How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom PDF

HOW TO ASSESS HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN YOUR CLASSROOM Susan M. Brookhart  HOW TO ASSESS HIGHER-ORDER...

HOW TO ASSESS HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN YOUR CLASSROOM Susan M. Brookhart  HOW TO ASSESS HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN YOUR CLASSROOM Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd i 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Many ASCD members received this book as a member benefit upon its initial release. Learn more at: www.ascd.org/memberbooks Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd ii 8/24/10 1:49 PM  HOW TO ASSESS HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN YOUR CLASSROOM Susan M. Brookhart Alexandria, Virginia USA Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd iii 8/24/10 1:49 PM  1703 N. Beauregard St. Alexandria, VA 22311-1714 USA Phone: 800-933-2723 or 703-578-9600 Fax: 703-575-5400 Web site: www.ascd.org E-mail: [email protected] Author guidelines: www.ascd.org/write Gene R. 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ASCD Member Books mail to Premium (P), Select (S), and Institutional Plus (I+) members on this schedule: Jan., PSI+; Feb., P; Apr., PSI+; May, P; July, PSI+; Aug., P; Sept., PSI+; Nov., PSI+; Dec., P. Select membership was formerly known as Comprehensive membership. PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-4166-1048-9 ASCD product #109111 Also available as an e-book (see Books in Print for the ISBNs). Quantity discounts for the paperback edition only: 10–49 copies, 10%; 50+ copies, 15%; for 1,000 or more copies, call 800-933-2723, ext. 5634, or 703-575-5634. For desk copies: member@ ascd.org. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brookhart, Susan M. How to assess higher-order thinking skills in your classroom / Susan M. Brookhart. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4166-1048-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Thought and thinking--Study and teaching (Sec- ondary) 2. Critical thinking--Study and teaching (Secondary) 3. Cognition in children. I. Title. LB1590.3.B745 2010 371.27'1--dc22 2010018842 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd iv 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction........................................................................................................... 1 1. General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking............................... 17 2. Assessing Analysis, Evaluation, and Creation................................................ 39 3. Assessing Logic and Reasoning..................................................................... 61 4. Assessing Judgment....................................................................................... 84 5. Assessing Problem Solving............................................................................. 98 6. Assessing Creativity and Creative Thinking.................................................. 124 Afterword........................................................................................................... 142 References........................................................................................................ 150 Index.................................................................................................................. 153 About the Author............................................................................................... 159 Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd v 8/24/10 1:49 PM Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd vi 8/24/10 1:49 PM  ❋ Introduction How many times in your adult life have you needed to recall a fact immediately? Sometimes it’s handy to have facts at your fingertips. When I cook I often use the fact that three teaspoons equal one tablespoon. To understand the TV news, it is helpful to know some geographical facts, like the names and locations of various countries. But think about it. You almost never need to know these facts for their own sake. My goal in cooking is having the dish I’m preparing turn out to be tasty. Math facts are useful when I’m working on my checkbook, a plan or budget, or a school report. Spelling facts are handy when I’m writing something. In life, almost everything we do requires using knowledge in some way, not just knowing it. I believe that most teachers, in fact, do understand this reality. But we often don’t carry it through into our assessment practices. Studies analyzing classroom tests, over many decades, have found that most teacher-made tests require only recall of information (Marso & Pigge, 1993). However, when teach- ers are surveyed about how often they think they assess application, reasoning, and higher-order thinking, both elementary (McMillan, Myron, & Workman, 2002) and secondary (McMillan, 2001) teachers claim they assess these cogni- tive levels quite a bit. Although some of this discrepancy may come from recent 1 Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 1 8/24/10 1:49 PM  2 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom advances in classroom practices that emphasize higher-order thinking, it is also clear that many teachers believe they are assessing higher-order thinking when, in fact, they are not. The reason that recall-level test questions are so prevalent is that they are the easiest kind to write. They are also the easiest kind of question to ask off the top of your head in class. Teachers who do not specifically plan classroom discussion questions ahead of time to tap particular higher-order thinking skills, but rather ask extemporaneous questions “on their feet,” are likely to ask recall questions. This situation is true for even the best teachers. After participating in professional development about questioning, one high school social studies teacher wrote the following: Upon reflection, it became obvious that many of the questions I have asked were at a lower-order thinking, or simply recall or factual response, level. [I am now...] more aware of the necessity for higher-order or open-ended questions in class. Many of the students also now understand the importance of the many different types of questions that can be asked. The same thing happens on classroom tests. Teachers who put together tests quickly, or who use published tests without reviewing them to see what thinking skills are required, are likely to end up asking fewer higher-order- thinking questions than they intended. Contrary to some teachers’ beliefs, the same thing also happens with performance assessments. Students can make posters or prepare presentation slides listing facts about elements, planets, or stars without using higher-order thinking, for example. Of course, what amount and what kind of higher-order thinking should be required on a classroom assessment depend on the particular learning goals to be assessed. Most state standards and district curriculum documents list goals for learn- ing that include both knowledge of facts and concepts and the ability to use them in thinking, reasoning, and problem solving. The purpose of this book is to clarify what is involved in several different aspects of higher-order thinking, and, for each, to show how to write good-quality, well-planned assessments. