HIGHER LEVEL THINKING Introduction

Most experienced teachers would agree that conveying information to students is very important but that teaching the students how to think is even more important. Experienced teachers also know that concepts are the basic building blocks for thinking, particularly higher level thinking. Concepts allow individuals to classify objects and ideas and to derive rules and principles; they provide the foundations for the idea networks that guide our thinking. The process of learning concepts begins at an early age and continues throughout life as people develop more and more complex concepts, both in school and out. The learning of concepts is critical in schools and in everyday life, because concepts allow mutual understanding among people and provide the basis for verbal interaction.

Skills are abilities to do things. They are competencies that people possess that enable them to perform in certain ways. Skills are different from knowledge in that they require more' than just knowing. They require doing, with some degree of proficiency.

Skills, however, are just as much school content as knowledge. They are part of what the students need to learn and part of what teachers must teach. Skills differ from both knowledge and affective learning and are taught differently, but they are an important dimension of school instructional programs and are central to the reasons that schools exist.

In at least two ways, thinking which is a complex skill or combination of skills, is especially important as content to be taught in schools. First, all students must learn to think;

second, the extent to which they do affects all their other learning.

When experts explain thinking, they usually use technical terms. Many say it involves at least three elements - intellectual processes, mental activities, and cognitive strategies.

In combination, they help people make sense out of the information and other stimuli that they encounter in their lives and relate new information to ideas they already have. Thinking involves so many skills that people do all of the following: to impose intellectual order or disorder, to gain insight, to predict consequences, to propose solutions to problems, and to decide what to do when faced with a decision.

Some educators say thinking is a uniquely human trait. It is the most significant characteristic that separates human from other forms of life because human thinking is at a higher and more sophisticated level than that of other worldly creatures. These higher levels of thinking are described in many ways and often with highly specialized language. Some of the more common general labels are critical thinking, systematic thinking, theoretical thinking, and abstract thinking. More specific terms that define particular aspects of thinking are conceptualizing, comprehending, computing, inferring, interpreting, analyzing, synthesizing, problem solving, generalizing, applying knowledge, and evaluating.

Key Features of Higher-order Thinking (Lauren Resnick, 1987 as cited by Arends, 1994) 1. Higher-order thinking is nonalgorithmic. That is, the path of action is not fully specified

in advance.

2. Higher-order thinking tends to be complex. The total path is not visible (mentally speaking) from any single vantage point.

3. Higher-order thinking often yields multiple solutions, each with costs and benefits, rather than in unique solution.

4. Higher-order thinking involves nuanced judgment and interpretation.

5. Higher-order thinking involves the application of multiple criteria, which sometimes conflict with one another.

6. Higher-order thinking skill often involves uncertainty.

1. Not everything that bears on the task at hand is known.

7. Higher-order thinking involves self-regulation of the thinking process. We do not recognize higher-order thinking in an individual who allows someone else to "call the plays" at every step.

8. Higher-order thinking involves imposing meaning, finding structure in apparent disorder.

9. Higher-order thinking is effortful. There is considerable mental work involved in the kinds of elaborations and judgments required.

Higher Level Thinking Skills

1. Concepts are the basic building blocks around which people organize their thinking and communication. A concept's critical attributes help define it and distinguish it from other concepts. The various kinds of concepts include:

a) Conjunctive concepts – this kind of concept has a constant rule structure. J:he concept of island, for example, always involves land surrounded by water. A triangle is a plane, closed figure with three sides and three angles. The rule structure for this concept is constant. The critical attributes are combined in an additive manner and are always the same.

b) Disjunctive concepts - this concept is broader and more flexible and permits alternative sets of attributes. Th8 rule structures are not constant. Example, the concept of a strike in baseball is based upon a number of alternative conditions. A strike may be when a batter swings and misses, when an umpire determines that the pitch was in the strike zone even though the batter did not swing at the ball, or when the batter hits a foul ball. The concept "noun" is another example of a disjunctive concept since, a noun may be a person, a place, or a thing, but it cannot be all three at the same time.

c) Relationship concepts - a concept whose rule structure depends on relationships. The concept of "aunt" describes a particular relationship between siblings and their offspring’s. The concept "time" and "distance" are also relational concepts.

