Author: Jacques L. Hamel (1) UNECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Western knowledge paradigms have a pyramid shape: at the bottom is real experience but moving up are layers of surrogates that stand for original ideas. At the apex are ideals, or highly refined knowledge. E.g. at the top is an idea called constitutional democracy but later by layer going down we can unravel this idea in terms of judicial institutions, legislative institutions, executive institutions, under which are communities and constituencies right until we come to the level of individuals serving in the various organs of state.

Benjamin Bloom (1956) developed a classification of levels that might be seen in intellectual behavior in learning. This taxonomy contained three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Within the cognitive domain, he identified six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These domains and levels are still useful today as you develop your critical thinking skills

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hyphothesizing, and critquing.

Creative Thinking