Abstract
The 21st academic curriculum worldwide has emphasized Critical Thinking as one of
the paramount thinking skills. However, the fact that whether EFL teachers- as direct
guides in the classroom- have thoroughly grasped the concept, have been exposed to
the concept or equipped with adequate methods and approaches to teach critical
thinking in daily lessons remains questionable. This paper aims to present the
Vietnamese EFL teachers’ perceptions of critical thinking and provide an overview of
their current practices of critical thinking skills. The paper emphasized the extent of
understanding of critical thinking that Vietnamese EFL teachers show in comparison
with definitions in the literature, and how they apply what they understand in the EFL
classroom. Participants of the study are 5 teachers who have teaching experience of
more than 3 years, and the researchers collected data through in-depth interviews.
The findings revealed a lack of information and training from the participants as well
as some challenges in practicing the skills due to time-constraints or inadequate
general knowledge and limited language level of students. This paper gives EFL
managers and practitioners’ assessment criteria for whether to include or exclude
critical thinking in their classes and sheds light on how Vietnamese EFL teachers can
structure their lessons to critical thinking in the classroom.