Students’ views regarding the barriers to learning critical thinking

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate students’ feedback on the impediments to developing critical thinking in the classroom. Interpretative phenomenological analysis techniques were used to obtain data from postgraduate and undergraduate students of an Internal Auditing department in a South African university. The students identified several barriers to developing critical thinking in the classroom some of which are (1) the lecturers who are most times not knowledgeable in the field of critical thinking, (2) the students themselves who are simply not interested, (3) finally the educational system, according to the students who all argued that critical thinking is not ingrained in the country's educational institutions. According to the students, their lack of knowledge of critical thinking including the lecturers’ seeming insufficient knowledge of critical thinking calls for urgent intervention in the form of re-curriculation and training of lecturers. The findings of this research could have important implications for the auditing profession, as lecturers are often challenged to identify innovative ways to assist students in improving their critical thinking skills.