Proposing a model of critical literacy program for fostering Indonesian EFL students’ critical thinking skills

This study was intended to depict how Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) principles were incorporated in EFL reading class in Indonesian secondary school and the students’ Critical Thinking (CT) were fostered during learning process. This study was a classroom practice-based model of how the principles were transferred into the detailed teaching syntax in an Islamic senior high school in West Java Indonesia. As a case study elaborating how a phenomenon happened, this study explored teaching steps, teacher-students dialogues, questions and the way the questions posed reflecting students’ CT skills, and students’ engagement in the learning process. The use of Indonesian folklores containing controversy predicted to enable students develop their thinking skills became novelty of the study. In addition, three times interventions were designed in which each intervention consisted of (a) teaching critical thinking concept explicitly and implicitly, (b) seven steps of teaching reading procedure incorporating CLP principles (explaining author’s purpose, activating students’ prior knowledge, reading text loudly, discussing text in group, exploring the text in class activities in which Critical Literacy Questions and CT Questions are incorporated, answering comprehension questions in group, and reflection, and (c) CT skills discussion. This study provides an alternative model of teaching CT in Indonesia context.


INTRODUCTION
The 21st century life is characterized by the increasing spread and use of information. This condition has spawned a new challenge: how humans survive amid information outbreaks. This condition requires the skills for human to survive: collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving [1]. Having only reading skills seems not to be enough to survive in this information age. Therefore, the having the four skills become especially important.
In Indonesian context, the teaching of critical thinking (CT) skills is also urgent. Facts showing that Indonesians seem to be easily deceived by hoax [2] indicate the lack of critical thinking skills among the members of the society. Unfortunately, this urgent need does not make critical thinking a specific subject included in the curriculum. Santosa [2] states that Indonesia faces problems since there has been no lessons about the philosophy of logic for adult and about thinking pattern for kids. He further asserts that the

COMPREHENSIVE THEORETICAL BASIS
A number of theories are utilized in the study: critical literacy pedagogy, critical thinking, and the use of folklores. Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP)-a combination of critical literacy and critical pedagogy principles-is considered to be potential in providing the students opportunities to learn to think and to view a phenomena from a critical lense, to relate what they read and experience in the classrooms with things that happened in their surroundings (learning to read the words and the world) [10], and analize phenomena based on "today's context" [11].

Critical literacy pedagogy
Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) imposes students to read texts in active and reflective manner in order to understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationship [22] The implementation of the principle of critical literacy equips students with a) engagement or involvement of students in the process of interpreting a text -which along with the progress of science and technology shifts meaning including visual, aural, digital, and multimodal texts, and (b) the ability to interpret different types of texts using " critical lens" [22]. Furthermore, critical literacy helps students read more comprehensively and more meaningfully, encourages students of various ages to use their ability to construct meaning, and helps

