Development of an Integrated CORE Learning Model for Cognitive Conflict Strategies to Improve Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) of Elementary School Students

Abstract

Conventional learning practices at the elementary school level are still dominated by teacher-centered approaches, which structurally rarely facilitate students to confront intuitive misconceptions or construct complex cognitive schemas1. As a result, traditional learning models fail to make a significant contribution to advancing  students' Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)1. This research report describes the development and empirical evaluation of a hybrid pedagogical framework that integrates the Connecting, Organizing, Reflecting, and Extending (CORE) learning model with the Cognitive Conflict Strategy to optimize the HOTS of elementary school students1. Through Research and Development (R&D) design, this framework was tested on Class V students of SD Negeri 104208 Medan City for the 2024/2025 school year with a cohort of 34 students1. Expert evaluations confirm that the developed model meets high standards of content, construct, and syntax validity1. The assessment of practicality by teacher practitioners resulted in a percentage of 85.42%, which puts this model in the category of very practical1. Post-intervention classical completeness reached 85.29%, proving that students' cognitive capacity successfully exceeded the threshold of standard mastery1. Inferential hypothesis tests through the paired-samples t-test produce a value  , which significantly exceeds the value   at significance level  1. These findings confirm that cognitive disequilibrium induction structured in four CORE phases is able to destabilize intuitive misconceptions, accelerate schema restructuring, and optimize HOTS achievement at the primary education level1.