Integrating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Young
Adolescent Students through Scientific Approach in English
Language Learning
Sri Setyarini
English Education Department, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: English Language Learning, Higher Order Thinking Skills, Innovation, Promote, Scientific Approach, Young
Adolescents Students.
Abstract: Although Scientific Approach (SA) as a part of Curriculum 2013 has been implemented, Higher Order
Thinking Skills (HOTs) seemed not to be integrated in English language learning. This study presents the
results of qualitative study aiming at investigating how teachers integrated HOTs in English learning through
scientific approach, what benefits gained by the students in their learning; what teachers’ constraints are faced
and how to overcome them. Two classes of seventh graders from two different schools were involved as the
subjects of this study. Classroom observation, interview with the teachers and the students, and documents
analysis were occupied as the instruments in collecting the data. The findings from classroom observation
revealed that all principles of scientific approach, called 5M (observing, questioning, associating, exploring,
and communicating) were implemented to promote the students’ HOTs in those two classes. The teacher also
admitted in the interview that through this method students seemed to be motivated and enjoyable since they
got opportunity to know some language exposures and experience in using the language. In this situation, they
felt free to express their ideas, arguments, and responses to the questions based on their prior knowledge and
experience. Their promoted skills can be seen from their written works of the students while the integration
with HOTs done by the teachers was proved from the lesson plan they made.
1 INTRODUCTION
Recently, the government of the Republic of
Indonesia just released the 2013 Curriculum as the
replacement of the 2004 Curriculum. This is due to
some reasons explained by Kemendikbud (2013),
such as: (1) the previous curriculum (the Curriculum
2004) has not been sensitive and responsive to social
change at local, national, and global level; (2) the
content of the curriculum is still too dense as
indicated by the number of the materials and subjects
as well as the difficulties beyond the level of children
development; (3) the competencies do not describe
holistically the domains of attitudes, skills, and
knowledge; (4) some of the competencies required in
accordance with the development need has not been
accommodated in the curriculum. It means that the
curriculum can only educate students to achieve
knowledge and underrate students’ skills and attitude.
Regarding this, the essential of the Curriculum
2013 is presented through scientific approach which
covers 5M principles, namely: observing,
questioning, associating, exploring, and
communicating. As explained by Kemdikbud (2013)
cited in Zaim (2017), observing is defined as the
activity to introduce the learning materials to be
learned. At this stage, the teacher provides students
wide opportunity to recognize and be acquainted with
the things to be learned. In ELT context, this stage can
be done through the activities of seeing objects,
reading, or listening. Questioning functions to
encourage and inspire learners to actively learn and
develop questions of and for itself (Kemdikbud,
2013). According to Zaim (2017), it can be done by
asking questions to students so that they can argue
and develop their thinking ability as well as enriching
their vocabularies and social tolerance in gregarious.
Experimenting can be conducted by dividing students
into some groups, asking them to discuss and
supervising the learning process to ensure that all
students are actively involved in the discussing
(Zaim, 2017; Kemdikbud, 2013). Associating is
defined as the ability to analyze and associate the
512
Setyarini, S.
Integrating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Young Adolescent Students through Scientific Approach in English Language Learning.
DOI: 10.5220/0007170105120519
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 512-519
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

information occurred within the group. Zaim (2017)
mentioned that it aims to find the relationship
between one information to other information and to
find the patterns of interrelationship of information so
that students can make conclusion from the pattern
found. Lastly, communicating is the ability to
conclude the facts that have been observed and
experimented (Kemdikbud, 2013). Zaim (2017)
stated that there are four activities that can be done in
the classroom, namely (1) asking the students to read
their work to the class; (2) asking each group to listen
well and provide additional input with regard to the
work of each group; (3) giving explanation after the
group discussion ended; (5) structuring tasks and
providing opportunities to the students to demonstrate
attitude, skills, and understanding of the substance of
learning given.
