Higher Order Thinking (HOT) to Promote EFL Students’ Awareness

in Go Green Issues

Sri Setyarini

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudi No.229, Isola, Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia

Keywords: Character Education, English Learning, Go Green, Higher Order Thinking, Social Awareness.

Abstract: As one of agendas in Curriculum 2013, Higher Order Thinking (HOT), so far has been integrated in English

Learning particularly for junior high school students although the outcome seemed not to be satisfying. One

of the indicators is the students could not get exposures clearly deal with increasing their social awareness in

Go Green issues. Therefore, this paper presents research result focusing on HOTs in storytelling to promote

EFL students’ awareness in go green issues. As a case study, it involves one class of seventh grade students

with one teacher. Two instruments were employed to collect the data namely classroom observation and

interview with the students and teachers. The findings show that the teacher applied brainstorming in go green

issue through showing pictures, direct observation to their environment, and role playing with a go green

specific topic related to their surrounding situation. The results from the interview show that the students

could understand well the materials given since they directly reflect to what really happen in their place. By

doing so, they realize that what they have learnt in the classroom should direct them to raise their awareness

so that the issue of go green could be done well. In addition, the students also claim that they could place

themselves and behave optimally to contribute the go green program. It was recognized by the teachers in the

interview that the students tended to accept what the teachers instructed them to succeed go green issue as

they were engaged through HOTs in storytelling classes.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays in the millennia time crimes among the

youngsters can be found in many places in the

country. Even, some criminal actions may be

recognized as common cases in the present societies.

They break the traffic rules as if they do not do

anything, distract their friends through bullying, or

have a less sympathy attitude toward their

environment. It seems that the education process

taken by the students does not significantly change

the way students think and behave in their real life.

Specifically, in Indonesia which has a diverse culture,

place, language, race, and ethnic, being tolerant is one

of the issues faced by the citizen. Tolerance is defined

as an attitude of being willing to accept and get along

with other people, and “not minding if they have

opinions that we don’t agree with” (Zakin, 2012).

One of the reasons for that condition is due to the

practice of teaching and learning which mostly still

focuses on mastering content knowledge but paying

less attention on how students can realize and imply

knowledge they have in their real life. It can be

indicated through the result of Program for

International Students Assessment (PISA, 2012)

showing that practice of teaching and learning in

Indonesia is still dominated by transmitting

knowledge through lower order thinking level such as

remembering and recalling materials given by

teachers in classroom activities. This teaching

practice considers students as an object of teaching

who follow what the teachers ask them to do rather

than to be an active meaning maker and decision

maker throughout the learning process

(Lengkanawati, 2015). Therefore, it is rarely

investigated that the students are trained to develop

their ideas, opinion, and choices during learning

process aimed at improving their thinking capacity

(Setyarini, 2018).

Regarding this notion, the government has tried to

compose Curriculum 2013 which is expected to be

able to accommodate those needs and prepare

students achieving success either in their academic or

in their social life. Many parties has realized that

enabling students to have a good content mastery is

not enough to make them to be a successful student in

110

Setyarini, S.

Higher Order Thinking (HOT) to Promote EFL Students’ Awareness in Go Green Issues.

DOI: 10.5220/0008546501100114

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities (ICONARTIES 2019), pages 110-114

ISBN: 978-989-758-450-3

 2020 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All r ights reserved

this millennial era but driving them to have a higher

level of thinking as a life style may lead them to be a

right decision maker in all aspect of their life (Puchta,

2012; Yen & Halili, 2015). It is then socialized and

revealed in revised Curriculum 2013 that put Higher

Order Thinking Skills (HOTs) as one of the agendas

in educational purposes. An instruction for teachers

to integrate HOT in their teaching practices is

explicitly written in the curriculum. Furthermore, the

administration of HOTs in teaching is also an effort

to prepare students becoming a good citizen as people

do analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing before

deciding one action to do (Awan et al., 2018). As

stated by King et al. (2010) that Higher Order

Thinking Skills involve a complex judgmental

thinking and other skills which are beyond the

common thinking that require students to analyze,

evaluate, and create.

