IDENTIFYING HIGHER ORDER THINKING ACTIVATION IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOK MANDATED IN INDONESIAN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL Anton Muzaeni Syukur, Misdi English Education Department, University of Swadaya Gunung Jati antonmuzaeny@gmail.com, misdi@gmail.com Abstract This paper aims at investigating factual phenomenon of higher order thinking as it reflected in the reading activities of Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA XI. Using theory of Bloom’s (2001) taxonomy, this study used the content analysis method to identify reading features specifically for their essay questions and exercises and tasks of the English textbook. The data of essay reading questions were collected by using coding checklist. Three categories of higher order thinking (analyze, evaluate, and create) were discovered while the distribution of the higher order thinking level is higher than the lower order thinking level. The finding reveal higher order thinking activation and activities in the reading exercises and tasks was unequal, especially the create skills which pursued lower distribution, e.g.not provide treatment properly of the higher order thinking than the analyze skill and the evaluate skill. This puts emphasis on the evaluate skills. Keywords: Higher Order Thinking, Reading Exercise, English Textbook I INTRODUCTION In English language teaching process, English textbooks performs a substantial role in EFL classroom because it provides beneficial guidance and covers the materials that teachers need to deliver . As one language activities, reading is a crucial part that stimulates higher order thinking ski l l s because the students need to analyze and synthesize what they have read. An effective English textbook must have relevant reading perhaps followed by exercises and questions. Besides, those exercises assist students to understand the teaching material and to know their ability in reading as the basic ski l l of t he language. By giving the questions, reading exercises should involve higher order thinking ski l l s due t o the involvement of five scientific processes on 2013 curricula. Krathwohl (2002) offered three levels of higher order thinking in Bloom’s revised taxonomy; namely analyze, evaluation and create. Farrel (2002) stated that most of language textbooks for exampl e reading textbook gives exercises such as predicting, inference, checking prior knowledge, and guess t he content of the text. Seif (2012) examined the higher order thinking activation in reading sections of English textbooks distributed in Palestine. The findings reveal analysis skill 51.92%, synthesis skill 41.35% and evaluation skill got 6.73%. The reading activates fairly students higher order thinking. Another study was also conducted in 2016. Lubis (2016) reported his high order thinking anal ysi s from senior high school English textbook. The report shows 12.9% for analyze skill, 2.6% for eval uat e skill, and 1.2% for create skill while lower order thinking skills got 83.2%. To this, the higher order thinking still exists in English textbook even if it has the lower number of distribution than the lower order thinking. Recent study revealed revealed that 95.6 % belongs to lower order thinking skill — remember (55.7%), understand (36.8%), apply (3.1%), whereas, 4.4% belongs to higher order t hi nki ng skill—analyze (2.2%), evaluate (2.2%), and create (0%) (Sari, 2017). The reading exercises i n E ngl i sh textbook activate students higher order thinking although it has the lower number than the l ower or der thinking. The rare analysis in the contexts of Indonesian schooling English textbook has driven this study to address critical thinking activation as reflected in the reading activities. Thus, the current research aims at identifying critical thinking activation as it indicated in the reading activities which potentially promote critical thinking in their completion. II MATERIALS AND METHOD A content analysis (Ary, et al., 2010) was employed as the technique of data analysis i n this current research. The data were collected following Bashir, et al’. (2014) Bahasa Inggris SMA/ MA XI . The book was published by National Ministry of Education and Culture. In addition, descriptive statistics was employed in presenting the results of data analysis to show the higher order thinking features of the English textbook. In the last stage, the descriptive statistics result s were then critically interpreted qualitatively. mailto:antonmuzaeny@gmail.com mailto:misdi@gmail.com 2 | Anton Muzaeni Syukur, Misdi Lingual (Vol. 11, No.1, 2021) III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 CHAPTERS AND READING TEXTS The textbook Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA XI purveys many exercises for students to study. Over al l , the book serves all language skills such as activities of speaking, listening, reading, and writing with their language components. These are present in the whole exercises and tasks for the students. However, it is the reading exercises and tasks which are the focus of the study. Eight reading texts wer e found to be explored and investigated texts—folklore, opinion article (discussion text), speech (argumentative text), a play, formal invitation, short story, personal letter, a skit (a short comical / f unny drama) as shown in the following table. Chapter Theme Number of Exercises Reading Exercises Essay Reading Exercise 1 Ca n greed ever be sa tisfied? 