EFL teacher educators’ experiences in teaching critical reading: evidence from Indonesia

While extensive studies have explored issues of teaching critical reading in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes, there is a paucity of research that examines teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching critical reading in the EFL contexts. To fill the gap, this phenomenological study probes into EFL teacher educators’ experiences in teaching critical reading. It specifically looks at teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching critical reading and how their teaching practices contribute to the development of students’ critical reading skills. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with nine teacher educators in a private university in Malang, Indonesia. Findings suggest that the teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching critical reading, as geared by their lived experiences, involve basic conceptions of teaching critical reading, teaching critical reading from a philosophical lens, and critical thinking empowerment in reading classes. The study also documents that teaching critical reading encompasses higher order thinking skills enacted in the process of reading. Practically, the study’s findings call for the enactment of pedagogic trainings for teacher educators in order to construe their basic tenets of teaching critical reading, the philosophies behind such a teaching practice, and the empowered learning activities in the reading classes.


Introduction
In recent years, research investigating the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) reading in tertiary levels worldwide has been much focused on investigating the effects of teaching strategies on learners' reading skill (Chin, 2019;Chou, 2021;Kung, 2019;Roohani & Asiabani, 2015) as well as scrutinizing various related aspects to reading activity such as strategies (Par, 2020), materials (Erlina et al., 2016), and affective factors that affect reading comprehension (Žolgar-Jerkovic et al., 2018). Until the present time, very limited investigations that have systematically explored the tertiary teacher educators' experiences in teaching EFL reading in terms of their concepts and approaches to teaching critical reading (see Okkinga et al., 2018;Villalonga-Penna, 2020). Looking at this gap, there is a need to examine the underlying conceptions of teaching critical reading enacted by tertiary EFL teachers, particularly in the Indonesian EFL context. In other words, investigating values underpinning the teaching of critical reading and examining the underlying assumptions that shape what teachers do in teaching critical reading are important in order to set an ideological stance about teaching critical reading and how it is performed in EFL settings (Colombo & Prior, 2016).
Theoretically, reading as a cognitive process of constructing knowledge through meaning negotiation (Jian, 2018) is a multifaceted activity that is done through reader-and-text interactions within a given context (Jiménez et al., 2009;van den Broek, 2012). This is in line with the efforts of enhancing comprehension in reading that covers active processes by which students focus on their prior knowledge, vocabularies, inference, and comprehension monitoring skills (Elleman & Oslund, 2019). Therefore, comprehension activities generally involve reading textbooks, answering questions, identifying main ideas, synthesizing ideas, and summarizing what is read to demonstrate well-attained understanding.
In general, the concept of teaching reading can be grouped into three views: traditional, cognitive, and sociocultural lens (Dole et al., 1991). The traditional view of EFL reading focuses on texts as self-contained objects consisting of words organized by grammar. In the classroom context, literacy educators seek to teach reading by focusing on the comprehension of individual passages through the use of exercises that look at discrete points that are believed to form texts. In short, the traditional view focuses the comprehension merely on the text itself. The general emphasis of teaching EFL reading is on word knowledge; thus, EFL classroom activities are aimed at enhancing students' grammatical and vocabulary mastery (Sana'ati et al., 2019). As evidence, a text is set as the medium of EFL teaching, which leaves out the comprehension of the text itself. Therefore, EFL teachers view texts as self-contained objects consisting of words and grammar.
The cognitive view, on the other hand, sees reading as a skill that can be broken down into a set of subskills involved in both decoding and comprehension. Readers are viewed as experts when they comprehend what they read, and they are conceptualized as active recipients of information from the text. Meaning resides in the text itself, and the goal of the reader is to reproduce that meaning (Dole et al., 1991). This cognitive view of teaching EFL reading is not enough to support students to understand a text critically. The need to present a social role in reading is crucial, which is called the sociocultural theory proposed by Vygotsky (1978). This theory posits that learning and development should be embedded within social events and be facilitated through interaction with other people, objects, and events in a collaborative setting.
The sociocultural perspective characterizes reading as a social process. Accordingly, to interpret texts, readers should be mediated by social and cultural factors, in addition to exposing them with micro-level skills (Wallace, 2003). Enacting social and cultural factors in reading aims to build new knowledge from what a reader reads (Wallace, 2003). This process of reading may involve skepticism, questioning, scrutinizing claims, being open-minded, identifying problems or issues, making connections, interpreting evidence, challenging assumptions, taking a different point of view, and being constructive (Poulson & Wallace, 2011).
