This poster summarises a study into how Vietnamese students apply critical thinking when studying in the UK. The participants were all Vietnamese students at one UK university. This study was a qualitative longitudinal study involving... more
This poster summarises a study into how Vietnamese students apply critical thinking when studying in the UK. The participants were all Vietnamese students at one UK university. This study was a qualitative longitudinal study involving successive focus groups three months apart. In these, the participants were asked to share their critical thinking experiences in Vietnam and discuss how they used this understanding in the UK. They also shared their personal experiences of the difficulties of studying here and how they overcame them. These students also gave very insightful suggestions to the university for improving teaching methods in the future. We discovered that it is simplistic to see Western teaching styles as more universally discursive than in Vietnam. We also discovered that lecturers are valued as sources of validation of students' knowledge and facilitators of discussions as much or more than presenters of knowledge. The participants informed us that discursive activities and written tasks facilitated critical thinking and that more interactive sessions based on and focused on prompts were greatly appreciated.
