Critical Thinking in Curriculum Content: The Case of Uganda

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of critical thinking in the curriculum content of institutions of higher learning in Uganda. The study is based on one of the institutions of higher learning in Uganda, particularly, Makerere University Business School, as a case study of institutions of higher learning in Uganda. Methodology: The methodology used is textual analysis, where curriculum documents are analyzed for aspects of critical thinking, on the basis of the higher order facets of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Findings: It is the finding of this research that to a small extent, critical thinking is prevalent in the documents of the institution of higher learning analyzed. But a lot more can be done. Unique contributor to theory, policy and practice : This study is a unique contribution to theory as it shows the application of Bloom’s Taxonomy, as a theoretical framework, in relation to critical thinking in Uganda’s institutions of higher learning.


BACKGROUND
Uganda's government faces several challenges, and one of them is youth unemployment (UBOS, 2016;The World Bank, 2014).The youth unemployment rate, which was 4.9% in 2015, doubled to 13.3% in 2016/17.This was despite the decline in the national unemployment rate from 11.1% in 2012/13 to 9.2% in 2016/17 (Egessa et al., 2021;UBOS, 2017a).About 30% of Uganda's institutionally qualified youth cannot find jobs (Gateway Research Centre, 2020).Uganda's Vision 2040 (GoU, 2013) notes that unemployment among the youth is a concern that is becoming a social and economic threat (S. 3.3).The Uganda Bureau of Statistics also noted that a significant percentage of the youth in Uganda are unemployed, and the rate of youth unemployment is higher for those with formal degrees (UBOS, 2017b;UN Desa Population Division, 2017).At present, one of the critical realities that Uganda is facing is how to stir the current unemployed youth into gainful employment in the face of the 21 st century job market.
Research ascribed the high levels of youth unemployment in Uganda to the skills mismatch of Uganda's graduates.Several studies have pointed to the mismatch between the skills obtained by the graduates of Uganda's institutions of higher learning and what the employers are looking for (Aheisibwe et al., 2021;UBOS, 2016).Education in Uganda has been seen as merely passing exams (Eton et al., 2018;Magelah & Ntambirweki-Karugonjo, 2014).In the NDP III, it was noted that within the Plan's five years (2020/21 -2024/25), Uganda was to focus on addressing the challenge of low labor productivity by improving the productivity of labor through strengthening the foundation for human capital; improving quality of education at all levels; and developing labor competences.No documented inquiry has been made into exploring critical thinking skills in higher institutions of learning; into exploring whether youth or graduate unemployment could be arising from the nature of critical thinking in Uganda's higher institutions of learning.Musisi and Bukirwa Sessanga (2019) concluded that to meet today's labor market demands, Uganda's schools need to shift the assessment strategies towards measuring employability skills, which are now prized in today's global environment.The most common 21 st century skill identified are among others; problem-solving skills, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration skills (Mahmud & Foong, 2022).Nichols et al., (2017) also pointed to the need for higher-order thinking which he argued was mapped into Bloom's 1956 taxonomy of educational objectives.By developing learners' analytical and evaluative skills, the learners would ultimately be able to apply knowledge and create new ideas.
There is a problem of high youth (and graduate) unemployment in Uganda (UBOS, 2016; The 3 World Bank, 2014).Thirty percent of youth graduates cannot find jobs (Gateway Research Centre Policy Brief, 2020).Less than a quarter of the learners who graduate from institutions of higher learning in Uganda fail to get absorbed in the employment world (Mbah, 2014).Despite jobs being not readily available in Uganda, there are employers' complaints about some graduates who have accessed jobs of their lack of critical attributes, in addition to the unemployed lacking ability to create their own jobs (Ahabwe & Mbowa, 2014).So far, documented Government effort on the existing graduate unemployment is related to the lack of hard skills taught in the higher institutions of learning, but not on soft skills such as critical thinking skills.No investigation has been done to evaluate the presence or absence of critical thinking skills in Uganda's higher institutions of learning.Yet critical thinking skills are 21st-century skills that are in high demand by employers in Uganda and other parts of the world (Aheisibwe et al., 2021;Musisi & Bukirwa, 2019).This study is therefore addressing a gap in literature and policy.
The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of critical thinking in Makerere University Business School (MUBS) Bachelor of Commerce curriculum content.The objective of the Study is to discover the critical thinking skills embedded in MUBS' BCOM curriculum content.The research question is what are the critical thinking skills embedded in MUBS' BCOM curriculum content?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
There are generally three vital broad theoretical approaches to critical thinking: the philosophical approach, the psychological approach, and the educational approach (Lai, 2011;Sternberg, 1986).
