Whereas Behaviorism focuses on actions, Cognitivism focuses on thinking. Of course, thinking can leads to actions. One famous application of Cognitivism is work on thinking skills, such as those in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives. One version of these objectives categorizes them as:

a.      Remembering – Recalling what has been read, heard, and seen (as in seeing a video or watching a demonstration). This type of thinking forms a foundation for the more complex thinking needed in the other categories. Listing, memorizing, and repeating are types of thinking that fall into the remembering category.

b.     Understanding – Going beyond remembering, students need to understand what they read, hear, and see. Explaining, defining, paraphrasing, and exemplifying are types of thinking that fall into the understanding category. 

c.      Applying – Using what is understood is applying. Ways to apply include discussing, demonstrating, illustrating, dramatizing, and using what was understood to do tasks and solve problems.

d.     Analyzing – Analyzing involves breaking what was learned into parts and using this analysis to solve problems, complete tasks, and gain better understanding. Comparing, contrasting, criticizing, praising, questioning, and classifying are types of thinking that fall into the analyzing category.

e.      Evaluating – Evaluating uses the previous four types of thinking to make a decision to accept, reject, revise, judge, or select individuals, ideas, things, or organizations. Evaluations need to be supported with reasons. In CL, learners evaluate the facts or evidence with which they are working and decide whether or not they add value to the task at hand.

f.      Creating – Building on the five previous types of thinking, creating involves bringing into being something new and different. Five-year-olds can create; maybe what they create is not 100% new in the world, but it is new to them. Words associated with creating include design, construct, generate, devise, and develop.

Cognitivism encourages students do all these six types of thinking. These types of thinking come to life when students explain ideas to each other, when they debate, apply, and compare ideas, even create new ideas. This fits with the CL principle of maximum peer interactions (quality).