Wangying Guo: From Curriculum Aspiration to Classroom Practice: Critical Thinking Reform in Chinese Schools

This study explored how 18 Chinese language teachers across three junior secondary schools understood and taught critical thinking, and how their professional agency shaped their responses to curriculum reform. Teachers participated in Critical Thinking Rounds (CTR), an 11-week collaborative professional learning intervention involving classroom video, peer observation, structured reflection and professional dialogue.

Findings revealed a gap between ambitious curriculum expectations and teachers’ everyday classroom realities, shaped by policy ambiguity, examination pressures and uneven professional support. However, CTR created opportunities for teachers to make critical thinking more visible in their practice, question established routines and collaboratively explore alternative approaches. The study highlights that meaningful curriculum change depends not simply on what policy asks teachers to do, but on the professional conditions that enable teachers to interpret, negotiate and enact reform.</p>