I am getting closer to developing a dissertation research question. It is easier for me to develop a graphical representation first to illustrate my current thinking. The idea here is to develop a research plan to help pre-service teachers develop the skills required to teach higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).
First, what is higher-order thinking? HOTS can be defined in several ways. Included below is a model created by Anderson et al. (2001) that integrates Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK).
Level four on the Webb model and level six on the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy are similar. At the highest level, higher-order thinking requires students to analyse information, make connections, create and synthesize new information and apply concepts. These are considered generic skills. A more in-depth representation of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge chart focuses on the questions asked at each level.
Discipline-specific skills are higher-order thinking skills corresponding to different subjects such as math, science, or social studies. In history, higher-order thinking skills or critical thinking are closely associated with a pedagogical approach to teaching history framed by inquiry into big questions (Bussell, 2022). Seixas and Morton (2013) fashioned these questions into a framework for historical thinking consisting of six key questions:
- The use of primary historical evidence: What sources do we use to interpret history, and what questions do we ask?
- Continuity and change: What changes and what stays the same?
- Historical significance: What are the events we care about today, and why are they important?
- Cause and consequence: What actions and conditions cause an event to take place?
- Historical perspectives: Understanding the context of people and events of the past.
- Understanding the moral dimension: How do we in the present judge the actions of others in the past?
Similarly, historical thinking is practiced in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Germany (Gestsdóttir, 2021). The British model, first developed by the Schools Council for Curriculum and Development in 1964 (Samec, 1979), with its focus on second-order concepts, influenced the development of the Canadian framework (Lévesque & Clark, 2018), while the American model developed through the work of Wineberg, (2001) focuses more on specific skills used in the analysis of information. These include:
(a) corroboration – the act of comparing documents with one another;
(b) sourcing – the act of looking first to the source of the document before reading the body of the text; and
(c) contextualization – the act of situating a document in a concrete temporal and spatial context. (Wineburg, 1991, p. 77).
While there is a broad consensus on the importance of higher-order thinking in history, there is little evidence that the theory has translated into the classroom (Reisman & Jay, 2024; Fernández, 2023; Gibson & Peck, 2020). There is also scant evidence that in-service professional development programs have enabled a shift away from traditional transmission forms of history instruction (Crocco & Livingston, 2017). My research will focus on an exploration of the perceived gap between theory and practice.
While there is consensus on the importance of discipline-specific higher-order thinking skills in history education, it is unclear how practicing and pre-service teachers are encouraged to apply historical thinking in the classroom. Specifically, how can pre-service teachers learn to teach higher-order thinking in their classrooms? Can a cognitive apprenticeship model be used to facilitate this learning? Why does this model/instructional approach matter to education? What difference does learning to teach with this model make to beginning teachers?
Is there a coaching mechanism that can be developed to guide pre-service teachers in the development of teaching methods focusing on HOTS? Referring to the infographic, I plan to construct a cognitive apprenticeship model, proposed by Brown et al. (1989), to facilitate the learning process. Cognitive apprenticeship focuses on teaching cognitive and metacognitive skills through modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration (Alwafi, 2022). For this study, I propose using three ‘coaches’ – an associate teacher (linked to the pre-service candidate for the year), a practicum supervisor (the formal link between the pre-service teacher), and a subject methods professor.formal link between the pre-service teacher), and and a subject methods professor.
The team working with the pre-service teacher will need some standard tool or platform to assist in acquiring HOTS. There are two possibilities here. One involves using the Teach HTR assessment tool developed by Gestsdóttir (2018); the alternative involves using Wikipedia to provide teacher candidates with some hands-on experience sourcing, corroborating, and evaluating evidence from various sources (Gareis, 2022). Teach HTR is a discipline-specific observation tool to highlight if and when historical thinking is being taught. It does this by reflecting on the observation of several historical thinking skills, including the use of sources, asking historical questions, avoiding the use of present-day standards to judge the actions of the past, and explaining historical concepts like cause and consequence, and continuity and change (Gestdóttir et al., 2024). The complete Teach HTR assessment tool can be found here.
Researchers have used Wikipedia assignments to teach students how to evaluate information for its content and accuracy, assess the credibility of sources in Wikipedia articles, and synthesize new information when writing or revising Wikipedia articles (Gareis et al., 2022). The Wikipedia writing project can lead students to appreciate the potential of Wikipedia better to enhance students’ digital literacy, information literacy, critical thinking and analytical skills (Remmik et al., 2024)
Teach HTR and Wikipedia are mentioned here because each tool facilitates the process of pre-service teachers acquiring discipline-specific HOTS. Both tools have the potential to enhance pre-service teachers’ teaching abilities. Teaching HTR seems more appropriate for teaching and assessing historical thinking skills, as Seixas and Morton (2013) outlined. Wikipedia can be applied to the acquisition of broader-based higher-order thinking skills; this would allow for the selection of students and methodology instructors outside the discipline of history. Either tool could be incorporated into a collaborative apprenticeship design as outlined above. The research design focuses on apprenticeship teams using Teach HRT or Wikipedia to work with a pre-service teacher to enhance their higher-order thinking and teaching skills, thus providing a teaching model that could be enhanced and refined for broader use thus providing a teaching model that could be enhanced and refined for wider use.
To move forward with a research design focusing on developing higher-order thinking skills, it will be essential to consider what elements must be included in any learning intervention. Sims et al. (2023) have developed the I/M/P/T model that characterizes what needs to be included for any professional development program to be effective. First, the intervention must provide teachers with insight into learning and teaching. Second, the program must motivate teachers to make changes in their program. Teachers must also be provided with techniques to implement new learning. Finally, any development plan must embed the new learning so it becomes a new element in daily practice (2023). While this theory was developed focusing on in-service professional development the principles discussed can be applied to the design of a pre-service learning program as outlined in this proposal.
Whole-Hearted 