Critical Thinking Practice in Moroccan Higher Education: An Evaluation

Abstract

In this paper, the authors intend to evaluate the stand of critical thinking in Moroccan higher education. To delineate the basic issues surrounding critical thinking and its practice, this study went through a review of eighteen articles that took as their subject matter the teaching and learning of critical thinking in Moroccan higher education. This article diagnoses the state of the art, the challenges involved, the scope and the limitations. The authors sought to answer four research questions: (i) what place does CT occupy in Moroccan higher education? (ii) what is the scope of the teaching and learning of CT in Moroccan higher education? (iii) what limitations do published studies on the teaching and learning of CT in Morocco have? and (iv) how can we improve the practice of CT in Moroccan higher education? Findings show that the teaching and learning of critical thinking (1) is a recent endeavour in Moroccan academia, (2) is an under researched field, (3) is limited to two CT skills: argument evaluation and argument construction, (4) is restricted to two language skills: reading and writing, (5) is diagnostic and evaluative more than practical in nature, and (6) lacks scientific rigour. This article ends with a critique of present practice as being devoted solely to procedural, analytical skills, ignoring issues of power relations and ideologies beneath discourses. The authors put forward some suggestions and recommendations to move beyond critical thinking towards a critical consciousness. After reading this article, the reader would come to a broad picture of the state, the scope, the limitations, the deficiencies, and the needs regarding the teaching and learning of critical thinking in Moroccan Higher education.