Hey there! We all now we breathe automatically because our body needs it but, have you noticed that if you think about breathing, you start doing manually, it’s weird, right? Every day we do a large number of processes that we aren’t conscious about it.
That is what happens to our basic thinking skills. Before we get more into it, let me ask you, how do you know a dog is a dog? Did somebody tell you about them? Did you watch it on tv? Or better, you saw one when you were little. It could’ve been millions of different ways, but I’m going to show you used your basic thinking to realize you were seeing a dog for the first time in your life when you were little.
The basic thinking processes are basic, not because they are simple processes but because they constitute the basis for developing analytical, critical, creative, and evaluative thinking. Most of the time these skills are used probably every day, but the fact we do it unconsciously doesn’t mean that our brains don’t do the mechanism itself. It requires intellectual abilities that involve directing attention to observe, describe, compare, relate and classify. In today’s blog, those aspects are the ones we primarily are going be talking about so; people take your seats and popcorns, the show it’s about to start.
“Observation is a research method, as well as a data collection method.”
– Powell & Connaway
- Observation: You may think it just merely seeing and don’t know that there is a whole process going on. Well, the phrase «don’t believe until you see it» makes a lot of sense here. Let’s think about our puppy, how do you know a dog is a dog? The first things to notice are the shape, the hair and the size of the animal, however since it is our first time observing a dog, it can be hard to identify because they are very diverse but, what if just yesterday you watched tv and there was this white fluffy thing barking and it was referred to as a dog, and today you see that the neighbor has the same dog, with the same characteristics. Therefore, observation is the ability to perceive something to gain information.
- Description: we often use «definition» and «description» as synonyms and regularly they are, but still, they have slight differences, and in this context is primordial to know their discrepancies. Think again about the dog. A definition will be, dogs are small but also big, they bark (a lot), they are very smart and funny. On the other hand, a description has more details; the neighbors’ dog was small but, white-haired, and it was just sleeping. Hence, a definition is a general idea and description has more details.
- Comparison is the process of identifying similarities and differences between two or more objects. If you haven’t figured it out yet, these steps are in order; hence, we use our observation skills to compare. How do we differentiate between a dog and a cat? we had already observed and described each of them, the next step is to compare them and for that we use questions, do they have the same shape of tails? Do they have whiskers? Do they bark?
- Relationship: the fourth step is finding the connection to our information. With the previous questions already answered, the next step is to find the relation in them. The cat’s tail is fluffy, he has whiskers, and it doesn’t bark (that we know of). On the other side, the dog’s tail is fluffy too, he doesn’t have whiskers, and it does bark.
- Classifying: the process of sorting data into groups based on relevant characteristics or attributes. Relation and classification are very close steps since while you are finding the relationship you start classifying them. Thus, for the last round, we need to find a general description of dogs and find the relation between our answers to figure out which one is the dog and then our to group to classify will be cats and dogs.
This example might have been really easy but, you need to realize that these basic skills are often used in more complex topics in which every step could difficult. We do these steps most of the time and very quickly (in cases like this one) so give yourself some credit for having developed basic skills when you were little.
References:
Burns, D., Leppien, J., Omdal, S., Gubbins, J., Muller, L., & Vahidi, S. (2006). Teachers’ Guide for the Explicit Teaching of Thinking Skills. Connecticut. Schiffman, K. (2014). Fundamentals: Normative and Descriptive Claims. Yale University. Video created by Gaurav Vazirani. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQOiHKT46zk Ø http://eprints.uny.ac.id/1807/1/P%20-%2063.pdf Ø https://www.istockphoto.com/us/es/vector/vector-design-relation-of-thinking-solution-and-process-concept-infographic-of-gm546449264-98667811