However, although HOTs has been instructed

officially by the government, many teachers are still

unfamiliar with ways of implementing it in their

teaching practices even the basic concepts of this

model. Setyarini (2016) found that teachers cannot

implement the model optimally in their classroom due

to several reasons including lack of knowledge and

experience in using HOTs. Furthermore, HOTs is not

yet socialized well by the government through

trainings or specific program to help teachers deal

with the concept and its implementation in practice.

As a result, some teachers tend to rely on traditional

teaching in which teaching process dominated by

remembering, recalling, and understanding facts

rather than activating their thinking ability toward

analyzing, evaluating, until decision making and

problem solving. Traditional education is

characterized by methods of instruction that

emphasize memorization and assessment schemes

that value students’ ability to recall information. The

same education system that failed to provide students

with depth of understanding, an ability to interpret

and apply information—about traditional curricular

subjects from chemistry to literature—clearly lacked

the capacity to convey to students anything as

sophisticated or radical as the idea of a civil society

founded upon the goals of openness, tolerance, and

respect for the individual (Zaki, 2012).

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Higher Order Thinking Skills

In educational context, Higher Order Thinking

Skills involve a complex judgmental thinking and

other skills which are beyond the common thinking

that require students to analyze, evaluate, and create.

It has been one of the modern issues in 21st century

of education around the world and was believed that

to train decisive, open-minded individual with

fragmental qualities referred as activities for critical

thinkers (Elder & Paul, 2008). This notion is

supported by King, et al (2012) who claim that Higher

Order Thinking Skills are grounded in lower order

skills such as discriminations, simple application and

analysis, and cognitive strategies which are then

linked to the prior knowledge of subject matter

contents (vocabulary, procedural knowledge, and

reasoning patterns). Appropriate teaching strategies

and learning environments facilitate the growth of

Higher Order Thinking Skills as do student’s

persistence, self-monitoring, and open-minded,

flexible attitudes. Higher Order Thinking Skills have

been defined variously depending on the subjects and

contexts these terms are used. Some of them argue

that HOTs deal with uncertainties, independencies,

and flexibilities related to the context as quoted

below:

The challenge of defining “thinking skills,

reasoning, critical thought, and problem solving” has

been referred to as a conceptual swamp in a study by

Cuban (Lewis & Smith, 1993) and as “century old

problem” for which there is no well-established

taxonomy or typology. In addition, explanation of

how learning occurs have been viewed as inadequate,

with no single theory adequately explaining “how all

learning takes place” (Crowl, Kaminsky & Podell,

1997, p.23)

Moreover, Lai (2011) mentions that HOTs have

been identified as one of several skills necessary to

prepare students for their secondary education.

Higher Order Thinking Skills are also believed as a

main tool for encountering education or daily lives.

Meanwhile, Crowl et al. (1997) explain Higher Order

Thinking Skills as part of the process of evaluating

the evidence collected in problem solving or the

results produced by thinking creatively. Considering

several major concepts related to Higher Order

Thinking Skills, overall there are three assumptions

about thinking and learning. First, the levels of

thinking cannot be unmeshed from the levels of

learning; they involve interdependence, multiple

components and levels. Second, whether thinking can

be learned without subject matter content is only a

theoretical point. In real life, students will learn

content in both community and 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

Higher Order Thinking (HOT) to Promote EFL Students’ Awareness in Go Green Issues

111

new content in the coming year. Third, Higher Order

Thinking Skills involves a variety of thinking

processes applied to complex situations and have

multiple variables (King et al, 2012, p. 12).

2.2 Character Education in Curriculum

2013

The integration of character education in learning

process has been a targeted project in Curriculum

2013. It reveals to response some challenges in 21st

century education that expect students to have good

social skills especially to deal with problem solving

and decision making in their real life (William, 2010).

According to Setyarini (2018) the educational process

should incorporate experiences that engage students

in developing decision making that enhance their

ability to make judgments in a proper way. In

character education, achieving decision skill needs to

involve both cognitive and affective process

(William, 2010). Unfortunately, many educators still

believe that affective and cognitive are two separated

skills that should be taught to students whereas it has

a strong relationship that influences each other. It is

also defined that successful learners are strong in both

cognitive and affective processing (William, 2010).

They are equipped to engage in cognitive processing

such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation but they

have also refined affective skills such as receiving,

responding, valuing, resolving conflict, and applying

a value system to a situation (Covey 1989; Goleman

1995).

