It is a major task for all stakeholders to enhance students' capabilities in multiple aspects. PISA’s HOTS-based questions have largely gone unanswered by Indonesian students. These questions often involve long discourse texts, world maps, graphs, and other complex information. One of the key issues is that students are not accustomed to engaging with long and complex texts. Teachers can no longer provide only simple texts repeatedly. Instead, students need to be introduced to complex, argument-rich texts to develop their analytical and critical thinking skills. Additionally, assessing HOTS can be complex, requiring the development of new evaluation methods that move beyond traditional testing to capture students' higher-level cognitive abilities (Zohar & Dori, 2003).
In conclusion, Higher-Order Thinking occurs when students engage with their existing knowledge in a way that transforms it, meaning they can modify or create new knowledge and produce something original. Through higher-order thinking, students can clearly distinguish ideas, construct well-reasoned arguments, solve problems effectively, generate explanations, formulate hypotheses, and interpret complex issues more clearly. These abilities explicitly demonstrate how students engage in reasoning. This essay has demonstrated that HOTS enable students to effectively navigate the digital landscape, solve real-world challenges, and drive innovation across various fields. Although implementing HOTS in educational systems presents challenges, strategies such as problem-based learning and interdisciplinary approaches have proven to be effective solutions.
References
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