High order thinking skills (HOTS): using design thinking in solving the issues and challenges for teachers, students and parents

Abstract

The Malaysian government has developed the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, which aims to establish high order thinking skills (HOTS) among Malaysian students in mastering critical thinking, reasoning, creative thinking, and innovation. However, the success of this skills is appalling. Study shows that knowledge sharing by students using HOTS were not being able to transfer their knowledge outside of the classroom. Therefore, the aims of this study was to explore the challenges faced by teachers, parents and students in embedding HOTS in their life. Research findings revealed that there are other factors that were not being recognized in influencing the success in practicing and teaching HOTS. This study explored the factors which contributed to the challenges in HOTS. The important factors are time management, environment, teachers training, student’s acceptance and proper system’s direction which also play a very important role in the success of HOTS. In this paper we discussed on teachers faced several challenges in teaching HOTS as well as parents find it difficult to guide their children. It is crucial for the students to be able to think critically and apply the knowledge as this is to build the leaders of the future. It is being proposed in this paper the solution for the issues in HOTS is by using design thinking. Design mindset is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused, and action oriented. By using the design thinking, it will help to achieve the goal of HOTS in Malaysian Education System.