Teachers' autonomy and their collaboration with each other in teaching are assumed crucial in shaping the quality of their teaching practices. This study addresses this assumption by examining the role of teachers' autonomy in making teaching decision and their collaboration in teaching practices in shaping their use of critical thinking focused teaching instruction from a comparative perspective. This study uses Japan, Singapore, Australia and the United States secondary teachers’ data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) which is an international survey focusing on teachers’ working conditions and teaching strategies. Each of the country involves average of 3242 participants and 12,968 secondary teachers’ data were utilized in this study. Results have found that secondary teachers in the two Asian (Japan and Singapore) countries are working under the school systems with low autonomy but high collaboration while those teachers in the two Western (Australia and the US) countries are teaching in the schools with high autonomy but low collaboration. Besides, teachers in a low autonomy culture including Japan and Singapore intended to use more often strategies in connection to students’ real-life to promote critical thinking. Yet, Australia and the US who hold a low level of collaboration preferred to foster students’ specific thinking skills to promote critical thinking development.

教师的自主权以及他们在教学中的相互配合被认为对塑造教学实践的质量至关重要。本研究通过从比较的角度考察了教师自主权在制定教学决策中的作用以及他们在教学实践中的协作以塑造以批判性思维为中心的教学指导的作用，从而满足了这一假设。这项研究使用了来自经合组织教学国际调查（TALIS）的日本，新加坡，澳大利亚和美国的中学教师数据，该调查是一项针对教师的工作条件和教学策略的国际调查。该研究平均每个国家/地区有3242名参与者，并使用了12968名中学教师的数据。结果发现，两个亚洲（日本和新加坡）国家的中学教师在自治程度低但合作程度高的学校体系下工作，而两个西方（澳大利亚和美国）国家的中学教师则在自治程度高的学校教书但合作程度较低。此外，在包括日本和新加坡在内的自律程度较低的教师中，他们倾向于在与学生的现实生活相关的过程中使用更多策略，以促进批判性思维。但是，合作程度较低的澳大利亚和美国更愿意培养学生的特定思维能力，以促进批判性思维的发展。