Welcome back to the second stop to our first blog; think about thinking. For a little summary, we talked about the basic types of thinking, but today, we are focusing on the heavy, hardcore, the expert level: higher-order thinking skills, mainly critical thinking.
Just for a formal definition, let’s explain what higher thinking is. Higher thinking skills are the processes in which people develop their intellectual thinking with which the person intends to obtain more knowledge and comprehension. These kinds of thinking skills go beyond basic observation of facts and memorization. Meaning, not more puppy examples 😪. We have now passed from kindergarten to college in a split second, we are getting closer to our degree, we need to work harder to be valedictorian and strive for greatness.
Higher-order thinking skills might sound a little bit overwhelming most of the time people think that is saying an idea out loud, and for other people to thorn it into pieces when it’s not (that mean). The higher skills help you to think deeper, to ask yourself questions of most of the things if not all of it, to analyze if your ideas are good or in what way they can get better;, instead of just memorizing facts for your exam and then the information in your head is deleted. HOTS (Higher-order thinking skills) makes you take these facts and understand them, infer from them, connect them to other facts and concepts, categorize them, manipulate them, put them together in new or novel ways, and apply them as we seek new solutions to new problems.
Let’s jump right into critical thinking. According to Paul and Elder (2007), “Much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of which we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought.” Critical thinking is a skill that allows you to make logical and informed decisions to the best of your ability. For example, a child who has not yet developed such skills might believe the Tooth Fairy left money under their pillow based on stories their parents told them. A critical thinker, however, can quickly conclude that the existence of such a thing is probably unlikely—even if there are a few bucks under their pillow. Critical thinking is, therefore, the foundation of a strong education. To understand better, we shall explain Bloom’s taxonomy, it was designed with six levels to promote higher-order thinking. The six levels were: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. (The taxonomy’s levels were later revised as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, revising, and creating.)
This theory is often shown on a pyramid in which the last three levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) include critical thinking or higher-order thinking skills. Critical thinking understanding is our aim for today’s blog, so people take out your notebooks and sharpen your pencils because we are about to start.
- Analysis: requires judgment to be able to analyze all the knowledge that you have been taught throughout your whole life. For example, distinguish between a fact and an opinion. This can be hard since as we already said, it starts about questioning what you have learned and there could be cases in which you realize what you thought was true it wasn’t. Like Santa Claus, he doesn’t exist, and all that time your parents bought all of your gifts.
- Synthesis: involves an open mind and an open perspective of things. Infer between different sources (such as essays, articles, works of fiction, lectures, and even experiences) to get to a conclusion. Some questions that could help to synthesize are: what alternative would you suggest for…? What changes would you make to revise…? What could you invent to solve…? During the analysis, you are going to synthesize, e.g. it is very unlikely that Santa Claus goes around the whole world, for only a night, that even has the capital to actually buy all of the children’s presents, and also with your experience you have never seen him, it can make you doubt his existence.
- Evaluation: On the top level of the pyramid, this is the last step because is necessary to have all the previous knowledge to get to this point. It’s about making judgments about the value of ideas, items, and materials. Again, Santa Claus you’ve asked you questions, put together your information, and now you need to evaluate it, our conclusions? Sadly no, Santa does not exist, and all this time our parents have been the ones buying the gifts.
Again, the example it’s very simple but, these are things you are not very capable of developing at a shortage, as said in the previous blog this skill starts developing after 11 years old (which is the time Santa Claus stops bringing presents). At school, you start practicing without notice. Usually, these steps are done unconsciously but remember our brains are always working even if you don’t see it.
References:
https://www.rasmussen.edu/student-experience/college-life/critical-thinking-skills-to-master-now/
https://cetl.uconn.edu/critical-thinking-and-other-higher-order-thinking-skills/#
https://www.thoughtco.com/higher-order-thinking-skills-hots-education-3111297
