Higher Order Capabilities: Why Are They Important?
Higher order capabilities are learned through the learning processes a person goes through,
since human beings, from birth, learn continuously through language and through communication with others and with the environment.
Learning takes place in a social and cultural context,
and it is an individual activity to acquire knowledge through study, exercise or experience.
What does it mean to learn?
As we said,
learning is acquiring knowledge. But that doesn’t just mean memorizing them, it also means understanding them
and rate them. For this, other cognitive operations are needed, such as the ability to analyze and the ability to synthesise.
Thus, these cognitive operations will allow people to assimilate information about concepts, procedures and values. But, in addition, with this information, they can
build new functional mental representations to be applied in different contexts and circumstances.
Learning, therefore, is a
ability that allows people to develop other skills and also know and acquire habits, in addition to building and modifying attitudes and behaviors.
In short, human learning allows us to develop the skills necessary for a motor and intellectual adaptation to the environment.
Higher order intellectual abilities
Among the skills or abilities to be developed by people through the learning processes,
there are some more complex ones, known or termed ‘higher order capabilities’.
Matthew Lipman,
in your book
Complex Thinking and Education
, talk about the
construction of better quality thinking that develops superior psychological functions.
The author is referring to a way of reasoning more similar to the one needed in a research, which constantly questions itself.
Thus, Lipman argues that higher-order capabilities must be developed and defines them as
” The set of internalized, organized and coordinated actions that promote the proper processing of information,
focused both on the information to be processed itself, as well as on the structures, processes and strategies that are being used to process it.
”
The higher order capabilities are as follows:
- Analyze. Ability to distinguish and separate different parts of a whole
until you get to its principles or elements.
- Synthesis.
Ability to achieve the composition of a whole
from the knowledge and joining of its parts.
- Conceptualization.
And the
ability to abstract required features
and sufficient to describe a situation, phenomenon or problem.
- Information management.
Capacity of
visualize the constituent elements of a situation as a system.
That is, as a set of rules, principles or measures related to each other.
- Critical thinking.
Ability to think on their own,
analyzing and evaluating the consistency of their own ideas,
both what is read and what is heard and observed.
- Research.
And the
ability to propose precise hypotheses about what is studied.
Furthermore, it involves collecting data and information with the aim of verifying hypotheses and, later, formulating laws and theories.
- Metacognition.
It’s the ability to
reflect on your own thoughts.
The Importance of Higher-Order Capabilities for Higher-Order Thinking
At the foundation of higher-order thinking is the development and management of the higher-order intellectual capabilities we have mentioned.
Although higher order thinking becomes possible with maturation,
it is important that the capabilities that enable it are developed and strengthened early on.
And this can be done both in family and school contexts, as well as in other formal and informal educational contexts.
In short, higher order capabilities are important for structuring complex thinking capable of meeting both content and procedures. And also
they are important because they enable rational and reflective thinking and, at the same time, critical, innovative and creative.