This study is based on the Educational Approach to critical thinking which focuses on problemsolving and decision-making skills (Sternberg, 1986).One of the commonly quoted sources of the educational approach to critical thinking is Bloom's Taxonomy (Dwyer et al., 2014) which was created to classify the thinking acts that result from educational experiences (Dwyer et al., 2014;Grieco, 2016).Bloom's taxonomy highlights the different levels of higher-order thinking that learners should experience as they go through higher levels of education (Calma & Davies, 2021).A learner that exercises the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy applies critical thinking dispositions (Calma & Davies, 2021).
The top-order qualities of Bloom's Taxonomy of application, critical appraisal, evaluation, and synthesis are aspects of critical thinking of self-regulatory judgment, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and contextual consideration.Indeed Facione (2000) points to the cognitive abilities of inference, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, explanation, monitoring, and correcting 4 one's reasoning as the foundational competencies of critical thinking.Thus, the top-order qualities of the revised Bloom's taxonomy of 2001 of creating, evaluating, analyzing, and applying are aspects of critical thinking that need to be emphasized by institutions of higher learning.Armstrong (2010) outlined some of the keywords that are entailed in the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy as follows: The top four words on the left hand side represent the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.The right hand side shows alternative words that can be found in the curriculum content to represent the key word on the left hand side.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In 1990, a cross-disciplinary international panel of 46 experts came up with a definition of critical thinking after two years of research and deliberation to include the purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, (Golter et al., 2016) as well as an explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based (Evangelisto, 2021;Facione, 2000).From this definition, a critical thinker was deemed to be: a well-informed, trustful of reason, openminded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit (Facione, 2000).Ahrari et al., (2016) argued that critical thinking skills are 21st-century skills.We are living in a period where the structure and the way of learning significantly determines our lives as never before (Vero & Puka, 2018).The conventional accumulation of technical knowledge and competencies is now less prioritized than critical intelligence, openness to change, and quick adaptation to new competencies (Civici, 2013).In the fast-growing, industry-driven global economy, higher education institutions are directly linked to economic growth through the skills and productivity of their graduates (Baird & Parayitam, 2017).The skills students acquire lead to organizational efficiency through the production of ideas, the invention of technologies, and competencies that increase productivity and create demand, thus resulting in economic growth (Schleyer et al., 2016).As such, critical thinking is believed to be an influential attribute to achieving quality employees worldwide (Moeti et al., 2017).Employers expect students to be equipped with critical thinking skills by the time they leave university, which skills lend them competence to perform in the job.Critical thinking also helps people to be responsible citizens (Barnaby, 2016).It enables them to support better decision-making based on careful and detailed evaluation of evidence, which is vital in an increasingly complex society (Barnaby, 2016).As such, Butler et al., (2017) plead for more instruction and attention to critical thinking skills.
Curriculum can be understood in a threefold fashion: as a concept, as practice, and as a field of study (Deng, 2021).This study will focus on curriculum as a concept.Ornstein & Hunkins (1998) defined the concept of curriculum 'as a plan for action or a written document that includes strategies for achieving desired goals and ends' (p.10).On the other hand, Nieto & Bode (2008) defined it as 'what should be learned and under what conditions it is to be learned' (p.127).The concept of curriculum is the organization of planned experiences where students achieve proficiency in the content and applied learning skills.It is the central guide for educators on what is essential for teaching and learning such that every learner is able to obtain a rigorous academic experience.
In 1990, Facione, a leading theorist on critical thinking, narrowed the components of critical thinking skills to five key facets: Interpretation, Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, and Explanation and Self-Reflection Judgment (Facione, 1990).This implied that for work to be identified as encompassing critical thinking skills, it had to have outcomes on interpreting, analyzing, evaluating, inferring, and explaining the problem (Facione, 2015;Ramandha et al., 2018).Does MUBS' curriculum content consider any of these facets?A more practical and viable curriculum framework for critical thinking that has been noted to be more suitable for university and higher education was noted by Armstrong (2010), who outlined some of the key facets and words in the revised Bloom's Taxonomy of 2001 (Dhanapala, 2021) to include; Apply (Executing and Implementing), Analyze (Differentiating, Organizing, Attributing), Evaluate (Checking, Critiquing), Create (Generating, Planning, Producing).In this study, I will explore the existence of these facets in the curriculum content of the MUBS BCOM program.
