International Journal of Education and Pedagogy (IJEAP) eISSN: 2682-8464 [Vol. 4 No. 1 March 2022]
Journal website: http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijeap
ENHANCING STUDENTS HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS) THROUGH ESL TEACHERS WRITING INSTRUCTION
Hani Rashika Mohd Salleh1* and Huzaina Abdul Halim2
1 2 Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
*Corresponding author: hanirashika@gmail.com
Article Information:
Article history:
Received date : 25 December 2021 Revised date : 16 February 2022 Accepted date : 2 March 2022 Published date : 6 March 2022
To cite this document:
Mohd Salleh, , H. R., & Abdul Halim, H.
(2022).ENHANCING STUDENTS HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS) THROUGH ESL TEACHERS WRITING INSTRUCTION. International Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 4(1), 1-7.
Abstract: i-THINK, a program adopted by the Ministry of Education which originates from The Thinking School International, United Kingdom. The i-THINK program has been introduced to teachers all over Malaysia to develop thinking skills as well as strategy and pedagogical tool for teachers to teach their students to be critical thinkers. The program has introduced 8 thinking maps that can be used not only by students in their learning, but by all parties involved in education. Despite of its promising benefits offered to; few studies reveal that majority of the students still have challenges to master the writing skills. In lieu of the above, this study is conducted to firstly explore ESL teachers’ experiences on teaching writing using Thinking Maps and discovers ESL teachers’ writing instruction in enhancing students’ higher order thinking skill (HOTS). It also accesses whether the teaching of thinking skills is effectively implemented in writing lessons. The integration of Thinking Maps in the teaching-learning processes as the promotion of HOTS shall then highlight. This study employs a qualitative method in which library research has been conducted to obtain reliable data. A range of priory works namely, articles journals, International and National Policies, online database, newspapers and magazines have been reviewed and systematically analysed using content analysis approach. This study further recommends that few strategies should be implemented to enhance HOTS through the application of Thinking Maps in writing instruction.
Keywords: Thinking Maps, pedagogical tool, HOTS.
1. Introduction
English language is one of the most spoken languages in the world (Akinwamide, 2012). In Malaysia, English is taught as a second language in primary and secondary schools. Ministry of Education has paid much attention towards the low of English language skills among students. The students are having problems in mastering English language particularly in writing skills. Nunan (1999) asserts that most students face big challenges in producing coherent in writing. This illustrates the reality among students in writing classrooms today. The ESL teachers and other stakeholders are also affected by this situation. Thus, the problems that the students face in writing cannot be neglected which will eventually impact the overall education system and the national education philosophy.
The ESL teachers believe that teaching writing is more difficult than teaching other language skills such as speaking, listening and reading (Singh, et al., 2020; Akinwamide, 2012). Despite this issue, other scholars claim that teachers’ practices and instruction affect students’ writing skills (Yunus et al., 2020; Sahin, Bullock & Stables, 2002). Studies have revealed that for the development of students’ writing skills, teachers need to provide clear instructions in the writing classroom (David, 1991; Hu, 2003). ESL teachers are to ensure that students are increasingly expected to use the knowledge and skills obtained during schooling, and more importantly, they can be critical thinkers.
For this purpose, teachers must possess writing skills to guide and motivate students for performing writing tasks. They also need to apply suitable strategies in order to enhance students’ higher order thinking skills (HOTS) during teaching writing.
Many strategies have been introduced to foster HOTS among teachers in teaching writing. The Ministry of Education has put an effort to enhance higher order thinking among Malaysian students by introducing ‘i-THINK’ program as a breakthrough project to be incorporated into the Malaysian school system (The Star Online, 2015). ‘i-THINK’ program was introduced by the Malaysian Government and Agent of Innovation Malaysia (AIM) to produce Malaysia’s next generation of innovative and critical thinkers of the future. The program was initially created by Hyerle and Yeager (2007) to enhance and encourage thinking skills among students and to develop critical thinking outside familiar academic contexts.
2. Objectives
The main aim of this paper is to analyze the functions of Thinking Maps as a pedagogical tool to enhance higher order thinking skills (HOTS) among students in writing classroom. This review is important because it reflects on how the approach is conceptualized in writing instructions. It also accesses whether the teaching of thinking skills is effectively implemented in the writing classroom.
