Thinking Skills and Learning

Before discussing how to develop thinking skills, this article asks two foundational questions. What is learning? What kinds of thinking skills exist? The answers shape every choice a teacher makes about lesson design.

What learning is

Three common views of learning exist. Each leads to a different kind of teaching.

View 1: Memorizing facts. Many teachers and parents assume that learning happens when a child memorizes a textbook. The child can repeat the content. Therefore, they have learned. This is rote learning.

Rote learning is real but limited. The child who memorized cannot necessarily understand or apply. They have stored words but may not have built understanding.

View 2: Permanent change in behavior (behaviorism). Behaviorist psychology defined learning as a permanent change in behavior. If a child can do something they could not do before, learning has occurred.

This view has merit. It points at outcomes. It avoids the trap of accepting “the child claims to know it” as evidence. The change must be visible.

View 3: Kolb’s experiential view. David Kolb defined learning more demanding:

Two requirements: experience and transformation. Without experience, there is no learning. Without using the experience to change something (the student’s understanding, the student’s behavior, the student’s view of the world), the experience does not become learning.

Kolb’s work was mostly on adult learning (andragogy). But the principle applies to all ages. Students who watch a teacher and absorb words have not really learned. Students who experience something and use it to transform their understanding have.

’s link to earlier course material: experience is what builds neural connections. The chapter on adolescent brains made this point. Kolb’s experiential learning theory is consistent with the brain science.

Pedagogy and andragogy

A small terminology note. Two words describe how people learn at different stages.

Pedagogy. How children learn. The teacher leads. The student receives, with appropriate scaffolding for the child’s stage of development.

Andragogy. How adults learn. The adult brings experience. They direct their own learning. The teacher (or facilitator) supports rather than transmits.

The question for teachers of secondary school students: which model fits adolescents?

’s answer: a coordination of both. Adolescents are not fully adults, but they are not children either. They have some experience to bring. They can self-direct to some degree. They still need scaffolding and support.

A secondary teacher who treats adolescents as small children misses their growing capacity for self-direction. A secondary teacher who treats them as fully adult misses their need for guidance. Coordination is the right balance.

The thinking skills family

Covers seven terms commonly used to describe thinking skills. Each term emphasizes a different aspect.

1. Critical thinking

Critical thinking is also called logical thinking and analytical thinking. The core: testing claims against evidence and being willing to change views when evidence demands it.

A student practicing critical thinking does not accept what they read at face value. They ask: who said this? What is the evidence? Are there other interpretations? Should I change my view?

2. Reflection

Reflection is thinking about thinking. A reflective student does more than produce work; they evaluate their own work, notice their own habits, and adjust.

Reflection is a higher-level skill. Many people produce thoughts and actions without ever monitoring them. Reflection is the deliberate act of stepping back and looking.

A reflective student catches their own errors. They notice when their reasoning is sloppy. They self-correct.

3. Metacognition

Metacognition overlaps with reflection but goes further. It includes:

1. Knowledge about how thinking works.
2. Disposition to actually monitor one’s thinking.
3. Skills to assess and adjust thinking.

The difference between reflection and metacognition: reflection is a habit (the disposition to monitor). Metacognition is the full set of capabilities, including the knowledge and skills, not just the habit.

A metacognitive student knows that working memory has limits. They use that knowledge to break complex tasks into smaller parts. They monitor whether their strategy is working. They switch strategies when needed.

4. Transfer

Transfer is taking what you learned in one context and using it in another. A student who learned essay writing in Urdu transfers that skill to writing essays in English. A student who learned problem-solving in math transfers it to science problems.

Example: computer learning. Many people “learn” Microsoft Excel in the sense that they can describe operations. But ask them to use Excel for a real project, and they cannot. The knowledge has not transferred to actual use.

Transferable skills are those that work across subjects and contexts. Non-transferable knowledge is stuck in the original context.

A teacher who emphasizes transfer designs lessons that ask students to use what they learned in new situations. Skills practiced in one subject are explicitly applied to others.

