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Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

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(This is the first post in a three-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

This three-part series will explore what critical thinking is, if it can be specifically taught and, if so, how can teachers do so in their classrooms.

Today’s guests are Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On Teaching & Learning Critical Thinking In The Classroom .

Current Events

Dara Laws Savage is an English teacher at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, where she serves as a teacher and instructional coach and lead mentor. Dara has been teaching for 25 years (career preparation, English, photography, yearbook, newspaper, and graphic design) and has presented nationally on project-based learning and technology integration:

There is so much going on right now and there is an overload of information for us to process. Did you ever stop to think how our students are processing current events? They see news feeds, hear news reports, and scan photos and posts, but are they truly thinking about what they are hearing and seeing?

I tell my students that my job is not to give them answers but to teach them how to think about what they read and hear. So what is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom? There are just as many definitions of critical thinking as there are people trying to define it. However, the Critical Think Consortium focuses on the tools to create a thinking-based classroom rather than a definition: “Shape the climate to support thinking, create opportunities for thinking, build capacity to think, provide guidance to inform thinking.” Using these four criteria and pairing them with current events, teachers easily create learning spaces that thrive on thinking and keep students engaged.

One successful technique I use is the FIRE Write. Students are given a quote, a paragraph, an excerpt, or a photo from the headlines. Students are asked to F ocus and respond to the selection for three minutes. Next, students are asked to I dentify a phrase or section of the photo and write for two minutes. Third, students are asked to R eframe their response around a specific word, phrase, or section within their previous selection. Finally, students E xchange their thoughts with a classmate. Within the exchange, students also talk about how the selection connects to what we are covering in class.

There was a controversial Pepsi ad in 2017 involving Kylie Jenner and a protest with a police presence. The imagery in the photo was strikingly similar to a photo that went viral with a young lady standing opposite a police line. Using that image from a current event engaged my students and gave them the opportunity to critically think about events of the time.

Here are the two photos and a student response:

F - Focus on both photos and respond for three minutes

In the first picture, you see a strong and courageous black female, bravely standing in front of two officers in protest. She is risking her life to do so. Iesha Evans is simply proving to the world she does NOT mean less because she is black … and yet officers are there to stop her. She did not step down. In the picture below, you see Kendall Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, except this was Pepsi’s weak, pathetic, and outrageous excuse of a commercial that belittles the whole movement of people fighting for their lives.

I - Identify a word or phrase, underline it, then write about it for two minutes

A white, privileged female in place of a fighting black woman was asking for trouble. A struggle we are continuously fighting every day, and they make a mockery of it. “I know what will work! Here Mr. Police Officer! Drink some Pepsi!” As if. Pepsi made a fool of themselves, and now their already dwindling fan base continues to ever shrink smaller.

R - Reframe your thoughts by choosing a different word, then write about that for one minute

You don’t know privilege until it’s gone. You don’t know privilege while it’s there—but you can and will be made accountable and aware. Don’t use it for evil. You are not stupid. Use it to do something. Kendall could’ve NOT done the commercial. Kendall could’ve released another commercial standing behind a black woman. Anything!

Exchange - Remember to discuss how this connects to our school song project and our previous discussions?

This connects two ways - 1) We want to convey a strong message. Be powerful. Show who we are. And Pepsi definitely tried. … Which leads to the second connection. 2) Not mess up and offend anyone, as had the one alma mater had been linked to black minstrels. We want to be amazing, but we have to be smart and careful and make sure we include everyone who goes to our school and everyone who may go to our school.

As a final step, students read and annotate the full article and compare it to their initial response.

Using current events and critical-thinking strategies like FIRE writing helps create a learning space where thinking is the goal rather than a score on a multiple-choice assessment. Critical-thinking skills can cross over to any of students’ other courses and into life outside the classroom. After all, we as teachers want to help the whole student be successful, and critical thinking is an important part of navigating life after they leave our classrooms.

‘Before-Explore-Explain’

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM and CTE for the Fort Zumwalt school district in Missouri and an experienced educator and author :

Planning for critical thinking focuses on teaching the most crucial science concepts, practices, and logical-thinking skills as well as the best use of instructional time. One way to ensure that lessons maintain a focus on critical thinking is to focus on the instructional sequence used to teach.

Explore-before-explain teaching is all about promoting critical thinking for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. What having an explore-before-explain mindset means is that in our planning, we prioritize giving students firsthand experiences with data, allow students to construct evidence-based claims that focus on conceptual understanding, and challenge students to discuss and think about the why behind phenomena.

Just think of the critical thinking that has to occur for students to construct a scientific claim. 1) They need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. 2) With data in hand, students can begin thinking about the validity and reliability of their experience and information collected. 3) They can consider what differences, if any, they might have if they completed the investigation again. 4) They can scrutinize outlying data points for they may be an artifact of a true difference that merits further exploration of a misstep in the procedure, measuring device, or measurement. All of these intellectual activities help them form more robust understanding and are evidence of their critical thinking.

In explore-before-explain teaching, all of these hard critical-thinking tasks come before teacher explanations of content. Whether we use discovery experiences, problem-based learning, and or inquiry-based activities, strategies that are geared toward helping students construct understanding promote critical thinking because students learn content by doing the practices valued in the field to generate knowledge.

An Issue of Equity

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at The Possible Project, an out-of-school program that collaborates with youth to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets and provides pathways to careers and long-term economic prosperity. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years as a middle and high school teacher, school coach, college professor, regional director of N.Y.C. Outward Bound Schools, and director of external research with EL Education:

Although critical thinking often defies straightforward definition, most in the education field agree it consists of several components: reasoning, problem-solving, and decisionmaking, plus analysis and evaluation of information, such that multiple sides of an issue can be explored. It also includes dispositions and “the willingness to apply critical-thinking principles, rather than fall back on existing unexamined beliefs, or simply believe what you’re told by authority figures.”

Despite variation in definitions, critical thinking is nonetheless promoted as an essential outcome of students’ learning—we want to see students and adults demonstrate it across all fields, professions, and in their personal lives. Yet there is simultaneously a rationing of opportunities in schools for students of color, students from under-resourced communities, and other historically marginalized groups to deeply learn and practice critical thinking.

For example, many of our most underserved students often spend class time filling out worksheets, promoting high compliance but low engagement, inquiry, critical thinking, or creation of new ideas. At a time in our world when college and careers are critical for participation in society and the global, knowledge-based economy, far too many students struggle within classrooms and schools that reinforce low-expectations and inequity.

If educators aim to prepare all students for an ever-evolving marketplace and develop skills that will be valued no matter what tomorrow’s jobs are, then we must move critical thinking to the forefront of classroom experiences. And educators must design learning to cultivate it.

So, what does that really look like?

Unpack and define critical thinking

To understand critical thinking, educators need to first unpack and define its components. What exactly are we looking for when we speak about reasoning or exploring multiple perspectives on an issue? How does problem-solving show up in English, math, science, art, or other disciplines—and how is it assessed? At Two Rivers, an EL Education school, the faculty identified five constructs of critical thinking, defined each, and created rubrics to generate a shared picture of quality for teachers and students. The rubrics were then adapted across grade levels to indicate students’ learning progressions.

At Avenues World School, critical thinking is one of the Avenues World Elements and is an enduring outcome embedded in students’ early experiences through 12th grade. For instance, a kindergarten student may be expected to “identify cause and effect in familiar contexts,” while an 8th grader should demonstrate the ability to “seek out sufficient evidence before accepting a claim as true,” “identify bias in claims and evidence,” and “reconsider strongly held points of view in light of new evidence.”

When faculty and students embrace a common vision of what critical thinking looks and sounds like and how it is assessed, educators can then explicitly design learning experiences that call for students to employ critical-thinking skills. This kind of work must occur across all schools and programs, especially those serving large numbers of students of color. As Linda Darling-Hammond asserts , “Schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum needed to ... help students attain the [critical-thinking] skills needed in a knowledge work economy. ”

So, what can it look like to create those kinds of learning experiences?

Designing experiences for critical thinking

After defining a shared understanding of “what” critical thinking is and “how” it shows up across multiple disciplines and grade levels, it is essential to create learning experiences that impel students to cultivate, practice, and apply these skills. There are several levers that offer pathways for teachers to promote critical thinking in lessons:

1.Choose Compelling Topics: Keep it relevant

A key Common Core State Standard asks for students to “write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” That might not sound exciting or culturally relevant. But a learning experience designed for a 12th grade humanities class engaged learners in a compelling topic— policing in America —to analyze and evaluate multiple texts (including primary sources) and share the reasoning for their perspectives through discussion and writing. Students grappled with ideas and their beliefs and employed deep critical-thinking skills to develop arguments for their claims. Embedding critical-thinking skills in curriculum that students care about and connect with can ignite powerful learning experiences.

2. Make Local Connections: Keep it real

At The Possible Project , an out-of-school-time program designed to promote entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, students in a recent summer online program (modified from in-person due to COVID-19) explored the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and local BIPOC-owned businesses. They learned interviewing skills through a partnership with Everyday Boston , conducted virtual interviews with entrepreneurs, evaluated information from their interviews and local data, and examined their previously held beliefs. They created blog posts and videos to reflect on their learning and consider how their mindsets had changed as a result of the experience. In this way, we can design powerful community-based learning and invite students into productive struggle with multiple perspectives.

3. Create Authentic Projects: Keep it rigorous

At Big Picture Learning schools, students engage in internship-based learning experiences as a central part of their schooling. Their school-based adviser and internship-based mentor support them in developing real-world projects that promote deeper learning and critical-thinking skills. Such authentic experiences teach “young people to be thinkers, to be curious, to get from curiosity to creation … and it helps students design a learning experience that answers their questions, [providing an] opportunity to communicate it to a larger audience—a major indicator of postsecondary success.” Even in a remote environment, we can design projects that ask more of students than rote memorization and that spark critical thinking.

Our call to action is this: As educators, we need to make opportunities for critical thinking available not only to the affluent or those fortunate enough to be placed in advanced courses. The tools are available, let’s use them. Let’s interrogate our current curriculum and design learning experiences that engage all students in real, relevant, and rigorous experiences that require critical thinking and prepare them for promising postsecondary pathways.

