Lecturers’ Pedagogical Practices in Higher Education: Determining the Counter-Balance Between Higher and Lower Order Thinking Skills

Lecturers’ Pedagogical Practices in Higher Education: Determining the Counter-Balance Between Higher and Lower Order Thinking Skills | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Lecturers’ Pedagogical Practices in Higher Education: Determining the Counter-Balance Between Higher and Lower Order Thinking Skills FRANCIS TABIRI This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7219492/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 9 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract It appears that higher education students, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, are unable to demonstrate critical thinking skills, leading to their non-employability after school. This problem seems to be partly associated with pedagogical practices in higher education; and so, several studies have been conducted to investigate lecturers’ pedagogical practices in higher education. However, it appears that most of these studies have focused solely on exploring the nature of lecturers’ practices. Hence, the present study departs from previous studies by quantifying lecturers’ practices to determine their level of concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The study focuses on three disciplinary fields such as English, Religion, and History by utilizing the case study design. While two iterated observations are done for each discipline in a semester, 120 documents, including 60 course outlines (20 from each discipline) and 60 examinations past questions (20 from each discipline), are selected. Frequencies and percentages, represented by pie charts, bar charts, and a log-likelihood calculator, are used to present the study's results. Findings from the study show that collectively, lecturers have developed epistemic predisposition to adopt practices that focus more on higher-order thinking skills such as creativity, criticality, collaboration, and communication. However, the tendency to focus more on higher-order thinking skills does not materialise in their instructional discourse and assessment practices, especially History lecturers. It is, thus, recommended that lecturers (especially History lecturers) should adopt pragmatic and innovative measures in utilizing practices that foster higher-order thinking skills in their discourse-related and assessment practices for the realisation of transformative education. Also, the Government of Ghana, in collaboration with Management in higher education, should provide adequate resources such as infrastructure and digital technologies for effective teaching and learning in higher education in the African Sub-region. assessment practices higher education higher-order thinking skills lower-order thinking skills pedagogical practices 21st century skills transformative education Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Introduction Pedagogy is the process of inculcating in educands essential skills, values, attitudes, and contemporary issues for proper growth, development, and transformation of the individual and the nation. Bourn (as cited in Simpson, 2018) defines pedagogy as the methods of teaching, and issues of meaning and theory about how children learn, how teaching is done, how the curriculum is structured, and how culture is integrally structured within the curriculum. Also, pedagogy can be seen to incorporate assessment (Olivier, 2016 ). The activities such as course outline development, lesson preparation, instructional delivery, examination questions, and marking of students’ scripts used to develop the skills of students are termed pedagogical practices (Tabiri & Afful, 2023 ). Therefore, in this study, pedagogy will be conceptualised to include classroom-related discourse (instructional delivery), issues about course outline, and assessment (focusing on lecturers’ examination past questions). Before actual teaching in the classroom, lecturers develop their course outline, which serves as a guide to teaching and learning. Classroom-related discourse or instructional delivery is where lecturers try to make students understand certain concepts and to determine their understanding of these concepts (Khan, 2016 ; Olivier, 2016 ; Taluah, 2016). The process of trying to determine students’ understanding of concepts is termed ‘assessment’, particularly formative assessment. According to Meyer, Lombard, Warnich, and Wolhuter (2010), assessment is the gathering of information for a particular purpose. It has also been noted that assessment aims “to determine the value, significance, or extent of something; it comes from the Latin word assidēre, which means ‘to sit by’” (AHD cited in Olivier, 2016 , p. 91). A careful examination of the definitions of assessment suggests that assessment is not only used to determine students’ understanding of concepts in the classroom. It can also be used to make certain decisions (such as promoting students from one level to another level) at the end of the entire course. This is referred to as summative assessment. Therefore, I define assessment in this study as a systematic process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data for a determination of students’ understanding of concepts in the classroom (formative assessment) and determining their progress in a particular course or programme (summative assessment). One important point that is worth considering in this definition is that formative assessment is a constituent part of classroom-related discourse, while summative assessment helps in making decisions on students’ progression to the next level. It is worth noting that the nature of classroom-related practices such as teachers’ approaches to teaching determines, to a very large extent, the nature of summative assessment practices, as in the kind of questions students are required to answer in examinations. Pedagogical practices seem dichotomous, as in those that require students’ total and passive submission to the provision of knowledge, and those that demand students’ full participation and critical reasoning in the construction of knowledge. For example, Freire ( 2010 ) distinguishes between ‘regulatory pedagogy’ and ‘participatory pedagogy’. In regulatory pedagogy, the learning environment is controlled by the teacher. This makes lecturers focus on lecturing without actively engaging learners in 21st century skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity (Freire, 2010 ; Lu, 2012). Lecturers who are oriented by regulatory pedagogy focus on practices that require students to copy notes and memorize facts. Participatory pedagogy, on the other hand, is where the learners are actively engaged in the teaching and learning process (Tsegay, Zegergish, & Ashraf, 2020 ). That is, lecturers who are informed by participatory pedagogy focus on practices that require students’ full participation and sense of reasoning in the teaching and learning process. What is more important is that participatory pedagogy enjoins academic instructors to pay more attention to higher-order thinking skills, which helps to provide the foundation for the development of students’ sense of reasoning and criticality. The practices of participatory pedagogy help in the actualisation of the purpose of higher education and the development of 21st century skills such as the development of students’ personal growth, intellectuality, sense of self, curiosity, criticality, agency, problem solving skills, communication, collaboration, and active citizenship (Nixon, 2011; Teo, 2019). Thus, most Ghanaian higher educational institutions have introduced Critical Thinking as a course with the view to facilitating the realisation of the purpose of higher education and 21st century skills. Noticeably, higher-order thinking skills, which are influenced by participatory pedagogical practices, are mostly preferred to lower-order thinking skills, operationalised by regulatory pedagogy (see, for example, Tabiri & Afful, 2023 ). Higher order thinking approach to pedagogy is preferred because it helps in the realisation of transformative education, which empowers students to become critical thinkers and to solve societal problems (Hooks, 2010 ; Zepke, 2013). Despite the need for higher-order thinking skills in the actualisation of transformative education in higher education, several studies (e.g., Afful, 2007 ; Afful & Tabiri, 2023 ; Scholtz, 2016 ) have revealed the inability of higher education students, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills. The students’ inability to exhibit higher order thinking skills results in their non-employability after graduation; and this has necessitated the conduct of several studies (e.g., Hassel & Ridout, 2018 ; John, 2019 ; Scholtz, 2016 ; Wong & Chiu, 2018) across the globe to investigate lecturers’ practices. However, it appears that most of these studies have concentrated on exploring the nature of lecturers’ practices without recourse to quantifying lecturers’ practices to determine their level of concentration on higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. For example, in their most cited and pioneering paper, Lea and Street ( 1998 ) find that in History, the use of evidence is vital; and in English, clarity of expression is paramount. Similarly, Tuck ( 2013 ) shows that the context of a particular institution, gender, position, and age are very instrumental in modelling tutors’ practices in the academic milieu in terms of referencing and plagiarism, assessment, and feedback. While some institutions have a policy on strict adherence to issues of plagiarism and feedback on assignments, other institutions do not hold that strict allegiance. Further, the study shows negative practices surrounding students’ writing. That is, the issues of nonconformity, lack of time, resources, recognition and status, as well as uncertainty and inability to get to students, are identified as problems affecting tutors’ practices. It can be noticed that the findings of these two studies differ; and this is because while Lea and Street ( 1998 ) focus on variation in terms of disciplinary fields, Tuck ( 2013 ) rather pays attention to institutional practices in higher education. Another related study, which seems to provide divergent findings from the preceding studies, is that of Gorka (2018). The study reveals that the practices of academic tutors focus on textual structure such as introduction, development of ideas, conclusion, language, and engagement with ideas. He reports that what constitutes specific disciplinary requirements appears to be conspicuously missing from practices of tutors. There is also the need for, as the study depicts, criticality rather than description. Similar to the findings of Gorka (2018), John ( 2019 ) reports that lecturers engage their learners in cognitive and metacognitive practices; but students seem to have challenges following both assessment and pedagogical instructions. She further reports that lecturers, in their bid to create a balanced instructional method (both teacher and learner-centred pedagogy), encourage students to participate actively in class, while welcoming students’ questions in class. Different from the findings of Gorka (2018) and John ( 2019 ), Hassel and Ridout ( 2018 ) find that lecturers focus on a teacher-centred approach for first-year university students, while in the continuing years, they (lecturers) concentrate on a student-centred approach. Additionally, Wong and Chiu (2018) reveal that lecturers in the university pay attention to the use of language (Generic Skills), student preparation, engagement and commitment, critical, reflective, and the progress of students. Also, Scholtz ( 2016 ) finds that lecturers focus on surface features of students’ academic writing. However, from the study, lecturers pay little or no attention to meaning making, interpretation, argument, and criticality of the students. Twigilimana (2013) equally reports that lecturers concentrate on the autonomous model (as in discrete skills in teaching AW); and therefore, proposes the use of a hybrid approach in teaching in the L2 context. Also, findings from studies conducted in Ghanaian higher education (e.g., Amua-Sekyi, 2011 ; Davies, 2011 ; Davidson, Richardson & Jones, 2014 ) have shown some significant deficits in pedagogical provisions. That is, while some of the studies report on limited use of digital technology in some Ghanaian higher education (see, for example, Davies, 2011 ; Davidson, Richardson & Jones, 2014 ), others (Amua-Sekyi, 2011 ; Afful, 2007 ) report on limited or lack of focus on criticality. A careful examination of the previous studies seems to suggest that most higher education institutions in the Western world try to create a balance between practices that promote higher-order thinking skills, while those in Sub-Saharan African countries seem to dwell mostly on practices that encourage lower-order thinking skills. However, what is missing from these studies is the level of concentration lecturers give to practices that encourage lower-order thinking skills or higher-order thinking skills. Determining the level of focus on higher-order and lower-order thinking skills will reveal the priority lecturers give to these levels of thinking. Knowledge of this will inform lecturers, Quality Assurance, and university management to adopt more proactive and pragmatic measures in fostering higher-order thinking skills in higher education students. Therefore, the present study departs from earlier studies (e.g., Gorka, 2018; John, 2019 ; Scholtz, 2016 ) on practices in higher education by quantising lecturers’ practices to determine the counter-balance between higher and lower order thinking skills. To achieve this aim, three research questions are formulated to guide the study: 1) to what extent do lecturers’ classroom discourse-related practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills; 2) what is the level of lecturers’ focus on assessment practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills; 3) what number of lecturers’ overall practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills? Theoretical Review Given the dichotomous nature of the present study, as in determining lecturers’ concentration on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills, two theories, such as Academic Literacies and Traditional Literacy (see Clark & Ivanic, 1997; Lillis et al., 2016 ), are adopted for the study. A focus on these theories enables me to investigate the ‘actual’ and ‘observable’ classroom discourse-related practices