Examining Middle School Student’s Lower Order Thinking Skill

Abstract

Focusing in Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) has been main goal in many education curriculums around the world including in Indonesia. Even though the ultimate goal is usually for students to achieve HOTS, it is also important to make sure student already mastered Lower Thinking Skill (LOTS) since it is a prerequisite in the process of using higher-order thinking. Therefore, the goal of the study is to examine student's achievement on LOTS. The paper pencil test with multiple choice format was developed and administrated to 347 students from five different middle schools in Manggarai Timur Regency. The test includes remembering, understanding and applying type of question. The data was analysed using descriptive (mean, maximum and minimum score, and standard deviation) and inferential statistic (Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test). Analysis of the data shows most of student's were categorized as poor level of LOTS. The student achievement on both of LOTS Level (Remembering-Understanding and Applying) also low. Based on the statistics test, it shows that most of students has higher achievement on remember-understanding level than applying level. Meanwhile, it is also found that the main difficulties faced by students related to their lack of understanding on mathematics concepts.