Empowerment and knowledge transformation through critical reading and thinking: a case study of Iranian university students

Developing critical thinking via reading is a way through which students can be empowered to transform knowledge. Studies indicate that critical thinking should be at the core of reading because it is vital in evaluating the arguments as well as for the transformation of knowledge (Freire, 1985; Facione, 1992). The way critical thinking is understood in Iran, as a collectivist society, varies from the way it is conceptualized in the individualistic societies, such as the West (Atkinson, 1997). In the West, it tends to be based on evidence in support of a point of view, fairness in argument, and systematic analytical investigation of a concept open-mindedly conveyed by a matured reasoning and judgment (Facione, 2011). In Iran, the focus of reading is memorization and routinized reproduction of the texts, and critical thinking is often seen as an unfavorable act of criticizing others. This study, through a semi-structured interview, reports on five Iranian university students to explore how they conceptualize critical reading and thinking and the relation between this and knowledge transformation. The study utilizes Van Dijk’s (2011) ideology critique approach as it is relevant to knowledge and power in the light of traditional Persian literary scholars.