I am working with an international team, creating Higher Order Thinking questions for a publisher. I am responsible for the method, so the questions from every subject come to me.
I explain to my history teacher, that asking “What is history?” is not a higher order thinking question, only recall, as the answer is given in the textbook. When I talk about the importance of asking the students for opinion, her colleague says: “but it can be dangerous, we should avoid sensitive questions”. A-ha. There was a time when sexual education was not in the curriculum, saying, let’s not talk about it, so teens won’t have sex. Yes, they had sex, but they didn’t know that they can get pregnant. The same is true for sensitive questions: you don’t discuss, then they will get information from improper sources and suddenly your sweet boy becomes an ISIS fighter.
After two hours of discussion my teacher submitted the second version: “In your opinion, what is history?” I wanted to cry, then tried to understand her. It is not easy, I can’t blame her. She is the product of an education system which promotes rote learning over thinking and supresses critical and creative thinking.
Higher order thinking skills, HOTS, is a collective word for all the important 21st century success skills (this is the current buzzword for it). I can tell the nationality of the author by the quality of the questions. One article states: “A 2017 report from Bank … stated that 78% of multinational companies would not hire … (substitute a nation) graduates because they lack confidence and self-esteem, communication skills, leadership traits, problem-solving as well as creative and critical thinking skills.” In fact the listed skills are the HOTS. Their importance is increasingly recognised worldwide, so more and more countries introduce them into their curriculum and exams. The underlying problem is that if teachers are not able to think out of the box, how can they get their students to do that? First we have to teach the teachers to ask HOTS questions, and all above, to be brave. Because it requires bravery to ask and think freely.