SustainingLearningforHigher-OrderThinkingSkills through Code-Switching

Despite English being widely used as the language of instruction in many educationalsettings,somelearnersstillfindthelessonsdifficulttounderstand.Itmeansthat enhancing their critical thinking skills is now challenged. Thus, this paper argues that students'higher orderthinking skillswill improve ifCode-Switching isused asa language of instruction.AnchoredonCode-SwitchingTheory,Vygotsky'sSocioculturalTheory,andZone ofProximalDevelopment,thestudyusesanexplanatory-sequential designwithfiftygrade8 students as respondents from Toledo National Vocational School. Through descriptive and inferential statistical treatment, students’ pre-and post-test performances were determined, and significant differences were observed in these performances. Braun and Clarke's analytical framework revealed themes like enabling learning and developing confidence, which help explain the quantitative results. It concludes that code-switching is a potential solution to improve critical thinking. Hence, it recommends that code-switching may be allowed as part of the language of instruction to facilitate learning and develop higher-order competencies continuously.