High Order Thinking Skills Teaching Innovation: An Analysis of English Teachers’ Understanding and Practices

The aim of the research was to investigate English teachers’ understanding and its practices in teaching HOTS. This research was conducted from October to November 2019 involving twenty English teachers from state and private schools in Majenang and its surroundings. The data on teachers’ understanding was obtained by interviewing the participants under study, while the data about its practices was obtained from observation and supervision documents from their school principals and supervisors. The result showed that most of the English teachers that participated in this research did not have clear understanding on HOTS and its implementation in the teaching and learning process. The misunderstanding even started from designing a lesson plan which incorporated the implementation of teaching HOTS in the classroom. The conclusion indicated that most of the senior teachers were not clear enough about HOTS and its practices as they lacked training and information about it. In contrast, most younger participated teachers understood HOST, but they had several misconceptions in its practices.


Introduction
The 21st century is known as the knowledge and technology development era, which has influenced people's job and interaction. It has positives and negatives impacts, especially in the world of education. Teachersle will face more challenges and complex problems in the future, which ordinary ways do not easily solve them. Hence, education is also demanded to deal with these alterations and shifts, such as preparing the students with higher-order thinking skills (Driana & Pascasarjana Universitas Muhammadiyah HAMKA Jakarta, 2019).
stakeholders. All of them must be synchronized to reach educational success; this means that it does not only focus on the improvement of evaluation, updated curriculum, and new regulations but also on the development of teaching professionalism (Ardini, 2017;Fakhomah & Utami, 2019). Therefore, the way teachers implement educational policy affects the quality of education.
One of the ways to improve education quality is that teachers must understand Bloom's revised taxonomy as part of teaching HOTS as stated by (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001). In thinking skill, the cognitive process is defined as a continuum that starts from the lowest to the highest starting from remembering (C1), understanding (C2), applying (C3), analyzing (C4), evaluating (C5), and creating (C6) (Schleicher, 2018). Remembering and understanding are categorized as lower-order thinking skills while applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating are categorized as higher-order thinking skills. The group of Lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) is a foundation that must be acquired before students are able to reach higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). In lower-orderthinking skills (LOTS), the materials are only remembered and comprehended by the students so that they are enough for the teaching-learning process, and must be completed by Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).
On the other hand, Brookhart (2010), as cited in (Driana & Pascasarjana Universitas Muhammadiyah HAMKA Jakarta, 2019), divided the higher-order thinking skills into three types which included transfer knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving. Transfer knowledge is seen as a skill of understanding and using the knowledge and skills that they have learned in a new context. Critical thinking is a skill of "reasoning, questioning and investigating, observing and describing, comparing and connecting, finding complexity, and exploring viewpoints (Indriani, 2019). Meanwhile, problem solving is a skill of using knowledge and thinking skills that a person has to look for new, alternative solutions to problems (Fakhomah & Utami, 2019).
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2019 showed that Indonesian Education is in low rank. Thus, our education system must be reformed in the teaching and learning process by emphasizing on higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) rather than lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) (Ariyana, Bestary, Yogyakarta, & Mohandas, n.d.)as stated in the module of Peningkatan kompetensi pembelajaran (PKP 2019). Most of the countries which have got high rank in PISA are focusing the teaching and learning activities on HOTS and its problem solving (Schleicher, 2018). However, the implementation of teaching HOTS is still confusing for teachers at every educational level. In lesson planning to teach higherorder thinking, the obstacles appear in preparing the conditions of the learning environment that supports the teaching and learning process. This process can be done by engaging in thinking activities with content through material collaboration, making conclusions, building representations, analyzing, and building the relationship between concepts ( as cited by Zhao et al., 2017, Smith, 2017. The things that need to be considered in developing higher-order thinking skills lie in the content/learning material and student's context. If the students are not ready to do higher-order thinking skills, it is necessary for the bridge, which built-in advance between lower-order thinking processes towards higher-order thinking. The trick is building a scheme from preliminary knowledge that has been previously obtained with new knowledge that will be taught (Samo, 2017). Therefore, the success of teaching higher-order thinking skills is also determined by teachers' understanding of designing and implementing lesson plans. Because of this, teachers need to improve their knowledge in designing the lesson plan as their professional competences. The teachers' ability to design and implement the lesson plan will be reflected in the quality of the teaching and learning process that they practice. While there were many extensive researches which concerned on the implementation of HOTS into English classroom, there were only few studies which investigated on teachers' understanding and its implementation. Thus, this research aimed to explore the understanding of English junior high school teachers in Cilacap and its practice areas regarding HOTS as a teaching and learning process innovation.

