Critical Thinking, Reading Comprehension, and Social Justice: University Students’ Knowledge of the Concept of Slavery
Critical Thinking, Reading Comprehension, and Social Justice: University Students’ Knowledge of the Concept of Slavery

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, the authors start from the assumption that what is taught in secondary/high schools forms the basis of the general knowledge learners carry with them when they start their university studies. Discourse analysis of first-year university students’ responses to a reading comprehension question (purposefully selected from a cohort of 500+ students taking a first-semester Academic Communication Skills course) shows how erroneous this hypothesis might be. In addition to this discourse analysis, we examined the secondary/high school curriculum (Ministry of Education and Training, Eswatini) in order to highlight the main elements of slavery taught in the schools. We investigate the notion of critical thinking—or lack thereof—in relation to some unexpected answers to an examination question relating to slavery. We highlight some of the possible reasons for the presence of a high number (76 responses out of 507) of surprising student responses and how a reading comprehension question has shed light on it.

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