Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)‎ reform dynamics in Israel

Abstract EN

In the last two years, the Israeli Ministry of Education has made a lot of effort to introduce a comprehensive national educational reform where teachers of different disciplines are required to integrate higher order thinking skills (HOTS) into their teaching.

This paper deals with one discipline – English as a foreign language (EFL).

The English inspectorate in the Ministry of Education showed enthusiasm and started with an initiative to integrate HOTS into teaching literature.

The initiative started with a whole-year pilot followed by many in-service professional development courses to English teachers nationwide.

However, despite the reported benefits of integrating HOTS into teaching literature, many teachers expressed their unwillingness to implement the reform.

This paper is to review literature on school reform and critical thinking to help describe the HOTS reform dynamics in Israel.