and assessment practices, while quantising these observable practices to make a determination of the counterbalance between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. While the practices of academic literacies promote higher-order thinking skills, practices of traditional literacy encourage lower-order thinking skills (see Janks, 2012 ; John, 2019 ; Stein, 2006 ; McKenna & McAvinia, 2011 for added emphasis). These thinking skills can further be dichotomised as deep learning (academic literacies) and surface learning (traditional literacy) [Haggis, 2003 ]. Further, what makes the adoption of the conceptualisations of academic literacies more viable in addressing higher-order thinking skills is that academic literacies theory is pluralistic, heterogenous, multidimensional, and dialogic (participatory pedagogy) in nature (Aiken, 2021 ; Gorska, 2018 ; John, 2019 ). Academic literacies approach is a ‘dynamic set of multiple literacies’ (John, 2019 , p. 5). It emphasises multiple modes of communication – multimodality (Olsson, Gelot, Schaffer & Listegard, 2021; Perry, 2012 ), information from varied sources via computers – digital literacy (Goodfellow, 2011 ), and the ‘fast changing world’ – new literacies (Tang, 2015), criticality or inherent creativity and disciplinary norms (Canagarajah, 2017 ; Lillis, et al, 2016 ; Janks, 2002 ). Its pedagogical and assessment practices are heterogeneous and dialogic (Gorska, 2018 ; Lillis, 2003 ) and student-centred (Aiken, 2021 ). Regarding Academic Literacies theory, Canagarajah ( 2017 ) asserts that educators are required to adopt ‘practices that empower learners at all levels and make use of the inherent creativity multilinguals bring to their acquisition of language and literacy competence’ (p. 93). This is what Janks ( 2002 ) refers to as ‘rationalist activity’ in critical literacy (p. 7). Issues of criticality in terms of pedagogy focus on discussion, dialogue, gestures, collaborative work (group work); and in terms of assessment, focus on talkback, originality, academic honesty, and voice (Lillis, 2003 ; Tuck, 2013 ). Regarding digital technology, both assessment and pedagogical practices employ computer-assisted devices such as projectors, laptops, desktops, and web 2.0 applications such as email, Skype, Zoom, online, and internet. (Stordy, 2015 ; Wash, 2010 ). Essentially, these practices promote higher order thinking skills. Also, in Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning, higher order thinking skills operate under application, analysis, synthesis, and creation. Therefore, higher-order thinking skills are conceptualised in this study to include critical thinking skills and creativity (application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation or creation), collaboration (group work, group presentation), communication (class participation, class presentations), and digital technology (laptops, projectors, web 2.0 applications). On the other hand, Traditional Literacy focuses largely on conventions and norms in various discourse communities, and thus, requires students to conform to these conventions and norms offered by expert members (Hyland, 2012 ; Jonker, 2016 ; Street, 2016 ). In this approach, students are merely knowledge consumers; and they are not encouraged to question, critique, and examine the values and changing dynamics of higher education (Blomaert & Horner, 2017; Huang & Archer, 2017 ). That is, in Traditional Literacy, students do not have the credibility to question academic literacy practices in higher education (Henderson & Hirst, 2007 ). As in tandem with the autonomous model, Traditional Literacy perspective is associated with learning theories such as behaviourism, as in the transmission of information and its reproduction (Lea & Street, 2006 ). Noticeably, the practices of Traditional Literacy promote lower-order thinking skills such as direct instruction, abstract concepts, passivity, and memorisation of facts. It focuses on notetaking and lecturing or teacher-centred approach to teaching. This theory operates under knowledge and understanding in Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning. Hence, lower-order thinking skills are defined in this study to encompass traditional practices such as lack of focus on critical thinking and creativity (knowledge and understanding), and any practice that does not promote collaboration, communication, and digital technology. To quantify lecturers’ practices, the principles of academic literacies and traditional literacy are the focus of the analysis. Apart from that, Bloom's Taxonomy of learning is utilised to be able to determine the level of concentration on either lower levels of learning or higher levels of learning. Armstrong (2010) has shown a link between pedagogy (a focus on course objectives of the course outline) and assessment (examination questions) by considering Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. The taxonomy has six levels of learning, such as knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation. This is a revised form of Bloom’s original taxonomy, which had the following cognitive skills: knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. While knowledge or remembering deals with memorising and producing facts, understanding focuses on comprehension of key concepts (Armstrong, 2010). These two levels of learning have been otherwise referred to as ‘surface’ approach or ‘knowledge and understanding’ (Haggis, 2003 ). Again, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation are actualised by applying information to new situations (Wilson, 2016 ), which have been put together as ‘the use of knowledge’ (Haggis, 2003 ). For Haggis ( 2003 ), the surface approach to learning is not in line with critical thinking (academic literacies approach). Therefore, to determine the level of lecturers’ concentration on higher-order or lower-order thinking skills, I categorise the dimension of knowledge and understanding as ‘traditional literacy’, while the ‘use of knowledge’ is labelled as ‘academic literacies’. This dichotomisation will help to indicate the questions that require students to recall facts (traditional literacy) and those that ask students to apply information to new situations (academic literacies). Research Methods The study utilises both quantitative and qualitative approaches within a case study design. Since the present study seeks to examine lecturers’ development of students’ literacy skills in a university in Ghana, an institution of higher learning (Simons, 2009 ; Yin, 2009 ), the case study is a suitable design. Again, the use of the case study design is justified because the goal of the present study was to observe lecturers’ classroom-related practices and examine excerpts of their academic writing, such as the course outline and past questions (see Marczyk, DeMatteo & Festinger, 2005 for added emphasis). The use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches in this study is necessitated by the fact that data are presented using enumerative induction such as figures and statistical tools together with phraseological samples of the data (see, for example, Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2018 ). Population of the study comprises 47 lecturers at three departments, namely English, Religion and Human Values, and History of Ghanaian higher education. Through the purposive sampling technique, 15 lecturers (5 from each department) are selected for the study. Also, 120 documents, comprising 20 course outlines (20 from each department) and 20 examination past questions (20 from each department), are selected for the study. The inclusion criteria adopted in selecting the 15 lecturers are based on their knowledge and experience, especially those who teach undergraduate students and have taught at the university for not less than 10years (possess knowledge and the expertise concerning the demands of higher education). Undergraduate lecturers are considered because the study focuses on undergraduate students, which will help in identifying the true reflection of the nature of undergraduate students’ literacy development in higher education. Again, the choice of the past questions and course outlines is based on 5 years; that is, those that do not go beyond 2years. The five-year period is to help address current practices of lecturers. In terms of data collection instrument, an observation checklist is developed together with a document guide (see Appendix A and B). Specific items on the observation checklist are categorised into two, viz. Traditional Literacy and Academic Literacies. For the analysis, rhetorical verbs of the course objectives and numerical data from the observation checklist are quantified and put together as lecturers’ pedagogical practices. Also, the rhetorical verbs and nominal elements of the examination past questions obtained from the three departments are quantised and considered for the analysis of lecturers’ assessment practices. Data collected from the observation checklist and the documents are represented by figures such as bar charts and pie charts with the use of frequencies and percentages, which are supplemented by “loglikelihood test (LL). I use the loglikelihood calculator developed by Paul Rayson at Lancaster University to test the statistical significance of the differences that are observed among the various disciplines; and between the focus of lecturers’ classroom practices on Traditional Literacy and Academic Literacies. The significance level is set at p < 0.01 with a critical value of 6.63, implying that any value below 6.63 is considered not significant and a value above 6.63 is considered significant. To ensure trustworthiness of the results, the data collection instruments, particularly the observation checklist, are taken through rigorous examination and evaluation by experts in pedagogical issues. Ethical consideration is addressed by avoiding stating the name of the university and lecturers involved in the study; and also, for procedural ethics, ethical clearance with the ID: XXXIRB/CES/2021/79 is obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the higher education institution. Results The extent of lecturers’ classroom discourse-related practices focusing on lower or higher order thinking skills. The focus of this study is to identify the direction of lecturers’ practices as either towards higher or lower order thinking skills. The results focus on data from rhetorical verbs of the objectives in the course outline and the observation checklist. I first provide phraseological analysis of the rhetorical verbs of the course objectives in the course outline in order to provide direction and focus to reveal how the quantitation was done. Phraseological analysis of pedagogical literacy practices The extracts below show the phraseological representation of the rhetorical verbs on the course outline. Course outline from Department of English is coded as ‘EDN’ with a corresponding number, Religion Department is coded ‘RDN’ with a corresponding number, and History has the code ‘HD’ with a corresponding number. By the end of this course, students will be able to: Extract 1 a. distinguish between varieties of English across the world b. analyse spoken, written, and computer-mediated languages c. investigate ways of producing various forms of writing (EDN12) Extract 2 The objectives of the course are, among others, to: a. explain Islamic jurisprudence and define its scope. b. identify the various schools of Islamic law. c. review the major sources for the Islamic legal analysis. d. evaluate the various stages of the development of Islamic law (RDN20) Extract 3 After this course, students should be able to: a. identify and describe the different sources for the writing of history b. have a clear understanding (based on practice) of comprehensive bibliographical research using research logs and annotated bibliographies c. identify different types of sources and their usefulness to historical study d. craft historical research questions that are compelling and answerable e. effectively analyse historical documents (HD16). The foregoing extracts (1-3) are the phraseological uses of the various rhetorical verbs captured in the course objectives of the course outline across the three disciplinary fields, namely English, Religion and Human Values, and History. As can be seen from the above excerpts, 13 rhetorical verbs are presented. Out of these verbs, six of them fall under Knowledge and Understanding – lower-order thinking skills (i.e., explain, identify, identify and describe, understanding) and the remaining seven fall under the Use of Knowledge – higher-order thinking skills (distinguish, analyse, investigate, review, evaluate, craft, analyse). This type of analysis was done for all the course objectives on the course outlines obtained for the study in order to determine the frequency distribution of these verbs. Distribution of the overall pedagogical literacy practices Here, the quantitation of the observation checklist (see Appendix A) and the rhetorical verbs in the course outline are put together as frequency distribution of pedagogical practices. Figure 1 shows the general and overall frequency distribution of lecturers’ pedagogical practices in all the three disciplinary fields. As can be seen from Figure 1, lecturers’ pedagogical practices seem to be geared towards higher-order thinking skills. This is because the majority (n = 408, 55%) of their pedagogical practices focus on higher-order thinking skills. However, this observed difference does not mean anything, as it could be due to chance or indeed a significant association between the two corpora. Thus, the log-likelihood result indicates that the observed difference in pedagogical practices between higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills is statistically significant (84.46) at p <0.01. This means that lecturers’ concentration on higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills regarding pedagogical practices differs at two independent ends of comparison. Frequency distribution of the two dimensions of pedagogical practices Given the fact that the overall result in Figure 1 is based on two different pedagogical dimensions – lecturers’ epistemological orientations (course outline) and manifestation of lecturers’ epistemological renditions (instructional discourse), it is expedient to ascertain the variation between these two dimensions in terms of the contribution each makes to lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The results are presented in Figure 2. The results in Figure 2 show that