Critical Reflection on Higher Order Thinking

It is important for students to engage in a level of higher order thinking. This type of thinking moves beyond simply describing material that is being presented. It stimulates students to move beyond the obvious, be creative and analyse information. It also involves a student’s ability to interpret information in a way to make them understand, and it also encourages individual learning. This higher order thinking is characterised in Blooms Taxonomy, where students are at the prime of learning when they are given their own chance to be creative, and interpret information for themselves, and at their own ace and level. This level of learning must be encouraged by the teacher in order to achieve the best results.Higher order thinking is compared to lower order thinking, where lower order thinking is simply the recollection of facts and figures. Alternatively, higher order thinking is the process by which students combine these facts and ideas and synthesise, generalise, explain, hypothesise or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation. Higher order thinking promotes this construction of knowledge, where the outcomes are not always predictable, meaning that each student will present a different result. Despite this, engagement in this type of thinking is important in developing student understanding.As a teacher, it is important for to encourage students to achieve this higher order thinking. Simply describing information is not the way to implant this information into their minds. Students need to be encouraged to interpret and understand material in their own way, as this should guarantee information retention. It may involve group work, the use of technology or a variety of teaching skills.