你没听过的HOTS（高级思维能力）：更高级的思维能力
2014-08-29 16:52阅读：
可能写出一篇思辨性的文章来展示他们对某一命题的分析能力或者评价能力。这是因为他们仅仅掌握了最低级的两种思维能力——记忆能力和理解能力——不幸的是这通常恰恰是传统教育所注重的。仅仅能够回忆起一些知识却不能运用它,这并不是真正学会了这些知识。
这些年通过指导高中生的大学规划和申请，我发现所谓的大学文章——统称为“个人陈述”——要求学生去分析他们所处的环境、思考他们的经历、评价他们所取得的成就或为何缺乏成就、畅想未来，并创造出个性化的道路来达到他们学业目标和人生目标。简而言之，写大学论文是需要高级思维能力的。很多学生发现写个人陈述是一件令人沮丧的事情，那是因为他们还没有掌握需要在论文中展现出来的这些高级思维能力。
从大学招生官的角度来看，他或她的任务就是挑选出来这样的学生：他们可以使自己在拥有同样的平均成绩和考试分数的海量申请者中脱颖而出。
大学招生官不仅对申请者的分数感兴趣，也看重申请者是否是一个具有深刻思想和独特能力的人，而这只能通过他的文章展现出来。
HOTS和LOTS是学生在小学和中学时期所培养的、并将延伸到高等教育中的，认知能力或者叫思考能力。这些思维能力的分类是基于教育心理学家和国际活动家本杰明?布鲁姆（1913年至1999年）的研究成果。本杰明?布鲁姆认为教育是实现人类潜力的途径。他在芝加哥大学从事教学与研究三十余载，在此期间他领导了认知心理学家对教学目标、学习活动和目标的分类方法的命题研究，这就是布鲁姆分类学
布鲁姆分类学包含三个学习范畴：认知范畴（知识或思考），情感范畴（态度或情感），精神运动能力范畴（技巧或运动）。这篇文章中我们只涉及到认知范畴，布鲁姆和他的学生把思维能力从低到高划分为以下六个级别：记忆、理解、运用、分析、评价和创造（由克拉斯沃尔和安德森2001年修订）。
现今课堂中的HOTS和LOTS
自1956年本杰明?布鲁姆发表了他的研究的第一卷开始，他关于可衡量的学习目标的研究就已经在课程设计和学习目标的评估上，引导了全世界几代教育学家。下面是这些思维能力的定义，一些动词通常指的是它们的隐含意义，以及用于开发这些能力的课堂活动的一些例子。
记忆：通过重复或者死记硬背来学习，并且从长期记忆中回想出相关知识。
动词：定义，寻找，识别，清单，命名和认识。
例如：学习字母表，记一首歌，背诵乘法口诀，识别左右，回想事实，回答一些“人物、事件、地点、时间”的问题。
理解：从口头、书面和图案信息中，通过分类、解释、说明和阐明事实的办法来建构意义。
动词：分类，描述，举例，释义和总结
例如：区分数列，识别前后缀，排列事件顺序，描述事实和理解字面意义
运用：通过已知事实、规则或者技巧，运用不同的办法或者是在新环境下来解决问题。执行、实施某一过程。
动词：构造、证明、实行、修改、促进和解决
例如：能运用语法知识写出语法正确的句子并清楚地表达想法，写出南北战争的时间表，展示云是如何形成的
分析：把事物细分成组成部分，通过微分，组织和归因，而分辨出各部分是如何彼此关联并构成一个整体或者一个目标。
动词：分析，比较，分解，检查，合成和构建。
例如：通过比较和对比分析两个事物的相似之处和差别，建立因果联系，分析不同观点，通过上下文的关联而得出结论。
创造：把各部分整合在一起形成一个连贯的或者功能性整体，把各因素重新排列，通过生成、设计或生产来构建
动词：创作、设计、想象、发明、规划和策划
例如：为故事设计一个不一样的结局，创作一首歌，修饰一个故事或者写一篇文章，创建一个iPhone手机应用程序，设计一个科学项目，为美国历史课堂而写一个剧本或者拍摄一段视频，为英语课堂上的莎士比亚课程而设计一个舞会
这些涉及到高级思维能力的活动往往需要调动多个能力才能完成，很多任务结合了逻辑能力、批判能力、沉思和创造能力。当老师让她六年级的学生写一篇关于偷袭珍珠港的报导时,她就是在布置一个需要运用高级思维能力来完成的作业,当一个物理老师布置一个需要构建过山车模型的作业的时候，情况亦然。
喜欢发现一些技术性错误的孩子们，总是有各种各样的机会和活动，来提高自己的低级思维能力和培养高级思维能力，同时享受着由此带来的快乐。
记忆：书签，谷歌搜索，精彩瞬间，社交网络
理解：标注，博客日志，分类，推特
运用：下载，播放，运行，分享，上传
分析：破解，链接，混搭，逆向工程，卷标，验证
评价：α/β测试，协作/网络，调节，回顾
创造：动漫，导演/制作，拍摄，混合/混音，程序设计，流媒体，博客
IV.培养课堂之外的解决问题的能力
课堂以外的生活中,鼓励孩子创建一个博客与他人讨论所关心的问题,或者建立一个俱乐部来解决一个问题或满足小区的某一迫切需要。这些活动是锻炼孩子高级思维能力的有效方法，因为这些活动首先是需要孩子发现问题，其次分析的问题前因后果，评价现有的资源，选择一个合适的方法或者有效的途径，最终制作方案并实施解决办法。
这些活动不仅能促进孩子的批判性思维能力，并且能提高他们的沟通、合作和创造性解决问题的能力。通过与他人紧密合作，孩子可以学习不同的想法和从不同的角度思考问题，这都会促使他们进行横向的联想思维，而不仅仅是纵向的垂直思维，因此他们可以考虑到不同的可能性，这些可能是他们独自想不出来的。这些活动可以帮助孩子培养高级思维能力去解决复杂的现实问题，无论是当地问题还是全球问题，同时可以培养他们的情商，这比智商还重要。
V. 结论：高级思维能力和未来的思想家
低级思维能力通常是通过被动学习和独自练习所得到的，而高级思维能力需要主动学习和共同协作。高级思维能力比较难培养，但是这些能力却能帮助学生更好地解决问题，因为他们可以把某一领域的技巧转移到另一领域，可以从一个熟悉的情景运用到一个全新的、不同的情景中，或者是不同的环境条件下，使他们变为跨学科的思考者。
现今面临的前所未有的挑战——气候变化，物种灭绝，能源危机，经济崩溃，贫穷，武装冲突，国际恐怖主义，核武器扩散——往往是相互关联并且非常复杂的问题
；因此，需要跨学科的、多维的解决方案。如今的社会比以往任何时候都更需要培养明天的创造性思考者以遏制日趋威胁着人类未来的、全世界范围内的社会、政治、经济和环境问题。
You Want HOTS:Develop Higher
Order Thinking Skills
Author：Annette Hu, Senior Academic
CounselorAdmissions Consultant at ThinkTank Learning
Overview
When I say to my students “You want HOTS, not just LOTS,” I
encourage them to acquire higher order thinking skills which are
grounded in lower order thinking skills.
Below are six levels of thinking skills from the lowest to the
highest:
? LOTS (lower order
thinking skills): remembering,
understanding,applying
