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Quantitative Evaluation of Primary School Science Instructional Design Oriented toward Higher-Order Thinking Development

Author(s)

Wenjia Miao, Lili Zhu*

Affiliation(s)

College of Photonic and Electronic Engineering, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

The 2022 Compulsory Education Science Curriculum Standards place higher-order thinking at the center of primary science education. Teachers, however, have few practical tools for assessing whether a lesson plan actually supports its development. This study develops an evaluation index for this purpose. A review of the literature and the curriculum standards produced six dimensions: teaching objectives, learner analysis, teaching process and methods, problem and situation design, thinking cultivation activities, and resource and technology application. These dimensions comprise sixteen second-level indicators. Their weights were estimated with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and the judgment matrices met the consistency requirement (CR < 0.1). The respective weights of the six dimensions were 0.2477, 0.1643, 0.2003, 0.1763, 0.1657, and 0.0458. Teaching objectives grounded in core competencies therefore received the greatest weight. The resulting framework offers teachers a structured way to review and improve lesson plans before teaching. The paper also outlines several directions for evaluating students’ higher-order thinking in the classroom.

Keywords

Primary School Science; Instructional Design; Higher-Order Thinking; Quantitative Evaluation; Analytic Hierarchy Process; Deep Learning

References

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