Folklores for teaching critical thinking skills
Regarding teaching critical thinking skills, at the practical level, the teaching of critical thinking in Asian contexts such as Indonesia, may face challenges. The challenges emerge because basically people of Asia like Indonesian usually think of group-goals, while thinking critically from a culture where each individual thinks independently [3]. Teaching Indonesian EFL students thinking can be done during teaching reading skills. To facilitate them thinking, the use of texts which containt controversy is required. The use of Indonesian Folklore was seen as being able to meet the requirements for the controversial topics because the unreasonable nature of folklore could produce many questions from students. In addition, Indonesian Folklore is also something that is culturally close to the lives of Indonesian people who are group goals. This is expected to be a way to introduce critical thinking to Indonesian students.
Furthermore, related to teaching critical thinking skills, using literature to teach the skills is a necessity. Hakes in Tabačková [24] reveals that "literature and critical thinking are not" two islands "but" simply different coastlines of the same one"; literature in foreign language classes such as English is an important tool for fostering students' critical and creative thinking skills, and it is literature that is able to bring changes in students' attitudes towards the world around them, and reflect on the world around them [22]. In the ability to "connect classroom reading and implement it in reading the real world that gives birth to critical awareness" [31,32] and the process of engaging students to the text critically and pedagogically [33] the concept of Critical Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Thinking, and literature (literary works) meet the slices.
In Indonesian context, the use of literature such as folklores in this study provides the students additional benefits. The use of folklores is believed to be able to regrow the love of Indonesian students for Indonesian literature. The fact that Indonesian Folklore is the prey of world book publishers who come from the United States, Taiwan and Japan as a media to introduce Indonesian culture [34] indicates that there are something interesting from Indonesian Folklore. This research becomes important because it explores what the power of Indonesian Folklore really is when implemented in teaching context. In general, the use of literature in language classes provides several benefits: (a) the literature sharpens cognitive and linguistic abilities, and increases students' understanding of the human condition (Lazar, 1993), (b) the literature serves as a tool to provide students with understanding of conditions humans (Horner, 1983), (c) growing cultural and intercultural awareness in [22]. In this study, the Indonesian folklores becomes the media for teaching critical thinking in which the teaching approach selected combines the two models of approches proposed by Tabačková [24] (See Section 1) and the CLP principles are infused.
Further, at the level of development and implementation in the classroom, the use of folklore to improve thinking skills cannot be separated from the implementation of the principles Critical Literacy Pedagogy. While critical literacy principles implemented in the process of engaging the studens in the process of interpreting a text [22], critical pedagogy principles are actualized in the creation of problematic classrooms with a series of diverse problems prepared that require students to foster their awareness for their surroundings [21] so that they can offer a solution [22]. The choice of controversial topics is part of the critical implementation of pedagogy within the scope of the class. The topics of the controversy, according to Oxam Development Education is "are those who have a political, social or personal impact, and arouse feeling and/ or deal with questions of value or belief" [35, p. 34]. In this study, what is meant by the topic of controversy is a topic in literature that provides social or personal impact, and arouse feeling and/ or deal with questions of value or belief. Teaching reading is considered to be the right vehicle for the implementation and development of critical thinking skills [36]. Furthermore, the assessment aspects of critical thinking in this study adopted a critical thinking assessment guide for (a) reading activities that included assessing skills of paraphrasing, explicating, evaluating, and role-playing [37], (b ) classroom activities use several universal intellectual standards that include clarity, accuracy, logicness, significance, and fairness [38, p. 12].
Particularly, the Critical Thinking Questions (CTQ) were used in connection with reading classes adapted from CTQ developed by Paul and Elder which include questions: (a) what is the purpose for the book? (b) What is the author trying to accomplish? (c) What issues or problems are raised? (d) What data, what experiences, what evidence are given? (e) How is the author thinking about the world? (f) Is her thinking justified as we can see from our perspective? (g) And how does she justify it from her perspective? (h) How can we enter the perspective to appreciate what she has to say? (29,30). In this study, the aspects of critical thinking skills to be achieved are the skill of finding (a) the author's purpose, (b) issues or problems raised, (c) evidences given, (d) the author's thinking about the world, and (e) the author's perspective seen from today's world.

RESEARCH METHOD 3.1. Research design
This research is a a case research in which data were collected in order to see how a phenomena-CLP principles implementation-happens, and to measure the students' critical thinking skills. In some cases, this research has character as a case study study. Based on the scope of the study, this study involved only 1 class of students who were directly selected by the school without being randomized. Meanwhile, based on the purpose of the study, this study was intended to explore, examine contemporary real life through detailed contextual analysis of limited numbers of events or conditions, and their relationships [39].

