Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

Chapter 8: Teaching Effective Thinking Strategies

THINKING: problem solving, decision making, reading, reflecting, making predictions about what might happen.

Thinking skills are not mysterious entities existing somewhere in the mind. Nor are they like mental muscles that have a physical presence in the brain. What the term refers to is the human capacity to think in conscious ways to achieve certain purposes. Such processes include remembering, questioning, forming concepts, planning, reasoning, imagining, solving problems, making decisions and judgments, translating thoughts into words and so on.

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THINKING SKILLS

THINKING SKILLS

Critical thinkingCritical thinking

Creative ThinkingCreative ThinkingMetacognitionMetacognition

Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

1. Critical thinking: “Critical thinking is the disciplined mental activity of evaluating arguments [information] or propositions and making judgments that can guide the development of beliefs and taking action.” Ennis (1992)

Critical thinking is based on concepts and principles, not on hard and fast, or step-by-step, procedures.

2. Creative Thinking : ability to imagine or invent something new. ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple, good, practical ideas that no one

seems to have thought of yet.

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Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

Creative thinking techniquesThere is no limit to ways there are of thinking creatively. Some techniques you can begin with are:

Brainstorm ideas on one topic onto a large piece of paper: don't edit these. Just write them down.

Allowing yourself to play with an idea whilst you go for a walk.

Draw or paint a theory on paper.

Ask the same question at least twenty times and give a different answer each time.

Combine some of the features of two different objects or ideas to see if you can create several more.

Change your routine. Do things a different way. Walk a different route to college.

Let your mind be influenced by new stimuli such as music you do not usually listen to.

Be open to ideas when they are still new: look for ways of making things work and pushing the idea to its limits.

Ask questions such as 'what if….?' Or 'supposing….?'.

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Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

3. Metacognition : involves thinking about one’s own thinking.

Metacognition is developed when pupils are helped to be strategic in organizing their activities and are encouraged to reflect before, during and after problem-solving processes.

Metacognitive knowledge involves executive monitoring processes directed at the acquisition of information about thinking processes. They involve decisions that help 

to identify the task on which one is currently working, 

to check on current progress of that work, 

to evaluate that progress, and 

to predict what the outcome of that progress will be. 

 

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knowledge of oneself, for example of what one knows, what one has learnt, what one can and cannot do and ways

to improve one’s learning or achievement

skills of recognizing problems, representing features of problems, planning what to do in

trying to solve problems, monitoring progress and evaluating the outcomes of

one’s own thinking or problem-solving activity

Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

Thinking Skills Activities

1.Brainstorming - a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.

2. Flexible Thinking - characteristic of high-level resilience. This is the ability to consider multiple perspectives, to consider different possible understandings of a situation or problem, as well as resulting different possibilities for action.

3. Forecasting – making statements about events whose actual outcomes (typically) have not yet been observed. Brainstorm of possible causes and effects of certain idea or situation.

4. Inductive Thinking - the process of coming up with a conclusion based on a series of events that repeat.

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Christina a/p Latsoomanan@Meshek LP 111109

5. Inference making – activity of logical thinking and requires assumption of concept and general ideas step-by-step to get the solution.

6. Deductive Thinking - process of coming up with a conclusion based on facts that have already been shown to be true. Hence, your conclusion will always be true.

7. Problem solving- mental process of creating a solution to a problem. It is a special form of problem solving in which the solution is independently created rather than learned with assistance.

8. Decision Making - mental processes or thinking skill of resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios

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