High-order Thinking Ability among TEFL and English Literature Students in Graduate Degrees: Does Academic Major Matter?

Given the crucial role thinking fulfills in enhancing the cultivation of mind, it seems necessary that prior to its nurturing, its position be investigated among students in educational disciplines. To this end, the present research, by employing a hybrid question framework, intended to identify the current status of thinking ability of Iranian EFL students in two majors of TEFL and English Literature in graduate degrees. Since one means of assessing thinking power is one's capability in producing thought-provoking questions (Lipman, ۲۰۰۳), a group of ۵۱ students, through convenience sampling, were recruited to read two passages and generate essay-type questions. Then, using purposeful sampling, ۱۵ participants out of ۵۱ were selected for a semi-structured interview. The findings revealed that English Literature students outperformed TEFL students in deciphering hidden layers of meaning and were more capable of producing thought-provoking questions. Moreover, the overall percentage of beyond-routine (critical, creative, caring) questions produced by Literature students was almost twice those generated by TEFL students. Furthermore, in searching for the reasons impacting the production of thought-provoking questions, several factors such as academic major, nature of courses (e.g., Literary Criticism, Philosophy and Postmodernism), reading story among others, were discovered to be operative. The findings may help the stakeholders to know the barriers to beyond-routine thinking capability and the hybrid question framework can be introduced for identifying the status of thinking ability both in EFL contexts and other disciplines.