regarding instructional discourse, most (n = 324, 55%) of the practices focus on lower-order thinking skills. However, in terms of the course outline, the majority, 104 (55%) of lecturers’ practices concentrate on higher-order thinking skills. The log-likelihood test carried out for the differences of these levels of thinking for instructional discourse proved not significant at p < 0.01 between higher-order thinkings vs. lower-order thinking skills (2.57); but proved significant for course outline – higher-order thinking skills vs. lower-order thinking skills (7.56). Thus, the statistical result presented here implies that while the observed difference between higher-order thinking skills for the course outline varied considerably, the difference between higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for instructional discourse is only due to chance. Frequency distribution across the three disciplines Given that the pedagogical practices presented in Figure 2 are based on disciplinary dimensions, it is imperative to report the pedagogical practices across the three disciplines to determine the particular discipline that produces the greatest number of each approach of the pedagogical practices. Results are presented in Figure 3 Findings from Figure 3 appear to be similar across the disciplines of English and Religion, but not for History. That is, the pedagogical practices of English and Religion (n = 161, 66%) and (n = 179, 72%) seem to focus on higher order levels of learning. Surprisingly, pedagogical practices of History seem to focus largely on lower-order thinking skills (n = 146, 57%). The LL values of the pedagogical practices for higher-order thinking and lower-order thinking skills across the three disciplines are as follows: English (42.22), Religion (73.43), and History (0.80). Set at a significance level of p <0.01, the LL results indicate that the observed differences in higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for English and Religion are significant, but the difference between lower-order and higher-order thinking skills for History is not significant. Therefore, the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for English and Religion vary considerably; but the statistical significance between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for History is only due to chance. The level of lecturers’ assessment practices focusing on lower or higher order thinking skills This research question focuses on determining the direction of lecturers’ assessment practices as focusing on either higher-order thinking skills or lower-order thinking skills. The results concentrate on data from rhetorical verbs or nominals of past questions. In the analysis of the rhetorical verbs or nominal elements of the questions, I identified all the rhetorical verbs or nominals, as either ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ (appreciation, understand, know), and ‘application’ through to ‘creation’ (differentiate, investigate, evaluate). I first provide phraseological analysis of the rhetorical verbs of the course objectives on the course outline in order to provide direction and focus as to how the quantitation was done. Phraseological analysis of assessment literacy practices Extract 4 shows the phraseological representation of the rhetorical verbal or nominal elements of the past questions. Extract 4 a. Outline two qualities of a traditional epic b. Explain what a ballad stanza is c. Differentiate between a verse and a stanza (ED2) d. Mention two features of a Villanelle e. How is the ‘Sonnets from Portuguese’ different from other sonnets? f. Discuss the relation between Christian ethics and non-Christian ethics. g. Examine the phenomenon of religion and its relation to values in a named society. h. Evaluate five roles religion plays in society (RHVD3). i. Provide one justification for the study of history of medicine j. Explain the term health and identify the three cultural patterns it embodies k. Identify the major factors that militated against the study and growth of medical science in India from 1000B.C.E. l. State Galen’s theory, which is believed to have delayed progress in medical science (HD6). In Extract 4, the verbs ‘outline’, ‘explain’, ‘state’, ‘mention’ and ‘identify’ can be grouped under knowledge and understanding, whereas verbs such as ‘differentiate’, ‘discuss’, ‘examine’ and ‘evaluate’ as well as nominals such as ‘different’ and ‘justification’ are considered as the use of knowledge. The former types of verbs demand low-order thinking skills, but the latter types of verbs and nouns require high-order thinking skills (Armstrong, 2010). This procedure was followed in quantifying the verbal and nominal elements in the past questions to be able to provide the frequency distributions of assessment practices. Distribution of assessment practices The ensuing discussions present results of the quantitative analysis of the verbal and nominal items in the past questions across the three disciplines. Findings are presented in Figures 4 and 5. Findings presented in Figure 4 show that the majority (n = 272, 54%) of the rhetorical verbs and nominals focusing on higher order thinking are adopted by lecturers across the three disciplines in their assessment practices. The LL value (3.52) proved not significant at p < 0.01. This implies that lecturers’ practices focusing on higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills are fairly similar. Distribution of assessment practices across the three disciplines Given that these assessment practices are based on three different disciplines, it is imperative to ascertain the extent of variation among them. This variation is presented in Figure 5. It can be seen from Figure 5 that the overall assessment practices of lecturers across the disciplinary fields of English (n = 88, 55%), Religion (n = 98, 54%), and History (n = 86, 53%) focus more on higher-order thinking skills. The LL results for the disciplines in terms of lower-order and higher-order thinking skills are: English (0.09), Religion (0.00), and History (0.13). The results indicate that the observed differences across the three disciplines regarding higher-order and lower-order thinking skills are not all significant at p<0.01. This means that the differences in higher-order and lower-order thinking skills are fairly similar. Number of Lecturers’ Overall Practices focusing on Lower or Higher Order Thinking Skills Having considered the frequency distribution of both pedagogical and assessment practices, it is indispensable to combine these practices to determine lecturers’ overall practices in HE. The overall practices are presented in Figure 6. Results from Figure 6 illustrate that, generally, lecturers concentrate on higher-order thinking skills as compared to lower-order thinking skills. This is because the majority (n = 773, 62%) of the overall practices in higher education appear to address higher-order thinking skills. The LL result (71.85) set at a significant level of p < 0.01 is significant, implying that the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills vary considerably. Overall distribution across the three disciplines Since the overall frequency of the practices in higher education is obtained from the disciplinary fields of English, Religion, and History, there is a need to consider the difference among these disciplines. The result is presented in Figure 7. Figure 7 shows that there are similar distributions across the disciplines of English and Religion, but not for History. That is, practices in both pedagogy and assessment practices of English and Religion are higher (n = 280, 67%), (n = 305, 74%) for higher-order thinking skills than lower-order thinking skills. However, for History, practices focusing on higher-order thinking skills are lower (n = 188, 45%) than those focusing on lower-order thinking skills. The LL values of the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills across the three disciplines are as follows: English (5.50), Religion (126.22), History (50.70). Set at a significance level of p < 0.01 (with a critical value of 6.63), the LL results indicate that the observed difference in higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for English is not significant, but the differences are significant for Religion and History. Therefore, the difference between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for English is only due to chance, while differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for Religion and History vary considerably. Discussion This study examines lecturers’ practices in higher education to determine the level of their concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. Findings from the study show that lecturers in a Ghanaian higher education concentrate more on higher-order thinking skills in their academic practices. In terms of disciplinary variation, concentration of History lecturers on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills is fairly similar, but lecturers in English and Religion seem to pay particular attention to practices focusing more on higher-order thinking skills. What this finding suggests, in essence, is that lecturers in higher education have generally developed the predisposition to focus on practices that address higher-order thinking skills. However, so far as I can determine, strict adherence to disciplinary norms may inhibit some lecturers’ (especially those in History) quest to incorporate practices that concentrate on developing higher-order thinking or 21st century skills in students. Therefore, it is not surprising that the disciplinary field of History appears not to have a fairly distinct concentration on higher-order thinking or 21st century skills as compared to lower-order thinking or traditional literacy skills. This finding accords with Lea and Street’s ( 1998 ) observation that in History, the use of evidence is paramount; however, their observation about English focusing on clarity of expression cannot suffice in this current study. As a direct consequence, I argue that this disciplinary variation regarding the concentration on higher-order thinking skills exists because construction of meaning in History is based on the relic of the past, and, therefore, requires a chronological account of events with emblematic dates. This is in contrast to Religion and English, which demands justification of religious beliefs and ideas, critical analysis of religious pluralism, and sentence structure in that regard. In contrast to the finding presented here, Scholtz’s ( 2016 ) reveals that lecturers in the Humanities and Health Sciences concentrate on lower-order thinking skills. Notwithstanding, Scholtz does not quantify the lecturers’ actual practices as I have done in the present study. In addition, Gorska ( 2018 ) has shown that lecturers in English seem to create a balance between practices that promote higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. Similarly, Gorska’s study does not quantify the lecturers’ practices as contained in the present study. Another finding from the present study that is worth discussing is that regarding lecturers’ pedagogical practices (comprising course outline and instructional discourse), much attention is given to higher-order thinking skills. However, further analysis reveals that regarding the development of the course outline, much concentration is given to higher-order thinking skills, but in terms of instructional discourse, there is no fairly distinct concentration on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills. Similarly, an analysis of variation among the three disciplines reveals that lecturers in English and Religion concentrate more on higher-order thinking skills in their pedagogical practices, but those in History have no clearly defined inclination to concentration on higher-order or lower-order thinking skills. My position on the disciplinary variation of lecturers’ pedagogical practices remains unchanged since it is similar to lecturers’ overall academic practices in higher education. However, concerning the disparity of the levels of thinking between the course outline and instructional discourse, I opine that lecturers seem to have a clear epistemic predisposition to address practices that promote higher order thinking skills, but this epistemic conviction mostly does not materialise during instructional hours. And this may be due to some constraints such as limited resources in the provision of educational instruction. The finding presented here is instrumental to the discussion of transformative agenda envisaged in higher education. The reason is that the Academic Literacies theory, which provides the basis for the conceptualisation of higher-order thinking skills in the present study, is multidimensional, addressing 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and criticality. There is, therefore, reason to believe that these 21st-century skills are not given a clear distinctive focus during instructional hours. The issue is inimical to the realisation of transformative education, where students are allowed to become independent, creative and critical learners, while articulating their views in earnest and proffering solutions and alternative solutions to the mirage of problems facing the world today (see Little, 1999; Farren, 2016 for added emphasis). This finding accords with findings from the studies (e.g., Davies, 2011 ; Richardson & Jones, 2014; Schalkwyk, 2008) conducted in Africa, which identified a mismatch between lecturers’ expectation of academic practices and their classroom practices. This missing link could be a result of large class size and limited resources. For example, Schalkwyk (2008) has underscored that the increasing nature of student enrolment at the university puts pressure on the infrastructure and human resources of the university. Davidson, Richardson and Jones ( 2014 ) have also highlighted the limited use of technology, resulting from inadequate access to technological equipment. Davies ( 2011 ) has, thus, recommended that universities, particularly those in Africa, should be committed to information technology by improving information technology infrastructure in order to foster effective teaching and learning in higher education. I consider the use of technology vital in this discussion because in the Academic Literacies theory, key variables that helped in the analysis of higher-order thinking skills are digital technology and the use of collaborative learning (21st century skills). Essentially, large class size can hamper the promotion of collaborative