The aforementioned three major views of teaching reading have caused different conceptions about reading per se. The traditional view of teaching reading categorizes understanding in reading as information transfer. According to Dole et al. (1991), understanding in reading is seen as a direct result of decoding and lexical knowledge. A general skill once learned can be transferred to different contexts. Different from the traditional view, the cognitive view sees reading comprehension as an interactive process. Brown (2010) describes that the interactive process means the constructive process between a reader's knowledge and textual information. Accordingly, reading comprehension depends on readers' knowledge about the topic, their reading purposes, and the cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies they utilize. On the other hand, the sociocultural view sees reading comprehension as an active constructor related to learning environments. This view strongly believes that reading is not an individualistic process; it needs to be situated in a social context with the help of some peers or expert teachers. Within this perspective, reading, just like learning, takes place in a sociocultural environment (Lantolf, 2007).
One question addressed as to how reading instruction can support undergraduate students in developing leadership and communication skills, and the capacity to solve problems, engagement in teamwork, showing demonstrate skills in data analysis, and involvement in systematic, logical, innovative, and ethical thinking. This is one question, among other challenges, that Indonesian literacy researchers and instructors need to address in the context of higher education. The skills capture different dimensions of investigative learning and need to be engaged for students to experience their relevance in the inquiry process (Lian & Pertiwi, 2017). Within this premise, the ability to read critically becomes one of the major predictors of success in the tertiary level; thus, critical reading is a key skill that should be integrated into all subjects taught in universities.
A growing interest in previous studies about teaching critical reading as a literacy enactment in language classes has extensively been done in diverse contexts. The results share multifaceted perspectives and conceptions of the teaching of critical reading, particularly in the EFL contexts. Drawing on online databases, we discuss current research studies on the teaching of critical reading within dissimilar perspectives.
In a recent study, Sutherland and Incera (2021) studied faculty members' opinions about critical reading. The survey recruited 128 faculty members in a private university in the U.S. Focusing on reading behavior, the findings suggest that the faculty considered a more complex reading skill as more useful learning by spending more time teaching the skills. The study sheds light on the importance of knowing faculty's perceptions on critical reading to improve the endeavors of teaching this skill to the students in university contexts.
Din (2020) made use of a quantitative investigation to explore university students' critical thinking skills in their critical reading classes in Pakistan.
Geared by Critical thinking inventory (CTI), Watson-Glaser's Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) (2002), and critical reading test (CRT), the study unveiled that although the 550 participants encompassed a positive attitude on critical thinking, their critical thinking levels in the critical reading skill were not in line with their attitudes on the critical thinking. The findings of the study implicate the teaching of critical reading to be engaged with students' critical thinking skills, particularly in an EFL context.
In a Norwegian EFL setting, Bakken and Lund (2018) looked into English teachers' reasoning on teaching reading using a qualitative approach. Geared by critical discourse analysis, the teachers' understanding of reading is negotiated between their past and present experiences and actual school practices. The study also uncovered the fact that teachers' understanding is influenced by traditional perspectives to teaching reading.
Investigating the impacts of dynamic assessment and computer assisted language learning (DACALL) on the development of Iranian EFL students' critical reading, Khonamri and Sana'ati (2014) found that participants experiencing DACALL in their critical reading class scored higher than those who did not. The study's findings implicate language teachers to integrate varied teaching approaches and testing on students' reading fluency. Despite this, the study may not generalize the findings into a broader setting of EFL since the participating students were all male and the research site was situated in one location.
Previous studies have attempted to reveal issues concerning the teaching of critical reading in EFL contexts from different angles. However, there lies a paucity of research that explores teacher educators' conceptions of critical reading and its teaching practices in such a setting. It is also evident that such studies are rarely carried out on EFL teachers in higher education contexts. While a similar study on teacher understanding of teaching critical reading (see Bakken & Lund, 2018) was also carried out using a qualitative approach, the present study differs significantly as it enacts a phenomenological design that documents more in-depth meaning construction from the teacher educators' lived experiences of teaching critical reading (Mosie, 2020). Exploring EFL teachers' conceptions of teaching reading through their lived experiences is also essential as it opens understanding of how teachers negotiate their beliefs and fundamental teaching philosophy in teaching practices (Mardiha & Alibakhshi, 2020).
Two research questions guide this study: (1) To what extent are teacher educators' conceptions of teaching critical reading? (2) How do their teaching practices contribute to the development of students' critical reading skills?

