21st Century Skills

Cognition and Learning: Thinking Skills
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Cognition and Learning: Thinking Skills
Thinking skills help people to navigate daily life events. There has been extensive research on thinking skills with endeavors to improve mastery ability and real-life applicability being the primary focus of scholars. Modern researchers have been building on 20th-century thinking methods to formulate the 21st-century skills that are employed in the learning process by contemporary learners. The scholarly attention of thinking skills makes an essential basis for learners to analyze the topic in pursuit of learning the different methods (maybe even formulate some)that they can identify with. The importance of these skills to students both in school and general life situations necessitate the research on how students can use them to solve problems and gain knowledge on life topics. This paper analyses different thinking skills, describing how they operate and the importance of mastering them in everyday life. The paper further illustrates how the powers manifest in people deriving from scholarly research and support. This is an analysis of thinking skills and how they can be mastered and employed in real situations.
1 Comprehension inference
* Description of the skill
Understanding comprehension involves complex inferences and reading between the lines to identify what particular text is about. This skill consists of looking for meaning in a version where the reader sets a goal and seeks to achieve it through analyzing the coherence and assigning discourse to a text (Graesser et al, 1994). The thinking skill involves understanding the purpose, examining the background, evaluation, monitoring, and drawing on the text. Comprehension mastery is a skill for students during text reading to gather as much meaning on the topic as possible. The ability is developed as students interact with texts and enhanced through practice. The skill is focused on eliminating the barriers to inferences in a manuscript by dividing it into understandable segments for more accessible analysis. The segmentation creates simpler word-groups which are easy to understand.
* Illustrations examples
The aspect of reading comprehension is the most common in institutions, especially for language majors, which involves significant texts. The course coverage had numerous texts that required analytical reading to infer the meaning. Reading the course materials during classwork and assignments was a substantial opportunity for students to utilize and develop their comprehension skills. The required texts during the task tested the comprehension skills developed during the course. The materials needed students to look at a particular topic and draw relevant meaning. Looking for content in the articles, evaluating the purpose, and the different ways the theories apply in learning was a show of comprehensive thinking skills.
* Importance of mastering the skill
Literary texts are present in every aspect of student life in course materials and assignments. Students encounter comprehensive texts which need the ability to enable them to have better study outcomes. It helps them understand course content without mandatory aid from the instructor making the learning process more convenient. Even in today's online life comprehension skill allows students to read and understand current issues about their social life both at in and out of school.
* Studies on the skill
In the process of deriving meaning from a text, a reader makes reading a literary more efficient by highlighting the essential issues which apply to the particular document (Seifert et al., 1985). The study showed that picking out inferences from a text is the beginning of getting the meaning out of a document since the reader groups it into more logical units, which the reader can efficiently assign meaning individually and then in conjunction with the rest of the text. However, further study on the inference mechanism of comprehension analysis showed that a reader is only able to retain and coheres during the time of reading but not in new editions of a text.
Another study into the comprehension skill was conducted by Graesser et al. (1994), who purported that the main aim of comprehension is to find meaning. The study showed that the application of the skill involved readers creating their version of sense about a text looking for particular elements like grammar, context, semantics, and the general discourse of the text. After the oriented approach, a student then can assign the secondary meaning and placing in context to explain the occurrences or meaning associated with the text.
* How to master the skill
Goal, plan, action is the best approach to master comprehension reading (Seifert et al., 1985). With this in mind, as a student approaches a text, it enables them to have an analytical comprehension of a text disclosing hidden meanings in writing. Addressing a text from an action-oriented perspective allows a learner to even have predictive instincts in analyzing a text (Seiffert et al., pp. 407). Coherence, background knowledge, and the construction of meaning are the main elements for readers to pursue a comprehension inference (Graesser et al., pp. 72).
2 Knowledge Transfer
* Description of the skill
Transfer entails the transmission of knowledge from one learning context to another regardless of the relationship between the two instances. It refers to how learners can project the knowledge derived from a situation and apply it to another example with similar applications. Transfer is the basis upon which most school curriculums are based on as students are expected to apply the knowledge they learned during a previous class to form the basis of a current scenario (Bransford and Schwartz, 2015). These expectations of knowledge application are based on the belief that students can transfer the knowledge they learned in the first year in a communication class to a scene in an interview in the fourth year. This skill depends on the ability of the learner to apply the relevant knowledge across contexts.
* Illustration examples
Instances of knowledge transfer are notable in every academic transition that occurs during the course study. For example, when a student uses a skill they learned in high school about scouting and uses it to save another student at a diner, it shows the transfer of concept from scouting to the restaurant. This illustration is an instance of a similar content transfer that does not always hold for concept transfer to occur. Another example in the application of transfer thinking skill is when a person uses the knowledge learned in a home science class to stitch an injured friend with the fabric sewing techniques.
* Importance of mastering the skill
Transfer is one of the most important skills a student can adapt, especially in interdisciplinary courses that need extensive related knowledge. It helps grow the buildup of experience from one learning level to another and making sure that by the time students are in their final year, they can apply the collective knowledge they learned during the course. Transfer also helps students after they graduate to use the classroom knowledge both in academic research and in the job market. Mastering the skill can help students remember and apply the knowledge they learned in elementary school, showing the effect it has on memory enhancement.
* Studies on the skill
Barnett and Ceci (2002) conducted a study to look at the possibilities of far transfer I human beings. Their main objective was to see if the transfer of inter-contextual concepts in differential topics, time, and place is possible. Far transfer constitutes the duplication of discourse in dissimilar situations. They studied the aspect of analogical transfer testing the possibility of transfer in more novel situations. Later studies, however, showed that the element of transfer depended on the prior knowledge acquiring and the cognition of the individual (Bransford and Schwartz, 2015). This needs a reflective understanding of the concept and how to apply it for its practical manifestation.
* How to master the skill
One of the best approaches towards the mastery of transfer is finding platforms to apply the knowledge gained during a study. The channels and practice of the application forms and expand the knowledge base of a learner for future derivative purposes when the need arises. One of the challenges in the study of transfer as a cognitive process is analogical transfer if in dissimilar contexts (Barnett and Ceci, 2002). This challenge can be tackled at the learning stage by the student using the analogical approach in the studying routines to duplicate the applicable scenarios concerning the topic. The use of analogical study encourages interaction during the learning process, which helps in projecting the concept over a diverse arena for easy and efficient transfer. Since transfer depends on the already acquired knowledge, ensuring that the initial concept has been grasped well during the first study provides easy reference to the application during a transfer.
3 Cognitive engagement
* Description of the skill
Cognitive engagement refers to the active participation and adaptation of cognition as a person engages with situations that affect their reactions and attitudes while they learn (Chi and Wylie, 2014). As the name suggests, it involves engaging the mind through activities that are identifiable with the student and encourage them to be more active and creative. This skill, however, needs a buildup of prior experience to which the student can relate. The need for expertise to build on in cognitive engagement makes the skill useful in solving math equations that engage the brain of students as they solve equations (Ritter et al., 2007). It involves the active thought process that requires activity, triggering cognitive processes on familiar content. The skill consists in using one's cognition while engaging in business.
* Illustration examples
One of the illustrations in the application of cognitive engagement is in solving math problems when a student meets a problem that involves a formula that he is familiar with. The building up of the formula knowledge leads to the interactive engagement of the cognition of the student leading to a thought that leads to solving the problem. Another ill...