? HOTS (higher order
thinking skills): analyzing,
evaluating,creating
When students are unable to apply grammar rules they have
learned to write grammatically correct sentences, let alone
thoughtful passages to demonstrate their abilities to
analyzeevaluate a given topic, this is because they acquired only
the two lowest order thinking
skills--rememberingunderstanding--which unfortunately are
too often the focus of traditional education. Being able to recall
something but not being able to apply that knowledge is not true
knowing.
After years of working with high school students on college
planningapplications, I have come to see that the so-called college
essay--collectively known as “personal statement”--requires
students to analyze their environments, reflect on their
experiences, evaluate their accomplishmentslack thereof, envision
their futures, andpersonalized pathways to reach their academic
objectiveslife goals. In short, writing college essays requires
HOTS. Many students find writing personal statements daunting
because they have not acquired HOTS in order demonstrate these
skills in their essays.
Looking at this from a college admissions officer’s point of
view: hisher task is tocandidates who can distinguish themselves
from a sea of applicants with similar gradestest scores. The
college admissions office is not only interested in an applicant’s
numbers but also in the applicant as a person who has thoughtful
ideasunique abilities which can only be revealed through the
essays.
HOTSLOTS in Bloom’s Taxonomy
HOTSLOTS are cognitivethinking skills that students develop
throughout elementarysecondary schools,continue into higher
education. The classification of these thinking skills is based on
the research of educational psychologistinternational
activist Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999). Benjamin Bloom saw education
as a way to realize human potential. He spent more than thirty
years teachingresearching at the University of Chicago, during
which he led a team of cognitive psychologists in a study of
educational goalsdeveloped a method of classification for learning
activitiesobjectives known as Bloom’s taxonomy.
Bloom’s taxonomy contains three learning domains: cognitive
(knowledgethe thinking domain), affective (attitudethe feeling
domain),psychomotor (skillsthe physical domain). This article will
only touch on the cognitive domain for which Bloomhis students
outlined a hierarchy of six thinking skills from the lowest to the
highest: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing,
evaluating,creating (revised by KrathwohlAnderson in
2001).
HOTSLOTS in Today’s Classroom
Since the publication of the first volume of his research in
1956, Benjamin Bloom’s study of measurable learning objectives has
been guiding generations of educators in the designs of
curriculaevaluations of learning goals throughout the world. Below
are definitions of these thinking skills, some of the verbs
commonly used to connote them,some examples of classroom activities
used to develop these skills.
