6 Levels of Thinking Every Student MUST Master

Every learner, regardless of age, should master six different levels of thinking, each of which leads to a different level of results. Unfortunately, the majority of the students I work with get stuck in the first few levels of thinking, and this is the reason they struggle to achieve top results. When this happens, it can be very frustrating, stressful, and time-consuming. It can seem impossible to achieve top results with any degree of confidence, and with enough time, we can begin to think that perhaps we're not cut out for it, but that is probably not the case.

By the end of this book, you will be able to see what level you tend to operate at and how you can get to the level that you need to be. Just so you know, the level you need to be is probably higher than you think, but we'll get to that later. The first level is all about memorising things this involves a lot of rereading uh rewriting it. This is one of the main reasons I was able to achieve top academic results in both medical school and for my master's of education. Trust me, I'm not a genius; I've seen similar results with thousands of students and professionals who have trained over years, is typically very repetitive, can feel very tedious, and frequently makes us feel sleepy.

This level is called Remember, and it involves learning and repeating hundreds of thousands of flash cards. This is how I and possibly you studied for the majority of high school, and it may be the reason you disliked studying. When you reach this level of thinking and studying, you can unlock Level 1, which is regurgitate. The regurgitate level is all about listing, defining, and stating facts. Even though this initial level is termed "remember," it's actually the kinds of questions that are less frequent as you progress through our university and become somewhat worthless in professional life.

The second level of learning is about really trying to understand what you are learning rather than just repeatedly cramming it into your brain. We'll talk about that later. The reason I've been saying that these are levels of thinking rather than different levels of studying is because your intentions really matter. For example, two people may be using the exact same technique, and to someone observing you, it may appear to be exactly the same. When you ask them how they're studying, they may both respond, "I'm just reading my textbook."

But cognitively, it's different for someone at level one because when they say, "I'm reading it again and again so I can try to get it stuck in my head," they mean "I'm reading it so I can understand what it's trying to say and wrap my head around it." Therefore, when we think at level two, we naturally unlock the level two result, which is explain. This enables us to answer questions that ask us to explain how well we understand a concept or a process. These kinds of questions typically comprise the majority of assessments until later in university, if this sounds familiar to you.

Level three is about applying what you have learnt to solve problems. This is a level that we call apply, and this is where things can get a little confusing because a lot of people misunderstand this about Bloom's taxonomy. Bloom's revised taxonomy was first published in 1956 and then revised in 2001. Despite being 70 years old, it is still one of the most underrated principles that most students have never heard of. If you have heard of it, stay put because I'll teach you a method of using it that doubled my learning efficiency.

methods to solve difficulties using your expertise, such as the following: what I would consider to be simple problems These are the kinds of problems where you learn something and then use that knowledge to solve a problem. For instance, in math or physics, you may learn an equation or formula and then use that formula or equation to solve a problem. Then, there are what I might call slightly more complex problems, where you must actually consider the best approach to solving the problem.

We're primarily discussing the first level, which is simple problem solving. By unlocking that level, which is the simple problem solving result, we're now able to solve what I refer to as One to One problems, where you learn a concept and the problem requires that one concept to solve. You can reach level three by simply answering questions and solving problems. There's a specific sequence and a lot more strategic thinking involved at level three. Many practice tests and quizzes have apply-level questions for simpler procedural tasks, such as coding; these might involve creating a basic function with a few basic variables, but what about the more difficult and intricate questions and the kinds of issues that are sophisticated.

This is where level four thinking enters the realm of higher order learning. People who are able to think at this level typically perform fairly well, but level four thinkers are few, and you'll discover why that is soon to change. Comparing and contrasting, as well as seeking out parallels and contrasts, are the main components of stage four thinking. This degree of analysis is known as For the first time, we are examining the information in relation to another piece of information rather than just by itself.

There are numerous methods that support level four analysis. Vin diagrams, tables, and summaries that use mind maps to illustrate the similarities and contrasts between issues and queries that require you to compare one concept to another; in fact, any technique will be beneficial as long as it requires you to compare and contrast one thing with another. Therefore, unlocking level four will grant you access to the level four result, which is the comparison level. Rather than merely providing you with examples of what comparison looks like, I'll go ahead and give you this excellent study tip. Go to something like ChBT or Gemini and fill in this prompt with questions at the educational stage you desire. For example, let's say the subject is at the second year of university.

We'll say, "Well, microbiology at Bloom's revised taxonomy level. In this case, it's going to be level four, and you'll notice that every single option forces you to compare ideas against each other. Now, the reason this technique is actually useful to use in your studying is because Bloom's revised taxonomy was not created for people like you, like a learner, but rather for educators and exam writers. Additionally, practically every single curriculum is designed around Bloom's taxonomy or a similar taxonomy, and they're all fairly similar to one another, so your exam writer is thinking along these lines when creating the questions that will filter the great with the good Learners, which means you can now anticipate the kinds of questions they will ask you and even write your own practice papers.

