Chapter I
Introduction
- Background of Study
These days, higher order thinking skills (HOTS) has become a major theme in education, particularly among adult learners as it is considered an important medium to survive the information-loaded global world (Vijayaratnam, 2012; Zohar & Cohen, 2016; Vainikainen, Hautamaki, Sulainen, & Kupiainen, 2015; Lee et al., 2016; Lee, 2014; Yen & Halili, 2015; Roets & Maritz, 2017). In all learning activities, including that of English language, students are encouraged to use their critical thinking skills to find solutions to their life problems, so that teachers are demanded to facilitate them by providing higher order thinking-based activities. As such, many attempts have been made to include the use of HOTS in all school subjects (Resnick, 1987), and due to its increasing demand and importance, this theme has, in the last decade, started to be integrated in English language learning (Osman & Kassim, 2015; Li, 2016).
Despite its perceived benefits, however, the inclusion of HOTS among young learners is still rarely investigated as it needs much effort, particularly from teachers (Mathews & Lowe, 2011; Leon, 2015). Most HOTS activities are intended for adult learners to develop their reading and writing skills (Afshar & Rahimi, 2016) and, consequently, its use to improve children’s speaking ability is understudy. In fact, as Collins (1991) argues, the incorporation of critical thinking skill into language arts will both improve learners’ writing and speaking skills. To achieve this, teachers of young learners should make use of all methods and materials, including the use of storytelling. For children and young learners, story or narrative is the backbone of their life by which they dream, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, criticize, construct, learn, hope and love (Hardy, 1978). He, furthermore, explains that stories can be a process of constructing mind or critical thinking in making meanings which pervades all aspects of learning which is required in the classroom.
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In Indonesian context, many studies have been conducted on the use of storytelling among young English learners (Setyarini, Damayanti, & Harto, 2008; Damayanti, 2017) including the inclusion of local stories (Muslim, Nafisah, & Damayanti, 2009). As a joyful learning strategy, storytelling can be an alternative to be implemented in the classroom so that learners can have a fun learning experience. For instance, Setyarini et al. (2008) investigates how child-friendly storytelling can improve the speaking ability of students. She found that the improvement of the students‟ speaking ability stems from their eagerness to give opinions, comments, and arguments in the discussion. This finding is in line with Yen and Halili (2015) that storytelling can stimulate students’ critical thinking development through arguing and responding to the teachers’ critical questions such as why, how, how about, and what if.
These studies, however, do not specifically address how storytelling can develop HOTS offered by Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2000). The current study, therefore, examines how storytelling can further be used to instigate HOTS activities among young English learners through oral skills as well as some challenges teachers may find in implementing this critical thinking skill within classroom action research.
B. Identification of Problem
- Why higher order thinking skills (HOTS) has become a major theme in education?
- What is the use of critical thinking skills for students?
- What are the perceived benefits of higher order thinking skills (HOTS)?
- How the incorporation of critical thinking skill into language arts will both improve learners’ writing and speaking skills?
- What is story or narrative for children and young learners?
- What is the use of storytelling among young English learners?
C. Limitation of Problem
The current study, therefore, examines how storytelling can further be used to instigate HOTS activities among young English learners through oral skills as well as some challenges teachers may find in implementing this critical thinking skill within classroom action research.
D. Formulation of Problem
How storytelling can further be used to instigate higher order thinking skills (HOTS) activities among young English learners through oral skills?
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E. Purpose of Study
This study investigates the development of HOTS strategies and possible challenges through storytelling among seventh grade students to improve their speaking ability.
F. Significance of Study
The findings of this study will give benefits and contribution to the following:
- The English language education study students
This study can be used as a reference in learning the provision of open-ended questions such as ‘why, why if, how, how about and if you were’. Students can study how to express opinions, arguments, comments, reasonable reasons related to the story discussed.
2. The English language teachers
This study can be used as a reference in developing learning material and evaluation especially in implementing HOTS, particularly in designing open-ended questions and composing new stories relevant to their students‟ cultural backgrounds due to their limited linguistic knowledge.
