Insights on Integrating Critical Thinking with EFL Instructions in Indonesian Higher Education

This research sought to address three key questions: how EFL instructors in higher education integrated critical thinking (CT) skills into their teaching practices, what challenges they encountered during the integration process, and how EFL students perceived and experienced the impact of this integration. Five instructors from four universities and 49 students participated in this research, with the following methods being employed: interviews with the instructors and open-response questionnaires and focus group discussions with students. A qualitative research approach was adopted using a descriptive design to explore the integration of CT within EFL instruction. The instructors were selected purposively based on their experience teaching EFL courses at the tertiary level and their willingness to participate. Students were chosen through convenience sampling from two intact classes in the third and fifth semesters. The data collection instruments included semi-structured interviews for instructors, open-ended written questionnaires for students, and one focus group discussion. Instrument validation involved expert judgment and pilot testing with non-participant instructors and students. Thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase framework was applied, with inter-coder reliability established at 87% to ensure analytical consistency. The findings indicated that EFL instructors could integrate CT in almost all EFL courses (reading, listening, speaking, writing, grammar, and vocabulary), with the CT themes emerging being analyzing, evaluating, giving arguments, guessing, inferring, reasoning, and summarizing. The study contributes to EFL pedagogy by documenting practical instructional strategies for CT integration and offering a context-sensitive framework for developing CT across language skill areas. It also offers theoretical insights into how sociocultural and constructivist principles manifest in EFL classrooms. These findings can inform curriculum reform, teacher training, and future research in CT-oriented language education.