![Rajendran, (2008), Teaching and Acquiring Higher Order Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice
A myth, however, exists that as people mature, their thinking and
reasoning naturally escalate. Unfortunately, critical and creative thinking
abilities do not develop automatically. Adults who were not taught to think
critically and creatively exhibit cognitive abilities that are no more advanced
than the thinking processes they used when they were in the sixth grade.
Therefore, it becomes important to also teach thinking skills explicitly
besides the school subjects. In this respect, it seems important to review how
we define and teach the respective school subjects in relation to whether we
teach students to think critically and creatively. To be literate now, for
example, seems to require that students know more about how to think; not
just how to read.
Today’s need for teaching thinking is created by the rapid changes
taking place in society. Knowledge and information are becoming ever more
complex and soon may become dated. Children, therefore, have to be
equipped with the skills of evaluating choices, and identifying and solving
problems using logical reasoning. Thus, it is not enough to have a considerable
amount of knowledge at one’ disposal (declarative knowledge), but the
questions of how to acquire knowledge, and how to apply this knowledge
(procedural knowledge) are also important. It is also claimed that having only
a limited command of thinking skills is one of the reasons for failing behind in
school. This can be seen in mathematics, reading, and writing, where all sorts
of activities come to the fore in which thinking skills play a central role.
Examples are the ability to describe and to compare objects, to group objects,
to associate one thing with another, to form concepts, and to generalize. Thus,
mental processes which are normally associated with the concept of ‘thinking’
are not limited to some kind of ‘higher-order’ of mental development. On the
contrary, thinking processes play a role in a broad range of learning activities
in school. This means that these thinking processes should form an integral
part of the school curriculum. In both school settings and in the world outside
of school, it is crucial for people to have skills in questioning, analyzing,
comparing, contrasting, and evaluating, so that [they] will not become
addicted to being told what to think and do.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/whyteachhigherhigherorderthinkingskills-180226121523/85/Why-teach-higher-higher-order-thinking-skills-4-320.jpg)
Why teach higher higher order thinking skills
- 1. Rajendran, (2008), Teaching and Acquiring Higher Order Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice Why Teach Higher-Order Thinking Skills? There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking. Thomas A. Edison Do we really need to teach students to think? Isn’t thinking a natural consequence of teaching and learning in general? Do not people think spontaneously without being taught? These are some of the important questions which need to be addressed in the area of teaching thinking. We, indeed, do think without being taught how to think. We classify, analyze, generalize, analogize, deduce, induce, form and test hypotheses, make decisions, and solve problems. We do these things long before we encounter organized efforts to teach us how to think effectively. It does not follow from the fact that we think spontaneously that we think as effectively as we might. And the evidence regarding our limitations as thinkers and the various ways in which our thinking commonly goes astray is well documented. When we say we want to teach students to think, we really mean that we want to improve the quality of their thinking. We want to teach them to think more deeply, more consistently, more productively, more effectively than they otherwise might. It is almost impossible to imagine how one could survive in this world, if he or she does not reason, plan, act, reflect, and learn to do things better the next time. This happens on a continuous basis. Sometimes, we are conscious of these actions, and most of the time we are not conscious of these actions. What is important is that, one takes stalk of things and make conscious effort to improve over time. How one reasons, plans, acts, reflects and subsequently learns from those experiences could be improved over time. What seems basis of this argument is the deliberate attempt to improve our thinking. Everyone is capable of conducting thinking, and most often what most really do is the lower-order thinking. With right exposure, orientation, guidance and motivation, we can learn to conduct higher-order thinking. You can think only that which you know, or imagine, or desire. Likewise, you can create or express or give out only that which you know. Your power lies in true knowledge from the still source within rather than information from the sensed world without. Your ability to express that power in building bodies lies in what knowledge your consciousness is aware of. Knowledge will build
- 2. Rajendran, (2008), Teaching and Acquiring Higher Order Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice for you a stable life. You can continually transform yourself, and your life condition, only through continually acquiring greater knowledge, then thinking that knowledge into the form of you. It is basically, what you think, you become. Different problems require different types of thinking. In general, we don’t deal with unfamiliar problems in the same way we deal with familiar ones. Besides this, people vary in the ways they prefer to think about things. Some like doing crossword puzzles while others like making the crossword puzzles up. Some like problems where there is a definite answer whereas others like problems where there is one right answer. Some like diagnosing what is wrong with computers when they crash, while others like to design new models of those computers. What all these suggest is that, there are multiple dimensions and approaches to thinking. Very often, educational achievement and intelligence are linked to thinking. It has become more evident in recent times that, educational achievement and intelligence do not necessarily reflect accurately one’s ability to reason, plan, act, reflect, and learn from experiences. In fact, there is a general agreement that, test scores only reflect a part of one’s ability to reason, and the traditional views of intelligence need to be reviewed. What this means is that, most individuals need to be guided to acquire the knowledge and skills to conduct higher-order thinking skills. Everyone is capable of performing such