An investigation on higher education teaching strategies based on bloom's taxonomy for the acquisition of higher order thinking skills

Higher education in India shows a teacher centred, information based and test driven instructional format. India needs skilled higher educated people who can lead our country forward. When India become capable of sending skilled people to the outside world; the country can be very easily become a developed nation from developing nation. Now the time has come to create a second wave of institution building and excellence in the field of education, research, and capability building (Aggarwal, 2006). In the present study, investigators designed a Thinking skill inventory to determine whether higher order thinking skills or lower order thinking skills are prevailing in the teaching strategies of higher education. The study showed that instructors of higher education in Kottayam district of Kerala, India, taught lower thinking skills associated with the first three levels of Blooms Taxonomy, namely, knowledge, comprehension and application. Normative survey method is used to study the problem. The sample consists of 200 college teachers of Kottayam District. The study proposes some possible reasons for such practices, and suggests that teaching higher order thinking skills to higher education students might widen their horizon in engaging more actively in learning.