Developing critical thinking in classrooms: Teacher responses to a Reading-for-Meaning workshop

Background: The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study of 2016 lays claim to the need for critical thinking be developed since, South African context, 78% learners could not even retrieve explicitly stated information (lower-order thinking) from texts, as opposed 4% rest world. Critical, higher-order and reading-for-meaning skills development are imperative allow become active participants this changing Objectives: study focused on teachers’ responses a Reading-for-Meaning workshop aimed at empowering teachers with tools or strategies improve learners’ comprehension through developing critical, skills. Method: research is an interpretative, qualitative which understanding how integrated into reading meaning classrooms. Microsoft program Teams was used online platform present facilitated synchronous e-learning. Purposive sampling applied 36 intermediate senior phase teaching grades four nine solicited. Data were collected Telegram chatroom web-page questionnaire inductively analysed. Results: Teachers experienced all positively and, implementation their classrooms, found that these encouraged learner engagement, improved interpretation, boosted confidence led meaningful engagement texts deeper allowed them think more critically. Conclusion: provided encourage express opinion answer questions based predictions, make inferences, connections, clarify, summarise paraphrase, so develop subsequently Contribution: On conceptual level, article has established connection between theories pedagogical strategies. This opens up new directions scholars field literacy education.