Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning includes the cognitive processes of analysis, comparison, inference and interpretation, evaluation, and synthesis applied to a range of academic domains and problem-solving contexts.
Students Who Are Higher-Order Thinkers and Sound Reasoners:
• Identify the essential elements in a problem as well as the interaction between those elements; use electronic tools to facilitate analysis.
• Assign relative values to essential elements of a problem and use those values to rank elements in meaningful ways; assess similarities and differences in problems and their elements.
• Construct relationships between the essential elements of a problem that provide insight into it; extract implications and conclusions from facts, premises, or data.
• Create and apply criteria to gauge the strengths, limitations, and value of information, data, and solutions in productive ways.
• Build new solutions through novel combinations of existing information.