Social Learning Environment and Pre-service Teachers’ Critical Thinking Development

Abstract

The pandemic has certainly pushed the world to become technologically savvy ahead of its time. Alongside this, the teacher education world was not spared. Teacher trainers and pre-service teachers alike were all forced to utilize technology in their teaching and learning process, in the effort to ensure that education goes on despite the pandemic. This has seen many teacher trainers designing teaching and learning digitally for the past two years. Although many teacher training institutions have gone back to the conventional mode after the pandemic, there is value in looking at how teacher education programmes can be delivered more efficiently in producing teachers with critical thinking skills. This raises the question of how teacher education programmes design a social learning environment that enhances pre-service teachers’ critical thinking. The present study attempted to answer this by examining the social learning features that the selected pre-service teachers had been experiencing during their online learning and how the features had developed their critical thinking. A qualitative research design was employed in which series of interviews were conducted on a group of pre-service teachers who were finishing their teacher education programme in two public universities in Malaysia. The study identified that these features include lecturers’ dynamics, lesson delivery and support available for students.  Several implications of these social learning features were also discussed for teacher trainers to take into consideration when they design social learning environments that enhance pre-service teachers’ critical thinking. These implications include the learning delivery and learning activities that affects students’ decision- making abilities and students’ learning performance. Recommendations were also made at the end of the paper for teacher trainers for future reference.