Published date: Mar 25 2021

Journal Title: KnE Life Sciences

Issue title: The 2nd International Scientific Meeting on Public Health and Sports (ISMoPHS 2020)

Pages: 1–12

DOI: 10.18502/kls.v0i0.8862

Ratih Eka PertiwiSchool of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Aan KurniawanNational Institute of Health Research and Development, Indonesian Ministry of Health, Jakarta, Indonesia

Desi Ariwinantidesi.ariwinanti.fik@um.ac.idDepartment of Public Health, Faculty of Sport Science, Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia

Critical thinking, as the ability to evaluate, has been a constant challenge for many Indonesians pursuing tertiary education in Australian Universities. As an essential component to the students’ competency set necessary to accomplish their degree, many Indonesian students struggle to sharpen their critical-thinking skills in appraising essays or discussing questions correctly. The struggle might be due to the difficulty in distinguishing critical thinking from other intellectual skills such as understanding, memorising and applying. This article is a reflective writing that explores the challenges faced and strategies applied by Indonesian public health students during their course to improve their critical-thinking skills. Several factors including the collective style-culture, where the students come from a home-education background, and the absence of relevant practices are responsible for their lack of critical-thinking skills. Strategies applied are frequent discussion with native students which helps in breaking the crossculture barrier, thus increasing their confidence in critical thinking; extensive academic articles reading to familiarise the critical-thinking style; practicing self-questioning various topics and validity of evidence; and being more open to other perspectives.

Keywords: critical thinking, students, public health, autoethnography, reflexivity

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