Critical Thinking & Student Engagement

Dr. PJ Caposey is an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, consultant, and author of seven books who currently serves as the superintendent of schools for the award-winning Meridian CUSD 223 in northwest Illinois. You can find PJ on most social-media platforms as MCUSDSupe:

When I start my keynote on student engagement, I invite two people up on stage and give them each five paper balls to shoot at a garbage can also conveniently placed on stage. Contestant One shoots their shot, and the audience gives approval. Four out of 5 is a heckuva score. Then just before Contestant Two shoots, I blindfold them and start moving the garbage can back and forth. I usually try to ensure that they can at least make one of their shots. Nobody is successful in this unfair environment.

I thank them and send them back to their seats and then explain that this little activity was akin to student engagement. While we all know we want student engagement, we are shooting at different targets. More importantly, for teachers, it is near impossible for them to hit a target that is moving and that they cannot see.

Within the world of education and particularly as educational leaders, we have failed to simplify what student engagement looks like, and it is impossible to define or articulate what student engagement looks like if we cannot clearly articulate what critical thinking is and looks like in a classroom. Because, simply, without critical thought, there is no engagement.

The good news here is that critical thought has been defined and placed into taxonomies for decades already. This is not something new and not something that needs to be redefined. I am a Bloom’s person, but there is nothing wrong with DOK or some of the other taxonomies, either. To be precise, I am a huge fan of Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance Framework. I have used that as a core element of my practice for years, and it has shaped who I am as an instructional leader.

So, in order to explain critical thought, a teacher or a leader must familiarize themselves with these tried and true taxonomies. Easy, right? Yes, sort of. The issue is not understanding what critical thought is; it is the ability to integrate it into the classrooms. In order to do so, there are a four key steps every educator must take.

• Integrating critical thought/rigor into a lesson does not happen by chance, it happens by design. Planning for critical thought and engagement is much different from planning for a traditional lesson. In order to plan for kids to think critically, you have to provide a base of knowledge and excellent prompts to allow them to explore their own thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information.
• SIDE NOTE – Bloom’s verbs are a great way to start when writing objectives, but true planning will take you deeper than this.

QUESTIONING

• If the questions and prompts given in a classroom have correct answers or if the teacher ends up answering their own questions, the lesson will lack critical thought and rigor.
• Script five questions forcing higher-order thought prior to every lesson. Experienced teachers may not feel they need this, but it helps to create an effective habit.
• If lessons are rigorous and assessments are not, students will do well on their assessments, and that may not be an accurate representation of the knowledge and skills they have mastered. If lessons are easy and assessments are rigorous, the exact opposite will happen. When deciding to increase critical thought, it must happen in all three phases of the game: planning, instruction, and assessment.

TALK TIME / CONTROL

• To increase rigor, the teacher must DO LESS. This feels counterintuitive but is accurate. Rigorous lessons involving tons of critical thought must allow for students to work on their own, collaborate with peers, and connect their ideas. This cannot happen in a silent room except for the teacher talking. In order to increase rigor, decrease talk time and become comfortable with less control. Asking questions and giving prompts that lead to no true correct answer also means less control. This is a tough ask for some teachers. Explained differently, if you assign one assignment and get 30 very similar products, you have most likely assigned a low-rigor recipe. If you assign one assignment and get multiple varied products, then the students have had a chance to think deeply, and you have successfully integrated critical thought into your classroom.

Thanks to Dara, Patrick, Meg, and PJ for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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Leveraging Creative and Critical Thinking for Better Decision-Making

By Dr. Marianne de Pierres and Gretel Bakker

Updated on 30th May 2024

We hear a lot about critical thinking in the workplace and how it’s needed to exercise good judgment in solving complex problems. But what constitutes critical thinking? Is it something that we practice in isolation from other forms of intelligence? And do we get the very best solutions from critical thinking alone?

Defining Critical and Creative Thinking

Firstly, we should define what we mean… critical thinking is  a complex process that demands high-order reasoning processes to achieve a desired outcome . Its skill lies in assessing and analysing a range of information and inputs.

Yet the primer to that process falls into another realm entirely—creative thinking. This can be much  more elusive to explain , but generally speaking, it means having  the ability to generate novel associations that are adaptive in some way (Ward, Thompson‐Lake, Ely, & Kaminski, 2008).

While creative thinking benefits from a   divergence  of ideas , critical thinking is analysing and evaluating a range of inputs that  converge  on a decision or action. So when we generate ideas, it is a process of making connections, and when we solve, we focus through comparison.

I t’s the synergy of these two acts — creative and critical — that enables truly effective thinking.

Studies on the overlapping nature of these dual “thinking” processes  found that:

• creative and critical thinking play complementary roles in problem-solving
• creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving are the main cognitive competencies for the 21st century
• creativity and critical thinking are key ingredients for innovation
• creative and critical thinking need to be stimulated for better learning contexts

One particular  learning model  used to explain the  connection  between the two, shows it unfolding in four phases that may be cyclical or linear, sequential or concurrent.

The Creative Thinking Phases

Inquiring  — this is where we ask questions and start processing what we’re hearing and observing

• Is this credible? Is it factual or a value claim?
• What are the assumptions and biases related to this?
• How can I get more understanding or clarity?

Generating  — this is where we start to spark connections, look for reframes, and begin to act

• How can this idea be expanded upon?
• How do I activate this idea?

The Critical Thinking Phases

Analysing  — this is where we interpret, apply rationale, provide reasons, and evaluate outcomes

• What is it that I am creating or developing?
• What is the information I require?
• In what ways can I interpret the data?

Reflecting  — this is where we think about what we are thinking and transfer wisdom to others

• How is my critical thinking leading me to a higher plane of understanding?
• How is this knowledge useful? Who is it useful to?

Another way to understand the continuum between critical and creative thinking is to consider the movement  from  one  to  the other.

Perhaps the most encapsulating explanation of their interdependency, though, is as  Dr. Linda Elder  explains it:

“I f all you can do is think critically, without creating solutions, then you’re not going to succeed in the process of “thinking.” If all you do is think creatively, then you may create something novel, but not significant. “

So, when you’re seeking solutions to complex problems in the workplace, consider whether you have committed just as strongly to the creative process that will bring the best and most diverse ideas. And once the creative thinking phase has flourished, look to apply the rigor of critical thinking. This interdependent weave of ways of thinking will yield the highest results.

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9.3: Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking

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• Kelvin Seifert & Rosemary Sutton
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Critical thinking

Critical thinking requires skill at analyzing the reliability and validity of information, as well as the attitude or disposition to do so. The skill and attitude may be displayed with regard to a particular subject matter or topic, but in principle it can occur in any realm of knowledge (Halpern, 2003; Williams, Oliver, & Stockade, 2004). A critical thinker does not necessarily have a negative attitude in the everyday sense of constantly criticizing someone or something. Instead, he or she can be thought of as astute: the critical thinker asks key questions, evaluates the evidence for ideas, reasons for problems both logically and objectively, and expresses ideas and conclusions clearly and precisely. Last (but not least), the critical thinker can apply these habits of mind in more than one realm of life or knowledge.

With such a broad definition, it is not surprising that educators have suggested a variety of specific cognitive skills as contributing to critical thinking. In one study, for example, the researcher found how critical thinking can be reflected in regard to a published article was stimulated by annotation — writing questions and comments in the margins of the article (Liu, 2006). In this study, students were initially instructed in ways of annotating reading materials. Later, when the students completed additional readings for assignments, it was found that some students in fact used their annotation skills much more than others— some simply underlined passages, for example, with a highlighting pen. When essays written about the readings were later analyzed, the ones written by the annotators were found to be more well reasoned— more critically astute— than the essays written by the other students.

In another study, on the other hand, a researcher found that critical thinking can also involve oral discussion of personal issues or dilemmas (Hawkins, 2006). In this study, students were asked to verbally describe a recent, personal incident that disturbed them. Classmates then discussed the incident together in order to identify the precise reasons why the incident was disturbing, as well as the assumptions that the student made in describing the incident. The original student— the one who had first told the story— then used the results of the group discussion to frame a topic for a research essay. In one story of a troubling incident, a student told of a time when a store clerk has snubbed or rejected the student during a recent shopping errand. Through discussion, classmates decided that an assumption underlying the student's disturbance was her suspicion that she had been a victim of racial profiling based on her skin color. The student then used this idea as the basis for a research essay on the topic of "racial profiling in retail stores". The oral discussion thus stimulated critical thinking in the student and the classmates, but it also relied on their prior critical thinking skills at the same time.

Notice that in both of these research studies, as in others like them, what made the thinking "critical" was students' use of metacognition — strategies for thinking about thinking and for monitoring the success and quality of one's own thinking. This concept was discussed in Chapter 2 as a feature of constructivist views about learning. There we pointed out that when students acquire experience in building their own knowledge, they also become skilled both at knowing how they learn, and at knowing whether they have learned something well. These are two defining qualities of metacognition, but they are part of critical thinking as well. In fostering critical thinking, a teacher is really fostering a student's ability to construct or control his or her own thinking and to avoid being controlled by ideas unreflectively.

How best to teach critical thinking remains a matter of debate. One issue is whether to infuse critical skills into existing courses or to teach them through separate, free-standing units or courses. The first approach has the potential advantage of integrating critical thinking into students' entire educations. But it risks diluting students' understanding and use of critical thinking simply because critical thinking takes on a different form in each learning context. Its details and appearance vary among courses and teachers. The free-standing approach has the opposite qualities: it stands a better chance of being understood clearly and coherently, but at the cost of obscuring how it is related to other courses, tasks, and activities. This dilemma is the issue— again— of transfer , discussed in Chapter 2. Unfortunately, research to compare the different strategies for teaching critical thinking does not settle the matter. The research suggests simply that either infusion or free-standing approaches can work as long as it is implemented thoroughly and teachers are committed to the value of critical thinking (Halpern, 2003).

A related issue about teaching critical thinking is about deciding who needs to learn critical thinking skills the most. Should it be all students, or only some of them? Teaching all students seems the more democratic alternative and thus appropriate for educators. Surveys have found, however, that teachers sometimes favor teaching of critical thinking only to high-advantage students— the ones who already achieve well, who come from relatively high- income families, or (for high school students) who take courses intended for university entrance (Warburton & Torff, 2005). Presumably the rationale for this bias is that high- advantage students can benefit and/or understand and use critical thinking better than other students. Yet, there is little research evidence to support this idea, even if it were not ethically questionable. The study by Hawkins (2006) described above, for example, is that critical thinking was fostered even with students considered low-advantage.

