TEACHING HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN MATHEMATICS CLASSROOMS: GENDER DIFFERENCES

Abstract

This case study aims to explore how male and female Indonesian mathematics teachers enact decision-making processes in teaching High-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Non-random purposive sampling technique was used to select the participants. The participants involved in this study were two Indonesian mathematics teachers who teach HOTS in their classrooms. The participants were chosen from 87 Indonesian mathematics teachers in 23 secondary schools in East Java, Indonesia, who were invited to our survey and confirmed that they taught HOTS and underwent classroom observation. Data were collected from classroom teaching and interview sessions. The data of classroom teaching consisted of a video-audio recording of two meetings and field notes of observation. In the interview session, we recorded the teachers’ responses during semi-structured interviews. We coded and explained our interpretation for each code. We also conducted investigator triangulation by comparing coding and interpretation made by two researchers and discussing them to find the best representation of the meaning of the data. Our findings indicate that both male and female teachers performed four steps of decision making, consisting of giving problems, asking students to solve, checking, and obtaining new ideas. The difference of male and female teachers’ decision-making process is observed in the process of giving problem (non-contextual vs contextual), how they ask students to solve and check the solution (individual vs group), and the criteria of the new idea of problem-solving (correct vs the best solution). The study findings can be a catalyst for enacting decision-making steps in teaching HOTS. Also, these can be a reflective practice for mathematics teachers to improve their teaching quality.