What Teacher Knowledge Matters in Effectively Developing Critical Thinkers in the 21 st Century Curriculum?

As the key agents of change in educational reforms, it is teachers who are seen as central to effecting change; this is no different in the curricular aim of developing critical thinkers found in numerous educational reforms across the world. One of the key assumptions behind such curricular reforms aimed at developing critical thinking in schools seems to be that teachers would somehow have the required knowledge and capacity to teach critical thinking successfully as envisaged in educational policies. However, research suggests that this is not necessarily the case and that teachers' knowledge in critical thinking teaching has to be developed in an explicit and systematic manner. Stemming from a qualitative case study on teacher knowledge in the context of implementing a curriculum that explicitly aims to develop critical thinking, a revised framework of teacher knowledge is proposed. This framework, which was emergent in the analysis of the study data, offers possibilities as a more complete heuristic and analytical tool to help understand the complexity and dynamics of teacher knowledge in teaching critical thinking. Moreover, it could help pave the way to better understand the various knowledge domains that need to be purposefully and systematically developed by schools and teacher education institutions to support teachers in their vital work of developing critical thinkers in the classroom successfully for life and work in the 21 st century. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.