The Role of Teacher Cognition in Fostering Critical Thinking in EFL Classrooms: The More Strategies, the More Ideas; the More the Merrier
Abstract
Critical thinking (CT) is increasingly recognized as a vital component of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogy. Despite this, limited research has explicitly examined the interplay between teacher cognition and the institutional environments that mediate CT instruction. Adopting a qualitative descriptive-exploratory design, this study investigates the cognitive frameworks and instructional practices of 18 Iranian EFL teachers working in contrasting contexts: public schools and private language institutes. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analyzed using a deductive–inductive thematic approach facilitated by MAXQDA 2025. The findings reveal a significant tension between teachers’ cognitive beliefs and their classroom enactment of CT, which is largely mediated by institutional affordances and constraints. Specifically, the study illuminates how the distinct bureaucratic and structural features of public versus private settings differentially impact pedagogical agency and the implementation of Facione’s (1990) core CT skills. These results offer critical implications for teacher education programs, policy development, and the cultivation of critical thinking within diverse educational ecologies.