Method
This was qualitative research involving 20 junior high school teachers in Majenang, Cilacap and some surrounding areas which belong to English Teacher Organization (MGMP) in Majenang district. This qualitative research aimed to describe English junior high school teachers' understanding and its practices about teaching HOTS. The researchers also analyzed the HOTS lesson plan that was designed and used by the teachers. Therefore, qualitative research was a very relevant choice. Data about the teachers' understanding of teaching HOTS and its practices were obtained through semi-structured interviews with previously prepared questions. Meanwhile, the data about its practices were obtained by observing the teaching and learning process supported by documentation of the lesson plan (RPP). The interviews were conducted to explore information about teachers' understanding of HOTS and their implementation in teaching and learning process. The researchers also gave some questions to get information about teachers' backgrounds related to teachers' training about HOTS that they have ever joined. In line with the teachers' agreement, the interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data from the interview were analyzed by referring to Miles and Huberman, which included the steps of (1) data reduction, (2) displaying the data, and (3) drawing a conclusion, verification and interpreting data.
Moreover, this study aimed at obviously giving a description and explanation of the overview on how the teacher used the steps in implementing higher-order thinking skills in the teaching-learning process. In addition, this study also would give an evaluation of teaching higher-order thinking skills. In short, the scope of this study is observing teachers' ways of teaching higher-order thinking skills based on the lesson plan that has been designed.

Findings and Discussion
Teachers' Understanding about HOTS In this research, the researcher used the interview to get data related to teachers' understanding. The interview used a semi-structured interview in which the researcher prepared the questions list. In general, the research results showed that the teachers were only capable of explaining a partial understanding of HOTS. The majority of the teachers described HOTS as a skill that higher than remembering and understanding. However, Teacher 1 (39 y.o) stated that: "HOTS is questions used to measure students' skill on a certain level of understanding, explaining, identifying, and analyzing".(Teacher 1) Understanding and identifying belong to LOTS, so teacher 1 (39 y.o) has misunderstood regarding HOTS. As stated in Bloom's revised taxonomy, analyzing, evaluating, and creating are categorized as higher-order thinking (Retnawati, Djidu, Kartianom, Apino, & Anazifa, 2018) in Fitz Patrick & Schulz, (2015. HOTS, as explained by Teacher 3 (48y.o), was still related to the cognitive process of analyzing, but the teacher knew HOTS as a skill of connecting different information and critically analyzing it. So, there is a misconception about its meaning and implementation.
"HOTS is a thinking skill or remembering information by analyzing the answer but it was difficult".(Teacher 3) Teacher 8 (48y.o) stated that remembering is a process of analyzing. The concept is untrue as analyzing is defined as one of the cognitive processes of HOTS in differentiating elements from obtained information and finding connections between those elements in a coherent structure (Zhao et al., 2017) in (Anderson et al., 2014).
Teacher 10 (33 y.o) stated that HOTS was a skill for students to face in the 21 st century. However, the teachers were not capable of explaining how to bridge the students from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking.
"In my point of view, HOTS is like a skill that needed in 21 st century education to think critically and work collaboratively, but my students are low students. It is difficult to give them HOTS teaching". (Teacher 10) The interview showed that the teachers did not entirely and comprehensively understandd the concept of HOTS. There were no teachers that specifically mentioned HOTS as C4 (analyzing), C6 (evaluating), and C6 (creating). In addition, there were some inaccurate understandings about HOTS teaching in bridging the students with a scheme from preliminary knowledge that has been previously obtained with new knowledge that will be taught. This lack of understanding rooted on knowledge that in teaching applying (C3) the teacher must give students the prior knowledge before directly going to C3 or applying.In this case, the students should be taught on remembering (C1) and Understanding (C2). This is called bridging students' basic competence.

Teachers' perception of HOTS as Teaching Innovation
To obtain data related to teachers' perception of teaching HOTS as a new innovation, the researcher conducted several interviews. One of interesting findings is that most senior teachers did not implement HOTS in their teaching because of their lack of knowledge. A 60 year old teacher claimed that he has never heard about HOTS as teaching-learning innovation.