2.3 Social Awareness in EFL Classroom

Tolerance is commonly believed as an issue in a

nation with diversity like Indonesia. It should be

underlined that since in a very young age, students are

aware of differences such as skin color and language

but they just do not put their attention much on it

(Masko, 2005). Unfortunately, society around

children such as parents and teachers also mostly less

concern about this that they may think young students

are free to comment on what they see from their own

perspective only (Zaki, 2010). This kind of thinking

is possibly fossilized in students’ mind and reflected

in their attitude toward their surroundings. Regarding

this, Jones (2004) and Masko (2005) suggest that the

earlier the better to introduce students about diversity

since they are less likely to internalize unspoken

negative messages about differences as they grow

older which can culminate in a learned hierarchy that

is then enacted throughout their lives (Jones, 2004;

Masko, 2005). It will help students to acknowledge

and make sense of diversity so that they can begin to

develop empathy for others rather than judging them

for being different from themselves (Paley et al.,

1998). In this case, school can be one of vital places

for students to learn about diversity while their ability

to accept difference is dependent on how their

environment accepts it particularly from the teachers’

attitude (Hollingsworth, Didelot, & Smith, 2003).

However, discussion of controversial issues, such as

diversity of skin color, is not a common occurrence

even in the social studies classroom, an expected site

of such exchanges (Nystrand, Gamoran, &

Carbonaro, 1998).

Among different definitions of being tolerant,

defining tolerance starts with recognition of one self

in relation to others which is realized from beliefs,

behaviors or characteristics of acceptance the

difference and similarity (Vogt, 1983; Zakin, 2012).

It means that the students are able to control their

disagreement attitude by not judging others merely

from their one point of view. To do so, students

should be exposed to various and diverse point of

views that is integrated in classroom learning.

Students get a chance to deliver their opinions and

also they have to listen what others say about a

particular topic (Zakin, 2012).

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research is a qualitative study with an

ethnography design that employed some instruments

to collect data namely classroom observation and

interview with teacher. It was conducted for three

months in the first semester of eight grade class in one

of junior schools in Bandung. The researcher

observed classroom practices done by a teacher who

addressed herself using Higher Order thinking skills

(HOTS) concept as a basic of her teaching practice.

Meanwhile, interview with the teacher was also

implemented to see a correlation between teacher’s

thoughts about teaching and its practice in classroom.

To get deeper information about the learning process,

the teacher was interviewed using a semi-structured

interview so that the questions can be naturally

elaborated during conversation and based on

teacher’s response. Data were then transcribed and

coded referred to principles of HOTs that appeared

during learning process. Furthermore, it also

observed to what extend students are able to deliver

their ideas and opinions and how they show their

tolerance toward others’ response during group

discussion.

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4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Data obtained from classroom observation and

interview show that the teacher used short story

entitled “The True Story of the Three Little Pig” and

“The ant and The Grasshoppers” to teach English and

students’ thinking skill. Some strategies were

implemented by the teacher such as brainstorming,

multiple-intelligences, role playing, guessing game

and open-ended questions to exercise students’

thinking skill. Each strategy gave students’

opportunity to involve actively in learning process

while the teacher acted out as a facilitator who

stimulated students to think in a higher level.

Regarding the use of strategies, teacher

acknowledged in the interview that students’ active

involvement and independency were very important

in creating HOTs learning process. Thus, the teacher

attempted to select classroom activities that give

students a chance to be independent in their thinking.

Meanwhile, a spoon-feed method that requires

students to remember, recall, or only comprehend the

materials were extremely avoided by the teacher. It

is in line with the principle of promoting HOTs in

young adolescents classroom stated by Yang et al.

(2016) that an active learning-environment is a

strategic atmosphere to give students an access

toward higher order thinking skills. By creating this

environment, it stimulates students’ engagement in

classroom activities and they are encouraged to share

their ideas, opinions, and arguments that they have in

minds.

After giving the story, the teacher asked students

to have a discussion within a group about the story.

