Encouraging Higher-Order Thinking

According to Alison King, peer interaction is a critical component to the development of higher-order thinking skills.

She writes in her article entitled Structuring Peer Interaction to Promote High-Level Cognitive Processing, "...peer learning tasks that demand a higher, more complex, level of cognitive processing. Examples of these tasks include: working together to solve ill-structured problems and problems with several possible solutions, peers analyzing and integrating ideas to go beyond presented material to build new knowledge, group decision making, peer assessment of learning products, and peer tutoring. These more complex learning tasks require high-level cognitive processing; that is, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making." She continues to say that "interaction between and among the learners in a group influences the cognitive activity that is occurring, and it is this cognitive activity that accounts for the learning that takes place" (King, 2002).

Read King's article to see the effects and benefits peer learning has on cognition and understanding [1].

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