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<p>It appears that higher education students, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, struggle to demonstrate critical thinking skills, leading to their adoption of a rote learning approach. This results in the practice of “chew, pour, pass, forget” (CPPF), ultimately hindering their ability to create opportunities for themselves after graduation. This problem seems to be partly associated with pedagogical practices in higher education, and so several studies have been conducted to investigate lecturers’ pedagogical practices in higher education. However, it appears that most of these studies have focused solely on exploring the nature of lecturers’ practices. Hence, the present study departs from previous studies by quantifying lecturers’ practices to determine their level of concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The study focuses on three disciplinary fields, namely English, Religion, and History, by utilising the case study design. While two iterated observations are conducted for each discipline in a semester, 120 documents are selected, including 60 course outlines (20 from each discipline) and 60 examination past questions (20 from each discipline). Frequencies and percentages, as well as the loglikelihood calculator, are considered for the study. Findings from the study show that collectively, lecturers have developed an epistemic predisposition to adopt practices that focus more on higher-order thinking skills such as creativity, criticality, collaboration, and communication. However, the tendency to focus more on higher-order thinking skills does not materialise in their instructional discourse and assessment practices, especially among History lecturers. The findings imply that lecturers are unable to translate their expectations into pedagogical practices in the development of higher-order thinking skills in students, thereby curtailing their employability after school. It is, thus, recommended that lecturers (especially History lecturers) should adopt pragmatic and innovative measures in utilizing practices that foster higher-order thinking skills in their discourse-related and assessment practices for the realisation of transformative education.</p>

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The weight of lecturers’ pedagogical practices in developing higher and lower-order thinking skills in higher education

  • 期刊论文

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年2月11日

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  • Francis Tabiri

摘要

It appears that higher education students, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, struggle to demonstrate critical thinking skills, leading to their adoption of a rote learning approach. This results in the practice of “chew, pour, pass, forget” (CPPF), ultimately hindering their ability to create opportunities for themselves after graduation. This problem seems to be partly associated with pedagogical practices in higher education, and so several studies have been conducted to investigate lecturers’ pedagogical practices in higher education. However, it appears that most of these studies have focused solely on exploring the nature of lecturers’ practices. Hence, the present study departs from previous studies by quantifying lecturers’ practices to determine their level of concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The study focuses on three disciplinary fields, namely English, Religion, and History, by utilising the case study design. While two iterated observations are conducted for each discipline in a semester, 120 documents are selected, including 60 course outlines (20 from each discipline) and 60 examination past questions (20 from each discipline). Frequencies and percentages, as well as the loglikelihood calculator, are considered for the study. Findings from the study show that collectively, lecturers have developed an epistemic predisposition to adopt practices that focus more on higher-order thinking skills such as creativity, criticality, collaboration, and communication. However, the tendency to focus more on higher-order thinking skills does not materialise in their instructional discourse and assessment practices, especially among History lecturers. The findings imply that lecturers are unable to translate their expectations into pedagogical practices in the development of higher-order thinking skills in students, thereby curtailing their employability after school. It is, thus, recommended that lecturers (especially History lecturers) should adopt pragmatic and innovative measures in utilizing practices that foster higher-order thinking skills in their discourse-related and assessment practices for the realisation of transformative education.