Enhancing learners’ higher order thinking capabilities in school curriculum: How teachers’ thinking habits and values affect its implementation in Hong Kong

In recent decades, there is a global trend that school curriculum should be reformed to equip the next generation with the capabilities of higher order thinking. In Hong Kong, the Education Bureau (EDB) (CDC, 2001) also emphasizes the development of students’ higherorder thinking skills (HOTs) in school curriculum. It is one educational notion imported from the western society. The success of any proposed school innovation is largely determined by the teachers’ thinking and understanding (e.g. Skilbeck, 1976). In Hong Kong, teachers are often found synthesizing the intended curriculum with their existing beliefs and practice (Yeung and Lam, 2006; Morris and Adamson, 2010). It is speculated that teachers’ mind habits and values, under the influence of the culture in the Chinese society of Hong Kong, may have played a significant role to influence implementation of educational change. The present researcher is conducting a research that aims at investigating how teachers deliberate the teaching of higher-order thinking (HOT) in primary classrooms. Special focus is to study if teachers’ thinking habits and values affect its implementation. One key research method is that teachers are invited to write reflections about their HOT teaching. Data thus collected was triangulated by interviews and classroom observation. The research intends to investigate how teachers’ values in teaching match with the current, western pedagogy proposed by the central authority in Hong Kong. It also probes into how far the educational ideology of teachers at the present time is still affected by the traditional Chinese philosophy.