As a pedagogical implication from this approach,
Indonesian teachers are required not only to transfer
knowledge like what they put in the package of
learning materials, but they also should consider the
moral values that should be given in character
education. Therefore, education can result in
preparing students to have good characters. By doing
so, they are able to compete globally in accordingly
with the principles of Pancasila. In addition, the Law
Number 20/2003 on the National Education System
expects that teachers and education practitioners are
able to realize the process of developing students’
personal qualities as future generation. It means that
students are necessary to possess good moral value
and critical thinking skill which aims to prepare them
in facing life phenomena and enable them to solve
their own problems.
In order to achieve this goal, curriculum as one of
educational resources can be employed to make a
significant contribution in realizing the development
of students’ quality. According to Sofyan (2016),
curriculum is a fundamental part of educational
program which refers to the means and materials
which students will interact for the purpose of
achieving identified educational outcomes. This is
also supported by the Law No.20/2003 on National
Education System which defined curriculum as a set
of plans and arrangements regarding the purpose,
content, teaching materials, and methods used as
guidelines for implementation learning activities to
achieve specific educational goals.
Furthermore, the regulation issued by the Minister
of Education and Culture (Permendikbud) No.
81a/2013 declares the process of learning in the
Curriculum 2013 should provide opportunities for
students to be able to develop any learning pattern
that occurs inside the two ways interaction between
teachers and students. It means that teachers do not
have to always more dominant in delivering the
learning materials, but they should actively
participate during the learning process. Shofwan
(2016) further mentioned that in the Curriculum
2013, learning activities apply scientific approach as
a main approach. It applies scientist’s steps in
building knowledge through scientific method. The
learning model needed is the model which allows
students to think scientifically and critically as well
as develops the sense of inquiry (Shofwan, 2016). In
addition, Shofwan (2016) stated that scientific
approach has three main characteristics, including:
centered on students, involves the science process
skills in constructing the concept, law and principle,
involves the cognitive processes of potential in
stimulating the development of intellect, especially
higher order thinking skills (HOTs) of students, and
be able to develop the character of students.
In order to make students think critically,
Setyarini (2016) believed that English language
teaching can be done in accordingly with some
strategies of Higher Order Thinking-based learning,
such as open-ended questions, abstract to concrete,
roleplay, and gesturing. From her research (2016), it
revealed that students’ cognitive level, especially in
terms of “analyzing and evaluating” can improve
students’ speaking skills through these strategies as
seen from their opinions, arguments, and judgements.
Moreover, Moon and Nikolo (2000) asserted that
Higher Order Thinking skills (HOTs) helps students
in practicing literacy. They could master
vocabularies, understand grammar, and get the
meaning of discourse in a holistic manner.
Although the term of scientific approach is
familiar for science teacher, it seems very new and
weird for English teachers. This is due to some
methods that commonly used by the teachers which
are not related with the scientific terms and
procedures, such as grammar translation, audio
lingual, communicative language teaching, and
natural approach (Richard and Rodger, 2001 in
Shofwan, 2016). As an impact, the study conducted
by Shofwan (2016) revealed that some teachers were
still confused and unsure in implementing scientific
approach for teaching English to their students and
their learning objectives could not achieved
optimally. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate
how Higher Order Thinking skills is implemented
through scientific approach in teaching English for
young adolescent students and obtain the data
regarding the benefits gained by students as well as
the difficulties faced by the teacher and the strategies
to overcome those challenges.
Integrating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Young Adolescent Students through Scientific Approach in English Language Learning
513

2 RESEARCH METHODS
As a research design of this study, ethnography study
was employed. According to Asher (2012),
ethnography is a collection of qualitative method that
focuses on the close observation of social practices
and interactions. It concerns on the study of social
interaction interactions, behaviors, and perceptions
that occur within groups, teams, organizations, and
communities (Reeves, 2008). In educational context,
Wilson (1997) cited in Angrosino (2007) mentioned
that human behavior including the teacher’s and the
students’ role are significantly influenced by the
setting in which it occurs. It is believed that the study
phenomenon in classroom in natural setting is
essential since it reveals regularities in behavior that
often transcend differences among individuals. This
becomes the main reason that ethnography study is
valuable to assist the researcher in obtaining rich and
holistic insights into teachers’ and students’ views,
actions, and behaviors during the implementation of
the learning model (Reeves, 2008).
