6 Types of Thinking Skills based on Bloom’s Critical Thinking Taxonomy:

1. Remembering Skills:

Remembering skill is the brain’s ability to remember, identify, and interpret what it sees and what it hears.

Recalling, memorizing, retrieving and repeating information from your brain whenever needed is a unique aspect of this thinking skill.

Associating Words: Bookmark, Count, Describe, Enumerate, Identify, Label, List, Match, Recall, Sequence, Tell, Remind, Recite, Find out.

2. Interpreting Skills:

The second stage of thinking is interpreting. Your mind becomes curious and asks questions like “what is it”, “why is it like that”, “who put it here”, “where it came from” etc.

Associated Words: Conclude, Discuss, Describe, Explain, Illustrate, Predict, Reports, Tell, Express.

3. Application/Implementing Skills:

Implementing skill is about “what you have to do” and “what has to be done”. By the knowledge and resources you have, you solve a problem.

Associated Words: Implement, Imitate, Show, Reveal, Produce, Choose, Gather, Use.

4. Analyzing/Scrutinizing Skills:

Systematically and logically you break the problem elements at this level. You disengage irrelevancies. You differentiate, compare, examine, categorize and experiment your problem-scenarios.

Associated Words: Characterize, Categorize, Classify, Compare, Predict, Rank, Redefining, Outlining, Subdivide, Research, Represent, Map, Diagrammatic Representation.

5. Judgmental Skills:

You draw conclusions based on facts and data. You justify your standpoint in this stage. To justify, you assess, support, evaluate, find credibility to your solutions and communicate it to people. Evaluation and judging is a crucial thinking skill.

Associated Words: Test, Compare, Critique, Defend, Rank, Judge, Justify, Argue.

6. Creative Skills:

Creativity is a higher-order thinking skills different from others. We can combine it with other thinking skills. Or, we can use it independently.

Associated Words: Invent, Modify, Reverse-Engineer, Rearrange, Networking, Revise, Remodel, Out of the Box, New Framework.

Conclusion:

The above are 6 major categories of thinking skills we see. And are based on bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking.

9 Major Types of Thinking SKills

1. Analytical Thinking:

Analytical thinking skill is your ability to analyze a given the problem, or situation step by step. You perform a complete analysis of all possible ways to interpret the situation/problem before you.

2. Divergent Thinking:

In short, divergent thinking skill is “Go diverse. Conclude with one that works”. Divergent thinking involves exploring all possibilities and viewpoints to find an appropriate solution.

First, you begin gathering related facts, data, or references from all sources. You analyze and apply logic to find the relevant possibilities. Among them, you pick the one that stands out and seems to be precise to solve the problem.

3. Convergent Thinking :

Convergent thinking is about connecting all the dots. You connect scattered thoughts, data, standpoints, or related information and put together one big picture. Convergent thinking is a key thinking skill we need in life.

4. Critical Thinking:

It covers 7 steps like identifying, gathering, analyzing, interpreting, establishing, deciding and communicating the problem.

5. Creative Thinking:

Imagination and creativity proceed here instead of logic and reasoning.

6. Abstract Thinking:

Abstract thinking is like abstract art/painting. Change your normal perspective to see what is being portrayed. Find the hidden meaning. You see the 'actual' truth behind the 'false' truth.

7. Concrete thinking:

As the name suggests, concrete thinking is factual thinking. Only facts and nothing else. A concrete thinker will approach everything with facts, data, and solid knowledge. It is the opposite of abstract thinking.

8. Sequential Thinking:

You think and process in an orderly, sequential manner. You don’t deviate. You progress step-by-step i.e. you can go to the second step only after your first step is complete. Every step in interconnected sequentially here.

9. Holistic Thinking

You go straight for the big picture and then you connect everything.