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 2 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 3 What Is Knowledge? The nature of human thought and reason is the subject of a field of philosophy called epistemology. Epistemologists still debate the definition of knowledge. A classic definition, based on ideas in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, is that for some- thing to count as knowledge it must be justified, true, and believed. Branches of philosophy have developed to describe what count as reasonable and plausible justifications, what counts as truth, and the nature of belief. I use this tidbit about Plato to make what I consider an important point. Even seemingly simple knowledge rests on some historical higher-order think- ing. Facts and concepts did not just fall out of the sky—or out of a textbook. They were discovered and debated until they came to be widely held as true, and widely believed. When we teach students to do higher-order thinking, we are not just teaching them some fancy skills useful for the flexibility and adapt- ability required for life in our 21st century “information age.” We are teaching them to be human. What Is Higher-Order Thinking? If we agree to stay grounded in this important purpose, our definitions of higher-order thinking for the purposes of this book can be much more mod- est and practical. In this Introduction, we consider the kinds of higher-order thinking that are (or should be) stated or implied in state content standards and classroom learning objectives. Definitions that I find helpful fall into three categories: (1) those that define higher-order thinking in terms of transfer, (2) those that define it in terms of critical thinking, and (3) those that define it in terms of problem solving. Here is a definition in the transfer category: Two of the most important educational goals are to promote retention and to promote transfer (which, when it occurs, indicates meaningful learning)... retention requires that students remember what they have learned, whereas transfer requires students not only to remember but also to make sense of and be able to use what they have learned. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 63) Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 3 8/24/10 1:49 PM  4 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom The critical thinking category includes this definition: Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. (Norris & Ennis, 1989, p. 3) Another example in this category comes from Barahal (2008), who defines criti- cal thinking as “artful thinking” (p. 299), which includes reasoning, questioning and investigating, observing and describing, comparing and connecting, finding complexity, and exploring viewpoints. In the problem solving category are these two definitions: A student incurs a problem when the student wants to reach a specific outcome or goal but does not automatically recognize the proper path or solution to use to reach it. The problem to solve is how to reach the desired goal. Because a student cannot automatically recognize the proper way to reach the desired goal, she must use one or more higher-order thinking processes. These thinking processes are called problem solving. (Nitko & Brookhart, 2007, p. 215) As you explore new domains you will need to remember information, learn with understanding, critically evaluate ideas, formulate creative alternatives, and communicate effectively. [A problem-solving] model can be applied to each of these problems... to help you to continue to learn on your own. (Bransford & Stein, 1984, p. 122) Of course, the first thing that may strike you as you read these definitions is that there is a lot of overlap. In the discussion here, and in the chapters that fol- low, this overlap will be apparent as well. I discuss the definitions separately in the following sections and give practical advice for assessment of these different aspects of higher-order thinking in Chapters 2 through 6, for analytical reasons. As any taxonomy of higher-order thinking skills shows, pulling a concept apart and discussing its various aspects is one way of understanding it. Think of this book as an analysis of classroom assessment of higher-order thinking. Higher-Order Thinking as Transfer The most general of the approaches to higher-order thinking is the Ander- son and Krathwohl (2001) division of learning into learning for recall and Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 4 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 5 learning for transfer. Learning for recall certainly requires a type of thinking, but it is learning for transfer that Anderson, Krathwohl, and their colleagues consider “meaningful learning.” This approach has informed their construction of the Cognitive dimension of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. For many teachers, operating with their state standards and curriculum documents, higher-order thinking is approached as the “top end” of Bloom’s (or any other) taxonomy: Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, or, in the older language, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Chapter 2 discusses assessing higher-order thinking conceived of as the top end of a cognitive taxonomy. The teaching goal behind any of the cognitive taxonomies is equipping stu- dents to be able to do transfer. “Being able to think” means students can apply the knowledge and skills they developed during their learning to new contexts. “New” here means applications that the student has not thought of before, not necessarily something universally new. Higher-order thinking is conceived as students being able to relate their learning to other elements beyond those they were taught to associate with it. There is a sense in which teaching for transfer is a general goal of education. Many teachers use the phrase “What are you going to do when I’m not here?” Most of the time, this reflects teachers’ appreciation of the fact that their job is to prepare students to go into the world ready to do their own thinking, in various contexts, without depending on the teacher to give them a task to do. Life outside of school is better characterized as a series of transfer opportuni- ties than as a series of recall assignments to be done. Higher-Order Thinking as Critical Thinking Critical thinking, in the sense of reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do (Norris & Ennis, 1989) is another general ability that is sometimes described as the goal of teaching. In this case, “being able to think” means students can apply wise judgment or produce a reasoned critique. An educated citizen is someone who can be counted on to understand civic, personal, and professional issues and exercise wisdom in deciding what to do about them. As we all learned in American history class, Thomas Jefferson Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 5 8/24/10 1:49 PM  6 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom argued this point explicitly. He believed that education was necessary for free- dom, that having a citizenry that could think and reason was necessary for a democratic government. The goal of teaching here is seen as equipping students to be able to reason, reflect, and make sound decisions. Higher-order thinking means students can do this. One of the characteristics of “educated” people is that they reason, reflect, and make sound decisions on their own without prompting from teach- ers or assignments. Wisdom and judgment are particularly important in higher-order think- ing tasks like judging the credibility of a source, always an important skill but newly emphasized in the era of ever-expanding, electronically available information. Identifying assumptions, a classic skill, also is very relevant today. As school and society become increasingly diverse, it is less likely that every- one’s assumptions will be similar. Identifying the assumptions behind points of view—what students might call “seeing where you’re coming from”—is a true life skill. Examples of the importance of critical judgment occur in all disciplines. Literary criticism involves both analyzing works of literature and evaluating to what degree the piece of writing succeeds in accomplishing the author’s purpose. Advertisers estimate the effect of various advertising strategies on different audiences. Closer to home, students estimate the effects various arguments might have in persuading their parents of their point of view. All of these involve critical judgment about purposes and assumptions and about the relative effectiveness of various strategies used to meet these purposes. To help students learn to think by looking at works of art, Project Zero at Harvard University developed the “Artful Thinking Palette” (Barahal, 2008). Six thinking dispositions are listed around the image of a paint palette: exploring viewpoints, reasoning, questioning and investigating, observing and describing, comparing and connecting, and finding complexity. Although these dispositions were developed in the context of learning from visual art, they are good ways to approach other critical-thinking tasks as well. For example, try thinking about how these six approaches apply in the study of literature, history, or science. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 6 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 7 Higher-Order Thinking as Problem Solving A problem is a goal that cannot be met with a memorized solution. The broad definition of problem solving as the nonautomatic strategizing required for reaching a goal (Nitko & Brookhart, 2007) can also be seen as a broad goal of education. Every academic discipline has problems. Some are closed problems, like a set of math problems designed to elicit repeated practice with a particular algorithm. But many problems are open-ended, could have many correct solu- tions or multiple paths to the same solution, or are genuine questions for which answers are not known. Economists, mathematicians, scientists, historians, engineers—all are looking for effective or efficient solutions to both practical and theoretical problems. Educators are, too. Teachers propose a solution strategy for a complex problem—how to effectively teach a particular learning target to particular students in a given amount of time and with the materials available—every time they write a lesson plan. Many life problems are open- ended. For example, planning for and living within a budget is an open-ended problem most households deal with. People solve problems in many different ways, depending on the values and assumptions they bring to the task. Bransford and Stein (1984) noted that problem solving broadly conceived— in a model they call the IDEAL problem solver, which I’ll describe in Chapter 5—is the mechanism behind learning for understanding. This is a similar posi- tion to Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) discussion of “meaningful learning.” Bransford and Stein also point out that problem solving is the general mecha- nism behind all thinking, even recall. This may seem ironic, but think of it this way. To recall something, students have to identify it as a problem (“I need to memorize the capitals of all 50 states. How can I do that?”) and devise a solu- tion that works for them. In fact, Bransford and Stein say that in addition to driving both recall and learning, problem solving is necessary for critical thinking, creative thinking, and effective communication. The role of problem solving in critical thinking (for example, “How well did this movie director accomplish his purpose with this film?”) and communication (for example, “How can I write this review so that readers will be interested in seeing the movie?”) seems pretty obvious. But does problem solving have a role in creativity? Isn’t creativity the free-spirit, Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 7 8/24/10 1:49 PM  8 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom whatever-you-want kind of thinking? Actually, no. Most human creations, both inventions of things and inventions of social customs, were conceived to solve some sort of problem. The proverbial invention of the wheel, for example, solves a problem that can be expressed as “How do I get this heavy stuff from here to there?” If you think of higher-order thinking as problem solving, the goal of teach- ing is equipping students to be able to identify and solve problems in their academic work and in life. This includes solving problems that are set for them (the kind of problem solving we usually think of in school) and solving new problems that they define themselves, creating something new as the solution. In this case, “being able to think” means students can solve problems and work creatively. What Is the Effect of Assessing Thinking Skills? When you teach and assess higher-order thinking regularly, over time you should see benefits to your students. Your understanding of how your students are thinking and processing what they are learning should improve as you use assessments specifically designed to show students’ thinking. Ultimately, their thinking skills should improve, and so should their overall performance. Students learn by constructing meaning, incorporating new content into their existing mental representations; therefore, improving thinking skills should actually improve content knowledge and understanding as well. How large can we expect this effect to be? Higgins, Hall, Baumfield, and Moseley (2005) did a meta-analysis of stud- ies of thinking-skills interventions on student cognition, achievement, and attitudes. A meta-analysis is a quantitative synthesis of studies that reports effect sizes, or amount of change in standard-deviation units. Standardizing the effects from different studies means researchers can average effect sizes across studies, which yields a more stable estimate of the size of an effect—in this case, the effect of thinking-skills interventions—than any one study alone could provide. For their review, Higgins and his colleagues defined thinking- skills interventions as “approaches or programmes which identify for learners Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 8 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 9 translatable mental processes and/or which require learners to plan, describe, and evaluate their thinking and learning” (p. 7). Higgins and his colleagues found 29 studies, from all over the world but mostly from the United States and the United Kingdom, that were published in English and that reported enough data to calculate effect sizes. Nine of the stud- ies were conducted in primary schools and 20 in secondary schools; most were in the curriculum areas of literacy (7 studies), mathematics (9 studies), and science (9 studies). Their purpose in doing the meta-analysis was to estimate the size of effects of teaching and assessing thinking skills, and they found very strong effects. The average effect of thinking-skills instruction was as follows: 0.62 on cognitive outcomes (for example, verbal and nonverbal reasoning tests), over 29 studies. 0.62 on achievement of curricular outcomes (for example, reading, math, or science tests), over 19 studies. 1.44 on affective outcomes (attitudes and motivation), over 6 studies. Because of the small number of effect sizes of motivational outcomes, the aver- age effect size estimate of 1.44 may be less reliable than the other two effect sizes. But even 0.62 is a large effect for an educational intervention, equivalent to moving an “average” class of students from the 50th percentile to the 73rd percentile on a standardized measure. Overall, then, Higgins and colleagues’ meta-analysis supports the con- clusion that thinking-skills interventions are effective in supporting student improvement in thinking, content area achievement, and motivation. In the next sections I describe some specific studies from the United States that support this conclusion. The studies described only scratch the surface of research in this area, and I encourage readers who are interested to look up additional works. Assessing Higher-Order Thinking Increases Student Achievement Using assignments and assessments that require intellectual work and criti- cal thinking is associated with increased student achievement. These increases Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 9 8/24/10 1:49 PM  10 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom have been shown on a variety of achievement outcomes, including standard- ized test scores, classroom grades, and research instruments, as the studies described here illustrate. These increases have been demonstrated in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. And they have been documented particularly for low-achieving students. Evidence from NAEP and TIMSS. Wenglinsky (2004) reviewed studies of the relationships between student performance on large-scale measures and instruction emphasizing higher-order thinking, projects, and multiple-solution problems. He reported clear evidence from both the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that, in mathematics and science, instruction emphasiz- ing reasoning was associated with higher scores in all grade levels tested. In reading, teaching for meaning (including thinking about main ideas, author’s purpose, and theme, and using real texts) was associated with higher NAEP performance as well, although Wenglinsky reminds his readers that NAEP testing begins in 4th grade, so it does not shed light on approaches to teaching beginning reading. In civics, 4th graders who studied basic information about how government works performed better on NAEP, but by 8th grade, students whose instruction also included active involvement and thinking did better. Evidence from an urban district. Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka (2001) studied the mathematics and writing assignments of Chicago teachers in grades 3, 6, and 8. Students who received assignments requiring “authentic intellectual work” (p. 2) made greater-than-average gains in reading and mathematics on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), and in reading, mathematics, and writing on the Illinois Goals Assessment Program (IGAP). As the name suggests, the ITBS is a basic skills test. The IGAP was the state test in place in Illinois at the time of the study. To do their study, Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka had to define what they meant by “authentic intellectual work.” They contrasted two kinds of instruc- tion: didactic and interactive. By “didactic” instruction, they meant the kind of instruction in which students learn facts, algorithms, definitions, and such. In didactic instruction, students are tested with “right-answer,” recall-level Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 10 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 11 questions or with problems that require application or problem solving just like what was done in class. However, in “interactive” instruction, “students are often asked to formulate problems, to organize their knowledge and experiences in new ways to solve them, to test their ideas with other students, and to express themselves using elaborated statements, both orally and in writing” (Newmann et al., 2001, pp. 10–11). Readers will hear in this definition the kind of higher-order thinking dis- cussed in this book. In this kind of instruction, students are assessed with non- routine application of knowledge and skills. The researchers defined “authentic intellectual work” as requiring “construction of knowledge, through the use of disciplined inquiry, to produce discourse, products, or performances that have value beyond school” (p. 14). This kind of work was associated with one-year learning gains on the ITBS that were 20 percent greater than the national aver- age. On the IGAP, students from classes that did this kind of work performed about half a standard deviation above students from classes whose work was very didactic. Students with both high and low prior achievement benefited. Evidence for disadvantaged students. Pogrow (2005) designed the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) program specifically for educationally disadvan- taged students, both Title I students and students with learning disabilities. The program specifically works on four kinds of thinking skills: (1) metacogni- tion, or the ability to think about thinking; (2) making inferences; (3) transfer, or generalizing ideas across contexts; and (4) synthesizing information. In its 25-year history, the HOTS program has produced gains on nationally normed standardized tests, on state tests, on measures of metacognition, in writing, in problem solving, and in grade point average. Two things make these results for the HOTS program particularly impres- sive. For one, in several of the evaluations, teaching thinking skills has been contrasted with enhanced content instruction. The thinking-skills instruction did a much better job of setting up the students to be flexible, allowing them to “understand understanding” (p. 70) and to handle all sorts of different content. For another, these results hold for about 80 percent of students who have been identified as Title I or learning disabled students, as long as they have a verbal IQ of 80 or above. It takes time, though. Pogrow (2005) reports that with these Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 11 8/24/10 1:49 PM  12 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom students, “It takes about four months before students will give a reason for a response without being asked, and it takes about six months before they will disconfirm a prior answer” (p. 71). But they do! Assessing Higher-Order Thinking Increases Student Motivation Studies have shown that holding students accountable for higher-order thinking by using assignments and assessments that require intellectual work and critical thinking increases student motivation as well as achievement. Stu- dents do not become engaged with their studies in the abstract, nor do they become motivated in the abstract. Rather, they become engaged in thinking about particular things and motivated to learn particular things. Higher-order thinking increases students’ sense of control over ideas. Thinking is much more fun than memorizing. A study of 3rd grade language arts. Meece and Miller (1999) studied elementary students’ goal orientations (interest in mastery and interest in per- forming well), perceived competence, and strategy use in reading and writing. During the research project, some of the 3rd grade teachers expressed concern that their students showed mastery of skills and strategies on reading and writ- ing tests but did not transfer those skills to actual reading and writing beyond the tests. Meece and Miller evaluated the 3rd grade assignments and found that most of them focused on individual skills, recall, and teacher control. Many assignments required one-word answers, for example. Meece and Miller helped teachers learn to devise assignments that required students to read extended material, write more than one paragraph, and collaborate with classmates. Students in classes where teachers gave these kinds of assignments regularly declined in their performance-goal orientation (meaning they were less inclined to want to do assignments for the sake of gaining the approval of others). More interesting, work-avoidance scores of low-achieving students in these classes (from student questionnaires about schoolwork) decreased, whereas work-avoidance scores of low achievers in the regular classes stayed the same. This finding may seem like a conundrum. Arguably, work that required more reading and writing could have been more, not less, off-putting, especially to Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 12 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 13 low achievers. But the opposite was the case. Low-achieving students were more motivated to do the thoughtful work than the one-word-answer drill work. A study of 5th grade social studies. In a much smaller-scale study—but one very similar to something you could do in your own classroom—Carroll and Leander (2001) were concerned that their own 5th grade social studies students lacked interest in the topic and that many perceived it as difficult and not fun. Their master’s thesis reported on a 14-week project to teach students learn- ing strategies designed to improve higher-order thinking. They also instituted cooperative learning to allow students to think together. Observations before the program suggested the average student was off- task during class about 20 percent of the time and inactive about 10 percent of the time. In a survey, less than half (47 percent) agreed that they were excited about learning, and less than half (47 percent) agreed that social studies assign- ments were easy. After a 14-week program that included teaching students questioning strategies, using graphic organizers, cooperative-learning research projects, and portfolio construction, the measures were repeated. This time, observations suggested the average student was off-task during class only about 10 percent of the time and inactive about 8 percent of the time. In the survey, 95 percent agreed that they were excited about learning, and 89 percent agreed that social studies assignments were easy. Students’ grades on chapter- comprehension assignments improved as well. A study of teacher and student perceptions of learner-centered practices. Meece (2003) reported on a study of 109 middle school teachers and 2,200 middle school students in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Both