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Processes and characteristics of higher thinking skills

Bloom’s taxonomy was designed with six levels to promote higher-order thinking. The six levels were: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

The top three levels of Bloom's taxonomy (which is often displayed as a pyramid, with ascending levels of thinking at the top of the structure) are analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These levels of the taxonomy all involve critical or higher-order thinking.

Analysis

Analysis, the fourth level of Bloom's pyramid, involves students use their own judgment to begin analyzing the knowledge they have learned. At this point, they begin understanding the underlying structure of knowledge and can distinguish between fact and opinion.

Synthesis

Synthesis, the fifth level of Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid, requires students to infer relationships among sources, such as essays, articles, works of fiction, lectures by instructors, and even personal observations. For example, a student might infer a relationship between what she has read in a newspaper or article and what she has observed herself. The high-level thinking of synthesis is evident when students put the parts or information, they have reviewed together to create new meaning or a new structure.

Evaluation

Evaluation, the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy, is the sequence by which a person judges or makes a value judgment about an object or situation. Almost all acts require a prior evaluation, such as rejections or expressions of preferences, for this it is necessary to analyze and have a set of criteria that serve as support to issue the assessment.

Internal Evaluation

It consists of determining differences between a desired situation under the criterion of an ideal case and an observed reality.

External Evaluation

It is to compare two situations or objects through external criteria which arise from the expectations of interested persons or from the objectives of the evaluation.