Higher order thinking skills of students in outermost region in Indonesia: A survey in Mamuju District

Abstract

The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys have consistently shown Indonesian students’ low performance in mathematical literacy. These results indicate that Indonesian students’ higher order thinking skills are still unsatisfactory. PISA only presents the results for Indonesia at the national level, which might not reflect the situation in specific regions such as 3T (frontier, outermost and least developed) regions due their specific characteristics. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the higher order thinking skills of students in Mamuju District which is an outermost and least developed region. A quantitative approach, which in particular was survey, was used in this study. A set of test items addressing higher order thinking skills (HOTS) was used to collect data. These items covered seven indicators of HOTS which were adopted from the National Examination. Data analysis revealed that no eight graders in Mamuju District were in the categories of High and Very High for their HOTS and the majority of the students belonged to the category of Low. In general, these findings in agreement with the results of PISA. Regarding content domain, it was found that geometry and measurement was the most difficult and statistics and probability was the easiest.