One of the key debates on critical thinking is whether it can be taught.The documentation of this debate started in 1983 in America when a Report called 'A Nation at Risk' (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) claimed that most seventeen-year-old children in America were not able to think critically enough to carry out basic tasks like making reasonable inferences on the basis of existing information.Several educators at the time tried to fix the problem by looking into deliberately teaching critical thinking skills to the learners.Unfortunately, there was not much evidence to prove that the programs and curricula developed changed the situation (Stapleton, 2011).It thus became contested; could critical thinking skills really be taught to learners in school?Some researchers stated that it was unclear how critical thinking was being taught in universities (Huber & Kuncel, 2016).Heft and Scharff (2017) noted that this debate was relevant because even if critical thinking skills were supposed to be taught, they may not have been effectively taught.The teaching technique may have been faulty even when the teaching faculty in the university was keen on teaching critical thinking skills.Also, the exact educational drills needed to promote critical thinking were vague (Ahrari et al., 2016;Pascarella et al., 2011).Moreover, critical thinking was not a blanket application.It differed according to the level of education.The higher the education, the higher the levels of critical thinking skills (Repo et al., 2017).For example, in a study conducted by Roohr et al., (2019), third/fourth-year students were found to have higher critical thinking scores than their first-year contemporaries.Huber & Kuncel (2016) also stated that existing literature did not really distinguish the effects of university from ordinary maturation effects.It may have been that critical thinking increased naturally with age and that some of the observed changes occurred independently of university education.
Other researchers have posited that critical thinking can be taught and developed over time through university education (see Hatcher, 2013;Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005;Saavedra & Saavedra, 2011) even though it is not automatic that it will improve as a result of university attendance (Schendel et al., 2020).Studies in Rwanda, Hong Kong, Scotland, Australia, and the USA identified institutional contexts in which students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in their critical thinking ability during their time at university (Schendel, 2015).However, other studies found that critical thinking in Africa can ably be taught when certain conditions are in place, relating to the pedagogical approach, the nature of the curriculum, and the level of challenge, amongst other factors (Schendel et al., 2020).
It is therefore believed that it is possible to teach critical thinking as long as active methodologies are used, universities' lack of interest is overcome, and students bring a minimum level of critical thinking aspects from previous educational stages (Bezanilla et al., 2021).Concerning this debate, Ennis (2018), one of the leading theorists on critical thinking, made a pronouncement that although individual critical thinking courses did not teach as much critical thinking as he would have liked, most, on average, did teach some form of critical thinking and indeed critical thinking could be taught.Huber & Kuncel (2016) also found that both critical thinking skills and dispositions could be taught and could actually improve substantially over a normal university experience.Therefore, since critical thinking can be taught, this research explores the nature of critical thinking taught in the MUBS BCOM program content.
The most common method of promoting critical thinking in the curriculum has been by including critical thinking in the subject matter expected to be taught (Dumitru et al., 2018).This has, for example, been noted in Europe with the Immersive Critical Thinking Approach, where critical thinking principles are not directly exposed to the learners but are believed to be learned once the students engage in subject matter instruction (Dumitru et al., 2018).Ennis (2018) also emphasized that combining critical thinking and subject matter instruction provided an increased use of, reinforcement, and retention of critical thinking, as well as subject matter learning.That it was a more effective way to inculcate critical thinking than a stand-alone course.The same perspective was noted in Africa.Ongesa (2020) found that in the long term, Kenya would need to move away from teaching critical thinking as a stand-alone topic to the infusion of critical thinking across curricular domains.That integrating thinking and disciplinary content to develop disciplinary understanding was educationally sound and a step in the right direction.Ongesa's findings are corroborated by Schendel et al., (2020), who sought to explore critical thinking issues in African countries that had been previously researched in the Anglosphere (USA, UK, Australia, etc.) to see whether findings and connections would hold cross-culturally.Schendel et al., (2020) found, from the data collected, that factors underpinning critical thinking development in students in the three African contexts studied (Kenya, Ghana, and Botswana) were similar to those elsewhere.Critical thinking should be infused across the curriculum rather than being confined to one curricular area or work of some lecturers.This, however, has not always been the position.In a 2001 survey conducted by Williams and Worth, it was concluded that stand-alone courses in critical thinking were generally successful in promoting critical thinking (Williams & Worth, 2001).However, more recent attempts to infuse critical thinking activities into subject-matter courses have yielded better results (Dumitru et al., 2018;Schendel et al., 2020).Penkauskienė et al., (2019) further suggest that aligning it at the program level would easily change students' thinking habits and transfer critical thinking across disciplines.Puig et al., (2019) also added that it not only had to be embedded directly into the course goals, activities, and assessment, but the students also had to be aware of the goal of including critical thinking development within the domain-specific instruction so that they could run with it (Behar-Horenstein & Niu, 2011).That way, they would have buy-in, and that would yield better results.That the continuously shared understanding would also mean that universities ensure students' critical thinking learning outcomes were aligned with the expectations and needs of the labor-market stakeholders (Penkauskienė et al., 2019).
