A Socratic–Memetic Didactic Model for Fostering Critical Thinking in Higher Education

Critical thinking is a central goal of higher education, yet its development requires pedagogical structures that create opportunities to examine and reconsider reasoning. This study developed a Socratic–memetic didactic model integrating Socratic questioning and Internet memes within critical-thinking education. A qualitative, interpretive model-development approach was employed, comprising three stages: theory-informed construction of the initial model based on critical-thinking, Socratic, multimodal, and didactic-modelling principles; structured appraisal by five purposively selected experts; and refinement informed by their feedback. Expert feedback was analyzed qualitatively, with Likert-type ratings providing supplementary descriptive information. The appraisal identified four areas requiring greater specification: meme selection and use, teacher preparation and pedagogical mediation, contextual flexibility and student participation, and implementation, ethical, and evaluative guidance. These findings informed operational refinement rather than fundamental restructuring. The resulting proposal comprises an interconnected pedagogical architecture and an eight-stage instructional progression in which Socratic questioning is intended to guide the examination of reasoning, while culturally situated Internet memes are proposed as resources for cognitive confrontation, interpretation, and multimodal representation. The model offers a theoretically grounded approach to organizing opportunities for critical inquiry in higher education. Its instructional effectiveness remains to be evaluated through future empirical research.