Creative thinking

Creativity is the ability to make or do something new that is also useful or valued by others (Gardner, 1993). The "something" can be an object (like an essay or painting), a skill (like playing an instrument), or an action (like using a familiar tool in a new way). To be creative, the object, skill, or action cannot simply be bizarre or strange; it cannot be new without also being useful or valued, and not simply be the result of accident. If a person types letters at random that form a poem by chance, the result may be beautiful, but it would not be creative by the definition above. Viewed this way, creativity includes a wide range of human experience that many people, if not everyone, have had at some time or other (Kaufman & Baer, 2006). The experience is not restricted to a few geniuses, nor exclusive to specific fields or activities like art or the composing of music.

Especially important for teachers are two facts. The first is that an important form of creativity is creative thinking , the generation of ideas that are new as well as useful, productive, and appropriate. The second is that creative thinking can be stimulated by teachers' efforts. Teachers can, for example, encourage students' divergent thinking — ideas that are open-ended and that lead in many directions (Torrance, 1992; Kim, 2006). Divergent thinking is stimulated by open-ended questions— questions with many possible answers, such as the following:

• How many uses can you think of for a cup?
• Draw a picture that somehow incorporates all of these words: cat, fire engine, and banana.
• What is the most unusual use you can think of for a shoe?

Note that answering these questions creatively depends partly on having already acquired knowledge about the objects to which the questions refer. In this sense divergent thinking depends partly on its converse, convergent thinking , which is focused, logical reasoning about ideas and experiences that lead to specific answers. Up to a point, then, developing students' convergent thinking— as schoolwork often does by emphasizing mastery of content— facilitates students' divergent thinking indirectly, and hence also their creativity (Sternberg, 2003; Runco, 2004; Cropley, 2006). But carried to extremes, excessive emphasis on convergent thinking may discourage creativity.

Whether in school or out, creativity seems to flourish best when the creative activity is its own intrinsic reward, and a person is relatively unconcerned with what others think of the results. Whatever the activity— composing a song, writing an essay, organizing a party, or whatever— it is more likely to be creative if the creator focuses on and enjoys the activity in itself, and thinks relatively little about how others may evaluate the activity (Brophy, 2004). Unfortunately, encouraging students to ignore others' responses can sometimes pose a challenge for teachers. Not only is it the teachers' job to evaluate students' learning of particular ideas or skills, but also they have to do so within restricted time limits of a course or a school year. In spite of these constraints, though, creativity still can be encouraged in classrooms at least some of the time (Claxton, Edwards, & Scale-Constantinou, 2006). Suppose, for example, that students have to be assessed on their understanding and use of particular vocabulary. Testing their understanding may limit creative thinking; students will understandably focus their energies on learning "right" answers for the tests. But assessment does not have to happen constantly. There can also be times to encourage experimentation with vocabulary through writing poems, making word games, or in other thought-provoking ways. These activities are all potentially creative. To some extent, therefore, learning content and experimenting or playing with content can both find a place— in fact one of these activities can often support the other. We return to this point later in this chapter, when we discuss student-centered strategies of instruction, such as cooperative learning and play as a learning medium.

Connecting moments of creativity, computational thinking, collaboration and new media literacy skills

Information and Learning Sciences

ISSN : 2398-5348

Article publication date: 22 November 2019

Issue publication date: 3 December 2019

This paper aims to present a novel pedagogical model that aims at bridging creativity with computational thinking (CT) and new media literacy skills at low-technology, information-rich learning environments. As creativity, problem solving and collaboration are among the targeted skills in twenty-first century, this model promotes the acquisition of these skills towards a holistic development of students in primary and secondary school settings. In this direction, teaching students to think like a computer scientist, an economist, a physicist or an artist can be achieved through CT practices, as well as media arts practices. The interface between these practices is imagination, a fundamental concept in the model. Imaginative teaching methods, computer science unplugged approach and low-technology prototyping method are used to develop creativity, CT, collaboration and new media literacy skills in students. Furthermore, cognitive, emotional, physical and social abilities are fostered. Principles and guidelines for the implementation of the model in classrooms are provided by following the design thinking process as a methodological tool, and a real example implemented in a primary school classroom is described. The added value of this paper is that it proposes a pedagogical model that can serve as a pool of pedagogical approaches implemented in various disciplines and grades, as CT curriculum frameworks for K-6 are still in their infancy. Further research is needed to define the point at which unplugged approach should be replaced or even combined with plugged-in approach and how this proposed model can be enriched.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a pedagogical model that aims at bridging creativity with CT, collaboration and new media literacy skills.

The proposed model follows a pedagogy-driven approach rather a technology-driven one as the authors suggest its implementation in low-tech, information-rich learning environments without computers. The added value of this paper is that it proposes a novel pedagogical model that can serve as a pool of pedagogical approaches and as a framework implemented in various disciplines and grades. A CT curriculum framework for K-6 is an area of research that is still in its infancy (Angeli et al. , 2016), so this model is intended to provide a holistic perspective over this area by focusing how to approach the convergence among CT, collaboration and creativity skills in practice rather than what to teach. Based on literature, the authors explained how multiple moments impact on CT, creativity and collaboration development and presented the linkages among them. Successful implementation of CT requires not only computer science and mathematics but also imaginative capacities involving innovation and curiosity (The College Board, 2012). It is necessary to understand the CT implications for teaching and learning beyond the traditional applications on computer science and mathematics (Kotsopoulos et al. , 2017) and start paying more attention to CT implications on social sciences and non-cognitive skills. Though the presented example (case study) seems to exploit the proposed multiple moments model at optimal level, empirical evidence is needed to show its practical applicability in a variety of contexts and not only in primary school settings. Future studies can extend, enrich or even alter some of its elements through experimental applications on how all these macro/micromoments work in practice in terms of easiness in implementation, flexibility, social orientation and skills improvement.

Originality/value

The added value of this paper is that it joins learning theories, pedagogical methods and necessary skills acquisition in an integrated manner by proposing a pedagogical model that can orient activities and educational scenarios by giving principles and guidelines for teaching practice.

• Collaboration
• Computational thinking
• Imagination
• Low-technology
• Information-rich
• New media skills

Tsortanidou, X. , Daradoumis, T. and Barberá, E. (2019), "Connecting moments of creativity, computational thinking, collaboration and new media literacy skills", Information and Learning Sciences , Vol. 120 No. 11/12, pp. 704-722. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-05-2019-0042

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Xanthippi Tsortanidou, Thanasis Daradoumis and Elena Barberá.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Developing students’ twenty-first century skills, including creativity, critical thinking and problem solving, has been a dominant concern in our globalized society. Students should take part in the present participatory culture to acquire these skills by becoming creators/prosumers of knowledge rather than being consumers of information ( Gretter and Yadav, 2016 ). Mishra and Yadav (2013) advocated that creativity can be augmented by computational thinking (CT) which constitutes a process of identifying aspects of computation in the world and applying tools and techniques from Computer Science to understand and explain both natural and artificial systems and processes ( Voogt et al. , 2015 ). In this context, computational problems can be solved, computational artifacts can be created and students have the chance to express themselves creatively ( Gretter and Yadav, 2016 ). It is noticeable that there is no clear-cut definition for CT and its curricular infusion in education should be tried by finding similarities and relationships in the discussions about CT. Although it draws on concepts of Computer Science, the two concepts are not identical, since CT refers to problem solving processes that are followed when solving complex problems, generalizing and transferring this process to a wide range of problems. The ability to think computationally involves algorithmic thinking and design-based thinking as well. CT practices include the design and development of computational artifacts, models, simulations and artifacts of natural and artificial phenomena collaboratively and the implementation of computing techniques to solve problems. Therefore, computing can take many forms ranging from creating animations to developing websites ( Voogt et al. , 2015 ). These products entail imagination since enable artistic, scientific and technical creation ( Vygotsky, 2004 ) and can be evaluated by applying aesthetic, mathematical, pragmatic and other criteria. Students can communicate them through written and oral descriptions supported by graphs, visualizations, diagrams, and so forth. Voogt et al. (2015) .

UNESCO advocates the complementary relationship between CT and media and information literacy that can provide teachers with a comprehensive set of skills to allow students to creatively produce content ( Gretter and Yadav, 2016 ). Computation, collaboration and creativity are overarching elements of media arts practices and therefore, it is meaningful to consider the new media skills development of crucial importance. More specifically, computation refers to the role of technology and computer programming. Mitch Resnick argues that although programming is an important tool to help development of CT skills, “computational thinking is more than programming, but only in the same way that language literacy is more than writing” ( National Research Council, 2010 , p. 13). Programming in this context is less about code and more about self-expression ( Grover and Pea, 2013 ), and creativity can be used as a way to tell stories or to create artwork for example. Self-expression means that students can infuse their interests and personal styles into their media artworks. Collaboration emphasizes the social context of media arts practices, since the social participation enables creation and sharing of work and forms peer to peer and mentor to peer forms of collaboration ( Peppler and Kafai , 2007a, 2007b ).

Media arts include sociocultural theories and the involvement of imagination. The sociocultural theory of constructionism serves the aims of (media) arts education since artifacts design and sharing within a community of learners stimulate social participation and active engagement. Consequently, it is important to stress that not only intellectual skills are developed but also social skills and that bidirectional connection between the individual and the community of learners is emerged ( Peppler, 2010 ). Students have to develop their physical, emotional and intellectual abilities as the basis for obtaining media competency ( Hübner, 2015 ) and toward this direction, it is purposeful to incorporate social and intellectual skills development in the model. The new media literacy skills framework proposed by Jenkins et al. (2009) is employed in our pedagogical model, which emphasizes not on mastering the tools use but on intellectual activities performed when someone works with sophisticated technologies ( Dede, 2010 ). In fact these skills, the new media literacy skills, are social skills needed for active engagement in todaý s participatory culture ( Jenkins et al. , 2009 ). Furthermore, CT requires intellectual and social abilities as well, and can be considered integral element of media skills acquisition ( Gretter and Yadav, 2016 ).