? Remembering: learning by repetitionrote
memorizationrecalling relevant knowledge from long-term
memory
- Verbs: defining, finding, identifying, listing,
naming,recognizing
- Ex. learning the alphabet, remembering a song,
memorizing the multiplication table, telling left from right,
recalling facts,answering “who, what, where, when” questions
? Understanding: constructing meaning from oral,
written,graphic messages through classifying, explaining,
illustrating,interpreting facts
- Verbs: categorizing, describing, exemplifying,
paraphrasing,summarizing
- Ex: identifying number pattern, recognizing
prefixessuffixes, discerning sequence of event, acknowledging
facts,comprehending literal meaning
? Applying: solving problems by applying acquired facts,
rules,techniques in a different waya in new situation; carrying out
a procedure through executing
- Verbs: constructing, demonstrating, implementing, modifying,
simulating,solving
- Ex: applying grammar rules to write grammatically correct
sentences to clearly communicate ideas, making a timeline of the
Civil War,demonstrating how clouds are formed
? Analyzing: breaking material into constituent parts,
determining how the parts relate to one anotherto an overall
structurepurpose through differentiating,
organizing,attributing
- Verbs: analyzing, comparing, deconstructing, examining,
integrating,structuring
- Ex: comparingcontrasting to determine how two things are
similardissimilar, establishing causeeffect relationship,
distinguishing different perspectives,drawing conclusions by
checking context clues
? Evaluating: presentingdefending opinions by making
judgments based on criteriastandards, checking validity of
ideas,critiquing quality of work
- Verbs: experimenting, hypothesizing, judging, moderating,
predicting,testing
- Ex: predicting what may happen next in a storyprocedure,
generating possibilities in scientific experiment,making inferences
to discover meaning through subtext
? Creating: putting elements together to form a
coherentfunctional whole; reorganizing elements into a new
patternstructure through generating,
designing,producing
- Verbs: composing, devising, imagining, inventing,
planning,strategizing
- Ex: creating an alternate ending for a story, composing
a song, crafting a storywriting an essay, making an iPhone
application, designing a science project, writing a scriptshooting
a video for a US History class project,planning an Elizabethan
banquet for an English class’s Shakespeare unit.
Many of these HOTS activities require more than one skill to
perform,many of the tasks combine logical, critical,
reflective,creative thinking skills. When a teacher asks her
sixth-grade students to write a newspaper story of the attack on
Pearl Harbor, she is giving a HOTS assignment, so is a physics
teacher who assigns a group project to build a model roller
coaster.
Children whoto tinker with technology can find a variety of
opportunitiesactivities to improve their LOTSdevelop their HOTS
while having fun:
- Remembering: bookmarking, googling, highlighting, social
networking
- Understanding: annotating, blog journaling,
categorizing, Tweeting
- Applying: loading, playing, runningoperating, sharing,
uploading
- Analyzing: cracking, linking, mashing,
reserve-engineering, tagging, validating
- Evaluating: alpha/beta testing,
collaborating/networking, moderating, reviewing
- Creating: animating, directing/producing, filming,
mixing/remixing, programming, streaming, blogging
Develop Problem-Solving Skills Outside the
Classroom
Outside the classroom, encourage children to start a blog
with others to discuss an issue they care about,form a club to
solve a problemmeet a dire need in the community. These activities
are good ways to improve children’s HOTS because such activities
require children to first identify a problem, then analyze
causeseffects associated with the problem, evaluate available
resources, decide on an appropriate approachan effective
method,finally strategize a planimplement a solution.
Such activities not only can sharpen your children’s critical
thinking skills but also improve their skills in communication,
collaboration,creative problem-solving. By working closely with
others, children can learn divergent ideassee different
perspectives which may lead them to engage in lateralassociative
thinking, not just verticallinear reasoning,thus allow them to
consider possibilities they may not be able to think of on their
own. These activities can help children develop HOTS to deal
with complex real-world problems, from local to global, also to
cultivate their EQ which is more important than IQ.
Conclusion: HOTSTomorrow’s Thinkers
LOTS are often acquired through passive learningsolitary
practicing while HOTS require active learningcollaborative effort.
HOTS are harder to develop but these skills enable students to
become better at problem solving because they are able to transfer
skills from one area to another areafrom a familiar situation to
newdifferent situationsunder different sets of circumstances,
making them multidisciplinary thinkers.
Today’s unprecedented challenges--climate change, species
extinction, energy crisis, economic collapse, poverty, armed
conflict, international terrorism,nuclear weapons proliferation—are
often inter-connectedcomplicated; consequently, they demand
multidisciplinarymultidimensional solutions. More than ever
in human history, today’s world needs to nurture tomorrow’s
creative thinkers to stem the tide of elevating worldwide social,
political, economic,environmental problems that threaten humanity’s
future.