In addition, one class from one selected school in
Bandung was selected as the research participant of
this study. During the process of collecting data, three
research instruments were occupied by the researcher,
such as classroom observation, interview with the
students and teachers, and documents analysis.
Regarding to the types of the classroom observation,
two types of observation that can be gained in
ethnography study, namely participant observation
and field notes. Participant observation requires the
researcher to take a part in the daily activities of the
individual being observed, while the field notes are
taken on the spot or as soon as possible. This study
was also used a semi-structured interview to make the
students and the teachers comfortable in answering
questions without any worry or making them hiding
something. The interviews were done in two
languages (Bahasa Indonesia and English) and they
were free to choose one of them if they wanted to.
Regarding documents analysis, Payne and Payne
(2004) in Reeves (2008) described that the documents
analysis is the technique used to categorize,
investigate, interpret and identify the limitation of
physical sources, most commonly written documents
whether in the private or public domain. Related to
this study, some documents that analyzed to obtained
the data were lesson plans which created and used by
the teacher, students’ writings, the written stories
provided by the teacher, and some videos that shown
to the teacher. All of those documents helped the
researcher by providing some information related to
the implementation of this learning model.
After the data from three instruments have been
obtained, the data analysis was conducted to answer
the research questions of this study. Qualitative
descriptive analysis was employed as the main
approach of this study since it focused on how Higher
Order Thinking skills (HOTs) is integrated in English
language learning through scientific approach which
required detail description and interpretation about
teachers and students experience in this
implementation.
The process of analyzing the data was conducted
both under the process of the implementation and
after the implementation of the learning model. This
is due to the statement of Kumar et al (1999) cited in
Reeves (2008) who claimed that in ethnography
study, ongoing data analysis was essential to ensure
that the data are clean and free from incompleteness
and discover additional themes that may be needed.
Regarding to this, the data gained from classroom
observations were analyzed during the process of the
study while the data which were analyzed after
completing the study were mainly gained from
documents analysis and interviews with the students
and the teachers.
3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The implementation of Higher Order Thinking skills
in teaching English for young adolescent students is
related to the stages of scientific approach in the
Curriculum 2013. From three research instruments,
the study revealed some results as explained in the
following.
3.1 Research Findings
Generally, the findings of this study showed that the
teacher from the selected school integrated HOTs
through scientific approach in teaching English by
using some strategies, such as brainstorming, giving
open-ended questions, providing abstract to concrete
concepts, mind-mapping, and role playing. Each of
these strategies are basically related to the stages in
implementing scientific approach as explained by
Kemdikbud (2013), namely observing, questioning,
experimenting, associating, and communicating.
In the learning process, it lasted for 90 minutes to
implement HOTs through scientific approach. The
teacher used story as a learning media to be
implemented in the classroom. As a topic, the teacher
chose a story entitled “Things in My Bag” to be
presented to the students. The English teacher divided
the learning process into three sections, namely
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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Opening (Pre-Activity), Main Activity, and Closing
(Post-activity). As the title of the story chosen at that
time was “Can You Guess What is Inside My Bag?”
presented through the pictures, white board, and
power point slides.
In the opening section (Pre-Activity), the teacher
started the lesson by giving open-ended questions,
such as what if, what about, why, how, etc. Such
questions were closely related to the story being
discussed which encouraged them to think from
different sides about the content of the story, either
connecting it to their prior knowledge or experience.