teachers and students completed surveys to assess the use of learner-centered teaching practices that stress higher-order thinking. For teachers, the only ratings correlated with student motivation and achievement were related to teachers’ reported support for higher-order thinking. For students, ratings on all the learner-centered practice dimensions (including practices supporting higher-order thinking) were correlated with motivation and achievement. Higher-order thinking practices were the only practices found to be related to motivation from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 13 8/24/10 1:49 PM  14 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom The Contents of This Book This book is intended to help teachers assess the kind of complex thinking emphasized by current content standards in various disciplines. I first lay out principles for assessment in general and for assessment of higher-order thinking in particular (Chapter 1). Then I define and describe aspects of higher-order thinking emphasized in classroom learning and give examples of how to assess each aspect (Chapters 2 through 6). The focus of the book is on assessment of higher-order thinking. I describe how to design assessments that require students to do higher-order thinking in an explicit enough form that the thinking becomes visible for appraisal, feed- back, and discussion with the student. I describe both how to write and how to score questions and assessment tasks. The scoring is part of the assessment: if a question requires higher-order thinking but the scoring scheme only gives points for correct recall of facts, the assessment fails as a measure of higher- order thinking. Of course, assessment of higher-order thinking assumes teaching of higher- order thinking. Although teaching these skills is not the subject of this book, it is worth noting that working through tasks like those in this book, with lots of feedback, could be part of such instruction. The ultimate goal is for students to learn to do more higher-order thinking, and do it better. For ease of illustration, I use the following categories of higher-order think- ing in the chapters illustrating ways to assess various aspects of such thinking: Analysis, evaluation, and creation (the “top end” of Bloom’s taxonomy). Logical reasoning. Judgment and critical thinking. Problem solving. Creativity and creative thinking. Chapters 2 through 6 describe in more detail the specific category, give guide- lines for how to assess it, and provide some examples. These categories are consistent with the discussions of higher-order thinking as transfer, reasoned judgment, and problem solving. They also make a useful framework for talk- ing about assessment (and instruction, too, for that matter), because slightly Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 14 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Introduction 15 different strategies are used to assess each one. And as I have already said, there is overlap. Throughout the book I have included many examples of assessments of higher-order thinking. The examples come from several sources. Some are particular examples that teachers have given me permission to share. Others are examples I have written myself that are based on many real examples but are not exact reproductions of any one of them. I have also used examples from NAEP because this is a good public source of well-written assessment items. The focus here is on individual items and tasks, not NAEP results or any of their uses in your state. This book is about classroom assessment of higher-order thinking. Some readers may be surprised to see that some of the examples are multiple-choice test items. We often think of essays and performance assess- ments when we think of assessing higher-order thinking. But well-written multiple-choice items, especially those with introductory material, can also assess higher-order thinking. You wouldn’t rely on multiple-choice items alone for such assessment, but it is important to be able to include on multiple-choice tests questions that tap thinking as well as recall. For example, in districts where banks of multiple-choice test items are used for benchmarking, if such items are not in the bank, then student thinking will not be part of the benchmark information. This book shows how to write both test items and performance assessments that tap higher-order thinking. I have chosen each example to illustrate assessment of the particular aspect of higher-order thinking discussed in the various sections of the book. Because this is a book for K–12 teachers in all subjects, I have tried to select examples from a variety of subjects and grade levels. I encourage readers not to think, “This assessment is a good example,” but rather, “What kind of thinking is this assessment a good example of?” Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 15 8/24/10 1:49 PM Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 16 8/24/10 1:49 PM  1 General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking Constructing an assessment always involves these basic principles: Specify clearly and exactly what it is you want to assess. Design tasks or test items that require students to demonstrate this knowledge or skill. Decide what you will take as evidence of the degree to which students have shown this knowledge or skill. This general three-part process applies to all assessment, including assess- ment of higher-order thinking. Assessing higher-order thinking almost always involves three additional principles: Present something for students to think about, usually in the form of intro- ductory text, visuals, scenarios, resource material, or problems of some sort. Use novel material—material that is new to the student, not covered in class and thus subject to recall. Distinguish between level of difficulty (easy versus hard) and level of thinking (lower-order thinking or recall versus higher-order thinking), and control for each separately. 17 Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 17 8/24/10 1:49 PM  18 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom The first part of this chapter briefly describes the general principles that apply to all assessment, because without those, assessment of anything, includ- ing higher-order thinking, fails. The second section expands on the three principles for assessing higher-order thinking. A third section deals with inter- preting student responses when assessing higher-order thinking. Whether you are interpreting work for formative feedback and student improvement or scoring work for grading, you should look for qualities in the work that are signs of appropriate thinking. Basic Assessment Principles Begin by specifying clearly and exactly the kind of thinking, about what content, you wish to see evidence for. Check each learning goal you intend to assess to make sure that it specifies the relevant content clearly, and that it specifies what type of performance or task the student will be able to do with this content. If these are less than crystal clear, you have some clarifying to do. This is more important than some teachers realize. It may seem like fussing with wording. After all, what’s the difference between “the student understands what slope is” and “the student can solve multistep problems that involve iden- tifying and calculating slope”? It’s not just that one is wordier than the other. The second one specifies what students are able to do, specifically, that is both the target for learning and the way you will organize your assessment evidence. If your target is just a topic, and you share it with students in a statement like “This week we’re going to study slope,” you are operating with the first kind of goal (“the student understands what slope is”). Arguably, one assess- ment method would be for you to ask students at the end of the week, “Do you understand slope now?” And, of course, they would all say, “Yes, we do.” Even with a less cynical approach, suppose you were going to give an end- of-week assessment to see what students knew about slope. What would you put on it? How would you know whether to write test items or performance tasks? One teacher might put together a test with 20 