Chapter II
Theoretical Review
- High Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) as educational objectives
Nowadays, the development of HOTS in education is considered more necessary. The main purpose of education in the 21st century is to provide students with the ability to think critically, to know what they do and justify it based on their well-informed decision making (Zohar & Cohen, 2016; Gardner, 1999; Armstrong, 2009). Consequently, it is not surprising that most teachers have positive attitudes towards the use of HOTS in their teaching practices. They have made various efforts to apply HOTS activities in their classrooms. To support and develop students‟ critical thinking, teachers at higher education should be able to provide students with classroom environments and practices which can support both students‟ sense of control and disposition for critical thinking (Stupnisky, Renaud, Daniels, Haynes, & Perry, 2008).
HOTS relates to educational objectives. As an effort to improve the results of learning process, learning objectives have undergone some significant changes. To have a more effective learning, Bloom‟s taxonomy of learning objectives developed in 1956 includes six objectives; knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Bloom, 1984). The six categories are a continuum of thinking skills ranging from the lowest (knowledge) commonly called Low Order Thinking Skill (LOTS) into the highest one (evaluation) called High Order Thinking Skill (HOTS). Although they are in the form of nouns, each of these objectives has some operational and identifiable words that teachers and other educators can use when assessing their students‟ learning achievement.
Many scholars, however, consider these educational objectives less operational and empowering. It is believed that noun is more rigid and less dynamic, making it hard to be classified in assessment activities. To make it more identifiable, Anderson and Krathwohl (2000) revised these educational objectives into six different objectives which are considered essentially similar but more easily identifiable. The objectives include six more operational verbs such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. Compared to Bloom‟s taxonomy, these categories are considered more operational and easily identifiable. Besides, the revised taxonomy also includes „creating‟ which is higher than just evaluating. It is the highest thinking skill that not all learners, particularly children, can perform. Like the original version, this revised one also ranges thinking activities from low order thinking skill (LOTS) into high order thinking skills (HOTS).
Considered important in improving the educational objectives, adults like teachers and teacher educators, should have good understanding about the HOTS development of their children or students. As educators, we have to be able to identify HOTS elements in our students‟ learning activities. Brookhart (2010) mentions three main characteristics of HOTS; transfer, critical thinking and problem solving. For her, learning should be more than merely remembering or understanding but transferring new knowledge into other new environment, which is the cognitive dimension of the revised Bloom‟s taxonomy. She also argues that assessing students‟ critical thinking can increase their academic achievement. Students should be directed to develop their critical thinking and curiosity for learning new information. Finally, the ultimate skill that students should have is their ability to identify problems which appear in their life and set a solution to these problems. So, problem solving skill is the highest criteria of HOTS in learning.
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In practice, HOTS can be developed through students‟ learning activities. Teachers can involve their students in various critical thinking activities which include observation, comparison, explanation, and prediction (Rodd, 1999, p. 351). As part of HOTS development scheme, students should be encouraged to take part in decision making process. These activities are expected to be able to nurture in students the ability to question the authority or to avoid absolutism (Mathews & Lowe, 2011). Teachers should involve students in classroom activities which enable them to develop their sense of skepticism to each information students receive from their environment.
HOTS can be both individual and social activities. Including verbal and quantitative reasoning, critical thinking can be developed both individually and in groups (Vainikainen et al., 2015). To nurture their critical thinking skills, teachers can involve students in these two types of activities. However, considering the importance of peers among teenagers, this skill can be developed more easily within social group. Studies show that HOTS is developed more in social or group than individual activities like group projects or other collective problem solving activities. Group problem solving is considered an effective way to develop higher order thinking skills among students (Vijayaratnam, 2012). To support social activities, Anderson, Howe, Soden, Halliday, and Low (2001) encourage the use of peers critiques of class works and other components which include direct instruction, modelling, coaching. In relation to the massive influence of technology in the life of today‟s young learners, cooperation in mobile learning game can be a useful media for developing critical thinking skills (Lee et al., 2016).
HOTS is applicable across disciplines. Although some studies show that most HOTS is applied in science and engineering subjects at higher education since university students are considered to have owned necessary skills to develop their critical thinking skills, others indicate that it can also be developed in non-science majors like English language learning. Critical thinking skill can even be taught in language teaching to non-language-majoring students (Minakova, 2014). Moreover, components of strategic thinking skills such as questioning, collecting information and investigating, can be used to improve language learning, especially the task-based approach (Osman & Kassim, 2015) as this study focuses.
