Thinking skills : A global necessity

Pages: 576-580
Monika Choudhry (Tika Ram College of Education, Sonepat, Haryana)

The world is undergoing a revolution and so are the educational institutions and learning demands of 21st Century learners. The demands of a prosperous career, job opportunities requires not rote memorization of facts, information but learning new techniques, structures that help in processing information, making decision and communicating in a global and diverse society in a better way. To be able to multi-task, implement one’s ideas, make complex choices, integrate old and new knowledge and tolerate ambiguity requires high order thinking skills. Thinking skill are not mysterious entities existing somewhere in the mind. Nor are they mental muscles that have physical existence but thinking skills refer to 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, analyze information and so on. The teachers should inculcate a probing spirit in students. They should encourage curiosity, exploration, investigation and scrutiny of facts, view failure as a learning opportunity, acknowledge effort not just reward performance. If our students learn the skills properly then they can have their own light-bulb (revelation) moments like Thomas Edison or ‘Eureka’ of Archimedes.