Design
The present study was situated in an English education department of a private university in Malang, East Java, Indonesia, which investigates the English teacher educators' experiences of teaching critical reading to EFL students. Specifically, the study seeks to construe their conceptions on the teaching of critical reading and how their teaching practices contribute to the students' reading skill development.
In order to gain rich and detailed understanding of the participants' lived experiences in teaching critical reading, a phenomenology design was utilized (Creswell, 2013). This study generates the transcendental phenomenology approach by Creswell (2013; which focuses on participants' given descriptions of experiences to portray an essence of such lived experiences.

Participants
Nine participants were recruited in the study using a convenience sampling technique due to easy accessibility and willingness to participate fully (Etikan, 2016). Their teaching experiences range from 2-25 years (see Table 1, for the profile of the participants). Three reasons were held why the present study was situated in one institution with the recruited participants. First, the university's curriculum specifies that the English department offers courses in reading ranging from reading I up to reading IV with different objectives. The second reason is accessibility. It was easier to interview participants working in the same institution rather than spreading out in different locations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because conducting a phenomenology study takes much time and in-depth interviews with the participants, accessibility into one institution where the first author of this paper also works with is possible.
The third reason pertains to the qualifications of the participants. They have relatively adequate experiences in teaching reading for some years. They would be able to provide comprehensive and detailed data during the interview sessions. While this study concentrates on the lived experiences in teaching

Data collection and analysis procedures
Data in this study were garnered through multiple in-depth interviews with the participants. The interviews (see Appendix) for each participant lasted around 45 to 60 minutes. All participants used Bahasa Indonesia and English language interchangeably during the interview sessions which allows for dynamic shared voices during the conversations (Halai, 2015). All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and translated into English for further analysis. To maintain the quality of the translated transcript, we asked the participants to comment on it and give feedback for improvement. Further, we did multiple and repeated readings on the transcript to gain a global understanding of the data (Widodo, 2014). Afterward, we interpreted similar voices of the interview data and grouped them to construct three theme-findings for the study (e.g., basic conceptions of teaching critical reading, teaching critical reading from a philosophical lens, and empowering learners with critical thinking in reading classes).

Findings
The findings of the study are detailed into three emerging themes obtained from the interview sessions: 1) basic conceptions of teaching critical reading, 2) teaching critical reading from a philosophical lens, and 3) empowering learners with critical thinking in reading classes.

