IISES International Academic Conference, Lisbon

NAVIGATING HOTS AND LOTS IN TEACHER EDUCATION

KRISTEL RUUTMETS, EVI SALUVEER

Abstract:

One of the essential 21st-century skills that teacher educators should focus on is developing their students' critical thinking. Chatfield (2018) claims that thinking critically involves understanding what is happening by using reasoning, evaluating evidence, and carefully considering the thinking process. However, in many classrooms, students' primary focus seems to be on what they are expected to do and how it will be assessed. This may be because textbook activities often emphasize lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) over higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), as indicated by various research studies. Therefore, it is the teacher's responsibility to create tasks that enable students to be flexible, creative and original, solve problems, and ask relevant questions. The presentation provides a brief overview of student teacher research on a primary school English coursebook set used in Estonian schools and offers some ideas for tasks and activities we have used to enhance student teachers' critical thinking skills.

Keywords: critical thinking skills, teacher education, tasks and activities