THINKING SKILLS

Thinking skills are considered as the “building blocks” of thinking. In today’s information age,
thinking skills are viewed an essential for educated persons to cope with the rapidly changing
world. For effective thinking we need to develop all the below mentioned thinking skills.

Thinking skills are a set of basic and advanced skills and sub-skills that govern a person’s mental
processes. They are as follows:

(a) Focusing skills:

“Focusing skills are thinking skills that focus on necessary information and ignore
information that is irrelevant.” There are two types of focusing skills they are –
(a) Identifying problems: Identifying problems is a focusing skill that defines needs,
differences or confusing situations.
(b) Setting goals: setting goals is a focusing skill that develops purpose and direction
for solving problems.
(b) Information gathering skills:
“Information gathering skills are thinking skills that collect together relative information
needed for thinking.” There are two types of information gathering skills –
(a) Observing: observing skills from various is an information skill that acquires
information from various senses.
(b) Forming questions: Forming questions is information gathering skill which
collects new information through inquiry.
(c) Remembering skills: “Remembering skills are thinking skill that store and bring back
information when needed.” There are two types of remembering skills-
(a) Encoding: Encoding skill is remembering skill that stores information in long-
term memory.
(b) Recalling: Recalling skill is a remembering skills that brings back the information
from the long-term memory.
4) Organizing skills: “Organizing skills are thinking skills that arrange information in a
particular order so that it can be used properly”
(a) Comparing: Comparing skills is an organizing skills that points out the similarities
and differences between entities.
(b) Classifying: Classifying is an organizing skills that classifies entities into various
categories on the basis of the features that they have in common.
(c) Ordering: Ordering is an organizing skill that sequences things according to a given
standard by which it may be judged.
 (d) Representing skills: representing skill is an organizing skill that changes the
structure of the information, but not the matter of the information.

5) Analyzing skills: “Analyzing skills are the thinking skills that examine existing
information into parts and relationships”. There are four types of Analyzing skills.

(a) Identifying features and Components: Identifying features and components is an

analyzing skill that analyzes features or the parts of a particular entity
(b) Identifying relationships and Patterns: Identifying relationships and patterns is an
analyzing skill that identifies ways in which elements are related.
(c) Identifying main ideas: Identifying main ideas is an analyzing skill that identifies the
main ideas or the main element.
(d) Identifying Arguments: Identifying Arguments is an analyzing skill that identifies
arguments and logical errors and corrects them.
6) Generating skills: “Generating skills are thinking skills that produce a new
information or ideas”. There are three types of generating skills.

(a) Inferring: Inferring is a generating skill that looks beyond available information to
determine what may be true.
(b) Predicting: Predicting is a generating skill that looks forward to next events which
may happen, or the result of situations.
(c) Elaborating: Elaborating is a generating skills that builds on other ideas, relevant
information. and details required.

7) Integrating skills: Integrating skills are thinking skills that connect and combine the
whole information. They are of two type:
(a) Summarizing: Summarizing is an integrating skill that briefly states the main points
and combines it together.
(b) Restructuring: Restructuring is an integrating skill that changes existing knowledge
structure to include new information
 8) Evaluating skills: Evaluating skills are thinking skills that judge about the quality and
reasonableness of ideas. There are two types of evaluating skills.
a) Establishing standards: Establishing standards is an evaluating skills that sets standards
for making judgements about ideas.
b) Verifying: Verifying skills is an evaluating skills that confirms the accuracy of ideas .i.e. it
shows that the ideas are accurate or not.

CREATIVE THINKING
Creative thinking is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new
association with the existing ones. Scientists, musicians, artists, writers, teachers, etc. make use of
creative thinking. Major inventions, great works of music, arts, literature, etc. are possible due to
creativity of individuals.

Features
1) Problem sensitivity: creative people quickly detect the problems. They detect them even if
there are slight changes. Problems solving is an individual’s ability to ask naive (lacking
experience or judgement) but fruitful questions.
For eg: why does the sky looks blue?
Why there are 24 hrs in a day?
2) Restructuring problems: Creative people have the ability to restructure problem in
interesting ways..
3) Curious and imaginative: creative people are always curious to learn new things. They are
also imaginative by nature.
For eg. If someone asks them about the use of a particular medicine, most would think it
gives relief from pains. But some might look at its round shape and wonder whether it
could be used as a button, or whether one could make a joke about it.
4) Flexibility: it is the key ability of creative thinkers. Flexibility is an individual’s ability to
adapt to different circumstances. Creative Thinkers are always flexible.
5) The ability to guess the causes of problems or situations: Creative thinkers have the ability
to guess the causes of problems or situations. They are good at guessing as they possess a
wide range of knowledge and interests.
 For eg. This is the ability that distinguishes a first rate scientist from an average one.
6) Elaborative ability: It is the ability to take an idea or a thing and bend and stretch it in
interesting ways. Management is full of tools and techniques, each of these needs
elaborative ability.
7) Originality: Originality means not copy. Originality is a crown of creative intelligence. All
the features of creative people, fluency, flexibility, problem sensitivity, problem restricting
ability, guessing ability, elaboration ability etc contribute to originality, either individually
or in combination.
8) Independent and assertive: Creative thinkers have independent thinking. They may not be
influenced by the opinions of other people. They make decisions and judgements on the
basis of their own thinking and are ready to be assertive even if it needs going against the
conventional way.
9) Intelligence: Most creative people possess high level of intelligence. While some creative
people also possess average or above average intelligence. This shows that creative people
always need not have high level of intelligence. In, fact studies have shown that IQ and
creativity are not related to each other.
10) Knowledge and interest: creative people like to gather more and more knowledge. They
also have wide range of interests. It is this ability of the creative thinkers that makes them
more and more creative. Creative thinkers always have a desire to increase their
knowledge and interests.
LATERAL THINKING
Edward de Bono is widely regarded as an authority on lateral thinking. He is also considered as an
expert in the teaching of ‘thinking as a skill’

According to de Bono says there are two types of thinking:

A. Vertical thinking
B. Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking:
Edward De Bono’s describes lateral thinking as “the method of thinking concerned with
changing concepts and perception.” Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not
immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional
step-by-step logic.
In lateral thinking, the emphasis is on generation of what ideas whatever may be the
process. In order to generate new ideas we must use new or unorthodox methods.
Lateral thinking seeks to look at the same thing from different positions. As a consequence,
when we look at something from different positions we see as many differences in the
thinking as there are positions.
We make use of both the types of thinking while finding solutions to problem. This is
because vertical and lateral thinking are complementary. Lateral thinking helps us in
generating ideas by looking for them in places where we would least expect them to be.
Vertical thinking helps us in developing them. According to de Bono’s “lateral thinking
enhances the effectiveness of vertical thinking.”