Teacher Support, Collaborative Learning, and Critical Thinking Development in College English Classrooms: A PLS-SEM Analysis of the Mediating Role of Deep Learning Strategies

Abstract

Critical thinking is increasingly regarded as an essential outcome of College English education because students must learn to interpret competing claims, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and construct defensible arguments in a foreign language. Nevertheless, the presence of critical-reading tasks, group discussions, or argumentative assignments does not necessarily ensure that students engage in the cognitive processing required for critical thinking. This study proposes a structural model explaining how teacher support and collaborative learning contribute to critical thinking through students’ deep learning strategies. Drawing on Biggs’ 3P Model of Learning, the Student Approaches to Learning tradition, the ICAP Framework, and research on learning strategies, teacher support is conceptualised as an environmental condition that communicates expectations for understanding, provides cognitive scaffolding, and helps students regulate complex learning tasks. Collaborative learning is conceptualised as a structured opportunity for explanation, comparison, knowledge construction, and interactive reasoning. Deep learning strategies refer to meaning-oriented processes involving elaboration, organisation, source integration, reflective monitoring, evidence evaluation, and transfer. Critical thinking is treated as a higher-order learning outcome involving interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and reasoned judgement. A quantitative cross-sectional survey and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling are proposed to test five direct relationships and two indirect relationships. The study contributes to College English research by specifying deep learning strategies as the cognitive mechanism through which classroom support and collaborative activity may generate critical-thinking outcomes