Critical thinking does not exist generically; that is, the same way in every context in the curriculum (Terblanche & De Clercq, 2021).Different academic disciplines have different levels of critical thinking.Engineers, for example, may need different critical thinking facets from accountants or English teachers (Billing, 2003).Critical thinking has generally been noted to comprise cognitive skills and dispositional attitudes (Cloete, 2018;Facione & Facione, 2013;Lai, 2011).These components are interrelated (Cloete, 2018).The challenge is that several researchers focus on critical thinking skills and ignore dispositions (Puig et al., 2019).However, both skills and dispositions empower learners to think and act critically (Bailin & Battersby, 2015;Halpern, 2014).
The complementarity between skills and dispositions requires different approaches and methodologies in critical thinking education.If the development of skills can be supported through the curricula, dispositions should be developed through pedagogy (Penkauskienė et al., 2019).
However, Calma and Davies (2021) found that current research on critical thinking in business education does not acknowledge this basic but necessary distinction between critical thinking skills and dispositions.They call for investigation into the most valuable and appropriate dispositions in business contexts and how they are fostered in the classroom.These dispositions are prima facie among the important ones that business students should develop.The business education literature needs to include an investigation of these aspects (Calma & Davies, 2021).Existing business literature is more focused on critical thinking as ethical thinking or moral misconduct in business (Hummel et al., 2018), entrepreneurship (Verzat et al., 2017), creativity and innovation (Sharma & Sharma, 2018).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is a qualitative research study, so as to offer a rich account and interpretation of the research analysis from the data obtained through processes such as document review, observation, and interviews (Pulla & Carter, 2018).The study was based on constructivist epistemology.
Constructivism dictates that knowledge is socially constructed by human beings, and reality is interpreted as multiple and subjective (Brau, 2020).Critical thinking, in its nature, revolves around the subjectivity of learners, who actively use the obtained knowledge to find solutions to existing problems.The philosophical paradigm used was Interpretivism.Knowledge is interpretive in nature.Interpretivism revolves around how we gain knowledge of the world by interpreting the meanings that humans attach to actions (Irshaidat, 2019).I used text interpretation to understand and interpret MUBS' curriculum content, to establish whether facets of critical thinking were embedded therein.The philosophical school of thought used in this study was Hermeneutics, which facilitates interpreting text and messages within the context they are made (Husni & Setiawan, 2018).Particularly, Hermeneutics by Wilhelm Dilthey (Dilthey, 2010), where the interpretation of meaningful texts is situated in the interpretation of human action and history.
The study used the case study design.Case study research involves a detailed, in-depth, and intensive analysis of a particular situation or institution within a defined space and time frame (Ridder, 2017).Case studies are meant to generate in depth, multifaceted understanding of complex issues in their real-life context (Schoch, 2020), just like in the current study where I sought to gain an in-depth understanding of critical thinking (a multifaceted concept) in its actual application in MUBS.Particularly, this study was an instrumental case study.An instrumental case study enables a researcher to obtain insight into an issue in which the case itself is secondary and might be typical of other cases (Lucas et al., 2018).In this study, the BCOM program is only secondary and might be typical of other programs.The main issue is to find the nature of critical thinking existing in MUBS, and this may very well be done through the BCOM program or any other MUBS programs.
The target population was the undergraduate Bachelor of Commerce (BCOM) program for years 1 and 2. The analysis involved the curriculum content for the BCOM program for years one and two.The sampling method that is typically used for case study research is purposive, non-random sampling (Ridder, 2017).As such, I purposively selected the curriculum content documents that would provide the information needed for the study objectives.I used Textual Analysis to interpret document data.Textual analysis refers to a data-gathering process for analyzing text data.It is a qualitative methodology that examines a text's structure, content, and meaning and how it relates to the historical and cultural context in which it was produced.There are several methods for conducting textual analysis, but in this study, I focused on two key methods; word frequency and text extraction.Word frequency helps one find the most recurrent terms or expressions within a of the examined documents did not reflect words that encouraged students to Create.
