Critical thinking is a central element in higher education, designed to respond to authentic challenges that our society currently faces: the emergence and spread of fake news, disinformation, and manipulation. There is a consensus regarding CT’s importance and role in higher education. Nevertheless, CT skills are often implicitly mentioned and only occasionally included in university curricula explicitly. The present paper aims at analysing how CT can be measured and tested in higher education, and it proposes specific tasks designed to increase the use of CT within the theoretical framework defined by Peter Facione and Paul Elder. Updated course descriptions were tested, and students’ feedback was analysed and discussed. CT was measured by pre-questionnaires, mid-questionnaires, and post-questionnaires to establish the effectiveness of coherently implementing CT into the course descriptions. The survey includes answers to open questions to determine the suitability of the tasks proposed. The present research is part of the international Erasmus project “Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs”.

This paper analyzes the different viewpoints of the participants in four focus groups discussing critical thinking (CT) in teaching/studying foreign languages. Three of them were conducted at Vilnius University and one at the Public Service Language Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania. All of the interviewees agree about the importance of critical thinking, although they define it differently and emphasize a number of various aspects needed for its acquisition and application. Both students/trainees and instructors/trainers describe several classroom activities that stimulate CT and suggest implicit and explicit methods for evaluating it. The focus group discussions were conducted as part of the international projects Think4Jobs, whose main task was to determine the gap between CT as it is taught at institutions of higher education and in the labor market. Answering this question, the participants mention the unpredictability of the labor market, the usefulness of CT for many different jobs and the importance of teaching it for the acquisition of foreign languages.

Aim. The concept of Good School was formed in 2015, however, the implementation of it has been rather slow. Therefore, the research aim of this article is to identify the educational experts’ viewpoints on the concept. The following questions have been raised to specify the aim: if the concept of the school of general education, presented as Good School, is adequately understood, what features should a teacher have in order to implement the concept of Good School? Methods. To answer the research questions a qualitative research by using structured interviews was carried out, i.e. experts’ written surveys were analyzed. The study revealed three positions that are discussed in this article: the concept of Good School, the mission and teachers’ features, which are interpreted in the context of the concept of Good School, albeit in a particular way. Results. The analysis of the empirical research data revealed that insufficient emphasis is placed on the value aspect, modelling of community-based school activities and their reflection. The research findings also showed that there has been a considerable lack of attention paid to some of the teacher's competences – there has been a lack of experts’ focus on the personalization of the educational content, its construction in the interaction with the elements of the pedagogical system, the reflection of pedagogical activities, and others. Conclusions. The concept of Good School is understood by the experts as a map, a conceptual idea, a guideline unfolding the schools’ specificity. The implementation of the concept of Good School should be based on the ideas of constructionism that open the pathways of common development, realization, and improvement of Good School.

This study aims to clarify how the outcomes of the Action-oriented Approach implemented in ESP teaching at the university level is evaluated and assessed by the students of Vilnius University (Lithuania). To achieve the research aim, the data sample of 150 students’ responses, representing three different faculties of Vilnius University (i.e. Life Sciences Centre, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of International Relations and Political Science), to the structured interview were collected in the period of one academic year 2019/2020. The qualitative analysis of anonymous students’ responses resulted in 164 statements of positive feedback, 37 statements of negative feedback, and 27 statements of further recommendations. More specifically, the analysis of the qualitative research data has clearly demonstrated that despite the difficulties in implementing an action-oriented approach into ESP teaching at Vilnius University, the changes in the language course have been mostly positively evaluated by the students. Also, the combined approach to analysing scientific discourse with the implementation of various practical tasks related to public speaking and team project has been assessed by the students as an opportunity to develop their critical thinking skills and become more engaged and motivated for further studies.

The findings obtained by G. Lind using his original research instrument – the Moral Competence Test – suggest that universities lack the capacity to foster students’ moral competence development. The MCT has been translated into 39 languages, all of which have gone through the necessary validation procedure. The article reports on the MCT validation study for the 40th language, namely Lithuanian. The research sample consisted of 526 students of English/German/French languages, future foreign language teachers, in the 1 st to 4th years of study at two universities in Lithuania: the former Vilnius Pedagogical University and the Vilnius University. The majority of the respondents demonstrated low or medium level of moral competence. On the basis of this cross-sectional study (2019–2020), the MCT for Lithuanian has been successfully validated and certified. In the following article, we present and discuss all the validation criteria and revisit the theoretical background of MCT. We also argue for educating students in moral competence and evaluating the effects of moral competence promotion in academic contexts.