THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER-ORDER COGNITIVE COMPETENCIES THROUGH THE PHENOMENON-BASED LEARNING APPROACH

Abstract

The current article delves into questioning the importance of developing low-order and higher-order cognitive skills. Reliance on the acquisition of ready-made knowledge can be favorable in educational institutions because of easiness and resulting in faster outcomes compared to working on developing higher-order cognitive skills demanding a laborious effort and a lot of time. Yet, it highlights the importance of developing higher-order cognitive skills because of tangible results such as knowledge construction and thoroughly thought and reasonably- made decisions due to productive thinking. It also presents a system of tasks to develop higher-order cognitive competencies through the Phenomenon-based learning approach with designed examples based on the themes presented in the curriculum of Integrated language skills. An educational technique called” Engage, Explore and Discover” is given to navigate readers’ attention through the steps of cultivating higher-order cognitive skills in the domain of the Phenomenon-based learning approach, a Finnish novel educational approach in which learners acquire and construct their own knowledge-based on real observation of events, objects, people rather than simply acquiring ready-made theoretical knowledge commonly witnessed case in an educational environment.