tasks. What is important is that parents and teachers consciously provide the extra guidance and space to the children and students to think about the multiple alternatives, try out some of those alternatives, and learn from these experiences. Over time, they would acquire the so called higher-order thinking skills. The last four decades have seen a growing educational interest in thinking and the ways it can be enhanced in the classroom. The current interest in teaching thinking skills has also been provoked by the onset of the Information Era, supported by recent advances in cognitive theory, and international comparisons of students’ higher-order cognitive skills. However, the idea of teaching thinking has been in different forms in schools for a long time. The cultivation of critical reasoning ability has been an objective of teachers of philosophy, logic, and rhetoric, among other subjects, for a long time. Aiding students to use their minds more effectively is presumably a major reason for teaching literacy, numeracy, and other basic skills. In the United States, for example, there were attempts to make explicit attempts to teaching thinking as early as in the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1920s and 1930s considerable energy was devoted, largely as a result of Dewey’s influence, to making the development of reasoning ability a
- 3. Rajendran, (2008), Teaching and Acquiring Higher Order Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice fundamental goal of primary and secondary schooling in America. Also, the earliest reference cites critical thinking as an important aspect of schooling is in a 1938 report issued by the National Education Association entitled “The Purposes of Education in American Democracy”. However, in spite of these efforts educational practice did not change much, or at least for very long. In Malaysia, the need for students to learn to manipulate ideas and feelings that are contained in the text they read, for which, it is assumed they need thinking skills, has been given attention from the 1990s. The teaching of thinking skills in the national curriculum formally started in 1992. In 1997, for example, there was an announcement by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia that, “the education system will be revamped to encourage rational and analytical thinking”. The basic issue justifying the efforts to teaching thinking skills is that, be it in the United States or in Malaysia, there is a general understanding that after 12 or 13 years of public education, many students are unable to give evidence of a more than superficial understanding of concepts and relationships that are fundamental to the subjects they have studied, or an ability to apply the content knowledge they have acquired to real-world problems. One reason for this state of public education could be because of the fact that thinking skills were not taught to all students until quite recently. As suggested by Resnick (1987), Mass education was, from its inception, concerned with inculcating routine abilities: simple, computation, reading predictable texts, reciting religious or civic codes. It did not take as goals for its students the ability to interpret unfamiliar texts, create material others would want and need to read, construct convincing arguments, develop original solutions to technical or social problems (p.5). It is important to note that, until recently, this has been the exclusive province of the elite education both in the industrialized and in the non-industrialized countries. When countries and governments democratized education, that is extended education beyond the elite, top priority was to educate as many citizens as possible. The aim of education then was to provide basic linguistic and mathematical skills required to perform everyday needs. Even today this is true to a large extent in countries where majority of the people lack these basic skills. There is, however, great interest among researchers and educators, at the present, in the teaching of thinking. There are attempts to include the teaching of thinking skills in all subjects to all students. There are reasons why teachers should improve students’ thinking as they build their language abilities, and mathematical and science skills.
- 4. Rajendran, (2008), Teaching and Acquiring Higher Order Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice A myth, however, exists that as people mature, their thinking and reasoning naturally escalate. Unfortunately, critical and creative thinking abilities do not develop automatically. Adults who were not taught to think critically and creatively exhibit cognitive abilities that are no more advanced than the thinking processes they used when they were in the sixth grade. Therefore, it becomes important to also teach thinking skills explicitly besides the school subjects. In this respect, it seems important to review how we define and teach the respective school subjects in relation to whether we teach students to think critically and creatively. To be literate now, for example, seems to require that students know more about how to think; not just how to read. Today’s need for teaching thinking is created by the rapid changes taking place in society. Knowledge and information are becoming ever more complex and soon may become dated. Children, therefore, have to be equipped with the skills of evaluating choices, and identifying and solving problems using logical reasoning. Thus, it is not enough to have a considerable amount of knowledge at one’ disposal (declarative knowledge), but the questions of how to acquire knowledge, and how to apply this knowledge (procedural knowledge) are also important. It is also claimed that having only a limited command of thinking skills is one of the reasons for failing behind in school. This can be seen in mathematics, reading, and writing, where all sorts of activities come to the fore in which thinking skills play a central role. Examples are the ability to describe and to compare objects, to group objects, to associate one thing with another, to form concepts, and to generalize. Thus, mental processes which are normally associated with the concept of ‘thinking’ are not limited to some kind of ‘higher-order’ of mental development. On the contrary, thinking processes play a role in a broad range of learning activities in school. This means that these thinking processes should form an integral part of the school curriculum. In both school settings and in the world outside of school, it is crucial for people to have skills in questioning, analyzing, comparing, contrasting, and evaluating, so that [they] will not become addicted to being told what to think and do.