What Are Higher Order Thinking Skills?

Higher Order Thinking Skills are a concept that had been introduced by the American author Benjamin Bloom in 1956 in his book. The idea is presented to inculcate critical and creative reasoning power in students to make them rational and creative individuals for tomorrow’s future. Higher-order thinking skills refer to the in-depth, multi-dimensional, all-inclusive, and thinking out of the box pattern rather than relying upon a rote learning system.

The concept prioritizes educators, teachers, and parents to inculcate the habit of analyzing, reasoning, comparing sources of facts, and deducing their solutions to problems in a rational manner. The concept discourages the rote learning process in the learning system.

Higher Order Thinking Skills accelerating Human wisdom:

Higher Order Thinking Skills play a formidable role in accelerating human wisdom in multiple ways.  The child, who has been taught and blessed with the inculcation of Higher Order Thinking Skills in teaching, tends to evaluate alternatives in every decision. Those possessors of the skills never comply and rely upon the pre-designed facts of the issue. The person seeks to consider several alternatives before embarking on opting for the best suitable option.

The adoption of this skill helps the individuals to outperform in academic, professional, and personal life. The Higher Order Thinking Skills help them to synthesize their knowledge and adopt the best suitable alternatives in a rational manner. A rote learner always relies upon following other’s directives without comprehending their own situation, capabilities, and resources. Whereas, the creative and rational thinker always tries to comprehend the situation in a wise manner.

For this reason, they tend to overcome difficulties and bring easiness to their path. Thus, Higher Order Thinking Skills nurture and increase the wisdom of the people. It multiplies Human wisdom and makes the person be critical and creative in resolving issues.

Why are Higher Order Thinking Skills Important?

Higher Order Thinking Skills are important for many reasons. One of the foremost requirements for adopting this skill is because of the increasing advancement in technologies and developmental projects. The increasing competency in the advancement and digitalization era requires huge levels of reliance on adopting critical thinking skills in day-to-day life. Following are some reasons, which make it mandatory to adopt these thinking skills:

1. Sharpen the multi-tasking ability:

Higher Order Thinking Skills enhance the ability of multi-tasking ability. Though, psychologists and researchers discourage involvement in multi-tasking activities. But, for some reasons, due to the higher factors involved in the current developmental stage, a person has to think from several perspectives. The ability to think from multi-perspectives comes with the inculcation of the multitasking ability.

• Higher-order thinking skills correspond with wisdom:

It is directly corresponding to the enhancement of wisdom. Wisdom is required to resolve the peculiar delicate issues of daily life. The adoption of Higher Order Thinking Skills helps in creating tolerance and patience to endure the obstacles of problems easily. The adopted wisdom through the set of skills helps to deal with issues tacitly.

• Increases good judgment:

Good judgment is necessary to rationally tackle day-to-day issues. More often, people tend to adopt reactionary behavior toward problems and dealings. The reactionary behavior harms the person at many levels. For this reason, these thinking skills help in increasing good judgment.

The person does not jump hassle toward bigger decisions without analysis and evaluation. The best-suited response toward a problem is thus adopted with the quality of being good in judgments and analysis. Good judgment requires a huge investment of wisdom as input. This wisdom is adopted as a by-product of the higher potential of these thinking skills.

• Increasing passion:

Passion is the mandatory state of heart that must be there while pursuing anything in life. It helps in igniting the potential and zeal for investing much more energy than the requirements. In the current stage of development, one cannot be succeeded in life without passion. Passion increases the craving for in-depth research and analysis of knowledge.

Higher Order Thinking Skills develop a passion for the involved activity. The whole involvement of the brain in analyzing and evaluating the knowledge creates eventual passion and zeal in a person. Thus, the eventual passion and zeal are created with the full involvement of the brain in critical thinking.

• Enhances the quality of being solution-oriented:

The possessor of these thinking skills has the ability to adopt solution-oriented personalities.  The person never feels scared of problems, but considers them a part of life.  The countenance of the person does not seem grumpy and moody. He/she embraces uncertainties with greater patience and tolerance.  Because their wisdom guides/her toward the adoption of better approaches.  Thus, the Higher Order Thinking Skills help to minimize the frowning face and the person never whines about unnecessary issues in life. 

How These thinking skills can be adopted? 

Higher Order Thinking Skills can be nurtured and inculcated at any stage of the child.  But the researchers prefer to inculcate this learning process from the earlier stage of a child.  It programs the child in the further developmental stages to think out of the box.  The thinking approach from multi-perspectives helps in adopting the quality of comparing and contrasting the facts and figures. 

The rote learning process eventually is subjected to be diminished with the focus on Higher Order Thinking Skills.  Thus, it can adopt through teaching methods that stress the student’s critical and creative reasoning power rather than rote learning. 

In short, these thinking skills are mandatory to be acquired in the current developmental period.  The rote learners are subjected to being deprived of attaining a competitive edge over creative minds.  Likewise, the wisdom of humans is subjected to diminish gradually.  Lastly, the cognitive ability of the students gets better with the reliance on higher-order thinking skills in the learning process.  Thus, to enhance the wisdom and knowledge of the people, educators need to nurture and promote these thinking skills in learning processes.