Basic conceptions of teaching critical reading
The first theme that emerged from the interview results is the participants' basic conceptions of teaching critical reading. In this aspect, all responses focused on exploring participants' conceptions of teaching critical reading. In the interview, it is contended that critical reading involves a deeper understanding of a text by evaluating its truthfulness or accuracy; thus, readers can take a stance based on how they evaluate the text. This implies that reading critically means that readers do not merely absorb meanings from the text, but they search for other possible meanings to further validate their comprehension of the text. These ideas are depicted in the interviews with R1 and R3: R1: Critical reading is coming to the deeper understanding of a text by evaluating the truth of the texts; thus, we can take the stance from the text. This implies that reading critically means we do not accept the text taken for granted but search for the further validity of the texts.
R3: Critical reading is finding out the author's purpose/attitude towards the topic, making inferences, and finding hidden messages On interviewing other participants, it is believed that critical reading involves "the process of constructing meaning from written text that involves higher order of thinking" (R4). It likewise means "understanding more about the information from the passages by asking questions and giving readers' opinion or judgment" (R5), and "a deeper examination of the claims put forth as well as the supporting points and possible counterarguments" (R6). Critical reading also engages readers in "questioning and evaluating the text" (R7), and in "synthesizing the meaning of a context and to combine it with previously gained knowledge to understand or solve certain issue/problems more deeply" (R8). Critical reading likewise entails "asking for evidence for any information/meaning expressed in texts" (R9).
Based on the abovementioned insights from the participants, teaching critical reading means evaluating the truthfulness or accuracy of a text, identifying the author's purposes, making inferences, finding hidden messages, constructing meanings from the text, asking questions and expressing opinions and judgments, examining claims and counterclaims, questioning (and evaluating) text, and looking for evidence for any information or meaning derived from the text.

Teaching critical reading from a philosophical lens
Interestingly, anchored by a philosophical perspective, teaching critical reading involved specified approaches. As shared in the interviews with R1 and R3 below: R1: Teaching critical reading involves taking risks from the students. Teaching reading is like teaching how to swim. Let learners dive into the texts and immerse into the writers' thought with caution (not lost in the text).
R3: Teaching critical reading is not as simply as giving students a text and then asking them to answer the reading comprehension questions, but guiding the students in finding not only the stated information but also the hidden message. To do so, the teacher should engage the students in an active process through the questioning process.
Teaching reading should be based on the principles of constructivism and active learning. The teaching of critical reading is anchored on the "sociocultural perspective of language learning proposed by Vygotsky (1978), classroom discourse perspective proposed by Bakhtin (1978), and transactional theory of reading proposed by Rosenblatt (1993)" (R4); and entails "motivating students to determine their purpose before reading" (R5) and developing in them the "ability to get meaning from printed symbols so that they become independent readers without teachers' help" (R9). According to the participants, the teaching approach of critical reading involves letting students take risks, guiding and motivating them, optimizing the sociocultural and the dialogic perspectives, and encouraging the students to be more autonomous.

Empowering learners with critical thinking in reading classes
In the interview, we also found that critical thinking in the reading class should be maintained sustainably by the teachers. It is depicted in the shared voices by with R1 and R3: Apparently, other interview data unveil that classroom circumstances, reading practices, and learning model also contributed to the development of students' critical reading skill. In the interviews, R4, R5, and R7 shared that: R4: Classroom discussion such as (1) collaborative reasoning, (2) instructional conversation, or (3) book club is also important.
R5: Having reading practices from simple to challenging should be given to students.
R7: Inquiry-based learning that allows the students to express themselves freely in the instruction.
Other interview sessions inform intriguing findings shared by the participants such as "group discussion, compare and contrast one and others' arguments" (R1); "brain storming and making summary" (R2); "roundtable discussion, presentation, and making posters" (R3); "questioning, connecting to the larger sociocultural context, and evaluating other alternative understanding" (R4); "developing the question, summarizing skill is so important" (R5, R6); "making a journal reading, asking students to gather information related to certain issue, doing certain project that demand a lot reading activity" (R8); and "asking learners to find arguments posed by the author of the text, finding supporting evidence in the text, asking learners to assess whether the evidence is valid and strong to support arguments in the text" (R9).
Furthermore, the findings reveal the need to introduce learning programs such as extensive reading (see excerpt from R1). This type of reading program allows students to read a large number of texts, providing them with the solid background knowledge that is useful for critical reading. Their solid background knowledge could be used as a counterargument in later reading activities (R1). Another response provides students to read a sentence carefully and make a note (R2). Once reading a sentence is finished, students can continue reading one paragraph carefully and make a note, then they combine the notes of each sentence and each paragraph and see how they come up with a summary and find out if the summary is similar to the reading text.

