A major shift from harsh criticism is when a person intentionally activities his or her academic capacity to use critical thinking. One of the trends of such thinking is introduced by benjamin bloom (1984) who suggests that teachers ancourage learners to push their thinking beyond knowing and comprehending facts and data. It is desirable then that learners can use higher-order thinking skills to apply, analyze, syntesis, and evaluate pieces of known and comprehended information. Applying denotes learners’ skills to use what they know (data, theories, concepts, laws, approaches, or methods) in another context that is specifically meaningful to them. Analyzing basically involves (a)identifying materials/texts to be focused on, (b) recognizing the organization of ideas/issues of one or several texts, (c) selecting salient issues or important parts hat are relevant to a task to be completed by learners; and (d) figuring out the relationships of ideas (their similarities or differences) in these texts. Next, synthesis is achieved when learners come up with a central, “novel” idea of his or her own which is then supported by assembling various sources/texts that have been (or are continuously being) analyzed. In bloom’s taxonomy,this set of critical thinking stages culminates in evaluation in that learners assess how claims, arguments, and presentation of data by other authors cited in these learners’ synthesis are valid, logical, and reliable (cf.Hall,2001,pp.88-89; see also chapter 6 below in which assessments on students’ performances in light of higher-order thinking skills are at stake). With this taxonomy, harsh and naive criticism can be reduced to a minimum.
Bloom’s taxonomy can be a starting point to begin using critical thinking in exploring issues in CPs. Nevertheless, attaining critical thinking skills not the ultimate end of CPs.