Abstract
This paper describes the development and validation of a new instrument to measure primary school teachers’ attitudes towards stimulating higher-order thinking in students (SHOT questionnaire). It is believed that it is necessary to explicitly teach students to think, because it cannot be assumed that students will automatically become good thinkers. Therefore, teachers are expected to stimulate students to engage in higher-order thinking. However, we know little about teachers’ attitudes towards teaching practices that engage students in higher-order thinking. Therefore, we need a valid and reliable measurement instrument that can be used to measure teachers’ attitudes towards stimulating higher-order thinking (SHOT). Hence, we developed the SHOT questionnaire. Based on an earlier literature review, we identified four attitudinal factors that we aimed to measure with the SHOT questionnaire. In addition, we included a scale to measure teachers’ behaviour aimed at stimulating higher-order thinking. Results of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with 659 pre- and in-service primary school teachers’ show that the requirements for construct validity were met. Furthermore, we found that in-service teachers, who are more positive about the relevance of stimulating higher-order thinking and their ability to do this, encourage students significantly more often to engage in higher-order thinking than pre-service teachers do.
Highlights
This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary school teachers’ attitudes towards Stimulating HigherOrder Thinking in students
Results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for the stimulating higher-order thinking (SHOT) questionnaire showed acceptable to good fit, SRMR = 0.067, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.079, χ2 = 389.203, df = 129, p < 0.001, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.929, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.916
In an earlier conducted literature review (Wijnen, Walma van der Molen, & Voogt, submitted for publication), we used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to extract four attitudinal factors that we aim to measure with the SHOT questionnaire
Summary
This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary school teachers’ attitudes towards Stimulating HigherOrder Thinking in students (the SHOT questionnaire). Thinking Skills and Creativity 42 (2021) 100954 memory This allows them to apply what they learned in new situations more (transfer of knowledge) (Anderson et al, 2001). Teachers are expected to stimulate students to engage in higher-order thinking. This means that teachers offer assignments in which students use complex cognitive skills (e.g., analysing, evaluating, creating) in order to find a solution or make a decision, prediction, judgement or product. Primary school teachers mostly engage in teaching practices aimed at stimulating lower-order thinking skills, with an emphasis on knowledge transfer and there is little evidence that higher-order thinking is systematically stimulated and assessed in schools (Schulz & FitzPatrick 2016)
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