In summary, the documents that had all the key words that denote critical thinking were only the BPD and SM.MCS only had 'Create', 'Evaluate' and 'Apply.'ICTB, ED, FA and BS only had 'Create,' and 'Apply,' ME and BC had 'Evaluate' and 'Analyze', CL and BL only 'Analyze' and BA and QM only 'Apply'.In the same way, the four key words did not exist in the course content of ITX, HRM, PM, and BA.Of the four words that were counted in this study, CL and BL did not have the words 'Create, ' 'Evaluate' and 'Apply' in

CONCLUSION, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The findings of this study demonstrated that several documents had the word 'Apply,' 'Analyze,' and 'Evaluate,' and very few had 'Create.'Some documents had all four keywords, and other, none of the keywords existed at all.Ennis (1993) noted that critical thinking is represented in the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, through each of the levels and all of the levels together.This means that if one of the themes is present, then critical thinking can be noted to be prevalent.But also, if all the themes are present, critical thinking will be deemed to be present.Even a demonstration of only two of the facets can point to the existence of critical thinking, for Nichols et al., (2017) noted that by developing learners' analytical and evaluative skills, the learners would ultimately be able to apply knowledge and create new ideas, which was all mapped into Bloom's Taxonomy.As such, it is not mandatory that all the documents demonstrate the existence of the key taxonomic words for critical thinking to be prevalent.It is sufficient that the words exist in some documents.Armstrong (2010) only noted that the top-order qualities of the revised Bloom's taxonomy of 2001 of applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating are aspects of critical thinking that need to be emphasized by institutions of higher learningthe key word being 'emphasized.'There is no particular mention of how much incorporation should exist.Therefore, if traces of higher-level thinking skills are noted, that is a good start for MUBS.MUBS can do much more to increase the prevalence of the key taxonomic words, as a higher prevalence provides a more excellent opportunity for critical thinking to be applied in the curriculum.
The above notwithstanding, there is another perspective to the above arguments.The construction of the existence of critical thinking on the basis only of the facets of Bloom's Taxonomy may not be a complete representation of the whole picture.It has been argued that the interpretation of critical thinking in curriculum documents ought to put into consideration the influence of cultural and sociopolitical factors that give rise to a variety of views of critical thinking across contexts (Meneses, 2020).When the curriculum documents are created, several factors are put into consideration during their creation.For example, the fact that not all students are of the same level of exposure (with some coming from rural villages and others from urban and suburban secondary schools).Some of these aspects must be captured in analyzing the overall existence of critical thinking in documents, which is not readily noted by purely using Bloom's taxonomic word analysis.
A few recommendations can be made with respect to beefing up and making what exists better.
There is always room for improvement, and an excellent education institution works towards performing better than its previous years.There should therefore be an intentional increase in the prevalence of the taxonomic words that denote critical thinking in MUBS' BCOM curriculum documents.The faculty of commerce should carry out an inventory of all its BCOM course outlines.
This would be through asking the lecturers to do an actual inventory of their course outlines on the taxonomic words and, after that, deliberately and thoughtfully increase the frequency of the words in the documents.When these keywords are included in all the documents, it will guide the lecturer's better implement the taxonomic words as they are able to see them often and therefore able to remember them and put them into practice continuously.Critical thinking needs deliberate attention, and the implemented interventions must be routinely monitored and assessed.In so doing, attention should be paid to the socio-economic conditions of MUBS and its students so that the taxonomic words are incorporated while putting into consideration the Ugandan environment, MUBS' vision, goals, and aspirations, and the graduate level of education of the BCOM learners.

Figure
Figure 1: Bloom's Taxonomy the course outline.Also, QM and BS did not have 'Create,' 'Evaluate' and 'Analyze'.FA did not have 'Evaluate,' 'Analyze' and 'Apply.'ICTB and ED did not have 'Evaluate' and 'Analyze' and MC also lacked 'Analyze'.The next question I investigated was the frequency of those words.It was noted that the frequency of the four key words in the course content documents was low.Apply featured 5 times in the BPD and ME, twice in BS, BC and SM, thrice in MKT and QM.Analyze appeared four times in the BPD, twice in BC, SM and BL, once in CL and four times in the BPD.Evaluate once in BPD, ME, MCS and ME and twice in BC and SM.Create, once in BPD, BC, ED, FA, twice in ICTB, three times in BC and six times in MCS.