Discussion
The present study was designed to explore teacher educators' conceptions of teaching critical reading and how their teaching practices contribute to the development of students' critical reading skills which is situated in an Indonesian higher education context. The study unveils salient issues which are discussed in the following section.

To what extent are teacher educators' conceptions of teaching critical reading?
Critical reading is defined as a deeper understanding of a text by evaluating the truth of the texts. Thus, readers can take the stance from the text (Bråten et al., 2009). This statement implies that reading critically means that readers do not accept texts taken for granted but search for the further validity of the information that appeared in texts (see R1). It showcases the participants' beliefs that reading is not a process of only accepting what the text says, but there is a process of accepting the ideas through critical examinations to construe meanings from the text. This finding validates previous research that discusses reading activity as meaning construction (Jung, 2020;Macalister, 2014;Taylor et al., 2017). Reading critically without involving critical thinking is not possible. Therefore, critical reading and critical thinking skills are closely related (Karademir & Ulucinar, 2016). It indicates that the teacher educators' teaching practices, as informed in previous research findings, illuminate higher level comprehension strategies and questioning skills including backgrounding aims in reading, linking former knowledge to the present reading activities, identifying the text structure and organization, viewing comprehension, enacting evaluation, synthesis, interpretation, and judgment perspectives in reading (Asmari & Javid, 2018;Awada & Plana, 2018;Kavani & Amjadiparvar, 2018). In so doing, the use of metacognitive reading skills designed for out-and in-class circumstance should be tailored (Hamiddin & Saukah, 2020), mindfulness approach (Azizi & Kralik, 2020), and also dynamic assessment in reading class (Fatameh & Kazemian, 2016).
Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 11(2), 422-441 p-ISSN 2088-1657e-ISSN 2502-6615 433 Critical reading aims at understanding what is not written in the text explicitly such as finding out the author's purpose/attitude towards the topic, making inferences, and finding hidden messages. As suggested earlier (see Tiffin-Richards & Schroeder, 2015), the process of critical reading happens when readers proceed text-decoding and linguistic knowledge to construct the meaning of the text and they use their critical thinking skills to interpret, analyze, criticize, reflect, and evaluate the text for deeper understanding. The other participants such as R5, R6, and R9 agree that implementing critical thinking skills in critical reading can be done through questioning technique, asking for clarification, and examining the claims.
The analysis of the study also informs that teaching reading is identical to learning to swim (see excerpt of R1). This concept means that there should an encouraging action from the students as readers to practice reading directly (St Clair-Thompson et al., 2018). In addition, teaching reading is not as simple as giving students a text and then asking them to answer the reading comprehension questions. A good teacher of reading should guide the students in finding not only the stated information but also the hidden message. In so doing, the teacher should engage the students in an active process through questioning (Baddeley & Lewis, 2018). That is to say; teaching reading is based on the principles of constructivism and active learning (see R3).
Another response is revealed from the theory of teaching reading informed by Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural perspective of language learning, Bakhtin's (1978) perspective of classroom discourse, and Rosenblatt's (1993) transactional theory of reading (see R4). The principle of engaging students to read more is forcing students to have better reading fluency. Helping learners to be able to understand meaning from printed symbols is important, so that they become independent readers without frequently utilizing instructors' support (see R9).

