Quantitative and qualitative analysis of higher-order thinking skills in blended learning

• Main Authors: He, Xiangjun, Singh, Charanjit Kaur Swaran, Ebrahim, Nader Ale
• Format: Article
• Published: LLC Ecological Help 2022
• Subjects: LB2300 Higher Education
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/43976/
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

The problem and the aim of the study. Higher-order thinking skills is a very popular concept in education field around the world. Among the broad range of higher-order thinking skills, recent studies are concentrating on fostering higher-order thinking skills in education. The number of related publications demands a bibliometric study for finding the keywords, sources, countries, and research clusters. And the study carried out a bibliometric analysis of the relevant publications on higher-order thinking skills from Scopus database between 2011 and 2020. Research methods. A visual system of top keywords in higher-order thinking skills research has been produced by analyzing of keywords co-occurrence. And by using bibliography inquiry, the most common topic of blended learning has been found. This study also investigates the recent publication trend of higher-order thinking skills in blended learning. Results. The annual number of publications demonstrates an uptrend in the area of higher-order thinking skills, and the publication rates have increased distinctively in 2018 and 2019. Indonesia and the United States have already become the two major research centers while Malaysia and Australia are joining the research circle in the near future. Related publications had been related to the field of education and metacognition from the very beginning in 2016, and then to the field of higher education, critical thinking and assessment, followed by active thinking and learning in 2017, and eventually to blended learning and flipped classroom in 2018. The systematic structure shows that the United States and Korea have more papers from joint efforts than other countries. In particular, Korea became the most collaborative country. The Journal of Physics: Conference series has signified an increasing occurrence in publications on Higher-order thinking skills in blended learning with “student” acting as the most influential word. Fostering higher-order thinking skills cultivation in flipped classroom and scaffolding higher-order thinking skills activities in learning approaches are both crucial areas involved. In conclusion, the quantitative analysis on higher-order thinking skills through bibliometric study has revealed the recent subfield of blende learning. Thus, the dataset is further refined by blended learning, considering publication year, sources, countries and organizations, keywords and topics. The annual output of publications on higher-order thinking in blended learning have risen in the past ten years, showing it is more likely to keep developing in the near future. © 2022 LLC Ecological Help. All rights reserved.