Regarding the result of the classroom observation,
open-ended questions provided by the teacher seemed
successfully invite students to actively participate in
the classroom. The students were brave and confident
enough to explain their opinion and argument in
accordingly with the questions.
Besides that, during running this session, the
teacher never put negative comments to the students
by saying “your word is not appropriate, your
sentence is grammatically wrong, you made a mistake
on your answer”, but the teacher expressed their
enthusiasm and positive responses to their students by
saying: “Yes, that’s good. That is a good try”. What
the teacher did in this session referred to be a
motivator who asked and motivated his students to be
active in classroom participation. However, the
teacher used another strategy to encourage the
students’ motivation to learn English and tried to
maximize the materials through giving mixed-
questions not only open-ended questions but also the
closed questions. Some findings caught from the
classroom observations described that the teachers
used pictures as media to conduct Brainstorming
which was done before storytelling started. The
pictures were in the form of objects found in the
classroom and their vocabularies in English. Then,
the teacher taught the students how every word was
pronounced in English and the students were then
asked to repeat the pronunciation. It was implemented
by the teacher to give a guidance or support to the
students to start concentrating their mind to the story.
Some pictures provided also could trigger the
students to connect their experience to the story they
were talking or recalled their previous knowledge to
the present story.
Some strategies were noted from the teaching
activity in which the teacher did mind-mapping by
using the information collected from the students
during the brainstorming. The activity is called mind-
mapping which was done through drawing a mind-
mapping tree with many branches filled by sub-topics
whereas the trunks were used to write some related
vocabularies. After drawing, the teacher gave an
opportunity to the students to make one sentence
using sub-topic and vocabulary available in the tree.
Along this activity, most students showed their
enthusiasm to connect the sub-topic to vocabulary to
make a simple story. In addition, they felt enjoyable
to think logically through combining the topic and the
word or sentence. Even the students kept trying to
express what they had known about the story and
what they did not know.
Based on the classroom observation results, the
data showed that the teachers integrated Higher Order
Thinking Skills (HOTs) in the main activity through
implementing several strategies such as repeating
words and gestures, making abstract to concrete
objects, and using realia. Repeating words and giving
gestures were found several times during the
observations. These were done by the teacher through
writing and pronouncing key vocabularies used in the
story. Meanwhile, giving gestures were done by the
teacher through imitating the actions of the characters
like what they did in the story. It was done to help the
students’ understanding the key words which would
support their comprehension to the whole story.
In this section, the following activity was done by
making abstract to concrete. As an example to explain
the concept of “heavy”, the teacher directly gave a
practical action that caused them imagined how the
word of “heavy” is looked alike so that it eased the
students catch the meaning of that word. The
researcher observed this strategy was continuously
employed by teacher during the storytelling activity.
Concerning to the main conflict on the story, the
teacher invited the students to be a problem solver in
the conflict as they were asked to give ideas,
suggestion or reasons why they took those solution
responding to problems given by the teacher. To
prepare their ideas, reasons, and suggestions, the
teacher gave 10 minutes for the discussion. During
the discussion, the teacher supervised the students
and gave some inputs to complete their opinions,
proposed to give problem solution.
In the Closing section, the researcher also caught
that the teacher assigned the students to create their
own story. The story-creating process was done
through several stages such as creating the main
framework of the story, discussing the character and
the plot, developing the characteristics of the actors,
and creating the whole story. This activity lasted for
30 minutes while being supervised by the teacher.
When some stories have been created by each group,
the representatives of each group were asked to tell it
in front of the classroom. The story was delivered in
English and the students were allowed to read the
Integrating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Young Adolescent Students through Scientific Approach in English Language Learning
515

story in order to avoid the missing information from
the story. After each representative of the group
finished to deliver the contents of their story, the
teacher assigned the other group members to respond
the story. From these responses, the researcher took a
note in the observation sheet to determine the level of
students thinking skills.