Based on this rationale, this paper attempts to achieve the following objectives:
• To explore ESL teachers’ experiences on teaching writing using Thinking Maps
• To evaluate the role of Thinking Maps as a pedagogical tool to enhance HOTS
• To suggest strategies that should be implemented by ESL teachers to develop students’
HOTS in writing classrooms.
3. Literature Review
Majority of ESL teachers are well exposed to the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The innovative forms of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy have been implemented in Malaysian education today. Most teachers are guided through three main domains of educational activities in Bloom’s Taxonomy:
• Cognitive: intellectual skills (Knowledge)
• Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitude or Self) and
• Psychomotor: physical skills (Skills).
To enhance students’ HOTS, ESL teachers need to encourage them to think and cultivate their own thinking by inculcating HOTS through comparing and contrasting, problem solving and using graphic organizers. Each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy consists of six actions or verbs that are used to indicate the levels of thinking. To date, the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) also refers to the taxonomy to differentiate levels of students’ abilities during learning process in the classroom.
Recent evidence has suggested that enhancing students’ HOTS has become a vital objective in education (Ganapathy et al., 2014; Rezaei et al., 2011; Mazer et al., 2008). This is further supported by Zohar (2013) and emphasizes that students’ HOTS can be improved when teachers create innovative learning activities that boost students’ thinking to the next level. Teachers are concerned that it is pertinent to teach students HOTS in schools (Yee et al., 2013). However, ESL teachers are not prepared to teach HOTS specifically for writing skill, as compared to other subject areas (Rajendran, 2013).
Students have found writing and speaking skills, to be more difficult than listening and reading (Berman & Cheng, 2010). Furthermore, according to Nesamalar, Saratha and Teh, (2001) it has been reported that students lack proficiency in writing, as compared to other skills. Students are taught to practice their thinking and organise information in the writing classroom. Writing critically requires HOTS as students go beyond their understanding of content knowledge and apply critical thinking.
Students need to master the knowledge of a topic before they can move to the next levels of thinking which are analysis, evaluation and synthesis as stated in upper levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
ESL teachers’ role is to motivate learning, so the students can learn independently (Jarvis, 2005), and through this process, students are able to enhance their HOTS. It is necessary for teachers when teaching writing, to create a comfortable and engaging instructional environment to gain multiple advantages of provoking more ideas in the writing process and giving the writing tools and practices a meaning (Englert & Dunsmore, 2015). Furthermore, it is essential for teachers to employ various teaching strategies to initiate students’ participation and increase interaction with others as supported in many studies (Bupu & Subiyantoro, 2018; Nachiappan et al., 2018).
Thinking Maps as a Pedagogical Tool to Enhance HOTS
To date, many graphic organizers have been introduced mainly to organise information and to represent ideas. Thinking Maps are one of the tools used to organise ideas systematically. Thinking Maps are visual representations that allows students to modify their background knowledge by understanding the connections between current knowledge and new information (Sam & Rajan, 2013). The creator of Thinking Maps, David Hyerle, concluded that Thinking Maps are also known
as a common visual language for thinking. The maps can be used across disciplines and each map has its own thinking processes. They are:
• Circle Map • Bubble Map
• Double-bubble Map • Tree Map
• Brace Map • Flow Map
• Multi Flow Map • Bridge Map Figure
Thinking maps are relevant to be used to promote HOTS (Hassan et al., 2016) and strategic thinking to help students to see which thinking skills are appropriate to be used to solve problems (Zahiri et al., 2015). They can be easily applied and understood across English curriculum. According to Hyerle (2007), the process of thinking and reasoning becomes a culture when the teachers and students practice the thinking skills and reasoning during teaching and learning.
Figure 1: Thinking Maps and its Thinking Processes
A study by Singh et al., (2020) affirms that the use of different types of graphic organisers such as Thinking Maps help to enhance students’ HOTS. When students are given a task in groups to present their mind maps, they become more excited to participate in the discussion. Similarly, Zaini, Mokhtar and Nawawi (2010) state that graphic organisers enhance students’ understanding, which in turn increase students’ motivation to learn. Another study by Murbiyan, (2015) shows that the use of Thinking Maps can improve the students’ writing skills and the students are able to write a draft of writing as required. Moreover, they are also able to write in more detail and well-organized writing.