learning, group presentation, and all-inclusive class participation. There is also no denying the fact that inadequate digital technological devices will curtail the use of technology in higher education. Furthermore, findings from the present study show that lecturers in the three disciplinary fields have not adopted practices that distinctively focus on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills in their assessment practices. That is, their focus on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills is fairly similar. This means that the point cannot be made that lecturers in higher education prioritise higher-order thinking skills. This shows a clear congruity between lecturers’ instructional practices and their assessment practices (questions), as a similar finding is noticed for lecturers’ classroom-related practices. It is not surprising because as I have argued earlier, instructional practices determine, to a very large extent, the nature of assessment practices. That is, lecturers assess their students the way they teach them. This finding departs a bit from that of the pedagogical practices in the earlier discussion. This is because the conceptualisation of lecturers’ assessment practices focuses exclusively on Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning, such as knowledge and understanding for lower-order thinking skills, and application, analysis, evaluation, and creation for higher-order thinking (Armstrong, 2010; Wilson, 2016 ). Therefore, this finding mainly addresses lecturers’ concentration on getting their students to be critical and creative, and not to collaborate and communicate as found in lecturers’ classroom-related practices. Conclusions and recommendations The concentration of lecturers’ overall practices (pedagogy and assessment) on higher-order thinking skills implies that there is a consensus by lecturers to adopt both pedagogical and assessment practices that promote 21st century skills. However, it can be concluded from the lecturers’ (in each discipline) lack of distinctive concentration on higher-order thinking skills in classroom-related and assessment practices that, transformative education, which seeks to empower and make students independent and rational learners, will be derailed. By implication, I am not in any way suggesting that lecturers lack the requisite pedagogic knowledge to adopt practices that promote higher-order thinking in their academic practices in higher education. Rather, I conclude that lecturers seem to have the predisposition to adopt practices that focus on higher-order thinking skills, but they seem to be impeded by massification of students in higher education as well as lack of requisite resources in aid of effective teaching and learning. This is even evident in the disparity between lecturers’ construction of the course outline, where attention is focused on higher-order thinking, and their classroom-related and assessment practices, which have no clear distinct concentration on higher-order thinking skills. Another important conclusion that can be drawn from the findings is that high orientation towards disciplinary norms, such as in English and History, can hinder the actualisation of transformative education in higher education. That is, in situations where lecturers consider chronological account of historical events exclusive of their discipline, higher-order thinking skills will not be given the needed attention. It will, thus, make students in these disciplines assume that critical thinking and creativity skills are outside the remit of their discipline, thereby making such students feeble-minded graduates. Further, this finding implies that graduates from such disciplines, where criticality and creativity are considered peripheral, will not meet the demands of the global world and their employability will be in doubt. This is important because in this present world, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking toll on every sector of the economy, criticality and creativity in the development of newer ways of doing things are consequential for one’s survival. It is, thus, recommended that lecturers, particularly those in the disciplinary fields such as History, where critical thinking and creativity are purported to be peripheral, should adopt a more pragmatic approach in utilising practices that seek to promote higher-order thinking skills. Again, lecturers should utilise innovative and proactive ways of focusing more on practices that foster higher-order thinking skills for the actualisation of transformative education in higher education. Moreover, Quality Assurance (QA) in various Ghanaian higher education institutions should be well-resourced by University Councils. This is to ensure that they (Quality Assurance) effectively discharge their duties by continuously inspecting lecturers’ instructional discourse and assessment practices to see if the practices reflect 21st-century skills. Again, the Government of Ghana, in conjunction with Management of institutions of higher learning, should commit more resources to providing adequate resources to promote effective teaching and learning in higher education. Also, Management in higher education should ensure a reasonable student-to-teacher ratio so that more practical and student-centred practices can be adopted to ensure the development of higher-order thinking skills. The present study was self-financed and so focused on a case study in one university in Ghana. Therefore, it is recommended for future researchers, with the aid of funding bodies, to scale up the present study to include all universities in Ghana. Declarations Conflict of Interest The researcher has no conflicts to declare as the research was done without any funding from anywhere. Informed Consent Written informed consent was obtained from participants to participate in the study and to publish it. Clinical Trial Number Not applicable Grant ID Not applicable Ethical Approval The University of Cape Coast’s Institutional Review Board granted ethical approval and clearance according to the University’s regulations for conducting research. Corresponding Authors Francis Tabiri, Ph.D Funding The author received no funding. Author Contribution This paper is a sole authorship and for that matter, everything was done by the author. Thank you. 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The teaching and learning of the English Language in Ghana: Problems and implications. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2(5), 513-520. Tang, K. S. (2015). Reconceptualising science education practices from new literacies research. Science Education International, 26(3), 307-324. Tsegay, M. S., Zegergish, M. Z. & Ashraf, M. A. (2020). Pedagogical practices and students’ experiences in Eritrean higher education institutions. Higher Education for the Future 5(1), 90-103. Tuck, J. (2013). An exploration of practice surrounding student writing in the disciplines in UK higher education from the perspectives of academic teachers. Unpublished doctoral thesis, The Open University, Odisha, India. Retrieved from https://oro.open.ac.uk. Twagilimana, I. (2013). Conceptualisation and teaching of academic writing in an ESL context: A case study with first year university students. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 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Appendicies Appendix A and Appendix B are not available with this version; However, an Appendix D is provided as a supplementary file. Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files APPENDIXD.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 26 Aug, 2025 Reviews received at journal 24 Aug, 2025 Reviews received at journal 17 Aug, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 17 Aug, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 15 Aug, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 13 Aug, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 31 Jul, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 31 Jul, 2025 First submitted to journal 26 Jul, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. 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6","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":32902,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eOverall frequency distribution of literacy practices\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"6.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7219492/v1/e71c9a55e9d6651b7fcadd90.jpg"},{"id":89561374,"identity":"724dea6e-c1d0-4bbd-a1be-e74bcc1ff8a4","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-08-21 10:23:11","extension":"jpg","order_by":7,"title":"Figure 7","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":36096,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eLegend not included with this version\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"7.jpg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7219492/v1/3b2cfb54dbe948379ea17df1.jpg"},{"id":89565226,"identity":"1da7f69a-bc9e-4ae2-bccd-1cf97c1c3a97","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-08-21 10:39:26","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1041511,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7219492/v1/1ce0d13f-8948-4919-bd3b-f704ff1cab75.pdf"},{"id":89561368,"identity":"334513b2-7252-4f60-8b23-a98de7c91e9c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-08-21 10:23:11","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":51202,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"APPENDIXD.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7219492/v1/de3777e90af33e45c205a88e.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eLecturers’ Pedagogical Practices in Higher Education: Determining the Counter-Balance Between Higher and Lower Order Thinking Skills \u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003ePedagogy is the process of inculcating in educands essential skills, values, attitudes, and contemporary issues for proper growth, development, and transformation of the individual and the nation. Bourn (as cited in Simpson, 2018) defines pedagogy as the methods of teaching, and issues of meaning and theory about how children learn, how teaching is done, how the curriculum is structured, and how culture is integrally structured within the curriculum. Also, pedagogy can be seen to incorporate assessment (Olivier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). The activities such as course outline development, lesson preparation, instructional delivery, examination questions, and marking of students’ scripts used to develop the skills of students are termed pedagogical practices (Tabiri \u0026amp; Afful, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Therefore, in this study, pedagogy will be conceptualised to include classroom-related discourse (instructional delivery), issues about course outline, and assessment (focusing on lecturers’ examination past questions).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBefore actual teaching in the classroom, lecturers develop their course outline, which serves as a guide to teaching and learning. Classroom-related discourse or instructional delivery is where lecturers try to make students understand certain concepts and to determine their understanding of these concepts (Khan, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Olivier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Taluah, 2016). The process of trying to determine students’ understanding of concepts is termed ‘assessment’, particularly formative assessment. According to Meyer, Lombard, Warnich, and Wolhuter (2010), assessment is the gathering of information for a particular purpose. It has also been noted that assessment aims “to determine the value, significance, or extent of something; it comes from the Latin word assidēre, which means ‘to sit by’” (AHD cited in Olivier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e, p. 91). A careful examination of the definitions of assessment suggests that assessment is not only used to determine students’ understanding of concepts in the classroom. It can also be used to make certain decisions (such as promoting students from one level to another level) at the end of the entire course. This is referred to as summative assessment. Therefore, I define assessment in this study as a systematic process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data for a determination of students’ understanding of concepts in the classroom (formative assessment) and determining their progress in a particular course or programme (summative assessment). One important point that is worth considering in this definition is that formative assessment is a constituent part of classroom-related discourse, while summative assessment helps in making decisions on students’ progression to the next level. It is worth noting that the nature of classroom-related practices such as teachers’ approaches to teaching determines, to a very large extent, the nature of summative assessment practices, as in the kind of questions students are required to answer in examinations.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePedagogical practices seem dichotomous, as in those that require students’ total and passive submission to the provision of knowledge, and those that demand students’ full participation and critical reasoning in the construction of knowledge. For example, Freire (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e) distinguishes between ‘regulatory pedagogy’ and ‘participatory pedagogy’. In regulatory pedagogy, the learning environment is controlled by the teacher. This makes lecturers focus on lecturing without actively engaging learners in 21st century skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity (Freire, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Lu, 2012). Lecturers who are oriented by regulatory pedagogy focus on practices that require students to copy notes and memorize facts. Participatory pedagogy, on the other hand, is where the learners are actively engaged in the teaching and learning process (Tsegay, Zegergish, \u0026amp; Ashraf, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). That is, lecturers who are informed by participatory pedagogy focus on practices that require students’ full participation and sense of reasoning in the teaching and learning process. What is more important is that participatory pedagogy enjoins academic instructors to pay more attention to higher-order thinking skills, which helps to provide the foundation for the development of students’ sense of reasoning and criticality. The practices of participatory pedagogy help in the actualisation of the purpose of higher education and the development of 21st century skills such as the development of students’ personal growth, intellectuality, sense of self, curiosity, criticality, agency, problem solving skills, communication, collaboration, and active citizenship (Nixon, 2011; Teo, 2019). Thus, most Ghanaian higher educational institutions have introduced Critical Thinking as a course with the view to facilitating the realisation of the purpose of higher education and 21st century skills. Noticeably, higher-order thinking skills, which are influenced by participatory pedagogical practices, are mostly preferred to lower-order thinking skills, operationalised by regulatory pedagogy (see, for example, Tabiri \u0026amp; Afful, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Higher order thinking approach to pedagogy is preferred because it helps in the realisation of transformative education, which empowers students to become critical thinkers and to solve societal problems (Hooks, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Zepke, 2013).