Higher-Order Thinking Skills at the workplace and education
Basic skills like memorization and observation of facts are essential to learning, but teachers can challenge their students by developing their higher-order thinking skills. Identifying reliable information and analyzing data often require more complicated thought processes and intentional work. Understanding how to cultivate these skills allows students to participate in advanced learning, become independent thinkers and solve problems on their own.
What are higher-order thinking skills?
Higher-order thinking skills are thought processes that help you connect information in meaningful ways and use those connections to solve problems. These thought processes tend to be innovative in that they apply knowledge in new, creative ways. They go beyond basic memorization and observation of facts to identify reliable information, analyze data, communicate findings and develop solutions.
Higher-order thinking skills can help you solve problems efficiently by anticipating connections between different ideas. Some cognitive researchers organize the ways they understand thought processes using taxonomies, another word for categories of ideas.
One of these ways of organizing thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy, identifies skills such as making connections as more challenging but potentially more rewarding than skills like memorization by repetition. This is why professionals refer to them as higher-order thinking skills. Bloom categorize teaching and learning into three domains:
Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
Affective: emotions n feelings
Psychomotor : kinestetic, hands on
How To Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Importance of higher-order thinking skills in teaching and learning
Teachers, leaders and education researchers often discuss the role of higher-order thinking skills in learning and development. Some educators believe that students must master lower-level thinking skills, such as memorization before they can connect those ideas using higher-order thinking skills.
Others think that higher-order thinking can happen at any stage of learning and growth. However, many professional educators agree that higher-order thinking skills are important to consider when developing lesson plans, providing instruction and assessing student growth.
Before we go into taxanomy bloom, you need to understand the concept of bloom.
Critical thinking is like using your own best judgment to understand and evaluate other people's ideas.
For example, if you're reading an article in a business journal, you might ask yourself who wrote the article, what their credentials are, what other writing they've done in the past and other questions that can help you assess their ideas. You may want to encourage your students to apply critical-thinking skills when they're reading industry periodicals or online resources to help evaluate what they've just read.
Metacognition involves an awareness of how you think. When students engage in metacognition, they closely examine the processes they're using in order to learn and retain new information. This involves understanding their own strengths (such as note-taking) and weaknesses (such as procrastination) as students.
For example, you may have a student who excels at memorizing grammar rules but doesn't always understand how to correctly apply the rules. In this instance, the student may wish to supplement their learning process to include a wide variety of examples so that they understand what they're memorizing.
Comprehension refers to the process of internalizing material and understanding the importance of content. Comprehension is a necessary first step for many other higher-order thinking skills because it ensures that you're making connections between ideas you have mastered.
For instance, a student in law school needs to understand not only which laws exist for certain situations but how those laws can apply to new situations.
Application as a higher-order thinking skill happens when you apply a piece of information you have attained to a similar issue or project.
For example, if a student learns the woodworking techniques necessary to craft a bench, they might also be able to apply those same woodworking techniques to craft a similarly-designed coffee table. The student can adapt the basic skills they learned in the first project to most efficiently complete the second project.
Evaluation and critical thinking often overlap because they both have to do with assessing new information based on ideas or concepts you already know. Evaluation allows you to place a relative value on a piece of information, which can help you make decisions based on reasoning and evidence. Students in law school and in the medical field often need to use evaluation to apply the knowledge they're learning in new ways.
Synthesis involves combining two or more ideas to generate a new idea that is more meaningful and productive than any of the original ideas were on their own.
For example, if your student gathers relevant information about every way to study for a big exam and then develops a new study plan, they're engaging in a kind of synthesis.
Inference is a higher-order thinking skill in which you use available information to make a reasonable estimate of information that is unknown.
You might use inference to determine the context of an email message from a colleague or anticipate an expected response from a student during finals week. You can use inference skills to understand and anticipate classroom dynamics and re-evaluate as more information becomes available.
Some of the essentials of critical thinking include:
The ability to think logically and critically about a situation
The ability to identify bias, fallacies, and other forms of error in reasoning
The ability to make sound judgments based on facts and data
The ability to think objectively and see both sides of an issue
Some of the essentials of creative thinking include:
The ability to come up with new ideas or solutions
The ability to think outside the box
The ability to be open-minded and embrace change
The ability to take risks
Real-Life Examples of Critical and Creative Thinking
It may not be too surprising to learn that some of the most successful people in the world are also critical and creative thinkers. Some examples of critical thinkers include:
Steve Jobs: He was able to see beyond what was currently possible and create products that changed the world.
Bill Gates: He was able to analyze data and make sound business decisions that made Microsoft one of the most successful companies in the world.
Warren Buffett: He is able to see beyond the current trends and make investment decisions that have made him one of the richest people in the world.
Some examples of creative thinkers include:
J.K. Rowling: She was able to develop an imaginative story that has captivated millions of people around the world.
Elon Musk: He was able to develop new ideas that have revolutionized the transportation industry.
Steve Wozniak: He was able to design products that changed how we use computers.
As you can see, critical and creative thinking skills are essential for success in any field. If you want to be successful, you need to learn how to think critically and creatively.
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