Regarding the teacher’s experience in integrating
Higher Order Thinking skills in storytelling, the
teacher claimed that she was familiar with Higher
Order Thinking skills closely related to critical
thinking. She was aware that critical thinking skill
implemented in the classroom could encourage the
students’ enthusiasm in the learning process. From
the interview with the teacher, it revealed that critical
thinking was stimulated by giving some critical
questions to the student such as “why” and “how if”
that placed the students as a character in the story
facing a particular situation. By doing so, the students
were encouraged to actively participate in the
classroom activities and they enjoyed giving their
response and opinion without being worry of making
mistakes. According to the teacher in the interview,
she was frequently surprised with the students’
responses that were unpredictable and unusual even
they could something out of the box. Such situation
couldn’t be found in the regular teaching session
which commonly only focused on comprehending the
materials. Furthermore, the teacher believed that the
teaching process should be conducted by addressing
the students’ need and characteristic in order an
effective and active learning environment was gained.
This belief was reflected in the teacher’s performance
that used various teaching media such as pictures,
video, and realia to help the students understand the
story delivered.
Nonetheless, some difficulties were faced by the
teacher in integrating HOTs with storytelling
especially to develop an active learning environment
in the classroom. As stated previously that critical
questions was one of stimulus to invite the students’
response, but it was not that easy for the teacher to
construct an efficient critical question that could be
easily understood by the students and facilitate them
to extend their ideas.
Moreover, the teacher also dealt with some
grammatical errors in providing the questions since
the questions should be immediately made adjusting
with the students’ response. To avoid
misunderstanding, in some cases the teacher preferred
to repeat the questions in Bahasa Indonesia for the
purpose of clarity. Another difficulty was dealing
with providing teaching materials that could facilitate
HOTs in storytelling.
According to the teacher, most of the materials
provided in the text book were irrelevant either in the
language level or in the content level for the students.
For example, inappropriate story chosen could cause
the students were less motivated in the learning
process since the story was not contextual and
familiar in their life so that there was no emotional
engagement with the students.
In the relation some difficulties faced during
learning process, the teacher applied some strategies
to solve those problems. First, it was important to
determine the learning objective and goal before
conducting the learning process. By doing so the
teacher said that she would be easier to create
valuable critical questions that could extend the
students’ ideas and opinions. Besides that, the teacher
was supposed to modify or create original teaching
materials that were able to accommodate the students’
characteristics. The teacher usually simplified the
language use in the story such as changing with
synonyms that were more familiar for the students.
Meanwhile for the content of the story, the teacher
modified it by replacing the character and setting with
something commonly found in society around the
students.
Data gained from document analysis was
expected to support the data from the classroom
observations and interviews with the teachers and the
students. Specifically, in that school, there were three
types of documents that were analyzed, namely
lesson plan created by the teacher, teaching media and
learning sources, as well as the written stories
composed by the students.
In term of the lesson plan made by the teacher,
some points were analyzed to obtain the data, such as
learning objectives, appropriateness of learning
materials, sequences of learning activities, and
assessment procedures. From the learning objectives
contained in the lesson plan, the teacher formulated
four learning objectives which covered the aspect of
cognitive, psychomotor, and affective.
3.2 Discussion
During the implementation of Higher Order Thinking
skills in English language learning, some major
concepts suggested by King and Rohani (2012)
should be understood by the teachers. First, the levels
of thinking cannot be unmeshed from the levels of
learning since they involve interdependence, multiple
components and levels. Second, whether or not
thinking can be learned without subject matter
content is only a theoretical point. In the real life, the
students will learn content in both community and
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
516

school experiences, no matter what theorists
conclude, and the concepts and vocabulary they learn
in the prior year will help them learn both higher order
thinking skills and new content in the coming year.
Third, higher order thinking involves a variety of
thinking processes applied to complex situations and
having multiple variables. (King and Rohani, 2012, p.
12).
