CRITICAL THINKING IN SECONDARY-LEVEL ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN PUNJAB: A BLOOM’S TAXONOMY-BASED EVALUATION OF THE CURRICULUM AND TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which secondary-level English Language Education (ELE) in Punjab promotes critical thinking through its curriculum and prescribed textbooks. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as the analytical framework, the study evaluates the cognitive demands embedded in the secondary-level National Curriculum for English and the prescribed textbooks to determine whether these documents provide meaningful opportunities for critical thinking through analysis, evaluation, justification, and creative response. The researcher analyzed the curriculum objectives to identify the distribution of Lower-Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The same analytical lens was then applied to the textbook tasks and activities presented at the end of each unit to determine their cognitive-level distribution. The document-based qualitative content analysis was supported by frequency and percentage distributions to quantify the cognitive levels identified in both documents. The findings show that the curriculum contains 67.74% LOTS and 32.26% HOTS, while textbook tasks/activities contain 70.3% LOTS and 29.7% HOTS. These results indicate that although critical thinking is present as an educational intention, it is not sufficiently developed through curriculum objectives and textbook tasks. Although the curriculum incorporates elements of HOTS, such as analysis, evaluation, and creation, both the curriculum and textbooks remain largely dominated by LOTS, including recall, comprehension, and controlled application. The study recommends stronger cognitive progression, more open-ended textbook activities, and closer alignment between curriculum intentions and instructional materials so that secondary-level English language learning in Punjab can move beyond rote reproduction toward critical and reflective engagement.