Integrating rich task into the mathematics classroom to develop students’ higher order thinking skills: A collaborative action research study in a secondary school

Abstract

This paper reports a collaborative action research study about the use of rich tasks in a mathematics classroom. It aims at exploring how to implement rich mathematical tasks using the problem-based learning model. It also investigates student higher order thinking skills improvement toward the use of this instructional approach and the difficulties faced by the students. Twenty-one Year 9 students were involved in this study. The results of the study showed significant learning gains in three research cycles. After the teacher and researcher made some improvements, student higher order thinking skills became significantly higher in the second and third cycles. The improvement included providing learning sources, implementing Number Head Together (NHT) learning method, and adding more modelling activities in the student worksheet. Some recommendations related to teachers’ preparations for rich task implementation in the classroom are presented based on teachers' and students' comments as well as existing literature.