From the results of this study, it could be seen that
scientific approach is done into several essential
elements namely, observing, questioning,
associating, experimenting, networking, and
communicating. Those stages are implemented
through sequential ways starting from observing
stage as the simple one until communicating stage as
the post activity in this approach. Generally,
concerning on the implementation of learning process
from classroom observation, the learning process is
divided into three main phases namely; opening
activity, whilst-activity, and post activity. Each of the
phases is done through several strategies such as
brainstorming, mind mapping, storytelling, role
playing, and playing game.
In the opening activity, the teachers implemented
some strategies including brainstorming and mind-
mapping. The brainstorming is done through showing
some related pictures to main topic and asking the
students about what they experience related to that
topic. This is similar to what scientific approach
suggested that initial learning should be stated from
observing an object. Observing stage was aimed to
introduce a new knowledge that is going to be
delivered in the learning process. In this phase, the
students were stimulated to recall some of their prior
knowledge. To get in depth knowledge on the object,
asking some questions is essential to generate some
ideas about the object including its structures and
elements. This activity was implemented through
implementing both using closed question and open-
ended question in sequential stage. The teacher
started to give close-questions such as “what” and
“where” aiming to ease students answered the
questions and get familiar with the topic discussed.
Closed-questioned was then followed by open-ended
questions such as how and why in order to stimulate
students deeply thinking about the materials. Such
questions required the students to analyze some
relations among the object being discussed with
others and provide logical reasoning for supporting
their claims. As the students’ understanding about the
material improved, it seemed that students paid
attention to the lesson better. Some students raised
their hands to ask several questions which aimed to
clarify, confirm, or even evaluate their understanding
on the object being discussed. In this case, the
students’ question is regarded as an indicator that the
stage of scientific approach has achieved the second
phase, questioning phase. Meanwhile, in the main
activity, several strategies used such as storytelling
and roleplaying were employed as strategies to
deliver various learning materials in different schools.
Storytelling as one of attractive learning model was
done through several techniques including using
gestures and mimic, repetition of some essential
words, making abstract to concrete, and scaffolding.
In the storytelling process, the teachers several times
stop telling the story and letting their students to guess
what would happen next in the story. students’
response this by producing different predictions, as a
result of their understanding toward some parts of the
story and draw a connection from one event to
another event in the story. In addition, strategy of
making abstract to concrete was also implemented to
help students understand intended meaning of the
story. Some concepts in the story is quite new and
unfamiliar to the students at which the teacher should
elaborate it more through giving several supporting
ideas about it in more simple way, so that the abstract
concepts to be real and tangible in the students’ life.
For example, explaining the concept of being greedy,
rather than giving the direct translation of the words,
providing some practical examples of that attitude in
the real life related to the word were more essential to
understand it to be a concrete thing. By doing so, the
students were trained to think abstract things obtained
through reflecting the practical examples toward their
experience on it. In this process, the associating
thinking of scientific approach was clearly identified
on how the students connect, compare, and contrast
what they have in their experiences to the abstract
concept being discussed.
Concerning on the post activity, generally in this
session the students were given task to create, and
modify the modeled story to be their own version.
The activities were initially done by guiding the
students to evaluate and criticize the characters of the
story based on several characteristics laying on them.
The students tried to create some statements related
to their opinion on the characters which were
stimulated by giving them open-ended questions such
as how if and what if. The students judged the
characters based on some moral values laying on their
social life whether it was good or bad. From the
observation, it is clear showed that the students’
thought related to the teacher questions were various
since the students shared different experience and
knowledge with others about the topic. The students’
ability to give comments and judgment were
Integrating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Young Adolescent Students through Scientific Approach in English Language Learning
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identified as the higher level of thinking before
creating. It still belongs to the association process
where the students learn to compare and contrast the
values in the story with the expression in thesis life.