They also manage to use the appropriate vocabulary, the correct grammar and spelling, punctuation and capitalization in their writing. Besides, the students’ attitude towards teaching and learning process has also improved because Thinking Maps enhance the students’ motivation in writing.
Literature has indicated that students participate more actively in their writing tasks and improve their logical flow of ideas when using Thinking Maps (Jaelani, 2017).
3.1 Problem Statement
Review of previous studies demonstrates that most of English writing lessons do not highlight on HOTS. A study by Singh et al., (2020) indicates that ESL teachers merely focus on lower order thinking skills which are recalling and memorizing. In addition, Sivapakkiam et al., (2016) reveals that teachers' knowledge on HOTS is still at a medium level. Likewise, recent studies have shown that ESL teachers are still having problems to incorporate HOTS in teaching writing due to the lack of knowledge on HOTS (Singh et al., 2020). Thus, they are not prepared enough in teaching HOTS in their lessons (Rajendran, 2008).
On top of that, the other scholars share the same view stressing on teachers lack knowledge to integrate HOTS in their lessons and do not allow thinking time during lessons after asking questions to their students (Siti, 2016; Li, 2016). Additionally, Ganapathy and Li, (2017) stress that teachers also lack training and exposure of HOTS, which lead them to be reluctant to integrate HOTS in their writing instruction. Besides, Siti (2016) asserts that teachers are unable to incorporate HOTS into teaching and learning which lead to unresolved issue in Malaysian classrooms. Therefore, it is important to highlight that ELS teachers are still having difficulty in understanding the knowledge of HOTS and still lack of knowledge to adopt any appropriate instructional strategies to teach writing.
However, ESL teachers must implement various strategies for teaching writing skills. This is due to the difficulties of L2 writing in Malaysian classrooms where the weak students struggle to write in a second language (Ong et al., 2020).
Previous studies have revealed that for the development of students’ writing skills, teachers need to provide clear writing instructions for students in writing classroom (David, 1991; Hu, 2003). For this purpose, teachers need to be skilled in writing. One of the ways for teachers to improve their writing skills is that they can choose and utilize variety of strategies of English language (Kong, 2005).
4. Methodology
An extensive review of existing literature was used as a technique to explore the problem and to suggest solutions to achieve the above objectives. The review of literature is a technique of evaluation of already existing research work on the issue under investigation (Fraenkal, Wallen & Hyun, 1993).
The main aim of review is to provide, evaluate, analyze and synthesize the knowledge and ideas shared by other studies on the problem under study. For this study too, the researchers used review of literature from articles journals, International and National Policies, online database, newspapers and magazines as a technique to address the research objectives of the paper. Review approach as a research tool has been widely used by researchers and writers in social science research (Gay, Mills
& Airasian, 2009). The review of literature was also systematically analysed using content analysis approach.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
The paper reviewed some of the existing practices, thoughts and concepts about HOTS and ESL teachers’ practices in teaching writing. For a long time, a lot of exposition on the importance of HOTS in teaching and learning process, especially in English language has been acknowledged. It is important to educate students on how to think and guide them in cultivating their thinking skills.
Some of the ways used to encourage HOTS are through inferring, reasoning, comparing and contrasting, problem-solving skills and using graphic organisers when teaching writing. The objective of instilling HOTS in writing classroom is to produce students who are knowledgeable, critical and creative thinkers and able to compete at the international level.
This exposition paper therefore adds to the literature, relating several strategies that teachers can adopt in teaching the students to enhance HOTS when teaching writing. Thinking Maps as a pedagogical tool can be used by ESL teachers to enhance HOTS is one of the strategies suggested in this paper.
The ESL teachers can plan systematically for their writing lesson by integrating brainstorming activities using 8 Thinking Maps to assist students to expand their ideas for the writing task. Then, the desired results ESL teachers seek with regards the development of HOTS, would be gradually achieved, and students who can creatively develop their understanding and show their enthusiasm for writing would begin to develop gradually. Thus, ESL teachers play an important role to enhance HOTS among students. On the other hand, students must improve their skills mainly in higher order thinking as it will benefit them to be creative and critical decision makers in the future.
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