5. Bloom’s taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy is mentioned as a term often used for thinking skills. Bloom’s levels (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating) describe a hierarchy of thinking.

Bloom’s taxonomy was covered in detail earlier in this guide. The reminder here: when people talk about “higher-level thinking” or “higher-order thinking,” they often mean the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Analysis, evaluation, and creation require more cognitive work than remembering or understanding.

A teacher who uses Bloom’s taxonomy is, in effect, building thinking skills. Each higher level demands more sophisticated thinking.

6. Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is “thinking outside the box.” Edward de Bono coined the term. It refers to creative, divergent thinking that does not follow obvious paths.

Conventional description. “It is brown, has four legs, and a flat top.” This describes the structure.

Lateral description. “It is the place where my family eats together. It is the conference table where we make decisions.” This describes function or context, going beyond structure.

A student practicing lateral thinking can see things from multiple angles. They generate unusual associations. They find unexpected connections.

7. Six thinking hats

The six thinking hats is a specific strategy (also from Edward de Bono) for developing lateral thinking. Each “hat” represents a different mode of thinking:

1. White hat: facts and information.
2. Red hat: feelings and emotions.
3. Black hat: caution and critical judgment.
4. Yellow hat: optimism and benefits.
5. Green hat: creativity and new ideas.
6. Blue hat: managing the thinking process.

A class working through a problem can wear each hat in turn, exploring the issue from each angle. This forces multiple perspectives, even from people who normally focus on only one.

The strategy is concrete. A teacher can introduce it in an hour and use it across many lessons. It develops lateral thinking with structure.

How thinking skills connect to learning

The seven terms describe different facets of one bigger picture. Real learning produces all of them.

A student who has truly learned can:

1. Apply critical thinking to new claims they encounter.
2. Reflect on their own work and improve it.
3. Use metacognition to choose strategies that fit the task.
4. Transfer what they know to new contexts.
5. Move up Bloom’s levels depending on the task.
6. Think laterally when straightforward approaches fail.
7. Adopt different perspectives like the six thinking hats.

A student who has only memorized cannot do any of these. They have content but not the habits of mind.

The teacher’s job is to build the habits. Content alone is not the goal.

What teachers must change

This is a shift from teacher-centered to student-centered teaching. The teacher’s quantity of speaking is not the measure of learning. The student’s quantity of thinking, doing, and experiencing is.

A class period where the teacher talks for 35 minutes and students work for 5 minutes produces less learning than a class period where the teacher talks for 10 minutes and students work for 30. The first looks like efficient teaching. The second is what actually produces thinking skills.

This connects back to Kolb’s definition. Without experience, no learning. The student must experience thinking, struggling with problems, evaluating evidence, transferring skills. The teacher’s job is to create those experiences.

Flashcard

What are the seven terms used to describe thinking skills?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Critical thinking, reflection, metacognition, transfer, Bloom’s taxonomy, lateral thinking, six thinking hats

1. Critical thinking: assessing authenticity through evidence.

2. Reflection: monitoring one’s own thinking.

3. Metacognition: full capabilities for thinking about thinking.

4. Transfer: applying skills across subjects.

5. Bloom’s taxonomy: hierarchical levels of thinking.

6. Lateral thinking: thinking outside the box.

7. Six thinking hats: a strategy for multiple perspectives.

A complete set of thinking skills includes all seven.

Generating ideas and big ideas

Thinking skills develop best when:

1. The unit focuses on big ideas (covered in chapter on Big Ideas in Curriculum).
2. Students engage with generating topics (rich enough to extend).
3. Essential questions drive the work (open, important, controversial).

A unit that meets these conditions naturally builds thinking skills. Students must analyze, evaluate, transfer, and reflect to engage with the work.

A unit without these (just content coverage) does not build thinking skills. The work is too shallow.

This is one more argument for big-ideas teaching. It goes beyond depth of content. It is about depth of thinking.