15 10 4 (1, 2, 3, & 6) 2 Bullying: a ca ncer that must be era dicated 14 10 3 (1, 2, & 3) 3 Hopes a nd dreams! 13 7 3 (1, 2, & 3) 4 Va nity, what is thy price? 11 7 3 (1, 2, & 3) 5 Benefit of doubt 12 7 3 (1, 2, & 3) Tota l Exercises 65 38 16 Table 1. Essay Reading Exercise distribution 65 exercises in the textbook Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA XI practicing and promoting all language skills as well their components while 38 exercises practice the reading skill. Nevertheless, 16 out of 38—amounts of the reading exercises in the textbook—the essay reading exercises. Meanwhile, the rests are not only the other types of reading exercises but also essay reading exercise like responding, readi ng aloud, multiple-choice, editing, short-answer, gap-filling, fill in the blank, complete the colum n, cl oze, labeling, and matching. From the textbook, the distribution of the essay reading exercises is supposed t o provide more attention again, because it has lower distribution compared to the other reading exer ci ses types. Test types of the reading are presented in the following table. Exercise types Chapter and numbers of exercises Total 1 2 3 4 5 Essa y 1, 2, 3, 8 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 16 Responding - - 6 6 - 2 Rea ding Aloud 4 4 4 4 4 5 Multiple-Choice 5 - - - - 1 Editing Ta sk 6 - 5 6 6 4 Short-Answer 7 8 - - - 2 Ga p-Filling 9 - - - - 1 Fill in the Bla nk 10 6, 10 7 5 7 6 Identifying Higher Order Thinking Activation in English Textbook Mandated in Indonesian Senior High School | 3 Exercise types Chapter and numbers of exercises Total 1 2 3 4 5 Complete the Column - 5, 7 - - - 2 La beling - 9 - - - 1 Ma tching Task - - - - 5 1 Cloze Ta sk 15 14 13 11 12 5 Tota l exercises/tasks 11 11 8 8 8 46 Table 2. Exercises and tasks types in reading 12 types of reading exercises, such as essay question, responding question, reading aloud, multiple-choice question, editing, short-answer question, gap-filling, fill in the blank, complete the column, labeling, matching, and cloze task. Either of the highest distribution (see the table)—clearly the essay question out of two more another test types, like short-answer and fill in the blank, t hose ar e, by acquiring 16 exercises out of 46 exercises, which practice the reading skill. Thus, it seems better than the rest distributions of another reading test types, like 1 exercise each (for multiple choice, gap-filling, labeling, and matching), 6 exercises (for fill in the blank), 5 exercises each (for cloze, and reading wor d aloud), 4 exercises (for the editing task), and 2 exercises each (for responding, short-answer, completing the column) out of 46 exercises. All reading provides essay questions constructed evenly in five chapters of the book besides except reading aloud, editing task, short-answer, fill in the blank and cloze. 3.2 HIGHER ORDER THINKING IN ESSAY READING: CATEGORIES AND DISTRIBUTION 54 essay questions were identified from 16 essay reading exercises. Directed from revised Bloom’s taxonomy (2001), lower order thinking level (remember, understand, apply) and hi gher or der thinking level (analyze, evaluate, create) were adopted. After examining and categorizing, the higher order thinking activities are found--analyze, evaluation and create. Interestingly, these domains of higher order thinking distributed more than lower order thinking skills. It is proven by the result of the data analysis which shows that the higher order thinking receives 64.8% while the lower order thinking collects 35.2%. In other word, 1:1.84 comparison. From 5 chapters, 54 essay reading questions are still lack of higher order thinking level (35 questions) and the rests are lower order thinking (19 questions). there is an unevenness of t he num ber s of distribution of higher order thinking questions in the essay reading exercise as shown in the following table. Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Level Essay Reading Questions Percentage Ana lyze 12 12/54×100% = 22.2% Eva luate 19 19/54×100% = 35.2% Crea te 4 4/54×100% = 7.4% Tota l 35 35/54×100% = 64.8% Table 3. Higher Order Thinking Skill distribution in essay exercises The calculation of the ratio between each skill of the higher order thinking looks like, among others: 1:1.6 (between evaluation and analyze), 1:4.8 (between create and evaluation), and 1:3 (betwe en create and analyze). The findings evaluating skill is regarded as the highest level of the taxonomy as Wulandari’s studies (2016). Furthermore, the study demonstrates an unbalanced amount too, inasmuch as, the create domain just obtains 7.4% only, out of 100%. It is quite startling if compared to the findings in Seif 's st udy t hat the synthesis skill or create skill acquires a superb number namely 41.35% (Seif, 2012). It m i ght occur 4 | Anton Muzaeni Syukur, Misdi Lingual (Vol. 11, No.1, 2021) because the author assumes that the textbook is addressed for the heterogeneous classes, who are less competent or incapable to answer the questions-based create skill of the higher order thinking skill in much number (Brookhart, 2010). Nevertheless, it is better if the attention of the author of t he t ext book tends to enrich several essay reading questions into the create skill, particularly in chapter 2 that has none of questions-based in create skill. First, the analysis skill obtained 12 out of 54 questions or 22.2%. It gets the second place i n the distribution of higher order thinking skill. This is available in all five chapters of the t ext book as wel l . From 12 questions which belong to the analyze skill, the highest distribution of the questions is from chapter 4, namely, amount to 4 questions. Meanwhile, chapter 1 and chapter 3 have the same distribution, that is, amount to 3 questions each. The same distribution occurs too in chapter 2 and chapter 5 as well, namely 1 question each. Second one is the evaluate skill. 19 questions out of 54 or 35.2% belongs to the evaluate skill. I t i s the highest number among the three skills in the higher order thinking level. Subsequently, the eval uat e skill is also available in all five chapters of the textbook. Further on, the highest distribution of eval uat e question is from chapter 2 namely amount to 6 questions out of 19 questions. Whereas, the rest chapt er s distribute as follow: chapter 1 (2 questions), chapter 3 (3 questions), chapter 4 (3 questions), and chapter 5 (5 questions). The last category is the create skill or the most critical thinking skill. It only distributes 4 questions out of 54 essay reading questions or 7.4%. From 5 chapters of the textbook, there is one chapt er of t he textbook that does not cover the create level, namely, chapter 2. In details, those four chapters di stribut e as follow: chapter 1 (1 question), chapter 3 (1 question), chapter 4 (1 question), and chapter 5 (1 question). However, 4 questions out of 35 higher order thinking questions that belong to the create ski l l (C6), in fact far away from idea, because the criterion of good questions according to Sudjana (1990) i s as follows, 30% for easy level (C1, C2), 40% for medium level (C3, C4), and 30% for difficult level (C5, C6). That is to say, the create skill (C6) on the basis of good question's criteria should amount of 8 questions while the number questions of other higher order thinking skills are supposed to be as follows, 11 items (analyze), and 8 items (evaluation); so that the percentage of distribution of those higher or der thinking skills, in the essay reading exercises in the textbook, are supposed to be as follows, 20.4% (analyze skill), 14.8% (evaluate skill), and 14.8% (create skill). Thus, the proportionate amount of distribution of the higher order thinking skill on the basis of good question's criteria, are supposed t o be 27 questions, out of 54 essay reading questions in the textbook. As addition, this lower create distribution normally occurs through receiveing complex r esponses (Daiek & Anter, 2004). This high skill is addressed for higher education settings. This will be a good chance for English teachers to provide their students this skill as a preparation to attend university by distributing the create skill in the essay reading questions. Finally, in the higher order thinking level, t he evaluate skill is the focus. Again, it confirms that evaluate skills regardless the two skills. Subsequent l y, it is still considered as the highest distribution comparing to the other six cognitive domains. Ther e was only 4 out of 54 questions or 7.4% distribution. The create skill needs to train students to make their original argument, thinking and ideas. In short, varieties of questions are still less paid. IV CONCLUSION The analyze, evaluate, and create—the three categories of higher order thinking—were available in the essay reading exercises of English textbook entitled Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA XI published by Kemendikbud 2014. This book is fairly promoting critical thinking in English language lear ni ng, even though some limitations are also identified. Limitation is found in the contexts of reading assessment and evaluation materials such as authenticity and student empowerment. This is interesting, because critical thinking, higher order thinking, and empowerment is key points in the 21st century ski l l s. I s sue of authentic reading exercises is still out of discussion. Thus, further analysis in high order thinking should be taken into account. REFERENCES Ary, et al. (2010). Introduction to Research in Education (8th Ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Brookhart, S. M. (2010). 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