Higher Thinking Skills Through IT-Based Projects

Higher-Order Thinking Skills


Deep and Meaningful Thinking
With the widespread use of computers in the 21st century, human beings can use technology to go beyond the kind of rationality that is best performed by machines to the kind of thinking that is inventive, productive, and ethical.

Most educators would agree that their students are not as proficient at these kinds of thinking as they would like them to be. Textbooks and other teaching materials often consist of activities that require low-level skills such as recall and memorization. The academic standards movement of the last decade has focused interest on the development of higher-order thinking skills through more rigorous academic expectations. These kinds of skills can be grouped into three categories.

Analysis >
Analysis, as defined by Robert Marzano, consists of matching, classifying, error analysis, generalizing, and specifying. By engaging in these processes, learners can use what they are learning to create new insights and invent ways of using what they have learned in new situations. When people use analysis skills to determine the validity and worth of a particular piece of information, they are engaging in critical thinking. Another type of analysis is argumentation, the presenting of claims and evidence persuading others of a point of view.

Using Knowledge >
The purpose of having knowledge is to use it. Traditional educational practices assumed that students needed a considerable amount of knowledge in order to do anything with it. Unfortunately, students rarely moved past the learning of facts, accumulating more and more of what philosopher Alfred Lord Whitehead called “inert knowledge.”

Using knowledge is the fun, and frustrating, part of learning. Project-based learning allows students to practice higher-order thinking and use knowledge. The processes included in this category are decision making, problem solving, experimental inquiry, and investigation. Creativity, another type of complex thinking, is often described as a special type of problem solving.

Metacognition >
Metacognition, or “thinking about thinking” refers to the mental processes that control and regulate how people think. Metacognition is especially important in project-based learning because students must make decisions about what strategies to use and how to use them. The three components of metacognition are: awareness, planning and goal setting, and monitoring. Students who are metacognitively aware are able to describe how they make decisions and are able to adjust the strategies they use when they are not successful.

Thinking with Data >
In the 21st century, using data involves more than adding numbers and performing statistical analyses. It requires logical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Students must learn to think with all kinds of data responsibly in order to make good decisions in their personal lives and to participate fully in debates about the political, social, and environmental issues of contemporary life.

RESOURCE- BASED PROJECTS
In these projects, the teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an content expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information. only when necessary for the active learning process does the teacher step in to supply data or information. The general flow of events in resource-based projects is:
1. The teacher determine the topic for the examination of the class (e.g. definition of “man”)
2. The teacher presents the problem to the class.
3. The students find information on the problem/ questions.
4. Students organize their information in response to the problem/questions.
Relating to finding information, the central principle is to make the students go beyond the textbook and curriculum materials. Students are also encouraged to go to the library, particularly to the modern extension of the modern library, the internet.
Furthermore, the inquiry-based or discovery approach is given importance in resource-based projects. This requires that the students, individually or cooperatively with members of his group, relate gathered information to the ‘real world.’
Finally, the process is given more importance than the project product. It doesn’t matter for example, if each group comes up with different answers to the problem (e.g. the definition of man). What matters are the varied sources of information, the line of thinking and the ability to argue in defense of their answers.
The table below can provide the difference between the traditional and resource-based learning approach to instruction.
Traditional learning model Resource-based learning model
Teacher is expert and information provider Teacher is a guide and facilitator
Textbook is key source of information Sources are varied (print, video, internet, etc.)
Focus on facts, information is packaged, neat parcels Focus on learning inquiry/ quest/ discovery
The product is the be-all and end-all of learning Emphasis on process
Assessment is quantitative Assessment is quantitative and qualitative

Higher-Order Thinking -- The way that Knowing becomes Learning

Recalling facts and memorizing dates are “wading-pool” expeditions into learning. When students dive deep into learning, it is through depth of thought.

The "order" in Higher-Order is..

Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation

These levels (a hierarchy) represent successively more complex thought processes.

Encouraging students to engage in successively more complex thought seems to be valued more highly than pressuring students to memorize just the right answer.

One reason for valuing thoughts such as Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation is that these thoughts are the basis of planning and problem solving.
One way that teachers encourage Higher-order Thinking is by asking Higher-Order Questions.
Multiple Intelligences

Another way that Higher-order Thinking is developed is through a wide range of learning experience. Experiences that are mapped to oral language, i.e., the teacher talking and the children daydreaming (I mean "listening"); limits sensory input to only one channel.

And, if the students are reading, they are translating printed words into sub vocalized sounds, still more Verbal/ Linguistic input.

But, what happens if Verbal/ Linguistic skills are less developed in some children. Well, nothing.

Minimal learning, that is. Teachers that broaden and deepen instruction by asking Higher-Order Questions, also widen instruction and skill practice by mapping learning to many kinds of sensory, motor, and experience channels.

This is what some call "Learning Styles."

This is what has come to be know as "Multiple Intelligences."

Multiple Intelligences are real-world, street-smart, experience skills. Here is a list (although folks keep “discovering” new intelligences. I think that they are just paying better attention to children and becoming more perceptive about learning. Here is a list: (Hint: we just make up new intelligences as we go. The abilities of children to learn are like closets: No matter how many more we build, the learning closets are always filled. )

Tactile/ Kinesthetic/ Proprioceptive/ Hands-on
Musical/ Rhythmic/ Performance
Intrapersonal/ Social
Visual/ Spatial/ Symbolic
Verbal/ Linguistic/ Metaphorical
Mathematical/ Logical/ Symbolic
Intrapersonal/ Self-Awareness/ Personal Meaning
Naturalistic/ World of Nature
Spiritual/ Transpersonal

It doesn't really matter that every time we list these Intelligences that we come up with a new order and additional components. This just shows that we are aware that children have many styles, modes and channels for learning. And, this shows that we value learning to be more than the facts that we can teach children to repeat.