For students, a group discussion provides several

benefits, those are to raise their speaking confidence

in a group rather in a class, explore ideas, share

opinions and motivate them to speak. The teacher

believed that HOTS learning should bring students’

prior knowledge and experience to the class and

connect it with the materials, thus a grouping work

will help them to explore their personal experience

easier rather than in a big classroom. The teacher said:

It is important to connect what students’ have including

their personal experiences and knowledge with the

material in classroom. However, some students may

feel uncomfortable to speak in front of other students in

classroom that’s why I prefer students to work in group

so they can get a closer engagement with their friends

in a group and share what they have.

The short story was delivered through storytelling

combined with role-playing by the teacher. As

recorded from the observation, teacher involved some

students to act out as characters in the story

meanwhile the teacher functioned as a narrator. In

addition, several pictures were also served on screen

to improve students’ understanding toward the story.

By giving modeling through these techniques,

students can understand the story better from some

clues given in multiple modes such as teacher’s

mimic expression, their friends’ gestures, and

pictures. Students try to observe, analyze, and guess

language meaning since the teacher fully used

English in delivering the story. These activities were

contradictive with traditional teaching in which

teacher literally deliver all material to the students

and ask them to remember or recall it (Lengkanawati,

2016).

In discussion time, students were asked about

their opinion related to the story they were learning in

the classroom. As many people thoughts, students put

their positive judgment to the ant as a protagonist

actor and negative judgments to the grasshopper

based on their characteristics. When the students were

asked about the ant’s characterization most students

agreed that the little ant was diligent, smart, kind, and

hard worker. Meanwhile, in their point of view, the

grasshopper was quite lazy, arrogant, and childish. To

change this stereotype, the teacher used HOTs

principle that allowed students to re-question any

facts delivered in the story through analyzing,

evaluating, comparing, and contrasting (Collin,

2014). In this case, the teacher applied some open-

ended question to discuss more deeply about the text

so that the students could think in different way.

Some questions given by the teacher were why, how,

why if, how if, what if. These questions provide

students with the opportunity to express opinions,

arguments, comments, reasonable reasons related to

the story discussed.

Another set of questions were also distributed to

observe the story from different perspectives. The

teacher invited students to re-question some decisions

made by the characters in the story either the ant or

the grasshopper. It was done to uncover reasons for

their action and decision that may have never been

discussed before through traditional teaching. The

teacher’s questions can be seen in the following

extracts:

• Why does the grasshopper play the music?

• How do people feel when listening to the

music? Are they happy?

• Do people know what happens before the

grasshopper plays his music?

• What would you do if you were grasshopper?

The purpose of using that kind of questions is to

make students’ aware related to another perspective

of someone’s decision before they judged people

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from their one point of view and categorize others to

be in good or bad side. It is in line with, Setyarini

(2018) who cited that open-ended questions can

enhance various alternative and relative answers

which are more encouraged and rewarded than single

fixed answer. From the questions, the students could

respond freely. It had created a space for them to see

connections across their personal experiences, and

explore the meaning of the text more deeply. In fact,

they tried to leave the stereotype of the grasshopper

and see the grasshopper from another positive side.

They guessed some possibly answers that might be

the reasons for the grasshopper to do his action. The

students also learned how to give a solution for

problems appeared without forcing their answer to be

completely accepted.

The small group discussion also benefits students

from being confident to share their opinion although

they found it different with their friends. Negation

process among students also can be found when the

group had to come to one decision. They listened to

their friends’ answer and reasons behind that.

Generally, students displayed an increase in being

tolerant, particularly when they came to give negative

judgment to others. Through HOTs strategies applied

in classroom, students are encouraged to observe,

analyze, evaluate before they come a decision making

and problem solving.

5 CONCLUSION

Considering the findings above, integrating HOTs in

EFL classroom may promote students’ awareness of

being tolerant, particularly using short stories. The

result revealed that delivering stories through using

several strategies namely brainstorming, role playing,

and giving open-ended questions is effective to

exercise students’ thinking process. by doing so,

students also learn to re-question stereotype by

analyzing, comparing, and evaluating before making

a comment or judge to others. In addition, the analysis

result of the interview clearly referred that the

students gained some exposures of becoming a

tolerant, respectful, and appreciative person in their

real life. Besides, they enjoyed their learning because

they got good opportunity from the teacher to present

their ideas think critically and not only one. It can be

concluded that teaching students to be tolerant can be

done through integrating HOTs in English learning.

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