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite the need for higher-order thinking skills in the actualisation of transformative education in higher education, several studies (e.g., Afful, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e; Afful \u0026amp; Tabiri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Scholtz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) have revealed the inability of higher education students, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills. The students’ inability to exhibit higher order thinking skills results in their non-employability after graduation; and this has necessitated the conduct of several studies (e.g., Hassel \u0026amp; Ridout, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; John, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Scholtz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Wong \u0026amp; Chiu, 2018) across the globe to investigate lecturers’ practices. However, it appears that most of these studies have concentrated on exploring the nature of lecturers’ practices without recourse to quantifying lecturers’ practices to determine their level of concentration on higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. For example, in their most cited and pioneering paper, Lea and Street (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1998\u003c/span\u003e) find that in History, the use of evidence is vital; and in English, clarity of expression is paramount. Similarly, Tuck (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e) shows that the context of a particular institution, gender, position, and age are very instrumental in modelling tutors’ practices in the academic milieu in terms of referencing and plagiarism, assessment, and feedback. While some institutions have a policy on strict adherence to issues of plagiarism and feedback on assignments, other institutions do not hold that strict allegiance. Further, the study shows negative practices surrounding students’ writing. That is, the issues of nonconformity, lack of time, resources, recognition and status, as well as uncertainty and inability to get to students, are identified as problems affecting tutors’ practices. It can be noticed that the findings of these two studies differ; and this is because while Lea and Street (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1998\u003c/span\u003e) focus on variation in terms of disciplinary fields, Tuck (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e) rather pays attention to institutional practices in higher education.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother related study, which seems to provide divergent findings from the preceding studies, is that of Gorka (2018). The study reveals that the practices of academic tutors focus on textual structure such as introduction, development of ideas, conclusion, language, and engagement with ideas. He reports that what constitutes specific disciplinary requirements appears to be conspicuously missing from practices of tutors. There is also the need for, as the study depicts, criticality rather than description. Similar to the findings of Gorka (2018), John (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) reports that lecturers engage their learners in cognitive and metacognitive practices; but students seem to have challenges following both assessment and pedagogical instructions. She further reports that lecturers, in their bid to create a balanced instructional method (both teacher and learner-centred pedagogy), encourage students to participate actively in class, while welcoming students’ questions in class. Different from the findings of Gorka (2018) and John (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), Hassel and Ridout (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) find that lecturers focus on a teacher-centred approach for first-year university students, while in the continuing years, they (lecturers) concentrate on a student-centred approach.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAdditionally, Wong and Chiu (2018) reveal that lecturers in the university pay attention to the use of language (Generic Skills), student preparation, engagement and commitment, critical, reflective, and the progress of students. Also, Scholtz (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) finds that lecturers focus on surface features of students’ academic writing. However, from the study, lecturers pay little or no attention to meaning making, interpretation, argument, and criticality of the students. Twigilimana (2013) equally reports that lecturers concentrate on the autonomous model (as in discrete skills in teaching AW); and therefore, proposes the use of a hybrid approach in teaching in the L2 context. Also, findings from studies conducted in Ghanaian higher education (e.g., Amua-Sekyi, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Davies, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Davidson, Richardson \u0026amp; Jones, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e) have shown some significant deficits in pedagogical provisions. That is, while some of the studies report on limited use of digital technology in some Ghanaian higher education (see, for example, Davies, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Davidson, Richardson \u0026amp; Jones, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e), others (Amua-Sekyi, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Afful, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e) report on limited or lack of focus on criticality.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA careful examination of the previous studies seems to suggest that most higher education institutions in the Western world try to create a balance between practices that promote higher-order thinking skills, while those in Sub-Saharan African countries seem to dwell mostly on practices that encourage lower-order thinking skills. However, what is missing from these studies is the level of concentration lecturers give to practices that encourage lower-order thinking skills or higher-order thinking skills. Determining the level of focus on higher-order and lower-order thinking skills will reveal the priority lecturers give to these levels of thinking. Knowledge of this will inform lecturers, Quality Assurance, and university management to adopt more proactive and pragmatic measures in fostering higher-order thinking skills in higher education students. Therefore, the present study departs from earlier studies (e.g., Gorka, 2018; John, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Scholtz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) on practices in higher education by quantising lecturers’ practices to determine the counter-balance between higher and lower order thinking skills. To achieve this aim, three research questions are formulated to guide the study: 1) to what extent do lecturers’ classroom discourse-related practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills; 2) what is the level of lecturers’ focus on assessment practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills; 3) what number of lecturers’ overall practices focus on lower and higher order thinking skills?\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTheoretical Review\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiven the dichotomous nature of the present study, as in determining lecturers’ concentration on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills, two theories, such as Academic Literacies and Traditional Literacy (see Clark \u0026amp; Ivanic, 1997; Lillis et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), are adopted for the study. A focus on these theories enables me to investigate the ‘actual’ and ‘observable’ classroom discourse-related practices and assessment practices, while quantising these observable practices to make a determination of the counterbalance between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. While the practices of academic literacies promote higher-order thinking skills, practices of traditional literacy encourage lower-order thinking skills (see Janks, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e; John, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Stein, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; McKenna \u0026amp; McAvinia, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e for added emphasis). These thinking skills can further be dichotomised as deep learning (academic literacies) and surface learning (traditional literacy) [Haggis, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e].\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFurther, what makes the adoption of the conceptualisations of academic literacies more viable in addressing higher-order thinking skills is that academic literacies theory is pluralistic, heterogenous, multidimensional, and dialogic (participatory pedagogy) in nature (Aiken, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Gorska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; John, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Academic literacies approach is a ‘dynamic set of multiple literacies’ (John, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e, p. 5). It emphasises multiple modes of communication – multimodality (Olsson, Gelot, Schaffer \u0026amp; Listegard, 2021; Perry, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e), information from varied sources via computers – digital literacy (Goodfellow, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e), and the ‘fast changing world’ – new literacies (Tang, 2015), criticality or inherent creativity and disciplinary norms (Canagarajah, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Lillis, et al, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Janks, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e). Its pedagogical and assessment practices are heterogeneous and dialogic (Gorska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Lillis, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e) and student-centred (Aiken, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Regarding Academic Literacies theory, Canagarajah (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) asserts that educators are required to adopt ‘practices that empower learners at all levels and make use of the inherent creativity multilinguals bring to their acquisition of language and literacy competence’ (p. 93). This is what Janks (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e) refers to as ‘rationalist activity’ in critical literacy (p. 7). Issues of criticality in terms of pedagogy focus on discussion, dialogue, gestures, collaborative work (group work); and in terms of assessment, focus on talkback, originality, academic honesty, and voice (Lillis, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Tuck, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). Regarding digital technology, both assessment and pedagogical practices employ computer-assisted devices such as projectors, laptops, desktops, and web 2.0 applications such as email, Skype, Zoom, online, and internet. (Stordy, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Wash, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e). Essentially, these practices promote higher order thinking skills. Also, in Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning, higher order thinking skills operate under application, analysis, synthesis, and creation. Therefore, higher-order thinking skills are conceptualised in this study to include critical thinking skills and creativity (application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation or creation), collaboration (group work, group presentation), communication (class participation, class presentations), and digital technology (laptops, projectors, web 2.0 applications).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the other hand, Traditional Literacy focuses largely on conventions and norms in various discourse communities, and thus, requires students to conform to these conventions and norms offered by expert members (Hyland, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e; Jonker, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Street, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). In this approach, students are merely knowledge consumers; and they are not encouraged to question, critique, and examine the values and changing dynamics of higher education (Blomaert \u0026amp; Horner, 2017; Huang \u0026amp; Archer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). That is, in Traditional Literacy, students do not have the credibility to question academic literacy practices in higher education (Henderson \u0026amp; Hirst, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e). As in tandem with the autonomous model, Traditional Literacy perspective is associated with learning theories such as behaviourism, as in the transmission of information and its reproduction (Lea \u0026amp; Street, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e). Noticeably, the practices of Traditional Literacy promote lower-order thinking skills such as direct instruction, abstract concepts, passivity, and memorisation of facts. It focuses on notetaking and lecturing or teacher-centred approach to teaching. This theory operates under knowledge and understanding in Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning. Hence, lower-order thinking skills are defined in this study to encompass traditional practices such as lack of focus on critical thinking and creativity (knowledge and understanding), and any practice that does not promote collaboration, communication, and digital technology.