Creativity and innovation in fostering teaching English are really needed to cultivate critical thinking skills, which have also become essential for students in the 21st century. As prospective language teachers, critical thinking skill is essential to pre-service teachers in professional learning and international teaching practicums provide with international learning experiences in real-world context. This study aims to describe pre-service teachers’ cognitions of critical thinking and how to cultivate critical thinking in international teaching practicum in Sekolah Indonesia Kuala Lumpur (SIKL), Malaysia. This research used a descriptive qualitative research design. Four pre-service teachers were interviewed. Document analysis of teaching videos and lesson plans was done. The findings indicated that pre-service teachers’ have sufficient cognitions of critical thinking. They show critical thinking characteristics and believed that critical thinking is important and should be cultivated in English teaching. However, pre-service teacher cultivation of critical thinking in teaching practicum is still low. They lack the ability to cultivate critical thinking in four components that are analyzed by researcher. Continuous training for pre-service teachers’ critical thinking pedagogy needs to be established to strengthen the cultivation of critical thinking skills in teaching. This research is confined to a small number of participants. Large-scale research involving participants is necessary to evaluate the extent pre-service teachers’ cognitions transformation over a period of time.