Higher education provides students with the platform for mobilising knowledge for practical use in the face of unforeseen situations. Referring to the area of media literacy, students nowadays are more likely to have access to a variety of information and publish their ideas; cultivating media literacy quality and skills thus takes on heightened significance. This requires critical thinking which encompasses knowledge and capabilities for achieving understanding, making appropriate judgement, and taking meaningful action, as well as a pedagogical approach to activating learning. The literature suggests that constructivist problembased learning (PBL) has the potential for enhancing critical thinking theoretically; empirically, studies in different disciplines argue for the importance of strategic implementation and supportive facilitation. This study defined critical thinking as a threshold concept and established the epistemological threshold framework with conceptual and practical levels to investigate how PBL contributed to the development of critical thinking in the news media literacy class through students’ learning experiences, academic performance, and perceptions of their development.