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo quantify lecturers’ practices, the principles of academic literacies and traditional literacy are the focus of the analysis. Apart from that, Bloom's Taxonomy of learning is utilised to be able to determine the level of concentration on either lower levels of learning or higher levels of learning. Armstrong (2010) has shown a link between pedagogy (a focus on course objectives of the course outline) and assessment (examination questions) by considering Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. The taxonomy has six levels of learning, such as knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation. This is a revised form of Bloom’s original taxonomy, which had the following cognitive skills: knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. While knowledge or remembering deals with memorising and producing facts, understanding focuses on comprehension of key concepts (Armstrong, 2010). These two levels of learning have been otherwise referred to as ‘surface’ approach or ‘knowledge and understanding’ (Haggis, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). Again, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation are actualised by applying information to new situations (Wilson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), which have been put together as ‘the use of knowledge’ (Haggis, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). For Haggis (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e), the surface approach to learning is not in line with critical thinking (academic literacies approach). Therefore, to determine the level of lecturers’ concentration on higher-order or lower-order thinking skills, I categorise the dimension of knowledge and understanding as ‘traditional literacy’, while the ‘use of knowledge’ is labelled as ‘academic literacies’. This dichotomisation will help to indicate the questions that require students to recall facts (traditional literacy) and those that ask students to apply information to new situations (academic literacies).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Research Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe study utilises both quantitative and qualitative approaches within a case study design. Since the present study seeks to examine lecturers’ development of students’ literacy skills in a university in Ghana, an institution of higher learning (Simons, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e; Yin, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e), the case study is a suitable design. Again, the use of the case study design is justified because the goal of the present study was to observe lecturers’ classroom-related practices and examine excerpts of their academic writing, such as the course outline and past questions (see Marczyk, DeMatteo \u0026amp; Festinger, 2005 for added emphasis). The use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches in this study is necessitated by the fact that data are presented using enumerative induction such as figures and statistical tools together with phraseological samples of the data (see, for example, Cohen, Manion \u0026amp; Morrison, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePopulation of the study comprises 47 lecturers at three departments, namely English, Religion and Human Values, and History of Ghanaian higher education. Through the purposive sampling technique, 15 lecturers (5 from each department) are selected for the study. Also, 120 documents, comprising 20 course outlines (20 from each department) and 20 examination past questions (20 from each department), are selected for the study. The inclusion criteria adopted in selecting the 15 lecturers are based on their knowledge and experience, especially those who teach undergraduate students and have taught at the university for not less than 10years (possess knowledge and the expertise concerning the demands of higher education). Undergraduate lecturers are considered because the study focuses on undergraduate students, which will help in identifying the true reflection of the nature of undergraduate students’ literacy development in higher education. Again, the choice of the past questions and course outlines is based on 5 years; that is, those that do not go beyond 2years. The five-year period is to help address current practices of lecturers.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn terms of data collection instrument, an observation checklist is developed together with a document guide (see Appendix A and B). Specific items on the observation checklist are categorised into two, viz. Traditional Literacy and Academic Literacies. For the analysis, rhetorical verbs of the course objectives and numerical data from the observation checklist are quantified and put together as lecturers’ pedagogical practices. Also, the rhetorical verbs and nominal elements of the examination past questions obtained from the three departments are quantised and considered for the analysis of lecturers’ assessment practices. Data collected from the observation checklist and the documents are represented by figures such as bar charts and pie charts with the use of frequencies and percentages, which are supplemented by “loglikelihood test (LL). I use the loglikelihood calculator developed by Paul Rayson at Lancaster University to test the statistical significance of the differences that are observed among the various disciplines; and between the focus of lecturers’ classroom practices on Traditional Literacy and Academic Literacies. The significance level is set at p \u0026lt; 0.01 with a critical value of 6.63, implying that any value below 6.63 is considered not significant and a value above 6.63 is considered significant. To ensure trustworthiness of the results, the data collection instruments, particularly the observation checklist, are taken through rigorous examination and evaluation by experts in pedagogical issues. Ethical consideration is addressed by avoiding stating the name of the university and lecturers involved in the study; and also, for procedural ethics, ethical clearance with the ID: XXXIRB/CES/2021/79 is obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the higher education institution.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe extent of lecturers\u0026rsquo; classroom discourse-related practices focusing on lower or higher order thinking skills. The focus of this study is to identify the direction of lecturers\u0026rsquo; practices as either towards higher or lower order thinking skills. The results focus on data from rhetorical verbs of the objectives in the course outline and the observation checklist. I first provide phraseological analysis of the rhetorical verbs of the course objectives in the course outline in order to provide direction and focus to reveal how the quantitation was done.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePhraseological analysis of pedagogical literacy practices\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe extracts below show the phraseological representation of the rhetorical verbs on the course outline. Course outline from Department of English is coded as \u0026lsquo;EDN\u0026rsquo; with a corresponding number, Religion Department is coded \u0026lsquo;RDN\u0026rsquo; with a corresponding number, and History has the code \u0026lsquo;HD\u0026rsquo; with a corresponding number.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the end of this course, students will be able to:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExtract 1\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea. distinguish between varieties of English across the world\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb. analyse spoken, written, and computer-mediated languages\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec. investigate ways of producing various forms of writing (EDN12)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;Extract 2\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe objectives of the course are, among others, to:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea. explain Islamic jurisprudence and define its scope.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb. identify the various schools of Islamic law.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec. review the major sources for the Islamic legal analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ed. evaluate the various stages of the development of Islamic law (RDN20)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExtract 3\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter this course, students should be able to:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea. identify and describe the different sources for the writing of history\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb. have a clear understanding (based on practice) of comprehensive bibliographical research using research logs and annotated bibliographies\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec. identify different types of sources and their usefulness to historical study\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ed. craft historical research questions that are compelling and answerable\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ee. effectively analyse historical documents (HD16).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe foregoing extracts (1-3) are the phraseological uses of the various rhetorical verbs captured in the course objectives of the course outline across the three disciplinary fields, namely English, Religion and Human Values, and History. As can be seen from the above excerpts, 13 rhetorical verbs are presented. Out of these verbs, six of them fall under Knowledge and Understanding \u0026ndash; lower-order thinking skills (i.e., explain, identify, identify and describe, understanding) and the remaining seven fall under the Use of Knowledge \u0026ndash; higher-order thinking skills (distinguish, analyse, investigate, review, evaluate, craft, analyse). This type of analysis was done for all the course objectives on the course outlines obtained for the study in order to determine the frequency distribution of these verbs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDistribution of the overall pedagogical literacy practices\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere, the quantitation of the observation checklist (see Appendix A) and the rhetorical verbs in the course outline are put together as frequency distribution of pedagogical practices. Figure 1 shows the general and overall frequency distribution of lecturers\u0026rsquo; pedagogical practices in all the three disciplinary fields.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs can be seen from Figure 1, lecturers\u0026rsquo; pedagogical practices seem to be geared towards higher-order thinking skills. This is because the majority (n = 408, 55%) of their pedagogical practices focus on higher-order thinking skills. However, this observed difference does not mean anything, as it could be due to chance or indeed a significant association between the two corpora. Thus, the log-likelihood result indicates that the observed difference in pedagogical practices between higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills is statistically significant (84.46) at \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt;0.01. This means that lecturers\u0026rsquo; concentration on higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills regarding pedagogical practices differs at two independent ends of comparison.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrequency distribution of the two dimensions of pedagogical practices\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven the fact that the overall result in Figure 1 is based on two different pedagogical dimensions \u0026ndash; lecturers\u0026rsquo; epistemological orientations (course outline) and manifestation of lecturers\u0026rsquo; epistemological renditions (instructional discourse), it is expedient to ascertain the variation between these two dimensions in terms of the contribution each makes to lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The results are presented in Figure 2.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe results in Figure 2 show that regarding instructional discourse, most (n = 324, 55%) of the practices focus on lower-order thinking skills. However, in terms of the course outline, the majority, 104 (55%) of lecturers\u0026rsquo; practices concentrate on higher-order thinking skills. The log-likelihood test carried out for the differences of these levels of thinking for instructional discourse proved not significant at p \u0026lt; 0.01 between higher-order thinkings vs. lower-order thinking skills (2.57); but proved significant for course outline \u0026ndash; higher-order thinking skills vs. lower-order thinking skills (7.56). Thus, the statistical result presented here implies that while the observed difference between higher-order thinking skills for the course outline varied considerably, the difference between higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for instructional discourse is only due to chance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrequency distribution across the three disciplines\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven that the pedagogical practices presented in Figure 2 are based on disciplinary dimensions, it is imperative to report the pedagogical practices across the three disciplines to determine the particular discipline that produces the greatest number of each approach of the pedagogical practices. Results are presented in Figure 3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFindings from Figure 3 appear to be similar across the disciplines of English and Religion, but not for History. That is, the pedagogical practices of English and Religion (n = 161, 66%) and (n = 179, 72%) seem to focus on higher order levels of learning. Surprisingly, pedagogical practices of History seem to focus largely on lower-order thinking skills (n = 146, 57%). The LL values of the pedagogical practices for higher-order thinking and lower-order thinking skills across the three disciplines are as follows: English (42.22), Religion (73.43), and History (0.80). Set at a significance level of \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e \u0026lt;0.01, the LL results indicate that the observed differences in higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for English and Religion are significant, but the difference between lower-order and higher-order thinking skills for History is not significant. Therefore, the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for English and Religion vary considerably; but the statistical significance between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for History is only due to chance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe level of lecturers\u0026rsquo; assessment practices focusing on lower or higher order thinking skills\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research question focuses on determining the direction of lecturers\u0026rsquo; assessment practices as focusing on either higher-order thinking skills or lower-order thinking skills. The results concentrate on data from rhetorical verbs or nominals of past questions. In the analysis of the rhetorical verbs or nominal elements of the questions, I identified all the rhetorical verbs or nominals, as either \u0026lsquo;knowledge\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;understanding\u0026rsquo; (appreciation, understand, know), and \u0026lsquo;application\u0026rsquo; through to \u0026lsquo;creation\u0026rsquo; (differentiate, investigate, evaluate). I first provide phraseological analysis of the rhetorical verbs of the course objectives on the course outline in order to provide direction and focus as to how the quantitation was done.