TOPIC 1

INTRODUCTION & CONCEPTS

Jabatan Asas Pendidikan

 Learning Outcomes
• Define and explain the concept of thinking
• Discuss the importance of thinking skills
• Discuss the problems of thinking
 Glossary
• Thinking skills
• Thinking
Why we need to think?
• Anyone can have an opinion, but not all
opinions are reliable.
• Which opinion can we rely on?
• Or rather, on whose opinion can we rely on?

“Don’t confuse the truth with the

opinion of the majority.”
-Jean Cocteau-
 You need to build skills and
attitudes that will enable you to
decide for yourself which opinions
to make your own.
As a thoughtful person you must
make a choice about how you will
react to what you see and hear.
 THINKING SKILL
• Thinking Skills are mental skills that allow us
to think in a certain strategy/method in order
to produce effective ideas.
THINKING
• Using the mind to
– Seek meaning/understanding
– Explore various ideas
– Make decision
– Solve problems
– To reflect
– Generate metacognition*

*ability to control thinking process and activities such as applying

strategies, planning, analysis and evaluating in the process of giving
ideas or doing a certain action.
• A mental activity whereby knowledge is achieved
and evaluated through the process of reasoning
(Presseisen, 1987).

• A mental activity with a systematic objective

which involves an individual in the evaluation of
his/her own thinking and others (Chaffee, 1988).

• Thinking requires the ability to seek for

information in the memory and to relate it to
new information (Swartz, 1989).
Socrates’ Practice

• Socrates has the habit

of asking a series of
questions surrounding
a central issue.
• This involves the defense of
one point of view against
another and its oppositional.
 Method of Inquiry - Questioning
• Two levels of questioning:
– Low level: to gather information
• Who / When / What

– High Level: to generate thinking and sound and

reflective answer
• Why/ How
 Activity
Give examples for these two levels of questioning.
Exchange questions with your friend next to you and
identify the differences.
 CONCEPT OF THINKING
Thinking: ‘is a mental process of your mind
in reasoning about something’

We think in order to:

• Understand observed phenomenon
• Form concepts
• Considering something
• …and other mental activities.
 Thinking:
• A mental process which requires knowledge
• Involves a certain mental skill
• Used in solving problems
• Determines behaviour outcome
• Reflects one’s attitude
 Thinking:
A mental process
which requires
knowledge

Involves a certain mental skill

Used in solving problems

Determines
behaviour
outcome

Reflects one’s attitude

We are creatures of habit!

 WHY THINKING SKILLS ARE
IMPORTANT
• Producing quality students for employability
• Making right decisions
• Generates sound and meaningful, critical and
creative ideas
• Facing today’s challenges
High-Level Thinking
Engaging in tasks with
greater cognitive complexity

Low-Level Thinking
Spend most of the time on
factual and procedural recall
Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)
• Higher order thinking occurs when a person relates new
information with the information stored in memory and
interrelates and/or rearranges and extends this information to
achieve a purpose or find possible answers.
• A variety of purposes can be achieved through higher order
thinking:
• deciding what to believe;
• deciding what to do;
• creating a new idea, a new object, or an artistic
expression;
• making a prediction; and
• solving a non routine problem.
Lewis and Smith (1993)
We are awashed with DATA and
INFORMATION…With our ways of thinking,
we always make conclusions based on the
information around us…that at the end…
such conclusions become our
KNOWLEDGE.
 PROBLEMS IN THINKING

Give one case from your experience where

you couldn’t think as much or as good as you
should. Discuss with your friend next to you.
When? Where? And Why does it happen?
 PROBLEMS IN THINKING
Literal thinking (what you should avoid!)

• Focus on the exact

meaning
• Fail to recognize
metaphoric meaning,
sarcasm, figures of
speech.
 PROBLEMS IN THINKING
Due to:
• Ad hoc (abrupt) thinking - limited time for
thinking
• Narrow (restricted) thinking– overcome: debates,
discussion and brainstorming
• Vague thinking (unclear)– efforts to clarify an idea
in various forms
• Confused thinking - overcome: train to organize
ideas in a more systematic manner in oral
and writing exercises as in flow charts
 References
• Moore, B. N. & Parker, R. (2015). Critical Thinking (11th Edition). Dubuque:
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
• Vogel, T. (2014). Breakthrough Thinking: A Guide To Creative Thinking and
Idea Generation. Ohio: FW Media, Inc.
• Allen, J. C. (2013). Emotional intelligence: The emotional intelligence
book.
New York: CreateSpace Independent Publishing.
• Nosich, G. M. (2013). Learning to think things through (4th Edition).
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
• Parks, S., & Black, H. (2012). Building thinking skills (2nd Edition). Cary: The
Critical Thinking Company.
• http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/thinking
- skills/index.html