Research site, participants, instruments, and materials
This research was carried out at the Private Islamic Senior High School in the North Sumedang Regency area, West Java Province. This site was selected based on several reasons. First, the preliminary study shows that literacy activities have been carried out by the school, but English reading classes are still with the old model of reading to answer questions [36]. Second, there are no critical thinking activities implemented in the classroom, A total of 29 students were appointed by the school principal to be participants in this study through a non-randomized sampling method. They are a combination of 11th grade students from science and social studies majors. From 29 students, 9 studenta are men and 20 students are women. Their age ranges from 15-16 years. Most of them came from the area around North Sumedang Regency, and several people are from outside the city who came and boarded at the pesantren (Islamic Boarding House). They grow in an environment with a good culture of religiosity, especially in the school environment.
Data is taken through classroom observation for examining the implementation process. Meanwhile, to evaluate the Critical Thinking aspects emerged a test for critical thinking skills was adopted and adapted from tests developed by The Critical Thinking Community (30,31).
The selected text contains controversy due to the "pralogical" nature of folklore [40]. It is this nature that will encourage students to think through questioning. In addition, the selection of classical texts also considers the students familiarity with the titles shown in Table 1 so that the main goal is achieved: to connect "a light on the past and other past world" about "how people think and lived long ago and see how they are similar to us today" Rosenblatt in [41]. The texts selection includes cultural aspects as priority. This is intended to take advantage of the benefits of reading classical texts that help expose students to different cultures in the world and in the past, "extreme instances of tensions in any literary transaction" Rosenblatt in [41].

Research Procedure
The procedure of the research includes conducting three times of interventions. During each intervention, a set of critical thinking questions were explicitly taught to the students. The qualitative data regarding Critical Thinking aspects that emerged during and after the implementation were elaborated and analyzed by using Paul and Elder's theories [37].
As indicated in Figure 1, the implementation involves a number of principles and theories: Critical Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, and Critical Thinking. The utilization of folklores and the incorporation of those principles in reading class and its stages was elaborated in form of schematic of general teaching procedure completed by detailed dialogue between teacher and students (See Figure 2 and Figure 3 and Dialogues in Section 4).

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The Implementation of critical thinking teaching based on Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) principles using Indonesian Folklore in critical reading class is done by taking into account several principles. First, the teaching of critical thinking needs to involve "dialogic teaching" [42] between teachers and students in the form of questions and answers, as well as between students and students in the form of discussion. Second, critical thinking skills are a set of abstract concepts that, though over time, can be obtained, but in teaching them need to be attached to a specific set of experiences and perspectives of the participants (Ennis and Paul in Chen et al., 2017, p.2) in this study i.e. students. This is actually to improve students' engagement with the teaching process [43]. The process of teaching critical thinking skills based on CLP Principles and the use of Indonesian Folklore is divided into 3 stages of intervention or called treatments. Intervention 1 focuses on the introduction of (a) the concept of critical reading, (b) critical thinking, and (c) Folklore. Intervention 2 and 3 is a follow-up that focuses on strengthening the aspects of critical thinking and critical reading skills. Details of the teaching process of each treatment will be presented in the next section.  (1) "What do the farmers ask for in the paddy field?" (2) "How long did the farmers work?" (3) "How the tiger behaved when welcoming the farmers?" (4) "What the farmers thought about the tiger" "(5) How was the baby condition?" and (6) "Where did the farmers kill the tiger?" Meanwhile, questions related to drawing conclusions are (7) "When the farmers arrive home, why the husband look suspicious?" "(8) What makes the farmers shocked?" (9) What the farmers did to the tiger? ? (10) How is the farmers' feeling when they found the truth? (11) Do you think that the tiger had eaten the baby? What is the evidence?
In addition to the questions submitted in written form, some questions are also spoken verbally in the question and answer session in-class discussions during the teaching process. These questions include critical thinking questions: (a) What is the author's purpose? (b) What problems or issues are raised? and (c) How is the author thinking about the world?
Thus, the stages of Intervention 1 consist of explaining the author's purpose, activating students' prior knowledge, reading the text loudly, discussing the text in group, exploring the text in class activities (+ CTQs are incorporated), answering Comprehension Questions in group (+ Group Work Sheet), and writing a reflection. The details of each stage are as follows:

a. Explaining the author's purpose
This stage begins with an explanation of the author's purpose described in the form of PIE which stands for to persuade, to inform, and to entertain. In order for students to understand the explanation of PIE easily, the explanation is made simple by using their closest life analogy (See Dialog 1, Sentence 1 : To play, staying at home is boring. 5 Teacher : Right, those are the purposes when doing something. 6 The next stage is explaining the author's purpose by connecting to the students' life, such as the author's purposes in a cartoon-movie they mentioned in the discussion, i.e. Spongebob, Doraemon, and Naruto. Then the explanation is more pursed by taking samples of news and advertisements. The fact that students tended to be more familiar with the information they obtained from what they watched rather than from what they read is also something teachers need to consider. This is an attempt to bridge the introduction of the concept of critical thinking that would be difficult for students to understand when it is presented in form of abstract concepts and not bind their experiences [42]. This bridging concept is part of an effort to leverage the abstract concept of critical thinking analysis in today's context [11].  [42] was conducted at the time of explicit teaching on "The Author's Purpose", beginning with explaining (a) the importance of knowing "The Author's Purpose," (b) theories about "The Author's Purpose," and (c) "The Author's Purpose in movies, news and advertisements" (See Dialog 5.2). In fact, this dialogic teaching is used at every stage of teaching based on CLP principles, with different portions as needed. This dialogic teaching helped the students find it easier to understand the concept of The Author's Purpose since the dialogue with the teacher provide them guidance in the form of questions and answers. The teacher gives more examples or illustrations to clarify an understanding of concepts.

Dialog 2. Dialogic Teaching
In this phase, the observation data shows that the students looked happy and enthusiastic about the lesson. They responded to questions posed by the teacher in the form of oral answers, follow-up questions, raising hands and nods and smiles illustrated in Figure 4. The responses become one of the markers of engagement in the learning process. These are the manifestation of the active participation of students in class discussions and the sign that they learn English enjoyably and attentively. This is in line with Licthman's [44] explanation which states that engagement occurs when the following questions are answered: (a) Are students working with peers? (b) Are students part of an active discussion? (c) Do students make choices about how to approach their work? (d) Are students asked questions? (e) Are students making their learning visible to others? (f) Are students welded to their seats or encouraged to move around? (g) Are students having any fun? (h) Are students using technology in ways of them to seek, find, and synthesize content? (i) And perhaps the easiest to assess: Look at student faces. (j) Are they bright and attentive or dull, bored, or letting the learning wash over them?
In addition, in this study, dialogic teaching process can be interpreted as an effective process involving students in the learning process. Once they have understood the explanation of the Author's Purpose, repeating the concepts is done in several ways: individual oral repetition, joint oral repetition, and written repetition by students and teachers altogether. During the process, the students showed their ability to repeat the whole concept of the author's purpose completely and correctly. They did the repetition with fun and enthusiasm. This session was the end of "Explaining the Author's Purpose" phase.
The phase of "Explaining the Author's Purpose" has involved several steps. First, students understand the concept of PIE (Persuade, Inform, Entertain) for the Author's Purpose. Second, the explanation of the Author's Purpose needs to be done explicitly through an explicit teaching. Thirdly, since the author's purpose is an abstract concept of critical thinking, bridging the abstract concept to make it more concrete seems to be important. It can be done by providing them with examples which are familiar to the students' experience and culture. Fourthly, since the author's purpose is a new concept, abstract, and not easily understood by students, dialogic teaching is the best choice: through question and answer and discussion with the teacher, the students will more easily understand it.

b. Activating students' prior knowledge
To activate the students' prior knowledge regarding the topic to be discussed, the students were grouped. One group consisted of four members. Before reading the text, the dialogue was conducted between teachers and students. In this phase, the students did not have any obstacles finding out words related to the topic "Village" as it is shown in Sentence #19, #20, and #21. However, the problem occurred because the topic which, in the researchers' assumption, was considered to be closed to the students' life, was not familiar enough for the students. They even could not get any clue from the Sundanese word "Panyalahan" (See Sentence #22, #23, #24, and #25). This may result in comprehension problem as well as thinking problems because the topic given is not at "the range of one's experience" [22, p. 180]. Therefore this activating background knowledge needs to be followed up with making prediction based on the appropriate text features (See Dialog 3  25 To solve the problem above, the teacher used pictures to activate the students' prior knowledge. Dialog 4 shows that the students were able to make predictions about the possible contents of the text based on the image they saw, yet they have not been able to find a link between the title, the tiger image, and the baby image. From student responses at # 27, # 29, #30, and #31, it was illustrated that the answer was based on what they used to read or hear. Question # 24 "What's happening with tigers and babies in the text?" is a question that tries to bring students to experience in the sphere of their lives [22]. Dialog  In this phase, several things have been done. First, through dialogic teaching, students' prior knowledge is explored through teacher and student questions. Secondly, the excavation of students prior knowledge begins with questioning on title explanation in terms of language, student's knowledge of panyalahan, and ability to make predictions based on title and picture relationship. Thirdly, as this phase determines the ability to understand the text and students' thinking skills, it is important to do so until the students reach their "range of experience."