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePhraseological analysis of assessment literacy practices\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExtract 4 shows the phraseological representation of the rhetorical verbal or nominal elements of the past questions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExtract 4\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea. Outline two qualities of a traditional epic\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb. Explain what a ballad stanza is\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec. Differentiate between a verse and a stanza (ED2)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ed. Mention two features of a Villanelle\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ee. How is the \u0026lsquo;Sonnets from Portuguese\u0026rsquo; different from other sonnets?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ef. Discuss the relation between Christian ethics and non-Christian ethics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eg. Examine the phenomenon of religion and its relation to values in a named society.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eh. Evaluate five roles religion plays in society (RHVD3).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ei. Provide one justification for the study of history of medicine\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ej. Explain the term health and identify the three cultural patterns it embodies\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ek. Identify the major factors that militated against the study and growth of medical science in India from 1000B.C.E.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003el. State Galen\u0026rsquo;s theory, which is believed to have delayed progress in medical science (HD6).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Extract 4, the verbs \u0026lsquo;outline\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;explain\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;state\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;mention\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;identify\u0026rsquo; can be grouped under knowledge and understanding, whereas verbs such as \u0026lsquo;differentiate\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;discuss\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;examine\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;evaluate\u0026rsquo; as well as nominals such as \u0026lsquo;different\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;justification\u0026rsquo; are considered as the use of knowledge. The former types of verbs demand low-order thinking skills, but the latter types of verbs and nouns require high-order thinking skills (Armstrong, 2010). This procedure was followed in quantifying the verbal and nominal elements in the past questions to be able to provide the frequency distributions of assessment practices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDistribution of assessment practices\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ensuing discussions present results of the quantitative analysis of the verbal and nominal items in the past questions across the three disciplines. Findings are presented in Figures 4 and 5.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFindings presented in Figure 4 show that the majority (n = 272, 54%) of the rhetorical verbs and nominals focusing on higher order thinking are adopted by lecturers across the three disciplines in their assessment practices. The LL value (3.52) proved not significant at p \u0026lt; 0.01. This implies that lecturers\u0026rsquo; practices focusing on higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills are fairly similar.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDistribution of assessment practices across the three disciplines\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven that these assessment practices are based on three different disciplines, it is imperative to ascertain the extent of variation among them. This variation is presented in Figure 5.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt can be seen from Figure 5 that the overall assessment practices of lecturers across the disciplinary fields of English (n = 88, 55%), Religion (n = 98, 54%), and History (n = 86, 53%) focus more on higher-order thinking skills. The LL results for the disciplines in terms of lower-order and higher-order thinking skills are: English (0.09), Religion (0.00), and History (0.13). The results indicate that the observed differences across the three disciplines regarding higher-order and lower-order thinking skills are not all significant at p\u0026lt;0.01. This means that the differences in higher-order and lower-order thinking skills are fairly similar.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Lecturers\u0026rsquo; Overall Practices focusing on Lower or Higher Order Thinking Skills\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving considered the frequency distribution of both pedagogical and assessment practices, it is indispensable to combine these practices to determine lecturers\u0026rsquo; overall practices in HE. The overall practices are presented in Figure 6.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eResults from Figure 6 illustrate that, generally, lecturers concentrate on higher-order thinking skills as compared to lower-order thinking skills. This is because the majority (n = 773, 62%) of the overall practices in higher education appear to address higher-order thinking skills. The LL result (71.85) set at a significant level of p \u0026lt; 0.01 is significant, implying that the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills vary considerably.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOverall distribution across the three disciplines\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince the overall frequency of the practices in higher education is obtained from the disciplinary fields of English, Religion, and History, there is a need to consider the difference among these disciplines. The result is presented in Figure 7.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFigure 7 shows that there are similar distributions across the disciplines of English and Religion, but not for History. That is, practices in both pedagogy and assessment practices of English and Religion are higher (n = 280, 67%), (n = 305, 74%) for higher-order thinking skills than lower-order thinking skills. However, for History, practices focusing on higher-order thinking skills are lower (n = 188, 45%) than those focusing on lower-order thinking skills. The LL values of the differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills across the three disciplines are as follows: English (5.50), Religion (126.22), History (50.70). Set at a significance level of p \u0026lt; 0.01 (with a critical value of 6.63), the LL results indicate that the observed difference in higher-order thinking skills and lower-order thinking skills for English is not significant, but the differences are significant for Religion and History. Therefore, the difference between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for English is only due to chance, while differences between higher-order and lower-order thinking skills for Religion and History vary considerably.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study examines lecturers’ practices in higher education to determine the level of their concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. Findings from the study show that lecturers in a Ghanaian higher education concentrate more on higher-order thinking skills in their academic practices. In terms of disciplinary variation, concentration of History lecturers on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills is fairly similar, but lecturers in English and Religion seem to pay particular attention to practices focusing more on higher-order thinking skills. What this finding suggests, in essence, is that lecturers in higher education have generally developed the predisposition to focus on practices that address higher-order thinking skills. However, so far as I can determine, strict adherence to disciplinary norms may inhibit some lecturers’ (especially those in History) quest to incorporate practices that concentrate on developing higher-order thinking or 21st century skills in students. Therefore, it is not surprising that the disciplinary field of History appears not to have a fairly distinct concentration on higher-order thinking or 21st century skills as compared to lower-order thinking or traditional literacy skills. This finding accords with Lea and Street’s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1998\u003c/span\u003e) observation that in History, the use of evidence is paramount; however, their observation about English focusing on clarity of expression cannot suffice in this current study.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a direct consequence, I argue that this disciplinary variation regarding the concentration on higher-order thinking skills exists because construction of meaning in History is based on the relic of the past, and, therefore, requires a chronological account of events with emblematic dates. This is in contrast to Religion and English, which demands justification of religious beliefs and ideas, critical analysis of religious pluralism, and sentence structure in that regard. In contrast to the finding presented here, Scholtz’s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) reveals that lecturers in the Humanities and Health Sciences concentrate on lower-order thinking skills. Notwithstanding, Scholtz does not quantify the lecturers’ actual practices as I have done in the present study. In addition, Gorska (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) has shown that lecturers in English seem to create a balance between practices that promote higher-order and lower-order thinking skills. Similarly, Gorska’s study does not quantify the lecturers’ practices as contained in the present study.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother finding from the present study that is worth discussing is that regarding lecturers’ pedagogical practices (comprising course outline and instructional discourse), much attention is given to higher-order thinking skills. However, further analysis reveals that regarding the development of the course outline, much concentration is given to higher-order thinking skills, but in terms of instructional discourse, there is no fairly distinct concentration on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills. Similarly, an analysis of variation among the three disciplines reveals that lecturers in English and Religion concentrate more on higher-order thinking skills in their pedagogical practices, but those in History have no clearly defined inclination to concentration on higher-order or lower-order thinking skills. My position on the disciplinary variation of lecturers’ pedagogical practices remains unchanged since it is similar to lecturers’ overall academic practices in higher education. However, concerning the disparity of the levels of thinking between the course outline and instructional discourse, I opine that lecturers seem to have a clear epistemic predisposition to address practices that promote higher order thinking skills, but this epistemic conviction mostly does not materialise during instructional hours. And this may be due to some constraints such as limited resources in the provision of educational instruction. The finding presented here is instrumental to the discussion of transformative agenda envisaged in higher education. The reason is that the Academic Literacies theory, which provides the basis for the conceptualisation of higher-order thinking skills in the present study, is multidimensional, addressing 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and criticality. There is, therefore, reason to believe that these 21st-century skills are not given a clear distinctive focus during instructional hours. The issue is inimical to the realisation of transformative education, where students are allowed to become independent, creative and critical learners, while articulating their views in earnest and proffering solutions and alternative solutions to the mirage of problems facing the world today (see Little, 1999; Farren, 2016 for added emphasis).