2. HOTS in English language learning through storytelling
Although its implementation is not as old as in education, the use of HOTS in language learning has been firmed and significant. Nevertheless, given the four language skills, most studies on HOTS focus on literacy, particularly writing skill (Osman & Kassim, 2015; Roets & Maritz, 2017; Minakova, 2014). It is believed that literacy, particularly writing, is the barometer of human thought and mind which necessarily needs critical thinking skill. This notion is also considered more acceptable among adult learners who rely most on reading and writing as the parameter of their thinking activities. The focus on literacy (reading and writing) is not always relevant with English young learners who commonly rely on verbal acquisition of language as their main learning activity.
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Unlike in adults, oral cycle plays a significant role in the learning process of young English learners. Among young children, language strongly relates to verbal, linguistic, and logic, thus language learning can serve as a good place for the development of critical thinking skills among learners. Borrowing one element of Bandura‟s (1997) self-efficacy, verbal persuasion is an important aspect of critical thinking strategies. Positif affect during task performance will enhance someone‟s efficacy (Mathews & Lowe, 2011), including English language young learners who rely on oral skills (listening and speaking). In a more specific context, Mali (2015) found that positive motivation from friends and teachers is a major attribution to students‟ speaking enhancement (p. 32) which may also be applicable among Indonesian students.
Of some language learning method for children, storytelling is the most favorite. It is the backbone activities by which children live and dream their life (Hardy, 1978). Considering the necessary role that storytelling has in children‟s language learning process, it can also be used to develop their critical thinking skills (Thomas & Thorne, 2009). This notion is supported by Douglas and Gomes (1997) who claim that stories may promote discussion, generate students‟ imagination and grow their involvement in their classroom activities. Storytelling can also become a means to improve students‟ oral communication skill because oral discussion of story content enables relation to their own life experiences by using their higher order thinking skill (Thomas & Thorne, 2009). Another claim on the strength of storytelling in promoting HOTS was also made by Weels (1986) who states that storytelling enables young learner to assimilate new ideas and help them understand new concepts linked to their lives more easily.
Moreover, story or narrative also relates to cultural understanding. This competence is an important part of critical thinking skill young learners should necessarily acquire for their successful future engagement in the global world. Again, Douglas and Gomes (1997) add that stories are also effective in increasing tolerance and understanding of people from other cultures. Through the medium of story, the listener can safely explore what all human beings have in common as well as how they differ from each other. Stories have the power to gently remove the children from their usual reality and for a time immerse the listeners in a different time and place. Through story imagination, each child can venture beyond the boundaries of individual experience and know what it is to share in another person’s travels or feel another’s sorrow or celebration. Therefore, integrating HOTS in storytelling should necessarily be applied among EFL young learners, particularly to improve their speaking ability which is the main skill required in storytelling activities.
The implementation of HOTS is influenced by age and psychological maturation. Most HOTS practices are implemented for adult learners in higher education (Stupnisky et al., 2008; Mathews & Lowe, 2011; Osman & Kassim, 2015). This choice seems to make sense considering the ability of adult learners to be engaged in HOTS-based activities such as questioning the authority, being skeptical and believing in relativeness. However, as previously mentioned, these activities can, to certain extent, also be applied in learning activities among children, including young English language learners. So far, no studies specifically address how critical thinking skills relate to speaking ability. One study only investigates the relationship between reflective thinking and speaking ability among EFL learners (Afshar & Rahimi, 2016), not their critical thinking. As this study focuses, it will be more interesting to investigate how HOTS relates to speaking ability and how social support influences the attrition of speaking skill of year seven students who are the participants of this study.
