CHARACTERIZING TEACHER READINESS AND STRATEGIES FOR EMBEDDING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS) IN THE ISLAMIC EDUCATION CURRICULUM

This research explores two main areas: first, what prevents Islamic Education teachers from fully understanding and mastering Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), and second, what challenges they face when developing effective teaching strategies and collaborative approaches. This research follows a straightforward qualitative methodology to explore our research questions. Five Islamic Education teachers from secondary schools were interviewed and carefully selected through purposive sampling. The interviews followed a semi-structured format. The analysis process involved manually coding the data and organizing the findings into major themes. The findings indicate that teachers struggle to implement HOTS successfully because they only possess a fundamental understanding of the concept. Factors leading to these issues were lack of specific HOT training, dense syllabus, high workload, and lack of teaching materials. In addition, challenges such as lack of collaborative work culture and administrative support also hinder the effective implementation of HOTS. Participants suggested various forms of support, including professional training, relevant teaching materials, mentoring, strengthening of Islamic Education committees, and parental support for embedding HOTS in teaching strategies. This study makes an important contribution to enhance teaching strategies among Islamic Education Teachers y emphasizing the need for structured and comprehensive support to help teachers overcome the challenges of implementing HOTS. In addition, this study proposes an integrated support model that can be applied to increase the effectiveness of implementing HOTS in Islamic Education.