Critical reading and evaluation of published professional knowledge

This module is designed to help you develop skills and strategies for critical thinking and reading that will help you engage with different forms of published professional knowledge. Doing so will enable you to evaluate the publications you come across depending on (a) how relevant they are to your interest and (b) the quality of their content. In addition to being linguistically and culturally sensitive, in language education, it is also important to remain critical of the quality (i.e., scholarly rigour, professional relevance, ethical implications) of the content we read. This need is heightened when we adopt a more inclusive reading outlook, which encompasses work that is published in a variety of ways, often without the mediation of editors, reviewers, or teacher educators. In this module, we will first explore the multi-layered concept of "being critical", focusing on concepts such as reflection, imagination, and creativity. We will highlight key sections of academic articles, including the abstract, literature review, methodology, results, and discussion. Additionally, we will introduce a systematic approach to evaluating scientific texts, such as the CRAAP (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) test.