c. Reading the text loudly
In this phase, one of the students was appointed to read the text aloud, as he is reading a story to his friend (bedtime stories). In the scope of literacy development, this reading aloud affects several things [45]. First, reading aloud helps increase the students' vocabulary where students gradually gain meaning from words they encountered during reading the story. Second, reading the stories help the students understand the complex grammatical structure. Thirdly, when the other students read stories, so the students who listenend to the stories explored the "story grammars" of a story. Fourth, listening to stories will add their knowledge of the world.
Some problems may arise when the students appointed to read the story is not "fluent" enough in reading English words. The positive impact of reading aloud may be reduced because the class turns to become learning pronunciation in English. To anticipate this, then the teacher needs to reread the story.

d. Discussing the text in group
The next phase is the students are guided to understand the text by the teacher. This activity is conducted in groups. In this phase, the teacher also discusses difficult words in contextual texts (See Dialog 5). This activity is intended to guide students to understand the text, to identify word meanings based on the context, and to recognize the linguistic features of the text. In this Intervention 1, the students were guided to use Past Verb in text as in the word had (#34), and went (#35), also on phrases like look after (#36

e. Exploring the text in class activities (+CTQs are incorporated)
In this phase the students seem to have a hard time finding the answer to question # 37 (See Dialog 6) which is really a derivative question of CTQs "What issues or problems are raised?" [37]. The difficulty is marked by the long duration to answer this question and deliver the group answer needed by the students in each group. This is understandable since it is the first time for them to analyze or break the code in the text, whereas the common reading skills taught by the teacher is to explore explicit meaning of the text. Dialog 6. Dialogic Teaching: Discussing the text Teacher : : Kita berhenti di sini. Coba diskusikan secara berkelompok, adakah hal yang membuat kalian bertanya-tanya tentang isi cerita ini? 37   Question #38 made by the teacher is a question in which the students need to recognize the controversy that appears in the text. The controversies, according to Oxam Development Education is "as those who have a political, social or personal impact, and arouse feeling and/ or deal with questions of value or belief" [35]. However, in this study, what is meant by the controversial topic is a topic in literature that gives social or personal impact, and arouse feeling and/ or deal with questions of value or belief. The topic of "The Story of Desa Panyalahan" has spawned a question that is the result of a clash between the story content and the beliefs/ values of students.
Subsequent answers by students for the question shown in #39, #40, #42, #45 #46 indicate the emergent of critical thinking skill; that is "asking questions", statements # 41 and # 43 indicate the students critical thinking skill of "providing alternative solution" [22], the assertion of "harimaunya sudah baik ini mah = the tiger is good" #44 shows that students make "assumption" based on their experience or value system that "loyalty must be met with loyalty" [46].
Moreover, it is also interesting to find out that the students were able to connect to the other sources of their experience. This is called intertextuality which is part of the critical reading aspect. Intertextuality, according to Mohd Ismail and Abd Majid [47, pp. 18-19], (a) refers to the reader's effort to create links or connections between texts being read with other texts he has read, (b) understand the text better and improve the ability to think critically and creatively, (c) signifies that the reading activity is "meaningful" for students where students make connections between what they are reading and the world, and (d) the dialogic nature of the text, and comprehension strategy where students create text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections when and after reading. However, teachers can not immediately ask students to dig up their previous experience related to the text they have read. Teachers should use some instructional strategies that can encourage students to associate text in the past with the current text [48].
The activities on Intervention 1 were closed with the assignment of some comprehension questions for students to do at home and discussed at the next meeting. The activities in Intervention 1 resulted in the emergence of several critical thinking skills: questioning attitude, intertextuality, the author's purpose, the context of the writer.

