One Size Fits All? – Postmonolingual Critical Thinking in Pentecostal Postgraduate Education

Abstract

The critical thinking required in Australian postgraduate education demonstrates an English-monolingual bias, which derives from Australian universities’ assumed English linguistic dominance and Western-centric academic culture. Therefore, Pentecostal theological educators need to examine the epistemological assumptions that underpin the broader Australian education system when undertaking Higher Education. This article offers postmonolingual critical thinking as an alternative pedagogical method for Australian Pentecostal theological postsecondary education and beyond. This article argues that postmonolingual critical thinking provides a possible response to Pentecostalism’s “anti-intellectual” debate and creates a Pentecostal identity within Australian postgraduate education. It is argued that Pentecostal education may facilitate learners’ transformation and move away from Western-centric knowledge-production where English-monolingual critical thinking is an a priori justification. By examining the critical thinking practices of seven multilingual Pentecostal postgraduate students through a postmonolingual lens, this article explores how these critical thinkers access their full language repertoire to exercise a socio-relationally-informed, communally-oriented postmonolingual critical thinking. The potential impact of this dialectically progressive framework of critical thinking on Pentecostal education is also examined.