Greene (2011) highlighted the central role of aesthetics and imagination in the artistic process because they engage students in building, creating and constructing digital or physical artifacts. The artistic creativity integrates “intangible assets” (“creative milieu”) and the new media arts aid the artistic, individual and social creativity ( Jennings and Giaccardi, 2005 ). In addition, the curricular infusion of CT in schools is still scarce and studies about how it can be cultivated in disciplines other than Computer Science are needed. CT facilitates students to think not only like a computer scientist, but also like an economist, an artist, a physicist, and so forth ( Voogt et al. , 2015 ). Furthermore, media arts as a “metamedium” overlap with sciences, visual arts, animation, film, electronic music, and so forth ( National Research Council, 2003 ) and in this sense, multimodality has significant implications in combining many different modes.

The proposed pedagogical model aims at developing the overarching twenty-first century skills of creativity, collaboration and CT which are presented as macromoments. We call it 3 C multiple moments pedagogical model (see Figure 1 ). The three macroments are connected and realized through five micromoments: non-technological, sociocultural, imaginative, multimodal and media. These micromoments refer to specific methods which cultivate the corresponding skills and thus, provide the natural avenues for the implementation of the macromoments.

Imaginative pedagogy is at the center of the model aiming at developing students in a holistic manner, since it unifies the thinking, feeling and doing realms of human nature ( Henriksen et al. , 2016 ). The non-technological micromoment refers to low technology and computer science unplugged approaches, corresponding to the CT macromoment. The socio-cultural micromoment refers to theories that recognize the social context in which the education process is realized and is connected to the collaboration macromoment. The imaginative micromoment entails the imaginative methods and tools that can be incorporated in a low-tech, information rich learning environment, matching with creativity. The media micromoment refers to media arts practices and new media literacy skills, corresponding to all macromoments. The multimodal micromoment spans over all teaching methods and skills accounted for by the 3 C model, involving all three thinking, feeling and doing realms of imaginative pedagogy. As such, it is inherent to the rationale of the model. As we explain in greater detail in the following section, all macromoments and micromoments intertwine, representing more than simple one-to-one relationships between them.

The micromoments of the pedagogical model

In this section, we elaborate on the micromoments that the pedagogical model draws upon. For each micromoment, we describe its essence and figure out linkages with the other micromoments. This model frames possible educational scenarios and activities, aimed at achieving a holistic approach to teaching practices. The holistic approach of the model is encountered in its content and process. Regarding content, the micromoments are comprised of methods and skills that intend to holistically develop the learner. Imagination serves this goal absolutely by using the thinking, feeling and doing realms of human nature. Regarding process, design-thinking approaches compose phenomena in a holistic constructivist manner. A real example explains this holism in the following sections. This model can be applied in tech-free or low-tech learning contexts, where artistic and hands-on activities are central. The role of imagination and creativity is prominent in low technology, information-rich learning environments since the educational process is free from high-tech products. In addition, social interaction and participation are prerequisites for these activities enhancing practical and participation abilities as well ( Sun, 2017 ). Next section presents the model in more detail.

Non-technological micromoment

This micromoment is comprised of both Computer Science Unplugged (CSU) and low-tech prototyping methods. CSU activities promote CT development, which involves problem solving skills; yet, concepts from Computer Science are used to solve real-world problems, independently from using computers ( Wing, 2006 ). CT can be taught through methods that do not use computers or technology and are called CT unplugged methods ( Letonsaari, 2018 ). More specifically, the CSU method exposes children to fundamental computing concepts and presents the kind of thinking that is expected of a computer scientist with the ultimate aim of creating computational models of real world ( Sysło and Kwiatkowska, 2015 ). The CSU pedagogical approach emphasizes on the intellectual and problem-solving nature of computer science. It enhances motivation through challenges and games. Thinking abilities and problem-solving skills are stimulated by trial and error method and hands-on activities with inexpensive materials. Teamwork is promoted and imagination is encouraged through adopting elements of fantasy and storytelling. All these activities can be carried out in classrooms or outdoors ( Nishida et al. , 2009 ; Nishida et al. , 2008 ). Some technical elements of the unplugged approach are: simplicity in implementation, active participation, teamwork towards a common goal, or competition towards finding the best or the fastest solution than another group ( Nishida et al. , 2009 ).

CT shares elements with creative media use since media design and media production are processes requiring programmatic logic ( Jacob and Warschauer, 2018 ). The creative media use is also encountered at low-prototyping methods. A low-tech prototyping method uses art supplies to create low-tech prototypes of technology and generate models ( Alhumaidan et al. , 2015 ) that can be used at educational scenarios ( Westerlund et al. , 2001 ). Indeed, “low-tech tools like crayons, watercolors and paper nourish children’s inner capacities and encourage the child to freely move in, directly relate to, and understand the real world” ( Cordes and Miller, 2000 , p. 74). The low-tech artifacts can be either materials, such as a hammer or a piece of software (computational artifacts), or non-material artifacts, such as a poem, a story, a theory or a scientific experiment. Both types of low-tech artifacts entail and cultivate imagination and can be implemented in several disciplines (arts, computer science, biology, mathematics, and so forth). Students develop technological, social and cognitive skills to construct low-tech artifacts embodying their understanding of concepts that serve as tools for construction, expression and communication of their learning ( Brown, 1992 ).

Sociocultural micromoment

In the proposed pedagogical model, the presence of social interaction between learner and the significant other(s) is paramount and the processing of information plays a primary role in low-tech, information rich learning environments. The human behavior depends strongly on the cultural and social context and exploits the social circumstances ( Letonsaari, 2018 ). CT is also a non-individualistic act and can be seen as a social, communal practice because we create to share with others. CT should be thought as computational participation, recognized as collaborative, distributed contribution since it is affected by social interaction and context ( Kafai and Burke, 2013 ). Since CT draws upon the cognitive and social realm, it is meaningful to highlight the significant role that sociocultural learning theories play in CT development in terms of information processing, social interaction and participation. Children perceive information and convert it to knowledge through social interaction. Social interaction is necessary element of educational process, facilitating information understanding and elaboration in a changing context (Walter 1994 as cited in Campana, 2018 ).

The social process is acknowledged as part of information construction because information seeking, use and sharing depend on cognitive information process and social interaction. Social constructivism elaborates on this account advocating that internal knowledge construction is affected by social interactions and the enveloping discourses ( McKenzie, 2003 ; Talja et al. , 2005 ). Vygotsky, a prominent proponent of social constructivism, asserts the social environment importance in children' development and learning. The internalization and transformation of social interactions result in cognition changes ( Schunk, 2012 ). Concerning social interactions, the role of significant other can be taken by teacher, parent, a more skilled/knowledgeable peer or even by materials. In the proposed model, the employment of materials is fundamental, particularly in CSU and low-tech prototyping methods, and contributes to information processing activity ( Schunk, 2012 ). In that sense, the significant other illustrates the concept of scaffolding and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In practice, scaffolding can take many forms, such as discussion, provision of materials, or designing tasks ( Pritchard, 2008 ). The ZPD differs from learner to learner and reflects the ability of her/him to grasp the logic of scientific concepts ( Fosnot and Perry, 1996 ). Consequently, it is meaningful to take ZPD into account when curricula, activities and materials are developed and provided. Situated learning is another important factor. It points out the importance of connection between people and situations/contexts, stressing that cognitive processes are situated within physical and social contexts. We mentioned previously that CT involves the process of problem solving, transferring and generalizing it to a wide range of problems. Understanding as well as knowledge and skills have more chances to be transferred successfully to other contexts when learning is situated in familiar contexts and learning tasks are authentic and culturally linked ( Pritchard, 2008 ).

The suggested model is also rooted in constructionism learning theory, first proposed by Papert (1987) . Papert’s theory of constructionism advocates that learners physically construct mental models to understand the world around them (“learn by doing approach”) and reconstruct their existing knowledge through inquiry-based active learning. The role of materials is also stressed demonstrating that learning is more effective when learners actively create “external and sharable artifacts” supporting in this way the development of concrete ways of thinking ( Kafai and Resnick, 1996 , p. 4). This learning perspective is fundamentally multimodal in that internal representations and meaning construction occur through engagement with digital, tangible, or even conceptual artifacts, in the real world including sound, text, images, motion and so forth ( Papert and Harel, 1991 ). Two elements of this theory are closely related to imagination: inquiry-based approach and intuitive knowledge. One of the pillars of constructionism learning theory is that learners can be empowered by powerful ideas rooted in intuitive knowledge which they have acquired over a long period of time ( Papert, 2000 ; Bers et al. , 2002 ). Dede et al. (2013) argue that CT must be seen in relation to human knowledge, expertise and intuition, implying that imaginative capacities are also involved. Imagination and inquiry are joined through co-design, foreshadowing the importance of design thinking. Steen (2013) draws upon Dewey's ideas on coordinating processes of joint inquiry and imagination. He asserts that co-design, as a process of collaborative design thinking, combines inquiry as a trajectory from the outside to the inside world whereas imagination follows the reverse trajectory, from the inside to the outside world. From this viewpoint, co-design is a reflective process in which instrumentalities (tangible or conceptual) are brought together in a novel manner so that something new is produced. We elaborate on design thinking in greater detail later in this paper, when we explain a real example of how to use our model to guide design instruction.

Imaginative micromoment

Dede et al. (2013) argue that CT must be seen in relation to human knowledge, expertise and intuition. It is noteworthy to say that success in CT requires not only computer science and mathematics, but also imaginative capacities involving innovation and curiosity. In this direction, CT can enhance creativity, one of the overarching skills in twenty-first century, because computing extends the human expression and allows the creation of new forms of expression ( The College Board, 2012 ). As we have already mentioned, CT practices include computational artifacts, which are products that draw upon imaginative capacity. Low-tech prototyping and unplugged methods also enhance creativity and capitalize on imaginative capacities since elements of fantasy and imagination are integral. To elaborate deeper on these elements, we propose the adoption of imaginative teaching methods that can serve as a pool of practices facilitating the ability to imagine and create ( Nielsen, 2006 ). Imagination unifies the three mental operations of cognition, emotion and motivation that correspond to the three learning faculties of thinking, feeling and doing ( Van Alphen, 2011 ). The sense of imaginative micromoment can accomplish the vision of children holistic development. We employ the imaginative teaching methods of storytelling, drama/role play, arts, discussion, exploration, ritual and routine, and empathy ( Nielsen, 2006 ). Furthermore, cognitive tools of story, abstract binary oppositions, jokes and humor, sense of mystery, sense of reality, and sense of wonder promote imagination ( Egan and Judson, 2009 ) and can be easily incorporated into CSU and low-tech prototyping methods. The sociocultural sense of creativity is stressed by Sawyer (2012) advocating that creativity is the generation of products that come from and direct at knowledgeable social communities. These products are evaluated for their suitability, usefulness and value at society ( Sawyer, 2012 ) applying aesthetic, mathematical, pragmatic and other criteria ( Voogt et al. , 2015 ). The proposed pedagogical model emphasizes on collaboration and the importance of social interaction, participation and active engagement of leaners towards a common goal. Creativity can be an individualistic mental process or collective, when no single participant’s contribution determines the creative product. In the case of non-individualistic creative process, distributed creativity or collaborative creativity occurs and corresponds to how collaboration contributes to creativity ( Sawyer and DeZutter, 2009 ). Distributed creativity shares common elements with the collective intelligence skill of media micromoment as well, since the ultimate aim is the collective social creation.

