I was raised and attended high school and university in Oregon in the United States, however

my family currently resides in the UK and I haven’t visited America this century. I am an EFL
teacher in a small, private school in an upper middle-class area of Istanbul, Turkey. I have been
engaged in this school for more than 15 years. During that time we have gained accreditation
with the International Baccalaureate with our Primary Years Programme and greatly improved
our standings in the national exams. I teach grades 4-7 with a total of around 240 students,
members of the highest socio-economic class in the country.
As such I play a vital role in the preparation of these students for their future academic careers.
Either they will need to exhibit sufficient language skills to enable them to enrol in a university
abroad, or they will need to use their academic achievements to facilitate their acceptance into a
university in this country. Due to the population explosion approximately 27% are 18 years old
or under, with continuing exponential growth expected (Wikimedia Foundation, 2022). In 2021,
2,592,390 high school graduates took the state mandated exams for university entrance, and
816,747 applicants were accepted for enrollment in a 4-year program, (International Trade
Administration, 2022). This highlights the competitive environment that students face in
continuing their higher education here in Turkey.
In response to this challenge my students need to become learners capable of constructing their
own understandings. Fortunately, the constructivist models supported by the inquiry based
methodology of the PYP help to support my students’ learning. Putting it in the simplest terms,
Bodner (1986) provides us with “knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner” (p.4). This
is supported by the perspectives offered by Freire (2000) that reject the ‘banking model’ of
education where students are deposited with information and their ability to reproduce that
information when called upon is sufficient evidence of mastery of knowledge. Referencing
Bloom’s Taxonomy, Burton (2010), indicates that activating these Higher Order Thinking Skills
(HOTS) allows learners to transfer knowledge and skills through the use of critical thinking and
problem solving. Sagala and Andriani (2019) further connect these HOTS to decision making,
and creative thinking. These four traits are linked by these sources to the cognitive domain of
Bloom’s Taxonomy (Burton, 2010; Sagala and Andriani, 2019).
With my students I am able to encourage these HOTS through the many projects and activities
we participate in. To illustrate, I offer a transdisciplinary project between the English and Social
Studies departments focused on ‘Countries’ under the theme of ‘Where We Are in Place and
Time’. In this project student’s are randomly chosen to research a country. They are then given
the choice of investigating five out of ten possible topics concerning that country; for example,
language, music, geography, history, etc. selected from the project rubric at the beginning of the
unit. This allows them to build on their interests and experience within the framework of the
project that ultimately places them as an ambassador for that country during the presentation of
their project at the end of the unit. Their decision making is evidenced by the choices they make
of what research topics to pursue. Creativity is addressed in how they may choose to present the
material. If a student selects the topic of music while researching the country of Japan, they
might decide to show a video of traditional shamisen music being played, discuss the influence
of China on the music of Japan, or as one student did a few years ago, learn to play and sing a
song in Japanese on the guitar. Challenges to critical thinking and problem solving are
encountered and overcome in several stages throughout the project as students learn to
manage their time and resources in reasonable and effective ways.
The role of the teacher during these activities is to facilitate student’s awareness of incomplete,
false or naïve ideas students may have had concerning these topics and subject matters
(National Academies Press, 1999). This is accomplished by monitoring student progress not only
to the extent that they are creating the project, but by identifying obstacles that learners might
not themselves recognise. Using Japan again as an example, a student might have the mistaken
or incomplete idea that sushi is only raw fish and is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Overcoming this obstacle need not start with an absolute statement or a lecture on Asian
cuisine, but a raised eyebrow from the teacher could persuade the student that they needed to
look more carefully at the subject. In this example the student starts with the knowledge of sushi
as the only Japanese food they know of, which they over-generalise to every meal and every
person. Some more information then allows them to qualify their understanding, to build, to
construct, a new structure of awareness that improves their acceptance of cultural diversity by
seeking commonalities rather than differences. This is not in opposition to traditional lecture
style lessons intended to impart knowledge, but in support of students interacting with
information as active learners (National Academies Press, 1999).
Thus, using a constructivist approach assists teachers in strengthening within learners the desire
to inquire and the skills to proceed successfully in that endeavour. Students increase their self-
efficacy within a positive environment of diverse learning approaches that share a common goal
of supporting inquiry.

References

Bodner, G. M. (1986, October). Constructivism: A theory of knowledge | Journal of chemical

education. ResearchGate. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed063p873?src=recsys

Burton, E. (2010, February 23). Research brief: High-level thinking and questioning strategies.
Educational Partnerships Inc. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED537922.pdf

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. (B. M. Ramos, Trans.).
Continuum.

National Academies Press. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school:
Expanded edition. (pp.3-50). https://www.nap.edu/download/9853

Sagala, P. N., & Andriani, A. (2019). Development of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)
questions of probability theory subject Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy.
ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332681568_Development_of_Higher-
Order_Thinking_Skills_HOTS_Questions_of_Probability_Theory_Subject_Based_on_Bloom's_Taxon
omy
Turkey - education.

International Trade Administration | Trade.gov. (2022). https://www.trade.gov/country-

commercial-guides/turkey-education#:~:text=As%20of%20December%202021%2C
%20there,students%20in%20various%20academic%20programs.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, June 12). Demographics of Turkey.

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Turkey