Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers’ Knowledge about Higher-Order Thinking Skills

Abstract

Mathematics learning should be designed to develop students’ higher order thinking skills. A deeper understanding of higher-order thinking will support teachers to be able to design mathematics learning that promotes students’ higher-order thinking skills. The purposes of this research are to describe pre-service mathematics teachers’ knowledge about Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and their ability in designing HOTS-based problem. The research participants are 9 pre-service mathematics teachers joining profession education for pre-service teachers at Sanata Dharma University. Data sources in this research include a written test about teachers’ understanding of HOTS and a written test about teachers’ ability to design HOTS-based problem. The analysis of data involved Miles & Huberman model. Qualitative results showed that pre-service mathematics teachers were not able to associate the cognitive demands of HOTS-based problem with the dimension of cognitive processes of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Besides, almost all the pre-service teachers were not able to design a non-routine problem, they tended to design a familiar application problem that requires students to memorize facts, concepts, or procedures that have been done before and apply them to the context. Based on the results, can be concluded that pre-service teachers’ knowledge about HOTS and their ability to design HOTS-based problem are very low.

Preservice mathematics teacher knowledge of higher order thinking skills

“…They also still incorrectly categorize the application's cognitive level in the bloom taxonomy as HOTS. Similar results were found by Rianasari and Apriani [27] that preservice teacher knowledge about HOTS and their ability to design HOTS-based problems is still very low. They have not been able to relate HOTS problems to the cognitive demands of Bloom's taxonomy.…”

“…On the one hand, the knowledge of preservice mathematics teachers is at a good level, but other findings show that preservice mathematics teachers are not able to design non-routine problems. They tend to design familiar application problems that require students to memorize facts, concepts, or procedures that have been done before and apply them to context [27]. These two different things explain the existence of two different measurement domains.…”

A phenomenological study of challenges that prospective mathematics teachers face in developing mathematical problems that require higher-order thinking skills

“…Although previous studies (e.g., Retnawati et al, 2018;Rianasari & Apriani, 2019;Schulz & FitzPatrick, 2016;Sinta et al, 2022) have succeeded in identifying teacher or prospective teacher obstacles in developing HOTS questions, these studies have not explained with certainty whether teachers and prospective teachers have been given the facilities to develop HOTS questions. The challenges that prospective teachers face in developing HOTS questions when they have been facilitated to understand HOTS and develop HOTS assessments, especially through the implementation of project-based learning, have unfortunately not been extensively explored.…”

“…These issues are very important to be explored because it cannot be denied that the provision of learning facilities for students to develop HOTS requires adequate mastery of knowledge and competence about HOTS by teachers. Several studies have been conducted to investigate teachers' and prospective teachers' understanding of HOTS and its learning strategy (e.g., Barak & Shakhman, 2008;Retnawati et al, 2018;Rianasari & Apriani, 2019;Schulz & FitzPatrick, 2016;Thompson, 2008) and their competency in solving HOTS problems (e.g., Retnawati et al, 2018), developing lesson plan oriented to foster HOTS (e.g., Sa'adah & Anjarwati, 2022), and developing HOTS instruments (e.g., Machromah et al, 2019;Rianasari & Apriani, 2019;Saepuzaman et al, 2022). However, studies that focus on the competence of prospective teachers, especially in the field of mathematics, in designing learning and assessments that are intentionally oriented towards promoting HOTS are still understudied.…”

“…Regarding the competence of teachers or prospective teachers in developing HOTS questions, Rianasari and Apriani (2019) have found that most prospective mathematics teachers have not been 5 / 21 able to make HOTS questions correctly, where the questions they have made only require thinking skills at the third level in the domain of cognitive processes in the revised Bloom's taxonomy. What was found by Rianasari and Apriani's (2019) study was also found in Sinta et al's (2022) study, where when developing tests that focused on HOTS assessments, many test item indicators that mathematics teachers construct did not reflect and were not appropriate with the levels of cognitive process in the revised Bloom's taxonomy. In addition, most of the test items they constructed required only cognitive process at the bottom three levels of the cognitive process dimension in the revised Bloom's taxonomy (i.e., remember, understand, and apply).…”