Thinking Skills

Thinking skills are a big focus now in many schools, but very few teachers can actually define exactly what these skills are, and how they are going to facilitate them. This page outlines a number of suggested sets of thinking skills.

 

CORE THINKING SKILLS    (  http://www.adprima.com/thinkskl.htm  )

This site suggests that "thinking skills are relatively specific cognitive operations that can be considered the building blocks of thinking". The site lists the following skills.

FOCUSING SKILLS - attending to selected pieces of information and ignoring others.

1. Defining problems: clarifying needs, discrepancies, or puzzling situations.
2. Setting goals: establishing direction and purpose.

INFORMATION GATHERING SKILLS - bringing to consciousness the relative data needed for cognitive processing.

3. Observing: obtaining information through one or more senses.
4. Formulating questions: seeing new information through inquiry.

REMEMBERING SKILLS - storing and retrieving information.

5. Encoding: storing information in long-term memory.
6. Recalling: retrieving information from long-term memory.

ORGANIZING SKILLS - arranging information so it can be used more effectively.

7. Comparing: noting similarities and differences between or among entities.
8. Classifying: grouping and labeling entities on the basis of their attributes.
9. Ordering: sequencing entities according to a giver criterion.
10. Representing: changing the form, but not the substance of information.

ANALYZING SKILLS - clarifying existing information by examining parts and relationships.

11. Identifying attributes and components: determining characteristics or the parts of something.
12. Identifying relationships and patterns: recognizing ways elements are related.
13. Identifying main ideas: identifying the central element; for example the hierarchy of key ideas in a message or line of reasoning.
14. Identifying errors: recognizing logical fallacies and other mistakes and, where possible, correcting them.

GENERATING SKILLS - producing new information, meaning or ideas.

15. Inferring: going beyond available information to identify what may reasonably be true.
16. Predicting: anticipating next events, or the outcome of a situation.
17. Elaborating: explaining by adding details, examples, or other relevant information.

INTEGRATING SKILLS - connecting and combining information.

18. Summarizing: combining information efficiently into a cohesive statement.
19. Restructuring: changing existing knowledge structures to incorporate new information.

EVALUATING SKILLS - assessing the reasonableness and quality of ideas.

20. Establishing criteria: setting standards for making judgments.
21. Verifying: confirming the accuracy of claims.

An ‘Effective Thinker’ has the skills that allow them to:

• Identify Purpose: Be able to identify the purpose for reasoning
• Identify Distortion and Bias: ability to recognise the factors that cause distortion and bias such as emotion, background, experiences, culture and perspective.
• Evaluate Evidence:  Recognise and evaluate evidence offered to support claims.
• Identify Inferences: identify inferences and the presence or lack of appropriate supporting evidence.
• Identify Assumptions: identify assumptions and the inferences from which they are drawn
• Identify Opinions: identify fact/opinions and the chain of evidence, inference, assumptions and biases that may be involved
• Develop and critique arguments: Develop and critique arguments to promote, defend or critique a point of view.
• Make Decisions: ability to make appropriate decisions considering relevant implications and consequences.

·         Generating and Assessing solutions: ability to generate a range of solutions and ability to assess a range of solutions looking for strengths, weaknesses, and possible outcomes

·         Ask relevant questions: ability to ask a range of relevant questions

·         Simplify complex situations: the ability to simplify complex situations so they can be understood

·         Avoid oversimplifications: the ability to avoid over simplification

·         Make connections into other contexts: Make links between current situation and other contexts making relevant comparisons

·         Clarify relevant language: Clarify relevant contextual language identifying key words and phrases as well as situationaly explicit vocab

·         Clarify issues: ability to examine complex situations, clarify and establish core factors, identifying root, significant and subsidiary issues

·         Discern contradictions: ability to discern contradictions

·         Discern prejudice: ability to examine opinions and discern hidden or underlying prejudice

·         Discern when to suspend judgment: ability to understand when one doesn't know enough and judgement should be suspended till better information is available

·         Develop criteria for evaluation: the ability to examine a situation, and create relevant criteria to use for evaluating some aspect

·         Evaluate credibility of information & sources: ability to evaluate the credibility and validity of information and its sources

·         Make and recognise generalisations: ability to make generalisations where appropriate and to recognise generalisations others have made 

·         Narrow or broaden a focus as appropriate:  ability to broaden or narrow focus as appropriate to ensure all aspects are considered

·         Recognise inadequate information or evidence: ability to examine information and evidence and make valid judgements about its adequacy

·         Weigh evidence: ability to weigh evidence to ascertain its relevance, validity, reliability, appropriateness and accuracy.

It may be helpful to have a look at the page on this website that addresses the question, "What skills do we assess?"

The Importance of Questioning

Questioning and the NZ Curriculum

What is a Good Question?

Question Types

Questioning Rubric

A Questioning Framework

Questioning Skills

Questioning Links