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3. Bloom’s revised taxonomy, HOTS, and children’s language learning
Considering the nature of children‟s thinking which is relatively less complicated than that of adults, the implementation of critical thinking in language learning, especially among young learners of English, may become more challenging. Roets and Maritz (2017) argue that mastery of HOTS is not easy to achieve, even for adult learners like nursing master students, as evidenced from their lack of logical order of thoughts, and let alone for children. Therefore, the development of HOTS may take time and need teachers‟ supports. Evidences show that although HOTS is encouraged in many educational policy documents, like the National Curriculum in the case of Indonesia (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2013), most classroom practices are still based on pedagogy of knowledge transmission focusing on low-order cognitive levels (Zohar & Cohen, 2016). As a common practice, especially among Asians, all learners, both adults and children are used to being taught to use low-order cognitive levels. For instance, students are often exposed to answer who, what, and when questions instead of why, what if, and how if. They are used to retrieving information without having the ability to apply or synthesize the information they receive from their environment. If they can perform these skills, reaching the stage of evaluating some phenomenon or creating a new object or idea, which is the highest continuum of HOTS, is even harder.
The development of HOTS among young English learners becomes more complex when it is handled by less competent teachers in both pedagogical and academic skills. Our observation as teacher educators who are involved in many teachers‟ trainings show that not all teachers have good understanding of HOTS that they cannot develop this skill in their students. In his study, Li (2016) found that most teachers in China hold insufficient understanding about the concept of HOTS. Despite their positive attitudes towards its integration in language learning through reading, science and math, they do not believe it should be specifically taught in English classrooms. He furthermore argues that teachers should have training in developing content and pedagogical knowledge of teaching thinking skills.
To help develop students‟ HOTS, teachers should also be familiar with students‟ learning styles. Along with the issue of inclusive education, they should, in fact, know the learning style of each student. Yee, Yunos, Othman, Hassan, Tee, and Mohamad (2015) state that identifying students’ learning styles is important in developing a more effective and conducive learning environment for learning HOTS (p. 143). Following Gardner‟s (1999) and Armstrong‟s (2009) multiple intelligences, some students may be more verbal and linguistic, some others are more spatial and physical, and the others tend to be more mathematical and logical. To anticipate these different learning styles, teachers should not only focus on cognitive aspect since high cognitive density does not guarantee the promotion of HOTS as it is more related to social cognition (Lee, 2014). Teachers should also focus on developing the critical thinking skills of their English learners in social interaction with their peers.
Considering these challenges in implementing HOTS in students‟ oral competence, it is reasonable that the development of critical thinking skills has a long process. As Zohar and Cohen (2016) argue, the development of HOTS may take time and faces challenges. Although HOTS is encouraged in many educational policy documents, most classroom practices are still based on pedagogy of knowledge transmission focusing on low-order cognitive levels. Therefore, this study examines some possible challenges that English teachers may encounter in developing HOTS through storytelling in their junior high school students.
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Chapter III
Research Methodology
- Method of Research
The study used two cycles of Classroom Action Research (CAR) (McTaggart, 1992).
- Place and Time of Research
The place and time of research was in two different junior high schools in northern Bandung of Indonesia for one semester in 2015.
- Schedules/Procedures of Research
During the first month of the study, the teaching practices in two classrooms (each classroom has 30 students) Indonesia, were observed to identify HOTS practices whereas two teachers and eight students from the two schools were also interviewed to identify their understanding of HOTS. Two classes and two teachers were purposefully selected to provide more comprehensive account of teacher’s teaching practices. In the second month of the study, having identified the teachers’ practices in storytelling as well as teacher’s and students’ understanding of HOTS, the researchers involved the participating teachers in a short training on storytelling strategies and how to develop a lesson plan which focus on deep learning, using HOTS as the main goals. Finally, due to ethical requirements, approval was sought from school two principals, teachers, students and their parents. Prior to data collection process, an explanatory statement was provided to all participants describing what they were supposed to do during the observation, interview and document analysis. Participation in the study was voluntary and each participant was permitted to withdraw anytime during the data collection process.
- Population and Sample/Participant
The participant of this study is seventh grade students, and the teachers.
- Instrumentation
Data were collected through classroom observations, interview with the teachers and students, as well as analysis of teachers’ written lesson plans.
- Data Analysis and Instrumentation Technique
This Classroom Action Research (CAR) obtains data from classroom observations, interviews with the teachers and students, and analysis of lesson plans.