Multimodal micromoment

The creation of digital, tangible, or even conceptual artifacts as integral components of both unplugged and low-tech prototyping approaches entail the engagement of thinking, feeling and doing realms. This is necessary since abstract imagination is specified by transforming mental conceptualization of an idea into real world. This learning perspective is fundamentally multimodal including sound, text, images, motion, and so forth ( Papert and Harel, 1991 ).

The curricular integration of different media through visual, auditory and kynesthetic approaches is a challenge that school curricula have to deal with Kosic (2018) . Media arts practice can serve this challenge through the concept of “metamedium”. This involves important implications for connecting multiple types of art forms, which includes making and representation (language, visual, spatial, musical, movement, digital, and so on) ( Peppler, 2010 ; Picciano, 2009 ). In this multimodal learning setting, the educational process involves head, heart and hands learning where the use and development of multiple intelligences and learning styles are encouraged. Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory ( Helding, 2009 ) differentiates nine intelligences: linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, spatial/visual, kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential. Multiple intelligences, such as linguistic, kinaesthetic and naturalistic, can be integrated in the imaginative teaching methods we have proposed as fundamental elements in our model. In addition, logical/mathematical and interpersonal intelligences can be involved through CT and collaboration activities, whereas media arts practices can employ spatial/visual, musical and interpersonal intelligences. In this respect, multiple intelligences theory can approach the educational process in a holistic manner, allowing students to reveal their abilities and inclinations.

Media micromoment

Our pedagogical model makes use of the new media literacy skills framework proposed by Jenkins et al. (2009) which emphasizes not on mastering the tools use but on intellectual activities ( Dede, 2010 ). Jenkins et al. (2009) assert that the new media skills are social and cultural skills necessary in todaý s participatory culture since the focus has shifted from “individual expression to community involvement” (p. 7). Students have to develop their physical, emotional and intellectual abilities as the basis for obtaining media competency ( Hübner, 2015 ). All these abilities require the participation of CT (intellectual pillar), imagination and creativity (physical, emotional, intellectual pillars, corresponding to doing, feeling and thinking realms) and collaboration (emotional pillar). Consequently, the new media literacy skills unify all the skills we intend to integrate in our model.

More specifically, play is a new media skill which is closely related to CT because it involves experimentation with the environment, as a problem-solving process. Performance is a media skill which is related to improvisation and discovery, elements that need imagination and creativity. Simulation is a skill related to CSU and low-tech prototyping methods, because real-world models/artifacts are created to interpret real world processes. Appropriation is a skill that can entail the combination of imaginative teaching methods with media arts practices. Multitasking is a skill which is encountered throughout the educational process. Distributed cognition is a skill that refers to tools that expand humans mental capacities, such as a calculator, a ruler, and can complement the creation and refinement of artifacts. Collective intelligence is a skill related to the whole design thinking process, when students have to solve a problem and each member s contribution is pivotal for finding the best solution through sharing and comparing knowledge and experience. Judgment is a necessary skill in information-rich learning environments and is related to the reliability and validity of the information sources that are used. Transmedia navigation is an ability which is closely related to storytelling and multimodality since a story can be encountered in different modalities. Networking is a skill that concerns information searching, synthesizing and disseminating and is connected with work sharing in a social community. Finally, negotiation is an important skill in terms of collaboration, social interaction and participation.

CT, collaboration and creativity are significant aspects of media arts practices. These practices involve complex forms of multimodality such as visual (media images), audio, animated movement, written and kinaesthetic/interactive forms. The engagement with media arts facilitates the acquisition of new media literacy and artistic expression ( Peppler, 2010 ). Learners use their creativity for their self-expression through media and arts practices and value the aesthetic qualities of them ( Kellner and Share, 2007 ). Particularly, CT in the context of media arts practices is less about code and more about creativity or self-expression and include telling stories or creating artwork. Collaboration promotes the social context of media arts practices and its importance for learning and motivation through creating and sharing work ( Peppler and Kafai , 2007a, 2007b ).

Using the model to guide design instruction

In this section, we elaborate on how the described micromoments can come into force. All the three skills, CT, collaboration and creativity, are inherent components of low-tech prototyping, CSU and media arts practices aiming at problem solving, imagination and social skills development. We unify all these micromoments’ relationships and interrrelationships through the proposed model, bringing together the skills that twenty-first century students have to possess in a holistic manner. In principle, the proposed model engages thinking, feeling and doing by tying together multiple micromoments in a holistic manner. Learners engage the thinking realm when they use their imagination for the conceptualization of an idea and their creativity when they put this idea into practice. This realm is related to Papert’s theory of constructionism. More specifically, it considers that intellectual abilities and the development of concrete ways of thinking ( Kafai and Resnick, 1996 , p. 4) are promoted through the CSU approach, problem solving and CT. The feeling realm is engaged when learners have to create a collective work with others and share it within their community, using their imagination in low-tech prototyping methods and artifacts co-construction. This distributive creativity involves the social and emotional life of learners within the context of community of peers, illustrating the presence of social constructivism. This realm also reflects one of the pillars of constructionism learning theory in that learners are empowered by powerful ideas rooted in intuitive knowledge ( Papert, 2000 ; Bers et al. , 2002 ). The doing realm employs Papert’s theory of constructionism and is based on the “learning by doing approach” in that learners physically construct mental models to understand the world around them and reconstruct their existing knowledge through inquiry-based active learning ( Papert, 1987 ). This theory finds its implementation through CSU and low tech prototyping methods. Kinaesthetic skills are also of equal importance with intellectual and social/emotional skills and are integral part in tangible products creation. To foster the applicability of the model, we suggest a methodology for structuring and guiding its implementation in the teaching practice. Firstly, we frame the model by employing the design thinking process ( Scheer et al. , 2012 ; Carroll et al. , 2010 ; Shute et al. , 2017 ). We have decided to follow the process of design thinking as a methodological tool because it is an excellent fit with the targeted skills. Secondly, we suggest some guidelines for macromoments and micromoments implementation and we demonstrate their practical application by giving a real example originated from a teaching practice in a primary classroom.

Design thinking process as a methodological tool

Problem solving is the common denominator between design thinking and CT. Design thinking requires learners to solve problems as designers ( Razzouk and Shute, 2012 ). Problem solving in CT can take many forms, from solving practical to theoretical and conceptual problems ( Shute et al. , 2017 ). Design thinking encompasses the whole concept of new competences that twenty-first century students have to acquire: resolving complex real-world problems by analyzing and evaluating them in a solution-oriented manner. Design thinking also fosters the ability to imagine without boundaries and limitations, which is an essential part of learning so that students develop creative confidence ( Carroll et al. , 2010 ). Additionally, design thinking effectively serves twenty-first century learning by facilitating interdisciplinary projects and approaching complex problem-solving processes in a holistic constructivist manner. Essentially, design thinking is a constructivist learning design since learning is promoted through experience, complex problem solving, and teamwork ( Scheer et al. , 2012 ; Carroll et al. , 2010 ).

Here, we explain the design thinking process and how it reflects the three realms of thinking, feeling and doing. Particularly, design thinking includes five phases: understanding and observing, synthesizing, ideating, prototyping and testing. The phases follow an iterative cycle. This means that it is possible to repeat the whole process or certain phases or even move from one phase to any other at any point of time; doing so, knowledge is updated and adapted to the context.

The understanding and observing phase involves understanding of the context of the problem as well as of the challenges, feelings and thoughts of others, thus corresponding to the feeling and thinking realms. The second phase of synthesizing involves the definition of the problem and its context so that learners proceed with powerful ideas generation and actionable problem solutions, involving the thinking and feeling realm. The third phase of ideating engages the imaginative capacities of learners towards the transformation of ideas into meaningful insights for solving the problem which, in turn, can lead to actionable solutions. This phase is related to the feeling and thinking realms, since social interaction leads to information processing and collective imagination to a common solution. During the fourth phase of prototyping, abstract imagination and mental concepts of solutions to the problem become tangible and testable through experimentation reflecting the doing realm. The last phase, testing, tries out the feasibility and applicability of the imagined solution to refine the final idea ( Scheer et al. , 2012 ; Carroll et al. , 2010 ). Scaffolding is crucial in all the phases for their successful completion, illustrating the implementation of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Discussion, provision of materials or designing tasks are forms of scaffolding ( Pritchard, 2008 ) that can be part of all the phases.

Pedagogical guidelines

The internalization and transformation of social interactions impact on information processing and knowledge construction ( social participation / collaboration ).

CT, collaboration and creativity ultimately lead the learners to holistic development since each skill and all together reflect the intellectual, feeling and doing pillars ( holistic approach ).

The role of the significant “other”, which can take many forms such as teacher, parent, a more skilled/knowledgeable peer, or materials, can extend learner s abilities through discussion, material or activity ( scaffolding ).

The curricular integration of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches, the utilization of thinking, feeling and doing pillars and the meaning making and representation in multiple forms approach the teaching practice holistically ( multimodality ).

Experiential learning situations, which facilitate knowledge construction, can be provided by external and sharable artifacts creation ( inquiry ).

Intuitive knowledge generates powerful ideas and involves CT ( imaginatio n/ creativity ).

Learners internalize the world through imagination and externalize it through inquiry. The reflective process can coordinate them to that end ( co-design ).

