HIGHER ORDER THINKING

The complexity of our world is continually increasing. In many cases, the problems to be solved become more difficult; the tasks to be done become more complicated; the issues to be resolved become more controversial. We need to be alert all the time and think twice before we leap. That is why our School includes higher order thinking as one of our major concerns for our students this year.

What is thinking? In simple terms, thinking is a mental process allowing us to recall something, to manipulate data and information, to solve problems and to make judgments and decisions. If we have better thought processes, we can construct our world more effectively and efficiently with a free flow of ideas so as to achieve our aims. As an analogy, it is like a great footballer who knows how to dribble the ball skilfully to pass the defenders and shoot at the goal. According to Dr. Benjamin S. Bloom, an American educational psychologist and a significant contributor to the theory of mastery learning, there are six levels of thinking, the lowest one being knowledge recall which many of us do every day. If you still remember the time when you studied at kindergarten or at primary school, you learned a lot of words by heart and were able to recognize pictures or identify numbers through memorization. In many tests, you encountered those tasks asking you to name a person, define a term or list the objects. All these activities require the minimum of brain power to recall information or facts by answering simple questions related to who, what, when or where. As you proceed to higher forms, you begin to make different choices and give explanations requiring you to have a certain degree of understanding and interpretation of the underlying concepts and principles. You learn how to organize your answers and rewrite them in your own words. This is what the second level of thinking is – comprehension.

Higher order thinking requires you to enter into the third level and above, i.e. to apply what you have learned, analyze situations or matter, synthesize ideas or substances, and evaluate the outcomes. All these skills demand a deeper level of thinking from us. We often apply our knowledge to tackle problems in our daily life. For instance, when there is a leakage of water at our home, we try to trace its source and repair the damaged portion of the pipe. We apply formulae or scientific principles to find out the solutions. We create meaningful sentences from given words or phrases. Conducting analysis is similar to playing the role of a detective. You need to look for evidence to discover some clues from the underlying structures or behind the scenes, identify the motives, find out the cause, trying to see how things can be put together. On the other hand, synthesizing ideas is like playing the role of a creator. You combine different parts of ideas into a new concept or make generalizations from them. You build a physical object from its components or make a chemical compound from its elements. You extract the theme of an article or get the moral of a story. In evaluation, you need to be critically-minded as you have to comment on a product or an outcome. When discussing controversial issues, you need to make judgments with justifications based on your values and beliefs and be able to present your opinions convincingly. Critical thinking enables you to develop logical arguments, conduct clear assessments against a specific set of criteria, and perform important decision-making tasks.

With higher order thinking, you ultimately become a problem-solver with an analytical mind, a creative designer and a critical thinker. I hope you all participate actively in class and learn all sorts of higher order thinking skills from your teachers.