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Abstract

Higher order thinking skills should be an integral part of teaching and learning especially at the higher
education level. Thinking skills lessons should be a part of the curriculum if students are to think and solve
problems individually; cooperatively and creatively, teachers on the other hand must be conversant with
relevant techniques needed in teaching higher order thinking. An in-depth review of literature reveals that
teachers are faced with the problem of how to prepare and teach higher order skills in design and technology
education. The paper is a library based work; and data was collected from textbooks, journal articles and
internet search. The paper critically examined existing practices in the teaching of higher order thinking in
design and technology education. Some of the key features mentioned were the use of concept, inferences,
visualization, and schemas, among others. Recommendations were made regarding the development of HOTS.
Specifically, instruction must be designed to reflect; conceptual, technical, aesthetics, constructional and
marketing areas, in order for students to develop creatively. However, there is no one way to reaching a
particular goal, therefore this paper exposes one of the various ways in which lessons can be deigned to bring
about higher order thinking, the implication of this is that teachers would have a pool of teaching-learning
resources to choose from for their lessons.

What Are Higher Order Thinking Skills?


According to the new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the intellectual behaviors that students should practice
and engage in are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. The behaviors at
the beginning of the list (remembering, understanding and applying) are lower order, while the other
behaviors (analyzing, evaluating and creating) are higher order. These take more critical thinking and
thoughtfulness.

Analyzing
Analyzing is the observing and breaking down of information in order to determine motives and causes.
Teachers can help students analyze by integrating technology into projects. For instance, without much
technology, a science teacher could show students how global warming may be affecting the planet. But with
the help of online school databases, students could research science articles from particular years, in order to
discover and analyze trends in scientific findings regarding ozone depletion. When students are allowed to go
beyond classroom handouts for information, forming an analysis becomes a more challenging but authentic
task.
Other times, analyzing can be made more interactive through online tools. For instance, the Read Write Think
website has a story mapping tool that guides students through the process of breaking down a story in order
to think about it. Teachers may also want to consider classroom software like Inspiration, which helps students
to visually organize information into graphs and charts. This helps them to compare and contrast, build
hierarchies of information, create cause and effect diagrams, etc. (If software like this is not in your school
budget, look into the charts and diagrams available on your school’s word processors.)

 Evaluating
When students evaluate, they make decisions and then justify them. One example of this is the book review, in
which students rate books and explain their decisions. The book review is a great way to help students
evaluate, but it can be taught more thoroughly (and written more enthusiastically) using technology. For
example, teachers can use actual book reviews found on Amazon as examples for students, asking them to
analyze shared elements between reviews. Next, students can write their own reviews and post on Amazon's
website themselves. When I switched from having my students write reviews for the class to writing reviews
on a real website, I noticed an improvement in the quality of their work. They felt their reviews could help lots
of readers across the country to choose a book and this motivated them to be thorough in their writing.

Of course, the Internet is not just for book reviews. For instance, Kathy Schrock use Inspiration software and
the Internet to help her 6th, 7th and 8th graders evaluate websites. Lessons like Schrock’s help students to
look at things with a more discerning eye, and to justify their evaluations with support.

 Creating
Creating is the last higher order behavior in the newer version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. In contrast to the other
behaviors on the list, creating is the production of something entirely new. Technology offers students great
opportunities to create in ways that non-technological projects don’t. For instance, students could create a
poster board of information for a math presentation, but it wouldn’t include nearly as much information as a
PowerPoint presentation.
Additionally, technology widens students’ audiences, which means more genuine creations. A website like Kid
Blog (when carefully monitored by teachers) is one example of how students can share their work with many.
Magazines like Teen Ink are now online and take submissions through email, making it easier than ever for
students to publish. So by integrating technology in your classroom, you are not only giving students more
possibilities in what they can create, but helping them to share their creations with more people.

 Final Thoughts
Most of us use technology in our classrooms every day, whether we are emailing parents or bringing students
to a computer lab to type their papers. However, keep in mind that technology integration is also beneficial as
it can encourage your students to use their higher order thinking skills to process all types of information and
in the long run, will help them to be the great learners and thinkers that will make successful adults.

 Reference
Overbaugh, R.C., & Schultz, L. (n.d.). Bloom's Taxonomy.

FYI:

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) are among the skills that teachers at school are expected to
develop. In a language class, this can be a challenging task especially for teachers who are not
trained in this area. Yet, many may not opt for a formal face-to-face training for various reasons. Time
is usually one of the constraints. In-service training programmes are also impossible to arrange for all
teachers in the country. In a survey conducted on English teachers in Malaysia, it was found that they
preferred to have this kind of training conducted both on-site and online. Majority of them preferred to
have the bulk of the course to be run online. This paper discusses the strategies and approaches that
can be adopted by English language teachers to develop their students’ critical thinking skills when
teaching literary texts. The paper also highlights how these are shared with the teachers using MOOC
platform. The platform helps to make the content accessible to more teachers.
Importance of Higher order thinking skills

It is very important because without conscious attempt you cannot build upon what you have
learned before. You need to establish connections between what you have learned and what you
are going to learn. To establish a connection between the items of learning you are exposed, you
need to think. Thinking is a conscious process and it is perhaps the core of learning, especially
when you are an adult learner. Therefore, higher order thinking skills, e.g. analyzing, applying,
creating and so on, need to be emphasized in teaching and learning a foreign language because
language learning is a skill learning, which is much more than knowledge transfer, and skill
learning requires thinking and creativity to apply those skills you learned. You cannot solely teach
a foreign language just by transferring knowledge, you should also be able to teach higher order
thinking skills to achieve your goal, i.e. using the language.

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