However, level four thinkers are uncommon because, as soon as you move from level three to level four, you will notice that this level of thinking is more difficult to complete and requires more mental effort. You are thinking more deeply and for longer periods of time than you did at the previous levels, which is good because it indicates that your brain is developing.

At level five, thinking is for the top learners; if you can think at level five, you will be reaching those top results. It's also the level that people find the most confusing, so I'm going to make it really simple for you. Level five is all about judgement. At level four, we analysed, compared, and contrasted, finding similarities and differences. At level five, we're asking, so what does it matter, who cares, why is it important?

Assessing and developing critical thinking skills At this stage, the level five result—prioritization—is unlocked, so let's repeat the little AI trick and observe how the kinds of questions we receive differ from level four on the left to level five on the right. You'll see that at level five, we are drawing conclusions, and it's not enough to simply know that there are similarities and differences; we also need to use that information to choose. It takes a lot more work to think at level five, and you'll know you're doing it correctly when you're switching between the content to try to answer the queries.

You may be wondering, "Why is this important? How does it relate to everything else? Why should I care?" Level four and level five are the kinds of questions and challenges you'll find in second and third year university and beyond on uh and in postgraduate studies. Almost every senior position in any profession will require you to do these things. You'll be bouncing between your lectures and your textbook and conducting a Google search. These are the signs that you are operating at level five, and it's not as easy as the previous levels, but you must go through this to reach level five results.

have level four and level five thinking, and as previously mentioned, it's more about what's going on inside your head than it is about how your technique looks. For instance, level five mind maps, teaching, answering questions, and creating summaries are all excellent techniques for level five, but if you're not thinking correctly, you could use all of those techniques and still not be at level five. For instance, it's simple to create a mind map by simply joining a number of lines and arrows between words, forming a few groups and categories here and there, and calling it done, but that's not level five thinking; it's very different from, say, creating a mind map where you're critically assessing which lines and relationships are more significant than other potential relationships and wondering how best to put these thoughts together. Although it may appear to be fairly similar on paper, the process is extremely different in the mind.

Level Six I'll get through this one fast because, in the end, most people don't find it as significant. The level six result, hypothesise, is unlocked when you unlock level six create. Some people believe that level six create is any scenario in which you must generate anything using your knowledge, but this is actually level six create, which is about creating a hypothesis and synthesising new and novel information from what you already know. It's merely level six, which is untrue. The reason level six is not as important as the previous levels is because most people will not really be assisted at level six unless they are at the highest levels of education or their profession. Most people will be at the top of their game in their daily lives just being able to perform at level five consistently.

However, for your knowledge, here are some examples of level six, and as you can see, it's pretty advanced. If you are creating an answer for something that you don't think exists in your knowledge already, you're identifying a gap and creating a potential answer that makes sense based on what you already know.

You can take a moment to read this a little bit more if you'd like, or you can jump on your AI and do this for your own subject. Now, here's the part that will blow your mind: if you want to reach levels five and six, there are actually two ways to do it. The first is to start studying and simply go through each level from bottom to top. This makes sense because you remember it, then you understand it, then you apply it, and finally you analyse it, and so on. However, most people do not find this to be effective.

two, followed by level three mastery For example, during lectures, students may do a little bit of level one, then a little bit of level two, and later when taking quizzes, they may do a little bit of level two and a little bit of level three, and so on. If they are faced with a more difficult question, they will do a little bit of level four, then level five, and so on. This is because it takes a lot of time, and most people do not have enough time to even reach level five, let alone master it.

doesn't really work very well because we will always forget things over time. In research, this phenomenon is called knowledge decay, and it happens because the memory has a forgetting curve. Basically, as you work through level two and level three, your knowledge of level one will gradually deteriorate, and you will spend most of your time simply relearning the things that you keep forgetting. The better way to get to the higher levels is to start at level five and actually move down remember level five because level six

is irrelevant to most people, and the reason this works is because our brain processes information and creates memory more strongly at level five than it does at level one. When we aim for the top, our brain will fill in the gaps and produce lower-level results along the way as a sort of side effect. This doesn't work the other way around; if we are just trying to learn so that we can memorise information, our brain won't be able to compare or prioritise information automatically; however, Level five requires more mental work, but it pays off greatly by reducing forgetfulness, so when we begin studying, don't concentrate on trying to remember or comprehend. The science behind this gets a little bit complicated, so if you want me to go into more detail, please let me know in the comments. Put the majority of your attention on attempting to assess, which compels you to comprehend and analyse it in the first place.