The shift from individual expression to community involvement alters the skills, from CT to computational participation and from creativity to distributed/collective creativity ( participatory skills ).

The incorporation of teaching practices that promote thinking in different disciplines, other than Computer Science and Mathematics, can be achieved by engaging the aesthetic qualities and inner capacities of learners ( arts ).

Problem-solving constitutes both the ultimate aim and the instrumentality of fundamental twenty-first century skills' acquisition, which can be attained collaboratively ( collective problem-solving/ CT ).

The common denominators of any teaching practice that intends to follow our pedagogical model are CT, collaboration, creativity, and ultimately new media literacy skills development. It is not necessary to follow all the elements that each micromoment includes, but even if a teaching practice does not adopt all the elements, the above principles are steadfast and applicable to every teaching practice that follows the current model. The nature of the problem, theoretical or practical and the nature of the artifacts, material or non-material, tangible and conceptual or digital are the most important factors that determine the accompanied methods and skills. For example, if the means used is a non-material artifact such as a poem, obviously the accompanied methods and targeted skills will not be the same as in the case of a material artifact such as a windmill. Though in both cases the design thinking process is common, the change of phases or the iterations may be different, so this process is adapted to the nature of the problem and the situation of it.

A real example

It is noteworthy to say that the following case study is a real example of teaching practice that comes from a public school. Since public schools function under the pressure of prescribed curricula, different types of schools, not so attached to given curricula, could follow different or innovative teaching practices. This was observed during a pilot study conducted in June 2019. We explain the case study by following the phases of design thinking process and we elaborate on micromoments that are encountered. The example concerned a two-hour project that implemented logical/mathematical intelligence and was completed by students aged 9 and 10 years old during the Indrés lesson. Essentially, this lesson aimed at fostering the most dominant multiple intelligences of students who were divided into three different classrooms every week for two hours according to their inclination, that is to inter/intra-personal intelligence classroom, logical/mathematical intelligence classroom and arts classroom, incorporating musical, spatial/visual and kinaesthetic intelligences. Students were free to choose what classroom wanted to attend each week.

Regarding the context of the example, students were divided into three groups. Each group had to solve a problem and once it was resolved, the next group took on the problem resolution of the previous group. At the end, all the students would have completed all the problems successively. The problem-solving process was considered complete when a real-life model was designed and constructed. The role of the teacher during this process was to facilitate the educational process by intervening when necessary, solving doubts and queries and organizing the timely completion of each problem so that all the students could engage with all the problems. Finally, the group that would have completed the tasks more accurately and correctly would win a prize, a statuette. Three statuettes were given, one for each successful artifact.

Design thinking process that describes the example methodologically

We describe the educational process of the example based on the design thinking methodology. More specifically, the example follows five phases:

Phase 1 : Understanding and observing

During this phase, the teacher explains that each group has to solve three different problems through experimentation and model construction. The problems are a damaged windmill, a non-functional current circuit and a defective solar panel. The students have to understand what makes the system non-functional and explain what elements are defective or missing and why these elements are the reason for this defect. Then, they should find solutions to solve these bugs, try out the possible solutions and ultimately describe the correct solution accurately. This process is related to the decomposition of the problem by breaking down the parts of the problem and identifying the steps that they have to follow to solve the problem.

Phase 2: Synthesizing

This phase involves the final definition of the problem and sharing of ideas to find the correct source of defect. The students write individually in a paper what they think about the sources of the problem and then they share their thoughts. The teacher replies to queries and gives prompts to students to keep on investigating the possible sources through discussion and generating powerful ideas so that they proceed with actionable problem solutions.

Phase 3: Ideating

During this phase, students have already discussed the possible sources of the problem and they intend to find the most possible explanations of it with the help of the teacher, excluding the weak explanations, discussing and doing the trial and error method. Students maximize the engagement of their imaginative and thinking abilities towards corresponding possible defects with possible impacts on model function.

Phase 4: Prototyping

This phase includes the conceptualization of possible problem sources and the imaginative resolution, which are transformed into a real-world solution through drawing. Students draw individually the model and think how it should be to function properly by stressing the missing and defective elements. The teacher confirms or explains in detail if the imagined solution is correct or not. The most accurate drawing (conceptual artifact) is choosen after negotiation among the students and teacher s advices to be the tangible and testable model.

Phase 5: Testing

During this phase, students transform their conceptual artifact into a tangible and testable one through experimentation. The model construction is done with inexpensive materials (blocks and other manipulative) to check its feasibility and applicability. In this phase, the aim is to refine the final solution and develop a theory that will explain: why the model was non-functional (problem sources), how they found the solution by recording specific steps (process of collecting the possible solutions), and why it works in contrast to the non-functional model (reasons for tangible artifact s functionality).

After the end of the process, the three groups present their artifacts and the accompanied theory at the whole classroom. The teacher decides which group followed the most scientific, accurate and correct procedure to explain and solve each problem. The winner group gains one of the three statuettes (one for each problem).

When the students have completed all the problems resolution, the four pillars of CT are coming up: they have identified the sources of bugs in a non-functional model by breaking it down in smaller pieces to understand its parts in greater depth (decomposition pillar); each one of the possible sources of defect was analyzed individually, so after the three problems resolution, the identification of similar bugs is much easier (pattern recognition pillar); students were able to reach possible explanations and solutions through social interaction and feedback from peers and teacher s advice, focusing on significant details and excluding irrelevant or weak explanations and solutions (abstraction pillar); the problems were solved by following specific steps or rules of similar logic in all the three problems (algorithms pillar) ( Brackmann et al. , 2016 ).

Joining the dots: skills developed from the application of the multiple macro/micromoments model

A problem that should be resolved without computers ( Wing, 2006 ) entails the sense of wonder and sense of reality through experimentation and the imaginative teaching method of exploration ( play skill ).

Students are expected to think like a scientist and designer with the ultimate goal of creating a model of real world ( Sysło and Kwiatkowska, 2015 ) ( simulation skill ).

Motivation is high since the procedure is challenging and students work together striving to find a more accurate and complete solution than other groups ( Nishida et al. , 2009 ) ( collective intelligence ).

Imaginative and thinking abilities are stimulated during the problem-solving process ( Nishida et al. , 2009 ; Nishida et al. , 2008 ) when students have to imagine the model and conceptualize its function by drawing it like a designer (conceptual artifact) and when they have to simulate its function by constructing it like an engineer (tanglible artifact) ( performance and distributed cognition skills ).

Inexpensive materials used in both artifacts feed children inner capacities and encourage them to understand the real world ( Cordes and Miller, 2000 ) and generate models ( Alhumaidan et al. , 2015 ). Understanding and respecting the thoughts of others and sharing ideas through social interactions also indicate the employment of the empathy imaginative teaching method within this community of learners ( collective intelligence and negotiation skills ).

The ultimate objective is to compose a theory reflected by the two artifacts/low-tech prototypes, a non-material/conceptual (drawing) and a material/tangible (real-world model), which are unified to illustrate the developing theory ( transmedia navigation skill ).

The teacher as facilitator of the educational process scaffolds students so that to extend their abilities through the imaginative teaching method of discussion and through the provision of appropriate materials. Additionally, peer support and feedback are indicators of Vygotský s Zone of Proximal Development presence. Social participation and interaction affect collective information processing towards the problem solution, illustrating the implementation of social constructivism ( negotiation skill ).

The employment of inquiry (finding the most accurate solution with “learning by doing” approach) and imagination (conceptualizing the problem with a drawing and realizing its function into real world through a tangible model construction) are indicators of Papert’s constructionism theory ( Kafai and Resnick, 1996 ) ( performance skill ).

The learning perspective followed in this example is multimodal in that the internal representations and meaning construction are externalized through artifacts construction ( Papert and Harel, 1991 ). Media arts implications are encountered through artifacts construction involving meaning making and representation through language and manipulative ( Peppler, 2010 ; Picciano, 2009 ). Learners express themselves and value the aesthetic qualities of their scientific artworks (final products) that represent their understanding ( Kellner and Share, 2007 ) ( collective intelligence, simulation, distributed cognition, visualization skills ).

Conclusions and further research

The proposed model follows a pedagogy-driven approach rather a technology-driven one since we suggest its implementation in low-tech, information-rich learning environments without computers. The added value of this paper is that it proposes a novel pedagogical model that can serve as a pool of pedagogical approaches and as a framework implemented in various disciplines and grades. A CT curriculum framework for K-6 is an area of research that is still in its infancy ( Angeli et al. , 2016 ), so our model is intended to provide a holistic perspective over this area by focusing how to approach the convergence among CT, collaboration and creativity skills in practice rather than what to teach. Based on literature, we explained how multiple moments impact on CT, creativity and collaboration development and presented the linkages among them. Successful implementation of CT requires not only computer science and mathematics, but also imaginative capacities involving innovation and curiosity ( The College Board, 2012 ). It is necessary to understand the CT implications for teaching and learning beyond the traditional applications on computer science and mathematics ( Kotsopoulos et al. , 2017 ) and start paying more attention to CT implications on social sciences and non-cognitive skills. Furthermore, there is room for research on how imaginative capacities can facilitate, foster and even predict the CT acquisition in various disciplines. However, there is some research work reporting that imagination is essential in computing, explicit guidelines and experimental applications that show how it can be achieved in practice are scarce. Drawing upon this scarcity, we based our pedagogical model on imagination and on pedagogical approaches that can empower it in relation to unplugged CT and collaboration. CT in this model is seen as a cognitive variable involving problem-solving process disconnected from computer programming. Though an unplugged approach can introduce young students into CT requiring the least amount of cognitive demand and technical knowledge ( Kotsopoulos et al. , 2017 ), further research is necessary to define the point at which the unplugged approach should grant its position to the plugged-in approach so that to keep on developing CT skills in a more sophisticated manner ( Brackmann et al. , 2017 ).

