Critical Thinking And Higher Order Learning Essay

Bloom’s taxonomy starts with the bottom of the pyramid: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Bloom’s level of thinking and how can it help you? Anticipate what kind of questions might be asked on a test and their level of difficulty as well analyze your mistakes so that you know what level of thinking was required and are able to determine why you missed a question. Some of those words I remember from high school during science class and some I have learned in graphic design class. The most used one in every class I have been in we evaluated other classmates work as well as our own, which is nice cause you have a more expanded thought process after getting other classmates input, which helps to improve

Critical thinking is described as unbiased, clear and factual thought process that helps any student with any decision-making process. Critical thinking is an essential tool that every student will need to master to continue academic success. There are multiple phases of critical thinking as described by Benjamin Bloom which include remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. The critical thinking process starts by remembering. If we can remember what we read and apply key facts we will be able to move forward to understand what decisions we need to make. From there we can then apply the facts to the decision we have to make and innovate, or create, as needed.

Teaching higher order thinking skills is not a recent need. It is apparent that students, at all levels of education, are lagging in problem-solving and thinking skills. Fragmentation of thinking skills, however, may be the result of critical thinking courses and texts. Every course, especially in content subjects, students should be taught to think logically, analyze and compare, question and evaluate.

Critical thinking includes the component skills of analyzing arguments, making inferences using inductive or deductive reasoning, judging or evaluating, and making decisions or solving problems when evaluating academic content. Background knowledge is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for enabling critical thought within a given subject. Critical thinking involves both cognitive skills and dispositions. These dispositions, which can be seen as attitudes or habits of mind, include open- and fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility, a propensity to seek reason, a desire to be well-informed, and a respect for and willingness to entertain diverse viewpoints. There are both general- and domain-specific aspects of

Bloom’s taxonomy consists of 6 levels of thinking ranging from the lowest to the highest levels of thinking. The first 3 levels of thinking (remembering, understanding, and applying) involve lower level of thinking skills. The last 3 levels involve higher level thinking skills (analyzing, evaluating, and creating). To strengthen your critical thinking skills, you must master the lower level thinking tasks prior to moving onto higher level thinking tasks. To deepen your understanding and become a critical thinker, you can complete the tasks and the question stems associated with each level of thinking.

“What any person in the world can learn almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning” (Bloom, 2017). This belief was held by Dr. Bloom in 1956 when he and his team created Bloom’s Taxonomy. Since then educators have been utilizing these “goals of the learning process” (Clark, 2015) and making assumptions of its usage and implications. I too did have assumptions but have not thought about how I developed them or how they would affect my use of the taxonomy. When starting this reflection I held three assumptions true about Bloom’s Taxonomy. The first is if the educator uses Bloom’s Taxonomy for planning through assessment, then the student will develop higher order thinking skills. Secondly, a student can move on to a higher order thinking level only if they first mastered a lower order thinking level. Thirdly, if educations use different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in lessons students will retain more information. Interestingly, I uncovered two additional assumptions that I did not know I had. The first of which is that the focus on cognitive development of Bloom’s devalues importance of other domains. The other is that Bloom’s Taxonomy is used only by educators in K-12 and college. Here are some things I understand about this subject that informed or changed

Critical thinking is a vital task that must be done in our everyday lives. In “Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking” found at criticalthinking.org, Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul explain critical thinking as “the disciplined art of ensuring that you use the best thinking you are capable of in any set of circumstances”. Even tough there are many different types of methods to achieve a better quality of critical thinking, Dr. Elder and Dr. Paul discuss four specific ones in the article. All strategies, however, force you to put yourself in an uncomfortable and difficult position to develop a better quality of thinking.

Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom at the University of Chicago with the purpose of create higher ways or forms of thinking in education, in which the student or the learner has to reach certain level of thinking and also, to involve knowledge and the development of intellectual skills.

Educators have always asked the basic question “Where do we begin in seeking to improve human thinking?” (Houghton, 2004 as cited in Forehand, 2005). One of the most famous men in the field of education is Benjamin Samuel Bloom. He was recognized for his work with Ralph W. Tyler known as Bloom’s Taxonomy. At the American Psychological Association in 1948, Bloom led a group of educators to develop Bloom’s Taxonomy, a method of classification for thinking behaviors believed to be important in the processes of learning (Forehand, 2005).

Critical thinking is the process of actively conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from the observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication. Critical thinking is a guide to belief and action (Scriven & Paul 1987). In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. Is a special type of thinking, with a particular structure and function that characterizes and differentiates it from other higher abilities as creative thinking, problem solving, and decision making. Critical thinking emerges as a quality strategic thinking that helps trigger the student’s basic skills to successfully deal with various situations they encounter in academia, everyday staff and are constructors of their own learning.

For many years critical thinking has been an important issue in education. Following the 1948 Convention of the American Psychological Association, Benjamin Bloom, an American educational psychologist, took control over the development of the goals of the educational process. The

Thinking， for a person it can be a simple process to reflect or consider something. However, thinking critically is more difficult do. It demonstrates the ability of a person to be reflectively engaging and independent thinking. Critical thinking means how well a person's ability to think clearly, logically and intelligently about what to do or what to believe. In the essay following, I will include a detailed explanation of what critical skill is and clearly evaluate the importance for me of thinking critically when studying at the university supported with a list of references.

Critical thinking is the logically disciplined practice of dynamically and proficiently conceptualizing, relating, combining, and assessing information assembled by observation, knowledge, reflection, interpretation, or communication. There are six steps to critical thinking which includes knowledge, comprehensions, applications, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It involves the use focused groups with similar skills to analyze and evaluate information that you read or hear critically.

Critical thinking is the art of thinking in a manner that is critical. This means that prior to making a decision one must be informed about possible repercussions and/or outcomes, this is particularly true in the case of both employers and an employees. A decision maker must be willing to “choose how to respond to opportunities and problems on the basis of a simplified and approximate account of the situation” (George & Jones, 2005, pg 475), while a stakeholder (in this case an employee) must be willing and able to complete any task that is put before him or her. The stakeholder must also make an informed decision based on their personal code of ethics.

My courses are designed to be learner-centered and often employ nontraditional and experiential content as well as foundational texts. For example, in my Childrens Literature course, I ask students to write about their experience after reading a multicultural text and analyze their responses to the available framework for analysis. This is a way for students to understand how to place their experience within the multicultural perspectives in the light of their experience as a critique of the societal hierarchy. In all my courses, I design assignments that ask students to engage in critical thinking skills by practicing them. For example, I have asked students to bring in books regarding disabilities and diagnose the accuracy of the experience the students undergo with the medical definitions and prognosis. Using assignments such as these, I ask students to problem-solve with methods and information available from various sources, while advancing their understanding of the significance to the discipline.