Abstract

The study aimed at measuring the impact of the open-ended questions along with lengthening wait time in explaining the unit of Islamic Jurisprudence prescribed in the book of Islamic education for the tenth grade and its relationship to the achievement and higher-order thinking skills. The study consisted of 60 students in the tenth grade in Arjan Secondary School for Girls in Amman Borough Directorate during the first semester of the academic year 2014-2015. The students were chosen intentionally and distributed equally and randomly on the study groups (the control group and the experimental group). The researcher has used the quasi-experimental method and has also built two tools for the study, the first tool is an achievement test, and the second is higher-order thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) to measure a variable effect (open ended questions with a waiting time of 5 seconds) on the variables of achievement and higher thinking skills. The study results showed that the arithmetic average for the experimental group that learned using open-ended question, with different cognitive levels along with a wait time of 5 seconds was the highest, amounting to (20.57), while the control group that learned using close questions with the normal wait time amounted to (15.27(. Moreover, it showed the presence of statistically significant differences between the averages of the two sets of performance differences study on the post-test and on the higher thinking skills test, in favor of the experimental group.