Brackmann et al. (2016) assert that the application of unplugged CT activities should be evaluated in relation to cognitive development improvement to empirically confirm that the CT incorporation into the basic education curriculum is necessary. Even though the combined approach of creativity, CT and collaboration is proposed, empirical studies are still scarce. What is needed is to infuse these skills into school curricula with evidence-based findings across different disciplines and grades, from preschool to higher education. Additionally, the current literature lacks in assuming connections among CT, collaboration, creativity and new media literacy skills. Characteristics of new media literacy skills are inherent elements of CSU and low-tech prototyping methods such as play, collective intelligence and simulation. Therefore, future research should focus on how new media literacy skills are developed through CSU and low-tech prototyping methods, how they can feed back into CT development and whether new media literacy skills can predict the successful CT, creativity and collaboration acquisition. Another interesting direction for future research is the area of learning styles. Kotsopoulos et al. (2017) state that many different types of projects support the different abilities, interests and learning styles of students. Future research can be oriented on this field by investigating whether learning styles can predict the engagement level, performance or even the success of students in CT and which learning styles model is the most appropriate to accompany this skill.

Though the presented example (case study) seems to exploit the proposed multiple moments model at optimal level, empirical evidence is needed to show the practical applicability of it in a variety of contexts, not only in primary school settings. Future studies can extend, enrich or even alter some of its elements through experimental applications on how all these macro/micromoments work in practice in terms of easiness in implementation, flexibility, social orientation and skills improvement.

3C (CT, creativity and collaboration) multiple moments pedagogical model

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of doctoral dissertation, supported by a doctoral grant from the Open University of Catalonia, Spain.

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Xanthippi Tsortanidou is a PhD candidate at Open University of Catalonia. She holds a Master in Curriculum Development from the University of Thessaly in Greece. Her research interests include learning design and pedagogies, ICT and collaborative learning.

Thanasis Daradoumis holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He combines his role as an Associate Professor at the University of the Aegean, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication with his collaboration at the Open University of Catalonia within the Department of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications. He is also researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) as well as at the eLearn Center (eLC). His research interests are emotional intelligence, alternative (Holistic) education, learning analytics, e-learning, collaborative, affective and adaptive systems, CSCL. He has been advisor of over 20 MSc theses and 8 PhDs. He has published over 110 Scopus-indexed papers, from which over 20 are articles in ISI-JCR journals. He is a member of the editorial board of several international conferences and journals; he has also coordinated or participated in various National and European R&D projects.

Elena Barberá holds a PhD in Psychology (1995) and doctorate extraordinary award for the University of Barcelona (Spain). She is currently Director of the Education and Technology PhD program and she is Full Professor at the Department of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia. Her research activity is focused on learning regulation and assessment, learning strategies and processes of teaching and learning in virtual contexts.

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This study aims to determine differences in 21st century abilities, including critical thinking, creative thinking, communication skills, and collaboration skills, in 4 schools in the Yogyakarta region. This research is a comparative survey with a research sample of 60 students. The data collecting techniques used in interviews with questionnaires consist of 4 21st century abilities: critical thinking skills, creative thinking, communication skills, and collaboration skills. The results showed differences in 21st-century abilities between schools AR with RA, AR with TY, RA with TY, RA with RB, and TY with RB. This is proved by the t-test, where the sig.t value <0.05 is obtained in a row on the creative thinking ability of 0.001; 0.049; 0.00; 0.001; 0.024. Ability to think creatively in succession 0.003; 0.009; 0.000; 0.009; 0.005. 0.000 successive communication skills; 0.011; 0.000; 0.000; 0.003. Collaboration ability 0.002 consecutively; 0.001; 0.000; 0.003; 0.000. Then there is no difference between AR and RB schools. The value of sig evidence this. t > 0.05 in a row on critical thinking skills, creative thinking, communication skills, and collaboration skills 0.781; 0.702; 0.540; 0.624. The difference in ability is influenced by the learning method used.

RESEARCH NOTEBOOKS Developing Students' Critical Thinking Skills in KAETSU ARIAKE Junior & Senior High School library

We, Kaetsu Ariake, regard 21st century skills as one of the most important factors for our students to acquire. Especially, critical thinking (CT) and its skills are indispensable. Thus, we offer special classes for the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students to become better thinkers. Teachers from a variety of subjects teach the classes, which are held in our school library with the help of its librarian. The librarian teaches the students library skills, supports the teachers, and edits the Research Notebooks. The Research Notebooks are the key to managing the three-year course. We refer to the six-step learning program and Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy in order to develop the Research Notebooks. Using the Notebooks, the students can develop good insights and skills to do research. By making use of the library, getting the help of the librarian, and using the Research Notebooks, we promote 21st century skills throughout our school.

Empowering critical thinking skills by implementing scientific approach-based models among various students’ ethnics

In empowering students’ 21st century skills, the implementation of scientific approach-based models (SAbM) is recommended. This quasi-experimental research was conducted in senior high school in which the students were comprised of different ethnics. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of SAbM on empowering students' critical thinking skills (CTS). The SAbM implemented were Problem-Based Learning (PBL), Guided Inquiry (GI), and PBL+GI combination. Furthermore, the students’ ethnics included were Javanese, Bugis, Kutai, Banjar, and Toraja. The purposive sampling was used to determine the classes employed (i.e. 11th classes from two senior high schools in Samarinda). The instrument used to collect CTS data was questions test. The data were analyzed using two-way ANCOVA. The results showed that there was no significant interaction between ethnic and learning models on the students' CTS (p = 0.219), as also shown by the main effect of ethnic types (p = 0.583). In contrast, there was a significant effect of SAbM on students’ CTS (p = 0.0005) Through this study, SAbM need to be implemented continuously as it can optimize the empowerment of students’ 21st Century skills.

Development of Local Wisdom Digital Books to Improve Critical Thinking Skills through Problem Based Learning

The challenge of education entering the 21st century in the era of the industrial revolution 4.0 is expected to get graduates who are competent in utilizing ICT but also competent in developing critical thinking skills. This research aims to develop digital book based on local wisdom to improve critical thinking skills. This research includes Research and Development (R&D) research using ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) models. Data analysis techniques used in this study include descriptive data analysis related to the validity and response of users, while to determine the effectiveness of the product used the N-gain test. The results show (1) the developed digital book has valid criteria regarding aspects of the material, presentation, and language (2) students and teachers provide responses to the local wisdom digital book used in learning with response criteria strongly agree (3) assessment results Students' critical thinking skills show improvement with high N-Gain grades. The developed local wisdom digital book is suitable to be used as an alternative source of learning additive material in natural science learning in the face of the 21st century and the industrial revolution 4.0.

WAS THE DESIGN OF LEARNING OBJECTIVES IN THE MODULE SUITABLE FOR IMPROVING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS OF THE 21st CENTURY?

Socratic self-examination and its application to academic advising.

Nussbaum (1998) proposed that Socratic activity is a worthwhile pursuit with regard to academic advising relationships. While it offers the promise of certain benefits, such as the development of critical thinking skills, Socratic activity arguably cannot be universally applied to all advising relationships. In presenting and analyzing issues related to the Socratic method, I offer support for a model of quasi-Socratic activity in advising as first identified by Hagen (1994). Referred to as “beneficial dialectic,” it can function from a more contextual standpoint than the traditional Socratic questioning method because through it advisors can consider factors such as level of student development, learning environments, and individual proclivities.

The correlation of character education with critical thinking skills as an important attribute to success in the 21st century

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Critical Thinking for Team Collaboration: A Guide to Effective Problem-Solving

Critical thinking is an essential skill that enhances a team’s ability to collaborate efficiently and effectively. By honing their critical thinking skills, team members can analyze information, solve problems, and make well-informed decisions. In the context of teamwork, critical thinking also plays a crucial role in improving communication, generating creativity, and fostering a shared understanding among members.

To apply critical thinking in team collaboration, individuals must first have a clear understanding of what it entails. The concept of critical thinking involves analyzing information objectively, questioning assumptions, and evaluating alternative perspectives. By cultivating these skills and incorporating them into their daily interactions, team members will be better suited to identify issues, discuss ideas, and collaborate towards finding viable solutions.

Furthermore, critical thinking in a team setting goes beyond addressing complex problems. Incorporating these skills in everyday communication and decision-making processes can yield significant benefits for professional development and remote work environments. Encouraging a culture that values critical thinking will not only promote enhanced collaboration but also prepare individuals for future challenges and opportunities within their respective fields.

Key Takeaways

• Critical thinking enhances team collaboration by improving communication and decision-making processes.
• Developing a clear understanding of critical thinking skills is essential for effective collaboration and problem-solving.
• Incorporating critical thinking in everyday interactions benefits professional development and versatile work environments.

Understanding Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a vital skill for effective team collaboration. It involves the ability to analyze information, question assumptions and biases, and reflect on one’s beliefs in order to make informed decisions and foster innovation. This skill set can greatly enhance a team’s ability to solve problems and reach their goals.

Teams can benefit from incorporating critical thinking by systematically and objectively evaluating information. This process helps identify any gaps in knowledge, clarify concepts, and highlight potential areas for innovation. By encouraging the development of critical thinking skills , such as analysis and reflection, teams can prevent pitfalls stemming from inherent biases or faulty logic.

One important aspect of critical thinking is recognizing and challenging one’s own biases and assumptions. All individuals possess a unique set of beliefs that can potentially cloud their judgment and decision-making. Within a team, acknowledging and addressing these biases can lead to more effective collaboration, as team members learn to consider diverse perspectives and views.

Another key component of critical thinking is the ability to analyze information. Conducting a thorough analysis of information enables teams to evaluate the relevance, validity, and reliability of facts. This helps the team make informed conclusions, ensuring that decisions are based on accurate and trustworthy data.

Critical thinking also involves reflection – the ability to evaluate one’s own thought process and decision-making. Reflective thinking allows team members to identify areas where they can improve, as well as recognize their strengths. This self-awareness can lead to a team culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

In addition, critical thinkers excel at drawing inferences from available data. Making accurate inferences is an essential skill for problem-solving and decision-making, as it allows team members to make connections between seemingly unrelated information in order to generate new ideas or solutions.

In conclusion, the development of critical thinking within a team fosters a culture of analysis, reflection, and innovation. By embracing these skills, teams can overcome biases and assumptions, make informed decisions, and ultimately improve their overall collaboration and performance.

The Role of Critical Thinking in Team Collaboration

Critical thinking plays a vital role in team collaboration as it enables team members to analyze situations, make informed decisions, and solve problems effectively. By enhancing collaboration, critical thinking empowers individuals to work together more efficiently towards a common goal.

In a collaborative environment, teamwork and cooperation are key factors that contribute to the overall success of the team. Team members should be able to think critically to evaluate different options, prioritize tasks, and allocate resources efficiently. This way, they can optimize their efforts and time to achieve the set goals in a timely manner.