These various answers were also due to the context of
the question given by the teacher that has been
familiar with the students. As explained by King and
Rohani (2012), context becomes one of the major
concepts that should be understood by the teacher in
integrating Higher Order Thinking skills. Context
affects the level of someone’s thinking since the real-
world situation provides many challenges for
someone to think critically. Furthermore, the activity
was ended by asking students in groups to present
what they already worked on the process of making
story in front of the class. This process is known as
communicating stage in the scientific approach where
the learning outputs were done in the form of the
students’ story version. Through story, the students
learned to perform problem thinking through
communicating stage, some of students’ output may
reveal in the form of story map or paragraph.
Based on the findings obtained from three
instruments, positive impacts of HOTs in storytelling
are significantly identified from the students’
acknowledgments in the interview, students’ work,
and classroom observation. Generally, HOTs in
storytelling has positively affected on both students’
cognitive skill and affective skill.
Concerning to the impact on cognitive skills, the
students noted that implementing HOTs helped them
to comprehend leaning content given by the teacher
including improve their comprehension about the
story as well as linguistic aspects. By implementing
some strategies such as brainstorming, mind-
mapping, critical questions, making abstract to
concrete, and multiple intelligences take the teacher
deeper exploring about events, characters, and
conflicts appeared in the story as it is stated by one of
the students in the interview.
Referring to the analysis results from the
interview with the teachers from three different Junior
High Schools, they clearly admitted to face some
challenges in the implementation of Higher Order
Thinking in storytelling to teach English to their
students, either internal or external challenges. In
term of internal challenges, the teachers met some
problems related to the lack of teachers’ knowledge
and beliefs about the importance of teaching thinking
skills that should be integrated in English learning
process. Meanwhile, the external challenges cover the
school system that did not facilitate the teachers to
integrate thinking skill into instructional process.
On the other hand, the challenges faced by the
teacher during the implementation of Higher Order
Thinking in storytelling were coming from external
factors such as the school system and the curriculum
set by the Ministry of Education and Culture,
Republic of Indonesia (Kementerian Pendidikan dan
Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia). The challenges
emerged from the schools system was the time
allotment, learning environment, and teaching
resources provided for the teachers to teach Higher
Order Thinking skills.
In order to overcome these challenges, the
teachers from the selected school used some
strategies, namely joining the professional
development programs and working with small
groups of teachers who have sufficient knowledge of
Higher Order Thinking skills.
The teachers from each school employed
different strategies to implement the learning model.
Generally, those strategies were aimed to make the
students actively involved in the learning process. As
the example, brainstorming gave positive impacts on
the learning process. The significant result is the
students’ higher order thinking skills were generated
by this strategy.
4 CONCLUSIONS
From the findings of the study explained above, some
points can be concluded. First, the teacher
implemented Higher Order Thinking skills through
scientific approach in teaching English for young
adolescent students by using several strategies such
as brainstorming, mind-mapping, giving open-ended
questions, doing repetition, gesturing, and explaining
abstract to concrete. During the implementation of
these strategies, the teacher divided the lesson into
three sections, namely Opening, Main Activity, and
Closing. In the opening section, the teacher employed
brainstorming and mind-mapping to generate
students’ ideas, familiarize the students’ with the
topic of the lesson, and understand the basic concepts
of the lesson. The brainstorming activity was done
through showing some related pictures to the main
topic and asking the students about what they have
experienced regarding the topic. This is similar to
what scientific approach suggested that initial
learning should be stated from observing stage. It
aims to introduce a new knowledge which is going to
be delivered in the learning process. In addition, to
get in depth knowledge, two kinds of questions were
also employed by the teacher, namely open-ended
question and closed question. The teacher firstly
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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started to give closed-questions such as “what” and
“where” aiming to ease the students answered the
questions and get familiar with the topic discussed.
Closed-questioned was then followed by open-ended
questions such as how and why in order to stimulate
students deeply thinking about the materials. Such
questions required the students to analyze some
relations among the object being discussed with
others and provide logical reasoning for supporting
their claims.
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