questions asking students to calculate slope using the point-slope formula. Another teacher might ask stu- dents to come up with their own problem situation in which finding the slope of Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 18 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 19 a line is a major part of the solution, write it up as a small project, and include a class demonstration. These divergent approaches would probably result in different appraisals of students’ achievement. Which teacher has evidence that the goal was met? As you have figured out by now, I hope, the point here is that you can’t tell, because the target wasn’t specified clearly enough. Even with the better, clearer target—“The student can solve multistep problems that involve identifying and calculating slope”—you still have a target that’s clear to only the teacher. Students are the ones who have to aim their thinking and their work toward the target. Before studying slope, most students would not know what a “multistep problem that involves identifying and calcu- lating slope” looks like. To really have a clear target, you need to describe the nature of the achievement clearly for students, so they can aim for it. In this case you might start with some examples of the kinds of problems that require knowing the rate of increase or decrease of some value with respect to the range of some other value. For example, suppose some physi- cians wanted to know whether and at what rate the expected life span for U.S. residents has changed since 1900. What data would they need? What would the math look like? Show students a few examples and ask them to come up with other scenarios of the same type until everyone is clear what kinds of thinking they should be able to do once they learn about slope. Design performance tasks or test items that require students to use the targeted thinking and content knowledge. The next step is making sure the assessment really does call forth from students the desired knowledge and thinking skills. This requires that individual items and tasks tap intended learn- ing, and that together as a set, the items or tasks on the assessment represent the whole domain of desired knowledge and thinking skills in a reasonable way. Here’s a simple example of an assessment item that does not tap intended learning. A teacher’s unit on poetry stated the goal that students would be able to interpret poems. Her assessment consisted of a section of questions matching poems with their authors, a section requiring the identification of rhyme and meter schemes in selected excerpts from poems, and a section asking students to write an original poem. She saw these sections, rightly, as respectively tapping the new Bloom’s taxonomy levels of Remember, Apply, Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 19 8/24/10 1:49 PM  20 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom and Create in the content area (poetry), and thought her assessment was a good one that included higher-order thinking. It is true that higher-order thinking was required. However, if you think about it, none of these items or tasks directly tapped students’ ability to interpret poems. Plan the balance of content and thinking with an assessment blueprint. Some sort of planning tool is needed to ensure that a set of assessment items or tasks represents the breadth and depth of knowledge and skills intended in your learning target or targets. The most common tool for this is an assessment blueprint. An assessment blueprint is simply a plan that indicates the balance of content knowledge and thinking skills covered by a set of assessment items or tasks. A blueprint allows your assessment to achieve the desired emphasis and balance among aspects of content and among levels of thinking. Figure 1.1 shows a blueprint for a high school history assessment on the English colonies. The first column (Content Outline) lists the major topics the assessment will cover. The outline can be as simple or as detailed as you need to describe the content domain for your learning goals. The column headings across the top list the classifications in the Cognitive domain of the revised Bloom’s tax- onomy. Any other taxonomy of thinking (see Chapter 2) could be used as well. The cells in the blueprint can list the specific learning targets and the points allocated for each, as this one does, or simply indicate the number of points allocated, depending on how comprehensive the content outline is. You can also use simpler blueprints, for example, a content-by-cognitive-level matrix without the learning targets listed. The points you select for each cell should reflect your learning target and your instruction. The example in Figure 1.1 shows a 100-point assessment to make the math easy. Each time you do your own blueprint, use the intended total points for that test as the basis for figuring percents; it will not often be exactly 100 points. Notice that the blueprint allows you to fully describe the composition and emphasis of the assessment as a whole, so you can interpret it accurately. You can also use the blueprint to identify places where you need to add material. It is not necessary for every cell to be filled. The important thing is that the cells that are filled reflect your learning goals. Note also that the points in each cell do not all have to be 1-point test items. For example, the 10 points in the cell for Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 20 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Figure 1.1 ❋ Blueprint for a High School Assessment on the English Colonies, 1607–1750 CONTENT REMEMBER UNDERSTAND APPLY ANALYZE EVALUATE CREATE OUTLINE Founding of Identify names, Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 21 English colonies dates, and events. 10 points, 10% 10 points, 100% Government of Define Describe the Explain how the English colonies proprietary, function of governments royal, and self- governors and of the colonies governing. legislatures in effectively each colony. foreshadowed and prepared colonists for the American Revolu- tion. 25 points, 25% 5 points, 20% 10 points, 40% 10 points, 40% Life in English Describe the colonies roles of religion, work, climate, and location in colonial life. 15 points, 15% 15 points, 100% General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking continued 21 8/24/10 1:49 PM  Figure 1.1 ❋ Blueprint for a High School Assessment on the English Colonies, 1607–1750 22 CONTENT REMEMBER UNDERSTAND APPLY ANALYZE ANALYZE CREATE OUTLINE Relations with Identify names, Explain how Native Americans dates, and colonial relations events. with Native Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 22 Americans were influenced by land, food and resources, political events, and the French. 25 points, 25% 5 points, 20% 20 points, 80% Trade, commerce, Identify goods Describe British Explain how and navigation and resources trade and salutary neglect produced in the navigation acts. benefited all colonies. Define Describe the parties involved. the mercantile triangular trade, theory of trade. including its role in slavery. 