Students grasp general concepts mainly by being presented with specific examples and nonexamples of the concept.

Learning a particular concept involves identifying both examples and nonexamples. For instance, a cow is an example of a mammal but is a nonexample of a reptile.

Australia is an example of a country in the southern hemisphere, but it is a non example of a developing country. Cotton and silk are examples of the concept "fabric," but leather and steel are nonexamples.

2. Concept learning and logical thinking are critical goals for almost everything taught in schools. These become important scaffolding for building student understanding of school subjects. Concept learning is essentially a process of putting things into classes or categories.

3. The knowledge based on concept learning and teaching is extensive. Studies have shown how age and intellectual development influence readiness to learn concepts. Studies have also shown how examples and nonexamples should be presented to maximize the student learning and how the teachers can use such specific practices as visual and mental images and graphic organizers to support concept learning.

4. The instructional effect of concept teaching is mainly to help learners acquire conceptual understanding of the subjects they are studying and to provide a basis for higher level thinking.

5. A concept lesson consists of four major phases, such as:

Phase Teacher/Behavior

Phase 1. Presenting goals and establishing setting

Phase 2. Providing examples and nonexamples

Phase 3. Testing for attainment

Phase 4. Analysis of thinking and

Teacher explains the goals and procedures for the lesson and gets the students ready to learn.

In the direct presentation approach, the teacher names the concepts, identifies the critical attributes, and illustrates them with examples and nonexamples.

In concept attainment, examples and nonexamples are given and students inductively arrive at the concept and its attributes.

Teacher presents additional examples and nonexamples to test the students' understanding of the concept. Students are asked to provide their own examples and nonexamples of the concept.

Teacher gets the students to think about their own

integration of learning thinking processes. Students are asked to examine their decisions and the consequences of their choices. Teacher helps the students integrate new learning by relating the concept to other concepts in a unit of study.

6. There are several different approaches to teaching concepts. Two of the most prevalent are direct presentation and concept attainment.

In direct presentation, the teacher labels and defines the concept early in the lesson and then presents the best examples through exposition.

In concept attainment, the teacher presents examples and non examples of a particular concept but does not define and label the concept until the end of the lesson.

7. Preinstructional tasks include concept selection and analysis, selection of examples and nonexamples, and decisions regarding the sequence in which to present the examples.

a) Selecting and Analyzing Concepts

The curriculum is the primary source of key concepts for instruction. These concepts may be embedded in a textbook or contained in local curriculum guides.

Charts, diagrams, and webs, as well as pictures can be employed as visual examples of abstract concepts. They can also aid the teacher in analyzing the concept for instructional decisions.

A web provides a visual image of the characteristics and relationships generating from the core idea of a concept. There are four steps in constructing a web for a particular concept.

Step 1: Create the core, which is the focus of the web.

This would be the name of the concept.

Step 2: Construct strands branching out from the core. These strands are critical attributes of the concept.

Step 3: Draw strand supports, which connect the critical attributes to the concept.

Step 4: Identify the strand ties, which may show relationships among the various attributes.

b) Selection of Examples and Nonexamples

This is the most difficult phase of concept teaching. Examples serve as the connectors between the concept's abstraction and the learner's prior knowledge and experiences.

Examples must be meaningful to the learner and must be as concrete as possible.

Figure 6: List of Easy and Difficult Examples and Nonexamples of Adverbs

Easy Examples Easy Nonexamples

4. The most dangerous weapon is a gun.

1. Do you fight?

2. He wants the dark rim to match.

4. The book had three pictures.

c) Choosing and Sequencing of Examples and Nonexamples

Examples and nonexamples should be sequenced for presentation in a logical fashion, and normally sets should be ordered from the easiest to the more difficult.

Teachers may also want to plan to give cues to focus students' thinking before each set of three to five examples.

8. Through questioning and discussion, teachers help the students analyze their thinking and integrate new learning with old as the final phase of a concept lesson.

9. As with other instructional models, a major post-instructional task requires teachers to match their testing programs to the model's particular goals.

10. When evaluating the students' understanding of a concept, it is important to ask the students to do more than merely define the concept. Students should also be asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the concept's critical attributes and its relationship to other concepts.

CRITICAL THINKING