Discussion of the validity of findings obtained in the present study

One of the main requirements of any investigation is the reliability of data and findings. In what follows, the question is addressed whether findings are valid enough to draw conclusions about the significance of the HOTS intervention programme.

5.5.4.1 Results of member and peer reviewing

In order to validate accuracy of data and credibility of findings, the results of this study were presented to other parties for review. At one of the professional school meetings, teachers and the school principal were informed about the goal and methodology of this research project. After the drafts of the quantitative and qualitative studies had been completed, the results and interpretations thereof were handed over to the intervention group teachers. In addition, the researcher scheduled a meeting with students’ parents who participated in the study to acquaint them with the results of interview analysis. Teachers were mostly interested in the qualitative part of the project. They held that the author accurately captured their attitudes to the HOTS intervention, problems taken place during the programme implementation, and how the results reflected the students’ pre- and post- intervention performance. Most of the teachers believed that the author should pay more attention to the problems they experienced when facilitating constructivist instruction and learning and the inconsistencies between the educational new policy requirements and the content of the existing textbooks and examination tests.

The results of the study have been also presented to the two Israeli Arab scholars who have been working in the field of HOTS – Ph. D. A. Abed and Ph. D. A. Amer. Both scholars emphasised

160

the importance of conducting the study that examines the impact of the HOTS intervention in an Arab school. They agreed that selection of the mixed method methodology was a right decision in terms of providing a deep insight into the processes and outcomes of the intervention. They held that data analysis and interpretations seemed plausible. They noticed, however, that interviews with students and conducting classroom observations would lead to a better understanding of the effects of intervention on students. Dr. Abed expressed the idea that additional pre - and post- intervention test could be performed to measure students’ abilities in some aspects of HOTS. Both authors have admitted that it is necessary to develop critical thinking of Arab school students with regard to social and political issues. Dr. Abed was more in favour of increasing students’ HOTS in math and science curriculum, arguing that Arab students lag behind their Jewish counterparts. Dr. Amer believed that the deeper examination of teachers’ epistemic beliefs and relation thereof to teachers’ cultural background and instructional practices would be beneficial to the study. He also noticed that this could be the subject of a separate investigation, as the research into Israeli Arab teachers’ epistemic beliefs is scarce.

5.5.4.2 Findings that help reduce the limitations of the study’s methodology

In the Methodology chapter, the limitations of the methodology of this study were outlined. In the following section, conclusions are drawn as to how the findings of this study helped overcome these limitations.

Insignificant inconsistencies in qualitative findings were found through triangulating the themes developed from the interview and documentary data. A comparison of qualitative and quantitative results indicates that most of the qualitative findings converge with the quantitative ones. The triangulation of the study’s findings with the results of studies conducted by other researchers contributed to a stronger external validity of the findings obtained in this research. In addition, the results of member and peer validation show that the findings of this study and interpretations thereof seem plausible and this also increases the external validity of the study.

With respect to student performance, one can judge about the increase in their cognitive and dispositional domains of HOTS mostly from the reports of teachers. The intervention results, which were highlighted in students’ post-intervention responses, reflect their perceptions of the

161

progress in their skills, but not the skills directly. On the other hand, the qualitative findings show that the perceptions of the intervention group teachers have been based on sound pedagogical practices and teachers’ views were informed by the HOTS-related professional training and research into HOTS. Teachers’ perspectives on the learning progress of students were based on the results of summative and formative assessment. Findings show that through intensive scaffolding and feedback, teachers could instruct students how to plan and accomplish learning tasks. Furthermore, written responses to open-ended questions appeared to be rich qualitative data represented the source of information about students’ behaviour and learning patterns. It is most probably that this information does not reflect students’ ability of using HOTS, but rather a high motivation to do so and their growing awareness of the usefulness of HOTS in every domain of life. On the basis of data obtained from teachers and students, it can be strongly suggested that positive developments have occurred in thinking of many students, as a result of intervention. Many students improved their attitudes to learning in general and to the HOTS-related activities in particular. Post-intervention records also suggest the signs of transfer of thinking skills obtained in school to real life situations.

With regard to the teacher and student control group population, the following can be suggested. As the data about the control group teachers were obtained only through administering a questionnaire, this group’s higher parameters for some intervention areas can be ascribed to the factors which were mentioned by the intervention group teachers in the qualitative study. These refer to professional contacts among teachers, self-education, and teachers’ attitudes to instructional methods. The confounding variables, which implies teachers’ and students’ potential pre-knowledge of HOTS and their individual characteristics, could have an impact on their perceptions. As to control group students, the results obtained from the statistical analysis of questionnaire responses are compatible with the data from their written responses to open-ended questions. A comparison of the student control and intervention groups suggests that the latter outperforms the control one in both cognitive and dispositional aspects of HOTS.

162

5.6 Summary

In summary, the researcher concludes that quantitative and qualitative findings complement each other to provide a holistic understanding of the goal and implementation of the HOTS intervention programme. In order to facilitate the merge of results from different strands, the author followed the principles of study design in which quantitative and qualitative data should address the same concepts (Bryman, 2006). The themes developed in the qualitative study correspond to the two groups of quantitative variables, which reflect the cognitive and dispositional aspects of the students’ thinking, and the two groups reflecting the instructional methods for developing students’ HOTS. The inconsistencies between different findings can be explained by the complementary approach (Slonim-Nevo, 2009; Bryman, 2006): conflicting findings can be integrated and consistency is achieved by acknowledging the complexity of the phenomenon under investigation.

Both qualitative and quantitative findings results point to the major importance of this research project in comparison with the findings of studies concerned with the performance of Arab school students (Abed & Dori, 2013; Dkeidek et al., 2010; Abed, 2008). This is not only the first study that describes the implementation of the new educational policies in the Arab educational sector. The study addressed the research questions by examining in detail the process of implementing the HOTS intervention in an Arab high school and by highlighting participants’ achievements in the intervention areas. It revealed the factors which were not addressed by other researchers: the change in teachers’ and students’ attitudes to the learning for good thinking and importance thereof for Arab school culture. In the final chapter of his thesis, the author will use the findings obtained in this study to provide the recommendations for further improvements in implementing the new educational policies in Israeli Arab schools.

163

6. CONCLUSION