EFL Teachers’ Strategies to Create Zone of Proximal Development to Promote Students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills

Abstract

Teachers’ competency and creativity in promoting higher order thinking skills (HOTS) materials become the basic requirement to implement proper learning activities for students. This situation is related to Vygotsky's approach called zone proximal development (ZPD). The zone of proximal development refers to the gap between a child's knowledge and what the children currently understand as the result of problem-solving from adult guidance. This study investigates the teachers’ strategies in creating students’ ZPD to promote students’ higher-order thinking skills and the challenges they face. A case study was employed to gather the data from two teachers taught in a senior high school. The data were taken from the observation and the interview regarding critical thinking instruction in the acceleration classes. The data was analyzed by using the framework by Mahan (2020) scaffolding strategy framework . Then, the promotion of students’ higher-order thinking skills was classified based on the framework from Marzano and Kendall (2007). The result of the study indicated that the two teachers implemented several scaffolding strategies such as connections to prior knowledge, uptake of student responses, modelling and the use of models. The level of higher-order thinking skill questions found during the class activity were analysis and knowledge utilization. Meanwhile, for the challenges found were time limitation for acceleration classes, students’ attitude, and learning activity preparation. This study suggests that there is a need for teacher training programs that provide insight into the implementation of classroom activities that can develop students' higher-order thinking skill.