Higher education has to elevate its graduate’s vital ability of critical thinking which is one of the competencies of the 21st century. Detailing from the name, dialogic pedagogy (DP) serves the purpose of enhancing the critical thinking of students by enabling interactions that require critical evaluation, looking at alternative views, and making sense collaboratively. Prior research on dialogic pedagogy and critical thinking has mostly focused on the experiences of educators, how it is incorporated into curriculum and learning, and the perspectives of educators. This study, thus, tries to challenge this gap by examining how university students perceive the influence of DP on critical thinking abilities, acknowledging its significance for graduates. A qualitative approach was used with an open-ended questionnaire given to 28 private university students in Malang who had directly engaged in dialogic pedagogy. The data was then analyzed by interpreting the result of the questionnaire. Moreover, NVivo application was used to manage, explore, find patterns, and visualize the data. The results, in general, indicated that students have positive experiences with dialogic pedagogy, such as deeper understanding, increased participation, and improved critical thinking skills. In addition, they get to share ideas, comprehend different points of view, and develop well-reasoned arguments. Nevertheless, they also face some challenges, such as language proficiency, unfamiliar topics, and lack of confidence. These findings imply that lecturers or teachers should integrate dialogic pedagogy in the teaching-learning process to build engaging, supportive, and dynamic learning environment that improves students' critical thinking.
Sulistyo et al. (Sun,) studied this question.