Using the HOT-based instruction for developing students’ thinking dispositions

This section is about an important part of the HOTS intervention which is dedicated to developing thinking dispositions of students, including a range of activities for increasing the student motivation, tolerance, independent learning skills, and social competence skills as well.

a) Enhancing students’ self-confidence and the ability of self-directed learning

It was acknowledged by teachers that engaging students in the HOTS-based learning should improve their self-confidence, as students would exert their mental efforts to process information and make inferences. Teachers reported that, with the help of the HOTS programme recommendations, they taught students to engage in their own learning process and in self-directed learning. The extract below demonstrates the necessity of appropriate assessment of students’ abilities and achievements, praising them for successful performance, and of being careful not to discourage weaker learners.

Students are more motivated when they believe they have a chance for success. We have to give students a realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses and define realistic learning objectives (Focus group interview).

91

b) Achieving the pervasiveness of students’ HOTS through problem-based learning.

In individual and focus group interviews, teachers expressed the hope that by engaging students in problem solving in the classroom, they helped them become prudent in making judgments and decisions in the course of daily interactions, professional activities, and coping with critical life events. Teacher’s response below shows the hope that solving problems in the classroom will contribute to the transfer of thinking skills across different areas and make the HOTS of students pervasive.

When embarking on independent life, young people are exposed to many challenges. I hope that analytical and reasoning skills we try to instill in students will help them to make thoughtful judgments and decisions … (Interview with the mathematics teacher).

The necessity was emphasized of including more the complex problems into textbooks.

Regretfully, our textbooks contain few problems related to real life situations. I believe that the authors of books should think more about that because such tasks can help our children solve the problems they have to deal with in their professional activities (Interview with technical education teacher).

c) Developing the tolerance and open-mindedness of students

Teachers believed that the involvement of students in collaborative problem solving, particularly through discussion and brainstorming activities, should contribute both to the enhancement of their cognitive skills and development of such qualities as tolerance and open-mindedness. Teachers acknowledged that they had implemented an important change. The discussions teachers held in the classroom were quite rare and teacher-dominated. Teachers increased the number of open- ended questions for discussions (for instance, “how would you describe the role of women in the Israeli Arab society?”). By doing this, teachers want the students to recognize that there are questions that allow for a variety of possible answers and make students understand an issue from a variety of standpoints. From the extract below, one can see that students were encouraged not

92

to be afraid of voicing their opinions and to be tolerant to the opinions of other discussion participants.

We discussed the issues involving sensitivity to the life in our community and how students would deal with ethical problems. This was an opportunity to involve the whole group in discussion because some students were reluctant to speak up. I tried to encourage some shy students to speak out and not to be afraid that their classmates would laugh at them. Also, students had to be taught how to respond to someone’s comment without being offensive (Social work teacher’s report).

d) Developing students’ communication and interpersonal skills through collaborative activities Another important goal in implementing collaborative inquiry projects and discussion activities was to develop students’ communication skills so that they would be able to work in team. Teachers reported that, in the course of the work on the project, they encouraged students to reflect on the activities and interactions of their group, support one another as they accomplish their tasks, and work out ethical problems among themselves. Teachers also noted that peer and cross-age tutoring could be an important means for developing students’ interpersonal skills and responsibility for the school student community. The example below how teachers constantly helped students work in group, as it is demonstrated in the extract below.

Students worked in little groups and soon it was revealed that there were many arguments among them. Some of them insisted on taking their decisions, claiming that they knew things better than others. The other ones were reluctant to acknowledge that they misunderstood something …In the beginning, I had to constantly intervene, helping to resolve conflict situations. In the course of time, students learned to handle problems among themselves (Social work teacher’s report).

e) Enhancing students’ motivation in learning.

In order to enhance student motivation, teachers tried to devise learning activities that would be of interest for students. Teachers noticed that when working with students, they paid attention to various learning motivators: the issues of personal success and failure and emotional factors, both

93

positive and negative. Teachers noted that in order to build student self-confidence and help students stay motivated, it is important to demand high expectations from students and at the same time promote supportive learning climate by being responsive to students’ needs, as can be seen from the following extract.

I believe that motivation is the most important value, particularly with regard to weak learners. If you know how to spark their interest and keep them motivated in mastering the subject you teach, consider it your best achievement as a teacher (Interview with the teacher of English).

Teachers’ opinions varied on the role of collaboration and competition in the student learning performance and motivation. In general, teachers agreed that to be competitive in today’s world students must be taught to collaborate effectively. It was pointed out that Arab society becomes more individualistic and many parents promote the spirit of competition in their children. On the other hand, they held that in the modern society and educational framework competition is valued over cooperation. The main challenge, they believed, was how to integrate competitiveness into the collaborative learning environment. The extract below presents the idea of organizing the competition so that all participants have a chance to show best their abilities.

It is important to praise students for the efforts they put in learning regardless of their achievements. Students should be enabled to compete against peers with similar ability. We should educate students in such a way that one student would not feel that his own success would hurt the others (Focus group interview).

f) Teaching students to understand and productively use their emotions

Teachers reported about the discussions conducted with students to explore the issues of the personal success and failure in learning and examine the emotional aspect of this issue. Teachers noted that through the means of formative assessment, they could learn about how the issues of learning success and failure were interpreted by students. It can be seen in the following extract that teachers guided students to usetheir own feelings to improve learning performance.

94

Students felt happy because they had done well on this assignment. Those who failed were dissatisfied and seem to be in a sour mood. I had to address their frustrations and explain to them their mistakes .... It is much to be done to teach them to use their emotions in a constructive way (Mathematics teacher’s report).

Many teachers noted that they tried to act as role models for students by being positive, confident in themselves and by maintaining good working relationships with students.

g) Teaching students to use HOTS for the wellbeing of the local community

Teachers were careful to devise inquiry projects that linked curriculum subject areas to real life problems and the issues that would promote students’ responsibility for the wellbeing of the local community. It was decided to deal with waste management problems (biology), contemporary political and social issues (history), and other areas. The topics chosen for collaborative projects in the professional training courses concerned electrical safety in buildings, social help to large families, or developing an internet site highlighting the needs of the local community. The following extract demonstrates launching the project for the needs of the local community.

Our area have many resources at hand for inquiry field work. There are green spaces that provide habitat for wild plants and animals, but there is also a site for the disposal of waste materials not far from our village. I decided to launch an environmental project on waste awareness .... . (Biology teacher’s report).

From the description of teachers’ activities presented in section 4.1.6, one can see that teachers paid much effort to the work on developing thinking dispositions of students. They showed special attention to discussion and brainstorming activities, believing that these are particularly important for developing team work skills of Arab students who have been not traditionally involved in such activities. Some authors (Poole, 2008; Larson, 2000) hold, however, that brainstorming may not be effective for developing social skills because of participants’ diversity. This may increase conflict and disagreement when students challenge one another or students may not understand each other because of different abilities and competence. It was noticed by teachers in the current study that weaker students were encouraged to speak out and would hopefully develop their team

95

work skills. Teachers have also argued that many parents promote the spirit of competition in their children and Israeli Arab society is becoming more individualistic. These issues, however, are rarely reflected in the literature relating to the characteristics of Arab society in Israel (Abu-Asbah, 2012; Abu-Asbah & Avishai, 2007).