25 points, 25% 5 points, 20% 5 points, 20% 15 points, 60% How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom TOTAL 100 points, 25 points, 25% 30 points, 30% 20 points, 20% 25 points, 25% 100% 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 23 explaining how colonial governments helped prepare citizens for participation in the American Revolution could be one 10-point essay, two 5-point essays, or any combination that totals 10 points. A blueprint helps ensure that your assessment and the information about student achievement that comes from it have the emphasis you intend. In the assessment diagrammed in Figure 1.1, three topic areas (government, relations with Native Americans, and trade—25 percent each) have more weight than colonial life (15 percent) or the founding of the colonies (10 percent). You can plan what percentage of each topic area is allocated to what level of thinking from the points and percentages within the rows. And the total at the bottom tells you the distribution of kinds of thinking across the whole assessment. In Figure 1.1, 55 percent of the assessment is allocated to recall and comprehen- sion (25 percent plus 30 percent), and 45 percent is allocated to higher-order thinking (20 percent plus 25 percent). If the emphases don’t come out the way you intend, it’s a lot easier to change the values in the cells at the planning stage than to rewrite parts of the assessment later on. In fact, blueprints simplify the task of writing an assessment. The blueprint tells you exactly what kind of tasks and items you need. You might, when seeing a blueprint like this, decide that you would rather remove one of the higher- order thinking objectives and use a project, paper, or other performance assess- ment for that portion of your learning goals for the unit, and a test to cover the rest of the learning goals. So, for example, you might split off the question in the cell Analyze/Native Americans and assign a paper or project for that. You could recalculate the test emphases to reflect an 80-point test, and combine the project score with the test score for the final grade for the unit. Plan the balance of content and thinking for units. You can also use this blueprint approach for planning sets of assessments (in a unit, for example). Cross all the content for a unit with cognitive levels, then use the cells to plan how all the assessments fit together. Information about student knowledge, skills, and thinking from both tests and performance assessments can then be balanced across the unit. Plan the balance of content and thinking for rubrics. And while we’re on the subject of balance, use blueprint-style thinking to examine any rubrics you use. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 23 8/24/10 1:49 PM  24 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom Decide on the balance of points you want for each criterion, taking into account the cognitive level required for each, and make sure the whole that they cre- ate does indeed reflect your intentions for teaching, learning, and assessing. For example, a common rubric format for written projects in many subjects assesses content completeness and accuracy, organization/communication, and writing conventions. If each criterion is weighted equally, only one-third of the project’s score reflects content. Evaluating such a rubric for balance might lead you to decide to weight the content criterion double. Or it might lead you to decide there was too much emphasis on facts and not enough on interpreta- tion, and you might change the criteria to content completeness and accuracy, soundness of thesis and reasoning, and writing conventions. You might then weight the first two criteria double, leading to a score that reflects 80 percent content (40 percent each for factual information and for higher-order thinking) and 20 percent writing. Decide what you will take as evidence that the student has, in fact, exhib- ited this kind of thinking about the appropriate content. After students have responded to your assessments, then what? You need a plan for interpreting their work as evidence of the specific learning you intended. If your assessment was formative (that is, it was for learning, not for grading), then you need to know how to interpret student responses and give feedback. The criteria you use as the basis for giving students feedback should reflect that clear learning target and vision of good work that you shared with the students. If your assessment was summative (for grading), then you need to design a scheme to score student responses in such a way that the scores reflect degrees of achievement in a meaningful way. We will return to the matter of interpreting or scoring student work after we present some specific principles for assessing higher-order thinking. It will be easier to describe how to interpret or score work once we have more completely described how to prepare the tasks that will elicit that work. Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking Put yourself in the position of a student attempting to answer a test question or do a performance assessment task. Asking “How would I (the student) have to Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 24 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 25 think to answer this question or do this task?” should help you figure out what thinking skills are required for an assessment task. Asking “What would I (the student) have to think about to answer the question or do the task?” should help you figure out what content knowledge is required for an assessment task. As for any assessment, both should match the knowledge and skills the assessment is intended to tap. This book focuses on the first question, the question about student thinking, but it is worth mentioning that both are important and must be considered together in assessment design. As the beginning of this chapter foreshadowed, using three principles when you write assessment items or tasks will help ensure you assess higher-order thinking: (1) use introductory material or allow access to resource material, (2) use novel material, and (3) attend separately to cognitive complexity and dif- ficulty. In the next sections, each of these principles is discussed in more detail. Use introductory material. Using introductory material—or allowing stu- dents to use resource materials—gives students something to think about. For example, student performance on a test question about Moby Dick that does not allow students to refer to the book might say more about whether students can recall details from Moby Dick than how they can think about them. You can use introductory material with many different types of test items and performance assessment tasks. Context-dependent multiple-choice item sets, sometimes called interpretive exercises, offer introductory material and then one or several multiple-choice items based on the material. Constructed- response (essay) questions with introductory material are similar, except stu- dents must write their own answers to the questions. Performance assessments —including various kinds of papers and projects—require students to make or do something more extended than answering a test question, and can assess higher-order thinking, especially if they ask students to support their choices or thesis, explain their reasoning, or show their work. In this book, we will look at examples of each of these three assessment types. Use novel material. Novel material means material students have not worked with already as part of classroom instruction. Using novel material means students have to actually think, not merely recall material covered in class. For example, a seemingly higher-order-thinking essay question about Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 25 8/24/10 1:49 PM  26 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom how Herman Melville used the white whale as a symbol is merely recall if there was a class discussion on the question “What does the white whale symbolize in Moby Dick?” From the students’ perspective, that essay question becomes “Summarize what we said in class last Thursday.” This principle about novel material can cause problems for classroom teachers in regard to higher-order thinking. For one thing, it means that only the teacher knows for sure whether a test item or performance assessment actually assesses higher-order thinking; others outside a given classroom can’t tell by looking whether or not an assessment requires higher-order thinking for that particular class. For another, the novelty of the material on an assessment is under a teacher’s control. Teachers who “teach to a test” by familiarizing the students with test material intended to be novel change the nature of the assessment. However well-intentioned, this practice short-circuits the intent of the instrument to assess higher-order thinking. Teachers should avoid short-circuiting assessments that are meant to evaluate higher-order thinking by using in class the same questions or ideas that they know will be on the test. Sometimes this is easier said than done, as students may complain—and rightly so—“we never did that before.” Students should be assessed on things they were taught to do, not surprised on a test or performance assessment with tasks for which they have had no practice. The solution is that teachers who want their students to be able