Monolingual versus Multilingual in CTCA 2.0: Effects on Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving in Business Law and Ethics

Abstract

Business Law and Ethics education demands that students demonstrate high-order cognitive skills, including critical thinking, and problem-solving in more complex legal & ethical situations. Current monolingual teaching practices have not lived to expectations, particularly in African settings, where there are different linguistic permutations. The objective of this study was to explore how monolingual or multilingual teaching practices can influence students’ critical thinking & problem-solving skills through the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach 2.0 (CTCA 2.0) in Sierra Leone. We used a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent groups design for 76 Senior Secondary School II students (the equivalent of grade11). 39 students were assigned to the CTCA 2.0 monolingual group, and 37 students were assigned to the CTCA 2.0 multilingual group. Business Law and Ethics Problem-Solving in African Context Test (BLE-PSACT) and Critical Thinking Test (CTT) were the instruments we used in the study. Multivariate analyses of covariates, controlling for pretest scores, revealed that multilingual instructional mode significantly enhanced problem-solving performance (F(1,72) = 76.43, p < .001, η²p = .515), whereas the effect on critical-thinking scores, though higher in the multilingual group, was not statistically significant (F(1,72) = 3.76, p = .056, η²p = .050). These findings suggest that multilingual pedagogies within CTCA 2.0 substantially improve students’ ability to analyse and solve complex problems with the African context while pointing to the potential for fostering critical-thinking with extended exposure. The study underlines the importance of integrating linguistic diversity in culturally and contextually responsive instructional designs to optimise higher-order cognitive development in Business Law and Ethics education in multilingual African contexts.