Development and validation of an inventory to evaluate the implementation of main educational elements in promoting higher-order thinking skills

Abstract

A valid, reliable and practical instrument is needed to evaluate the implementation of higher order thinking skills (HOTs) amongst teachers in primary schools. The purpose of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of an inventory in promoting HOTs. The inventory was adapted from Nurasyikin (2016), Gulistan et. al (2016) and Gonzales and Fugan (2012). The instrument in the form of questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 220 primary school teachers teaching Islamic education subject. The content validity was assessed by a group of experts, and the construct validity was measured by an Exploratory Factor Analysis. The reliability of the instrument was measured by the alpha coefficient reliability or Cronbach Alpha. Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis suggested that 12 items needed to be removed due to their non-dimensionality as they had more or less equal loadings on several factors. The instrument developed yielded high values of internal consistency as reflected by the Cronbach alpha values. The final draft of the instrument contained 107 items which was considered valid and reliable. Even though the validity and reliability of the instrument were within the acceptable range, more data needed to be gathered with a bigger sample, and further analysis using an Item Response Theory (IRT) model could be used to explore deeper into the psychometric characteristics of the items.