to demon- strate higher-order thinking should teach it. Dealing with novel ideas, solving problems, and thinking critically should not be something students feel they “never did before.” By the time students arrive at a summative assessment that requires higher-order thinking in the content domain of instruction, they should have had many opportunities to learn and practice, using other novel material. The following example includes three versions of an assessment requir- ing students to discuss a theme, in this case the moral of an Aesop’s fable: a multiple-choice question, an essay question, and a performance assessment. All three of the examples present the students with introductory, novel material. In this case, the material is Aesop’s fable “Androcles and the Lion.” Giving students the fable text means they don’t need to have memorized the tale. Using a new (to them) fable means students can’t rely on a previous discussion or summary Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 26 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 27 of the tale. To save space, the fable is printed only once here, but it would be printed above whichever format of the question you used. You would not use all three formats, just the one most appropriate for your assessment purposes. Androcles and the Lion Once upon a time, a slave escaped from his master. The slave’s name was Androcles. He ran into the forest and came upon a lion in distress. The lion was lying down, moaning in pain. Androcles started to run away, but the lion did not run after him. Thinking that strange, Androcles turned back. As he approached the lion, the great beast put out his paw. Androcles saw that the paw was swol- len and bleeding from a huge thorn that had become embedded in it. Androcles pulled out the thorn and bandaged the lion’s paw. Soon the lion was able to stand, and licked Androcles’ hand like a dog. The lion took Androcles to his cave, where Androcles could hide from his master, and brought him meat to eat each day. All was well until both Androcles and the lion were captured. Androcles was sentenced to be thrown to the lion, who had not been fed for several days, as an entertainment in the arena. Many people, including the emperor, came to see the spectacle. The lion was uncaged and, eagerly antici- pating a meal, charged into the arena, where Androcles was waiting. When the lion approached Androcles, however, he recognized his old friend and once again licked Androcles’s hand like a dog. The emperor was surprised, sum- moned Androcles, and asked how this could be so. Androcles told the emperor about coming upon the lion in the forest, caring for his paw, and living in his cave. Upon hearing the tale, the emperor pardoned Androcles and freed both Androcles and the lion. Multiple-choice question to assess reasoning about the theme 1. The theme of Aesop’s fable “Androcles and the Lion” can be expressed as “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” Choose the plot detail that best expresses the theme. continued Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 27 8/24/10 1:49 PM  28 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom A. The emperor ordered Androcles to be thrown to the lion. *B. The lion did not eat Androcles. C. Androcles pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw. Brief essay question to assess reasoning about the theme 2. The theme of Aesop’s fable “Androcles and the Lion” can be expressed as “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” Explain how the fable expresses this theme. CRITERIA for feedback or rubrics: Appropriateness of details from the fable. Soundness of reasoning and clarity of explanation. Performance assessment to assess reasoning about the theme 3. The theme of Aesop’s fable “Androcles and the Lion” can be expressed as “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” Write an original fable express- ing the same theme. Then explain how the theme applies in a similar way to both “Androcles and the Lion” and your own fable. CRITERIA for feedback or rubrics: Appropriateness of original fable to Androcles theme. Soundness of reasoning and clarity of explanation. Appropriateness of evidence from both fables. Writing conventions. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 28 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 29 All three of the tasks call for analytical thinking. All three require that stu- dents be able to reason about the fable “Androcles and the Lion” and its theme. Note, however, that the formats are not completely interchangeable. They each tap a slightly different set of skills in addition to the core analysis required for explaining the theme. The multiple-choice version requires students to identify, from choices given, the portion of the fable’s plot where a noble soul expresses gratitude. The short-essay version requires students to identify, from the text of the fable, the portion of the fable’s plot where a noble soul expresses gratitude and to explain their reasoning. It also, therefore, requires students to exercise some writing skills. The performance assessment version requires students to do everything the short-essay version does, plus display synthetic or creative thinking to write an analogous fable and explain that thinking. It also requires more writing than the short-essay version. Which of these you would use would depend on exactly what you wanted to assess. Manage cognitive complexity and difficulty separately. Realizing that level of difficulty (easy versus hard) and level of thinking (recall versus higher-order thinking) are two different qualities allows you to use higher-order-thinking questions and tasks with all learners. The misconception that recall is “easy” and higher-order thinking is “hard” leads to bad results. The two most insidious ones, in my opinion, are shortchanging young students and shortchanging low achievers of any age by offering them only recall and drill assignments because they are not “ready” to do higher-order thinking. In either case, while these students are waiting for you to think they are ready, they will also learn that school is boring. They may misbehave, they may drop out, and they certainly will not learn to think well. Thinking tasks can be easy or hard, and so can recall-level tasks. If you doubt that, consider the examples on the following page. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 29 8/24/10 1:49 PM  30 How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom Easy Difficult Recall Who is the main character Name all the characters in in The Cat in the Hat? Hamlet. Higher-Order Why do you think the Cat Hamlet wrestles with a Thinking cleaned up the house on his major question in his solilo- way out, before Mother got quy, “O, that this too, too home? solid flesh would melt” in Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 131–161. What is the ques- tion in his mind, and how do you think he resolves it by the end of his soliloquy? State your interpretation of his major question and his resolution, and use evi- dence from the speech to support it. Strategies for Giving Feedback or Scoring Tasks That Assess Higher-Order Thinking There are two ways to interpret student responses to items or tasks: one is to comment on the work, and the other is to score it. For either, it is important to apply criteria about the quality of thinking exhibited in the work. In this book, I suggest criteria with each essay or performance assessment example (as shown in the example using the fable). The criteria could be either the founda- tion for feedback or the basis for rubrics, or both, depending on how you used the assessment. The important points are that the criteria match your learning targets, and that progress against those criteria means learning. Brookhart-Higher Order Thinking pages.indd 30 8/24/10 1:49 PM  General Principles for Assessing Higher-Order Thinking 31 Formative Assessment of Higher-Order Thinking Observing and discussing student reasoning directly can be a powerful way to assess higher-order thinking. Give students an assessment, and use it formatively. Have conversations with students about their reasoning, or give substantive written feedback. The conversations and feedback should be base