ROLE OF HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN ENHANCING TIMSS TASKS

Abstrak / Ringkasan

Students’ performances in TIMSS and PISA have featured strongly in recent discussions and debates about the quality of mathematical learning outcomes both from teachers and policy makers. Findings of TIMSS and PISA showed that most high school students in Malaysia continue to perform at less than satisfactory levels. Particularly, in tasks that are cognitively demanding. However, such findings are based on a broad-brush view of the performance of Malaysian students. In this analysis, there is a lack of information about the kind of tasks which are proving to be problematic to the students. This latter information, we argue is critical for future actions aimed at lifting their TIMSS performances. The Malaysian Ministry of Education had advocated for the integration of Higher Order Thinking Skills [HOTS] in mathematics and science. The result of TIMSS has placed greater emphasis on the need to teach HOTS effectively. Our argument is that in order for HOTS to have a significant impact on students’ engagement with and improvement on TIMSS, researchers ought to undertake a fine-grained analysis of student performances in relation to particular tasks and use this information to help teachers understand and integrate HOTS in their teaching. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of selected TIMSS Tasks and demonstrate how to better support students in the use of HOTS in making progress with such tasks. In so doing we present a methodology that can be utilised by teachers better understand the role of HOTS in empowering students move from lower to higher levels of cognitive funtioning in the context of TIMSS and similarly demanding tasks. Our methodology provides an important starting point for the design of future professional development programs for Malaysian mathematics teachers in articulating HOTS and implementing them in regular classrooms.

Key words: Higher Order Thinking Skills [HOTS], mathematics problem solving, secondary mathematics, TIMSS Tasks, mathematics teacher professional development, level of

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