Volume 16 Issue 1, September 2022
Integrating Debiasing Strategies to Facilitate Improved Critical Thinking in Language Learning Contexts
John Peloghitis, Guy Smith
Abstract:
Since the 1970s, scholars from a variety of disciplines have identified numerous cognitive biases and examined how they can impede rational decision-making. Despite the overwhelming evidence from these empirical studies, critical thinking pedagogy has largely ignored this body of work. This paper maintains that critical thinking instruction needs to adopt a new framework, one that considers the importance of cognitive biases. This paper first explains how cognitive bias can surface and negatively impact tasks that typically occur in language learning contexts, and secondly, it aims to describe several debiasing strategies and interventions to equip language teachers with the tools to facilitate a framework that encourages students to critically question ideas and sources, seek diversity of opinion, and slow the thinking process. Current literature on cognitive bias and debiasing is reviewed, followed by an explanation of how teachers can integrate strategies in two common language learning tasks.