Intervention 2 and 3
In Intervention 2 and 3, the focus is directed toward the reinforcing the students' understanding about Critical Thinking aspects that had been discussed earlier. The reinforcement was done through the provision of different texts. In Intervention 2, the text given entitled "Timun Mas", and the critical thinking aspects to be reinforced is the aspect of "making judgment": "What right things Mbok Sirni did?" and "What wrong things Mbok Sirni did?" In Intervention 2, the teacher did the general CLP Principles-Based Teaching Reading Procedure similarly to what had been done in Intervention 1 shown in Figure 5. After that. the students were grouped to create a mapping This mapping becomes the guide for the students to get the answer to some questions, and to engage all students in the activities. Not only are students required to work together to make mappings, but they need to negotiate a few things regarding their judgment of what Mbok Sirni does before they begin to describe it in a map. content of the text in group to confirm their understanding, negotiating the meaning of good and bad things done by Mbok Sirni, and doing assessment about the text in form of mapping. During grouping, giving time limits may be one of the motivations for them to complete their works on time and distribute the works. This is one solution to help them stay productive during the lesson. The answers that students write in mindmapping cover all critical thinking questions.
Data obtained from Intervention 2 show that, in this stage, Table 2 shows the students revealed the following answers to the CT questions: To entertain 47 To entertain & to persuade 48 What is logic from the story?
The seeds will grow. 49 What is not logic from the story?
The baby is inside a cucumber. 50 Giant existed. 51 What is the right thing Mbok Sirni did?
Mbok Sirni asked the gient for a baby. 55 Mbok Sirni did not keep her promise. 56 The woman believed the giant 57 What is the situation at that time?
Mbok Sirni lived in a jungle. 58 Mbok Sirni lived in a remote area, no neighbor. 59 They lived in the mountain. 60 Table 2 shows that Intervention 2 has enabled the students to recognize the author's pusposes (#47, #48), to identify the logic and illogic parts of the story (#49-#51), to evaluate the right and wrong things done by the characters in the folklores (#53-#57), and to predict the situation when the author wrote the story (#58-#60). The students seems to be able to cope with the critical thinking questions that frequently required them to go beyond the text, or asked them to weight all context of the story before evaluation was made, or used their own perspectives to evaluate one condition [37] For example, the students considered that believe in the existence of giant (#51) as something illogic, because they saw it from their own belief system (religious belief as Moslems).
On Intervention 3, the students are given similar questions but begun by distributing jumbled paragraphs first. This activity is intended to train students' comprehension skills and thinking logically about the order of the occurrences. This activity is also proposed to introduce the students to other aspects embedded to the text such as image and color when reading.

CONCLUSION
The process of incorporating Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) principles in reading class is found as enabling Indonesian EFL students foster their critical thinking skills. To foster their thinking skills, three times interventions were designed in the implementation of those principles incorporated in reading class. The results showed that, first, the process of incorporating the principles were divided into five steps: Explaining CT skills-such as the author's purpose, activating students' prior knowledge, reading texts loudly, discussing texts in group, and exploring texts in classroom activities, critical thinking questions were incorporated). The implementation was found to be facilitating the students with more engaging thinking process as it was shown in their frequent questions posed and active participation. Second, the critical thinking skills emerged were the students' ability to recognize (a) the author's purpose, (b) the context of a written text (c) think logically. In sum, the CLP principles-based model appears to be an alternative model of teaching critical thinking skills in Indonesia. Miharja from Research and Publication Centre of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung for their never ending supports to "research, write, and publish." Finally, to all teachers and students in Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (Islamic Senior High School) in Sumedang and Sukabumi West Java Province who were willingly to be involved in our research, thank you.