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis finding accords with findings from the studies (e.g., Davies, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Richardson \u0026amp; Jones, 2014; Schalkwyk, 2008) conducted in Africa, which identified a mismatch between lecturers’ expectation of academic practices and their classroom practices. This missing link could be a result of large class size and limited resources. For example, Schalkwyk (2008) has underscored that the increasing nature of student enrolment at the university puts pressure on the infrastructure and human resources of the university. Davidson, Richardson and Jones (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e) have also highlighted the limited use of technology, resulting from inadequate access to technological equipment. Davies (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e) has, thus, recommended that universities, particularly those in Africa, should be committed to information technology by improving information technology infrastructure in order to foster effective teaching and learning in higher education. I consider the use of technology vital in this discussion because in the Academic Literacies theory, key variables that helped in the analysis of higher-order thinking skills are digital technology and the use of collaborative learning (21st century skills). Essentially, large class size can hamper the promotion of collaborative learning, group presentation, and all-inclusive class participation. There is also no denying the fact that inadequate digital technological devices will curtail the use of technology in higher education.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFurthermore, findings from the present study show that lecturers in the three disciplinary fields have not adopted practices that distinctively focus on either lower-order or higher-order thinking skills in their assessment practices. That is, their focus on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills is fairly similar. This means that the point cannot be made that lecturers in higher education prioritise higher-order thinking skills. This shows a clear congruity between lecturers’ instructional practices and their assessment practices (questions), as a similar finding is noticed for lecturers’ classroom-related practices. It is not surprising because as I have argued earlier, instructional practices determine, to a very large extent, the nature of assessment practices. That is, lecturers assess their students the way they teach them. This finding departs a bit from that of the pedagogical practices in the earlier discussion. This is because the conceptualisation of lecturers’ assessment practices focuses exclusively on Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning, such as knowledge and understanding for lower-order thinking skills, and application, analysis, evaluation, and creation for higher-order thinking (Armstrong, 2010; Wilson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Therefore, this finding mainly addresses lecturers’ concentration on getting their students to be critical and creative, and not to collaborate and communicate as found in lecturers’ classroom-related practices.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusions and recommendations","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe concentration of lecturers’ overall practices (pedagogy and assessment) on higher-order thinking skills implies that there is a consensus by lecturers to adopt both pedagogical and assessment practices that promote 21st century skills. However, it can be concluded from the lecturers’ (in each discipline) lack of distinctive concentration on higher-order thinking skills in classroom-related and assessment practices that, transformative education, which seeks to empower and make students independent and rational learners, will be derailed. By implication, I am not in any way suggesting that lecturers lack the requisite pedagogic knowledge to adopt practices that promote higher-order thinking in their academic practices in higher education. Rather, I conclude that lecturers seem to have the predisposition to adopt practices that focus on higher-order thinking skills, but they seem to be impeded by massification of students in higher education as well as lack of requisite resources in aid of effective teaching and learning. This is even evident in the disparity between lecturers’ construction of the course outline, where attention is focused on higher-order thinking, and their classroom-related and assessment practices, which have no clear distinct concentration on higher-order thinking skills.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother important conclusion that can be drawn from the findings is that high orientation towards disciplinary norms, such as in English and History, can hinder the actualisation of transformative education in higher education. That is, in situations where lecturers consider chronological account of historical events exclusive of their discipline, higher-order thinking skills will not be given the needed attention. It will, thus, make students in these disciplines assume that critical thinking and creativity skills are outside the remit of their discipline, thereby making such students feeble-minded graduates. Further, this finding implies that graduates from such disciplines, where criticality and creativity are considered peripheral, will not meet the demands of the global world and their employability will be in doubt. This is important because in this present world, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking toll on every sector of the economy, criticality and creativity in the development of newer ways of doing things are consequential for one’s survival.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is, thus, recommended that lecturers, particularly those in the disciplinary fields such as History, where critical thinking and creativity are purported to be peripheral, should adopt a more pragmatic approach in utilising practices that seek to promote higher-order thinking skills. Again, lecturers should utilise innovative and proactive ways of focusing more on practices that foster higher-order thinking skills for the actualisation of transformative education in higher education. Moreover, Quality Assurance (QA) in various Ghanaian higher education institutions should be well-resourced by University Councils. This is to ensure that they (Quality Assurance) effectively discharge their duties by continuously inspecting lecturers’ instructional discourse and assessment practices to see if the practices reflect 21st-century skills. Again, the Government of Ghana, in conjunction with Management of institutions of higher learning, should commit more resources to providing adequate resources to promote effective teaching and learning in higher education. Also, Management in higher education should ensure a reasonable student-to-teacher ratio so that more practical and student-centred practices can be adopted to ensure the development of higher-order thinking skills. The present study was self-financed and so focused on a case study in one university in Ghana. Therefore, it is recommended for future researchers, with the aid of funding bodies, to scale up the present study to include all universities in Ghana.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eConflict of Interest\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe researcher has no conflicts to declare as the research was done without any funding from anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eInformed Consent\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten informed consent was obtained from participants to participate in the study and to publish it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eClinical Trial Number\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot applicable\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGrant ID\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot applicable\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEthical Approval\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe University of Cape Coast’s Institutional Review Board granted ethical approval and clearance according to the University’s regulations for conducting research.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eCorresponding Authors\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrancis Tabiri, Ph.D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eFunding\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe author received no funding.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis paper is a sole authorship and for that matter, everything was done by the author. Thank you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgement\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot applicable\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data that support the findings of the study are presented in the study for consideration.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAfful, J. B. A. (2007). Academic literacy and Communicative Skills in the Ghanaian university: A proposal. Nebula, 4(3), 141-159. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAiken, V. (2021). Academic literacies and the tilts within: The push and pull of student writing. Teaching in Higher Education. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.13562517.2021.1952565. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAmua-Sekyi, E. K. (2011). Developing criticality in the context of mass higher education: Investigating literacy practices on undergraduate courses in Ghanaian universities. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sussex. 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The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 4(2), 1-14.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Appendicies","content":"\u003cp\u003eAppendix A and Appendix B are not available with this version; However, an Appendix D is provided as a supplementary file.\u003c/p\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":true,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"discover-education","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"diedu","sideBox":"Learn more about [Discover Education](https://www.springer.com/journal/44217)","snPcode":"44217","submissionUrl":"https://submission.nature.com/new-submission/44217/3","title":"Discover Education","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Discover Series","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"assessment practices, higher education, higher-order thinking skills, lower-order thinking skills, pedagogical practices, 21st century skills, transformative education","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7219492/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7219492/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eIt appears that higher education students, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, are unable to demonstrate critical thinking skills, leading to their non-employability after school. This problem seems to be partly associated with pedagogical practices in higher education; and so, several studies have been conducted to investigate lecturers\u0026rsquo; pedagogical practices in higher education. However, it appears that most of these studies have focused solely on exploring the nature of lecturers\u0026rsquo; practices. Hence, the present study departs from previous studies by quantifying lecturers\u0026rsquo; practices to determine their level of concentration on lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The study focuses on three disciplinary fields such as English, Religion, and History by utilizing the case study design. While two iterated observations are done for each discipline in a semester, 120 documents, including 60 course outlines (20 from each discipline) and 60 examinations past questions (20 from each discipline), are selected. Frequencies and percentages, represented by pie charts, bar charts, and a log-likelihood calculator, are used to present the study's results. Findings from the study show that collectively, lecturers have developed epistemic predisposition to adopt practices that focus more on higher-order thinking skills such as creativity, criticality, collaboration, and communication. However, the tendency to focus more on higher-order thinking skills does not materialise in their instructional discourse and assessment practices, especially History lecturers. It is, thus, recommended that lecturers (especially History lecturers) should adopt pragmatic and innovative measures in utilizing practices that foster higher-order thinking skills in their discourse-related and assessment practices for the realisation of transformative education. Also, the Government of Ghana, in collaboration with Management in higher education, should provide adequate resources such as infrastructure and digital technologies for effective teaching and learning in higher education in the African Sub-region.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Lecturers’ Pedagogical Practices in Higher Education: Determining the Counter-Balance Between Higher and Lower Order Thinking Skills","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-08-21 10:23:04","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7219492/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2025-08-26T06:54:11+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2025-08-24T23:58:30+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2025-08-17T17:56:58+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"289160879930812118954164924442404976062","date":"2025-08-17T17:15:32+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"327673550977484216549352068814111352238","date":"2025-08-15T14:10:27+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2025-08-13T05:36:54+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2025-07-31T14:26:33+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2025-07-31T14:24:57+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Discover Education","date":"2025-07-26T07:46:08+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"discover-education","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"diedu","sideBox":"Learn more about [Discover Education](https://www.springer.com/journal/44217)","snPcode":"44217","submissionUrl":"https://submission.nature.com/new-submission/44217/3","title":"Discover Education","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Discover Series","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"9c358012-7bb7-4532-915c-c3c57a33b048","owner":[],"postedDate":"August 21st, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-01-09T06:08:56+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-08-21 10:23:04","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7219492","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7219492","identity":"rs-7219492","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}