"I have never heard about it before, so I have not implemented the HOTS teaching models. I teach my students as usual by explaining the material, and giving question and answers. The school has not given me information yet, and I have not attended any training about teaching HOTS." (Teacher 9)
It is seen that the senior teachers did not understood about HOTS and its practices as they had never attended teacher training related HOTS. It is supported by teacher 11 (58 y.o) who admitted that: "Teaching HOTS is important as the exam also use HOTS item, and it is valuable for students ' future".(Teacher 20) It means that this younger teacher understood about HOTS as he often joined teachers teaching training, especially related to HOTS. Thus, the guidelines related to HOTS for him is clear.
The interview result concluded that senior teachers find that the the concept of HOTS is not clear to be practiced. Such unclear and unspecified changes can cause great anxiety and frustrations to those teachers who are sincerely trying to implement HOTS (Moseley & Jones, 2008).
Taking into account of Fullan's(2007), as stated in (Hashim & Noh, 2015) that the degree of clarity of something new is related to the degree of change that occurs in practice. The teachers found teaching HOTS is more complex so that the teachers agreed that it requires a more sophisticated array of activities for effective implementation. In contrast, the findings indicate that the younger teachers found the change to be simple and easy to carry out. The implementation of HOTS did not seem to create many problems for them.

Teachers' practices in teaching HOTS
To collect the data related to the teachers' practices, the researcher did observation on how the teacher conducts the teaching-learning process (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing evaluating, and creating). The researcher'sobservation was recorded by using field notes and matching the teachers' activities from their lesson plan. The researcher also took the document from the school principal and supervisor related to supervision documents such as review of designing RPP (see appendix 1) and observation sheet (see appendix 2).
Most senior teachers stated that it was difficult to teach HOTS and it was more difficult to understand the concepts of HOTS because teaching HOTS requires a sophisticated array of activities. On the other hand, younger teachers perceived it challenging to teach HOTS, but they were still confused about equipping students from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking. It is seen from the score result of supervision documents from the supervisor and principal in table 1. Most of the teachers got some notes from the school principal and supervisor related to reviewing teaching design. Hence, teachers have not understood enough to design HOTS teaching. They stated that the teaching design was new for them. Thus, they needed more information and preparation to generate teaching quality. Furthermore, they also complained that the materials were also needed to be prepared in printed and electronic as demanded by 4Cs competences. The supervisors' notes were mostly given in elaborating teaching aims and its supporting indicators competences (IPK Penunjang) and key indicator competences (IPK Kunci). These terms were new for the teachers, especially the senior teachers. Then, most of them did not apply the real HOTS teaching in the class which was still dominated by lecturing because they implemented the wrong steps of HOTS teaching models. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that teaching and learning design the teachers developed needs to have systematic steps that invite teachers to trace the flow of learning design oriented to higher-level thinking skills. Strategic steps that need to be considered can be seen as follows (Ariyana et al., n.d.)in Peningkatan kompetensi pembelajaran (PKP 2019) : 1. Determining and analyzing basic competencies according to students and teaching demands. Minister of Education and Culture Regulation No. 37 of 2018 concerning Basic Competence, which becomes the minimum target to be achieved and determines the target to be achieved by Basic Competency by separating the competency target with the material contained in KD according to the format below. b. Understanding the Indicators of Competencies Achievement and learning material that has been developed; c. Understanding the syntaxes in the learning model, formulate preliminary activities that include orientation, motivation, and apperception

Conclusion
It can be concluded that change within the educational setting should considera process,and a process involved in implementing HOTS in teaching English requires time and support. The conclusion that can be taken from the teacher's activities while implementing LOTS and HOTS, such as teacher's way in the implementation of the teaching-learning process in senior high school, is not in sequence. It should start from LOTS to HOTS by giving the students a scheme related to bridging their knowledge and basic competence. Whilemost of the younger teachers that participated in this research were aware of the importance of HOTS to prepare the students to face the challenges of the 21 st century their understanding was not comprehensive yet. In contrast, the senior teachers have not understood on implementing teaching HOTS as they rarely and never joined a training about it. In addition, there was a misunderstanding about the meaning of HOTS questions. This difference in perception happened because the teachers did not have a comprehensive understanding of HOTS yet. In short, teachers need opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills in developing and implementing HOTS teaching design through proper training programs.