Designing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) assessment for diverse students: trends and challenges

Designing a test with Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) component is in line with the goal of the curriculum 2013 within the context of Indonesian schools. The aspect of thinking in HOTS should be attached in test items, and this may be challenging for teacher in Indonesia. This research aimed to explore the trends and challenges of Indonesia EFL teachers in designing HOTS assessment, particularly for diverse students. To explore this issue, this study interviewed four EFL teachers and analyzed their made tests. The finding indicated that teachers tend to design the test that cover three aspects of HOTS: analysis, judgment and critical thinking, and logic and reasoning skills. Also, participating teachers said that they found some challenges when designing HOTS assessment: lack of knowledge about HOTS assessment, finding a source about how to design HOTS assessment for English subject, finding idea to write question that assess HOTS, managing time, mapping learning domain, determining level of difficulty, and building literacy assessment. This finding highlights that it is essential for English teachers to have a professional program, particularly on how to construct good test that cover the aspect of HOTS. Thus, this can minimize the challenges that the teachers found in this study.