How do the teaching practices contribute to the development of students' critical reading skills?
The participating teacher educators in the study elaborated limited shared voices on the enactment of students cognitive and metacognitive skills in reading. Despite this, they showcase basic conceptions in teaching critical reading to the students (Islam & Eltilib, 2020;Phajane, 2014). It is evident that the traditional reading practices generally used in social studies classes were oriented into instructor-driven model. This has led to the minimal realization of inferential and evaluative thinking for engaging students in text comprehension (Park, 2020).
The present study also emphasizes that critical reading involves higher order thinking skills, and there is a need to train students' critical thinking skills (see R4). Léger and Cameron (2013) contend that critical reading involves not only meaning construction but also critical thinking. Both critical reading and critical thinking skills are closely linked in order for readers to read texts critically (Karademir & Ulucinar, 2016). Therefore, critical thinking skills such as interpreting, analyzing, criticizing, reflecting, and evaluating should be trained to students effectively. It can be concluded that critical reading with the domain of vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, and experience, linguistic knowledge combined with critical thinking skills will drive students to have critical reading.
In addition, the classroom should support students to think critically because critical reading serves as the foundation for critical thinking skills. The group discussions, such as debate by providing compare-and-contrast ideas between different opinions and arguments, provide students with brainstorming, while summary reading, making posters and presentation, questioning, journal reading, and assessing evidence are some valuable activities for engaging students with texts. It assumes that these activities can drive students to read critically (Ng, 2018). Interestingly, the participants in this study found benefits from the implementation of certain teaching practices to develop students' reading comprehension such as types of question-answer relationship strategy, journal reading, making posters and presentations. Thus, teaching reading is consistently considered challenging (Nurkamto et al., 2021).
The practices shared by the teacher educators in this study essential and have been studied in previous projects (Chin, 2019;Roohani & Asiabani, 2015). Specifically, these practices are supportive in enhancing students' understanding of specific and general topics. Despite this, previous research revealed different findings, suggesting that teachers still mainly focus on word meaning in teaching reading (Zaman et al., 2019). Accordingly, Fisher and Frey (2015) suggest that teachers use complex texts to improve students' critical reading. Challenging readers with complex text is not only adult privilege because children in lower grades or unskilled readers can also benefit from it.
In addition to that, critical reading demands students to investigate, interrogate, and explore the deep meanings of a text. A number of essential features of close reading are crucial. For instance, teachers should pay attention to the selection of texts that should be short and complex (Chak, 2020). The complexity of the texts is an element of reading that is considered by three factors: quantitative measure, qualitative values, and the match between task demand and readers. Second, teachers should be able to provide students with collaborative conversations to discover the meaning of the text.
To this end, the present study portrays three salient issues concerning teacher conceptions of teaching critical reading in tertiary EFL settings: basic conception, philosophical basis, and critical thinking empowerment. The study highlights that the participating teachers perceive teaching critical reading as a more complex domain than traditionally-held teachings. This informs further that reading is a dialogic activity that students do to comprehend texts and enact their higher order thinking skills through critical questions.

Conclusion
The present study attempted to uncover teacher conceptions of teaching critical reading and how their practices contribute to students' reading skill development. The findings revealed that teacher educators' experiences in teaching critical reading cover three salient issues: 1) basic conceptions of teaching critical reading, 2) teaching critical reading from a philosophical lens, and 3) empowering learners with critical thinking in reading classes. The study also portrays that, based on the interview with the participants, teaching critical reading involves higher order thinking skills as evidence of a text being understood with deeper understanding by combining critical thinking skills in the process of reading. It infers that teaching critical reading starts from comprehending a text utilizing the linguistic process then optimizing higher order thinking skills through higher order thinking questions.
The findings shed light on the urgency in the teacher education programs to provide practical trainings for teachers on how to understand their fundamental perspectives of critical reading and its teaching, the philosophical ideas behind such a teaching practice, and learners' learning needs in a critical reading class. Despite the contributions shared by the present study, unveiling data from interview protocols solely may yield participants' subjectivity in the findings. Therefore, future research agenda should examine this issue using a case study with participatory observation in reading classes to investigate teachers' practice of teaching critical reading, particularly in the EFL context.