Critical thinking in the higher education classroom: knowledge, power, control and identities

This paper examines how critical thinking is perceived and transmitted in higher education (HE) classrooms using two Vietnamese undergraduate programmes as case studies. The analysis of semi-structured interviews with teachers, supervisors institutional leaders from both reveals transmission impacted upon by power relations not only outside, the form cultural political ideologies, but also within pedagogic discourse itself. Guided Bernstein’s concepts device, classification framing, discussion centres on organisational decisions prepare students to think, or not, ‘the unthinkable’. While teachers cannot unilaterally alter official curriculum texts make accessible all students, it former’s engagement, re-organisation curricular texts, use particular practices that can bring about change.