Topic 3: Processes and characteristics of higher thinking skills

 In education, there exist some basic thinking skills, even so, they were already covered in the previous essay. Moreover, what happens with the higher ones, this is the new point of view. Checking Bloom’s taxonomy to see these news skills in the top part, means that the lower ones are known even though this does not that the rest ones must do them because for learning with this methodology some steps can be suppressed according to the user. Therefore, these skills will specify a hard way of not only looking for the information, rather interpret it as well as reasoning and take decisions.

Analysis, in line with the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. is “the process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple or ultimate constituents.” In this way can say that is made isolation of what is more elementary from what is more complex, due to this is primordial to examine and evaluate the recently acquired knowledge to elements already known, recognizing the problems for an optimal attempt of solutions.

Metacognition, just as the Cambridge Assessment mention “describes the processes involved when learners plan, monitor, evaluate and make changes to their own learning behaviors.” So, it refers to the action and effect of reasoning on one's own reasoning or, in other words, of developing awareness and control over the processes of thinking and learning. Pintrich (2002) asserts that “Students who know about the different kinds of strategies for learning, thinking, and problem-solving will be more likely to use them” (p. 222) owing to this, being conscious about this process of learning favors the development of critical thinking stimulates the capacity for self-reflection and creates in the student awareness of autonomy, self-control, and self-regulation of learning processes.

Reading the book from Bloom mentions that Synthesis involves the “putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole.” Then when talking of it refers that all the information will be judged and evaluated to stand our desertions in the consonance of a whole, of a general conclusion. This point is near the evaluation and Bloom engenders “judgments about the value of material and methods for given purposes.”, from this point the problem solving is parting of it, despite it requires hard work and perseverance, that is to say, that people must practice searching for strategies and organized information.

There exist some evaluation techniques that could be very helpful for students with different purposes that may help for developing these skills and also the creativity, reading a text and criticizing it, give ideas and support them, doing debates, etc.

And eventually, all analysis is thus a development, a representation taken from points of view from which we note as many similarities as possible between the new object which we are studying and others, using the concepts previously known. Metacognition could be also a good method for this kind of understanding, after studying a topic you may evaluate the importance and veracity of your information. Making a synthesis of a complex topic is a good way of learning it due to not always people have the time to know about it, and it allows you to read quickly the information and reorganize it to your convenience. The evaluation has a good point as you can exercise your creativity searching and planning a solution or ways to communicate it. As a final commentary, hope all these concepts could make a difference to the new students of the XXI century. 

References 

Pintrich, Paul R. (2002). The Role of metacognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, and assessing. Theory into Practice, 41(4). 219-225.

Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed

https://cambridge-community.org.uk/professional-development/gswmeta/index.html

Benjamin Bloom (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Handbook One, pp. 201-207):