Moreover, critical thinking promotes open communication and constructive feedback among team members. By fostering an atmosphere of trust and transparency, individuals can express their opinions and ideas freely, leading to effective decision-making and innovative solutions. For example, collaborative learning and critical thinking help team members to question assumptions, examine possible alternatives, and arrive at reliable and trustworthy conclusions.

Another advantage of collaborative critical thinking is that it enhances team members’ autonomy. By encouraging independent thought and self-directed learning, individuals can take ownership of their roles and responsibilities within the team. This sense of autonomy leads to increased motivation and engagement, contributing to improved team performance.

In conclusion, the integration of critical thinking in team collaboration not only enhances productivity but also promotes innovation, effective decision-making, and open communication. By developing these essential skills, teams can work together more cohesively, ultimately achieving their desired goals.

Communication and Critical Thinking

Effective team collaboration relies heavily on strong communication and critical thinking skills. Clear and confident communication enables team members to articulate their ideas, seek feedback, and ask open-ended questions that foster deeper discussions. Utilizing information and communication technologies can further enhance these interactions, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Open dialogue and constructive feedback are crucial elements of successful communication between team members. By actively listening and seeking out the perspectives of others, individuals can vastly improve their own critical thinking abilities while also strengthening bonds within the group. Encouraging team members to ask questions and engage in discussions allows for diverse viewpoints to be considered and creates a more inclusive environment.

Information and communication technologies, such as collaborative tools and digital platforms, play a significant role in facilitating communication and critical thinking in team settings. They help streamline processes, enable the sharing of resources, and support remote team members in staying connected. Utilizing such technologies can lead to more efficient decision-making and problem-solving, ultimately enhancing overall team performance.

In summary, nurturing both communication and critical thinking skills within a team leads to more effective collaboration and increased productivity. By incorporating open dialogue, constructive feedback, and the use of information and communication technologies, team members can create a supportive environment that fosters growth and promotes success.

Generating Creativity in Team Collaboration

In the realm of team collaboration, fostering creativity is crucial for generating innovative ideas and solutions. One way to encourage creative thinking is through brainstorming sessions wherein team members can freely share their thoughts and perspectives without fear of judgment.

During brainstorming sessions, it’s important for participants to keep an open mind and be willing to explore different paths before settling on a specific strategy. This process of exploration allows for the emergence of unique and unconventional ideas, which are key ingredients of creativity. Encouraging team members to think divergently and approach problems from various angles can lead to more effective and innovative solutions.

When teams engage in creative thinking, it’s essential to develop a culture of respect and open-mindedness among team members. By valuing diversity and actively seeking different perspectives, teams can cultivate an environment where creativity thrives. Listening to others’ opinions, asking questions, and learning from each other are all essential aspects of generating creative ideas in collaboration.

One useful technique to promote creative thinking in teams is the application of various strategies, such as the use of mind maps or visual tools that help in organizing and structuring ideas. These tools allow team members to visualize connections and relationships between concepts, fostering a better understanding of the problem at hand.

While exploring different ideas, it’s also crucial to ensure that team members maintain a neutral and objective mindset. This helps in critically evaluating each idea and selecting the most viable option, while keeping biases and personal preferences at bay.

In summary, generating creativity in team collaboration requires a combination of open-mindedness, respect for diversity, and the strategic use of tools and techniques. By actively fostering a creative environment within the team, effective problem-solving and innovative solutions are more likely to be achieved.

Tools and Resources for Critical Thinking

In today’s fast-paced and complex business environment, critical thinking is essential for effective team collaboration. It involves analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from various sources and perspectives while fostering an environment where open dialogue and feedback are encouraged. There are several resources and tools available for organizations to promote critical thinking among team members.

Technology plays a significant role in enhancing critical thinking within a team. Online platforms such as LinkedIn offer various resources on how to encourage critical thinking, though the use of peer reviews, surveys, polls, brainstorming sessions, debriefs, and retrospectives. These tools enable team members to exchange ideas, evaluate different approaches, and draw conclusions based on the collective wisdom of the group.

Education and training are crucial in nurturing critical thinking among team members. Organizations can invest in leadership training programs that focus on fostering a culture of critical thinking . These programs typically cover the importance of questioning assumptions, seeking diverse perspectives, and engaging in reflective thinking.

Knowledge management systems play a vital role in promoting critical thinking in teams. They provide access to relevant information and encourage team members to share their knowledge, expertise, and insights. By integrating collaborative learning and critical thinking , these systems enable teams to continuously learn from each other and adapt their problem-solving approaches accordingly.

Organizational infrastructure also plays a crucial role in fostering critical thinking. Creating a culture of open communication and collaboration is essential in enabling team members to engage in constructive debate, express their thoughts, and evaluate different perspectives. Establishing channels for feedback, such as regular team meetings and one-on-one sessions, can help reinforce critical thinking behaviors.

In conclusion, leveraging technology, education, knowledge management systems, and the right organizational infrastructure can significantly impact a team’s ability to think critically and collaborate effectively. By providing the necessary tools and resources, organizations can foster a culture that values critical thinking and ultimately improve team performance.

Experience and Perspective in Critical Thinking

Experience and perspective play a vital role in critical thinking, especially when applied to team collaboration. By drawing from individual experiences, team members can contribute a variety of opinions and observations that enrich the overall problem-solving process.

In a collaborative setting, considering multiple perspectives allows the team to weigh different options and contemplate a range of possible outcomes. Each team member’s unique background and personal experiences can provide new insights that might not have been considered otherwise. As individuals synthesize information and share their opinions, they effectively expand the entire team’s collective knowledge base.

Actively incorporating diverse viewpoints encourages open discussions, where team members can challenge assumptions and question information sources. By evaluating each team member’s contributions fairly, the group can avoid relying solely on one person’s judgment or succumbing to groupthink.

The deliberate inclusion of contrasting perspectives in decision-making processes serves as a valuable safeguard against potential errors and biases. By engaging in open dialogue and critical analysis, teams develop the ability to make more informed and well-rounded decisions.

Collaborative critical thinking thus greatly benefits from the richness of team member experiences and the varied opinions they bring to the table. By thoroughly examining these perspectives and objectively synthesizing the information, teams can ensure that their decisions are both robust and well-considered.

Decision Making and Problem Solving Through Critical Thinking

Effective decision-making and problem-solving skills are crucial for team collaboration. By applying critical thinking in these processes, team members can analyze information, evaluate various options, and make well-informed choices that benefit the whole team.

Critical thinking helps teams to deal with ambiguity and risks associated with decision-making. Teams can address uncertainties by considering different scenarios, gathering additional data, and seeking guidance from experts. In doing so, they can minimize mistakes and maintain a clear direction towards achieving their goals.

One essential aspect of critical thinking in decision-making is the evaluation of pros and cons. By thoroughly examining the strengths and weaknesses of different alternatives, teams can make informed decisions aligned with their objectives. They can also anticipate and mitigate potential negative consequences, thereby supporting a stronger and more effective collaboration.

To enhance problem-solving through critical thinking, teams can use various techniques, such as:

• Brainstorming : Encouraging open discussions among team members, stimulating creativity and innovation.
• Mind mapping : Visualizing complex issues and their relationships, making it easier to identify the root causes of problems and potential solutions.
• SWOT analysis : Evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with a situation or decision.

These techniques enable teams to gather diverse perspectives, analyze information, and decide on the most appropriate course of action.

In conclusion, applying critical thinking to decision-making and problem-solving processes empowers teams to tackle challenges more effectively. By considering various factors, evaluating risks, and leveraging a range of techniques, teams can optimize their collaboration and achieve better outcomes.

Critical Thinking in Remote Work

In the modern work environment, remote work has become increasingly prevalent. As teams continue to work remotely, the importance of critical thinking for effective collaboration cannot be overstated. Employers, recognizing the value of well-developed critical thinking skills, are actively seeking ways to promote and enhance these abilities within their teams.

A crucial aspect of fostering critical thinking in remote teams is ensuring that team members have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. With increased autonomy, remote workers must be able to analyze tasks, identify potential challenges, and make informed decisions. Open communication channels, regular check-ins, and performance evaluations can support this process.

Collaborative tools like Taskade help promote critical thinking by providing features such as file sharing, real-time collaboration, and project management. These tools encourage team members to actively engage with one another, share ideas, challenge assumptions, and solve problems together.

Building a culture of trust within remote teams is another essential element for promoting critical thinking. When team members feel confident in expressing their opinions and challenging ideas, a dynamic environment for strategic discussions can thrive. Employers should encourage open, honest, and constructive conversations that foster mutual respect and a willingness to learn from one another.

By focusing on these aspects of remote work, employers can create an environment where critical thinking flourishes. Teams with strong critical thinking abilities tend to produce better quality work, make more informed decisions, and collaborate more effectively, ultimately benefiting both the individual team members and the organization as a whole.

Benefits of Critical Thinking for Professional Development

Critical thinking has significant advantages for both individuals and teams in the context of team collaboration and professional development. Enhancing one’s critical thinking skills can lead to success in various areas, such as career development, productivity, rewards, fostering a growth mindset, and promoting individual accountability.

By incorporating critical thinking into your daily work routine, you can improve your career development by making more informed decisions, identifying potential issues, and seeking better solutions. This enhanced decision-making capability allows professionals to navigate complex situations and make choices that truly benefit the organization and their career paths.

In terms of productivity, incorporating critical thinking in team collaboration leads to streamlined operations and reduces time spent on unnecessary tasks. Collaborative learning and critical thinking go hand in hand, fostering an environment where team members effectively communicate, share ideas, and work together to solve problems. This increased efficiency leads to higher overall productivity.

Rewards are another area where critical thinking plays a crucial role. Individuals who engage in critical thinking and collaboration demonstrate a strong ability to innovate and problem-solve, making them more valuable to the organization. This increased value can lead to rewards in the form of higher salaries, promotions, and opportunities for growth.

Fostering a growth mindset is vital in today’s fast-paced work environment. Critical thinking enables professionals to seek and evaluate information , question assumptions, and engage in constant learning to stay abreast of the latest industry developments. This continuous learning attitude keeps professionals adaptive and agile in an ever-evolving landscape.

Finally, critical thinking enhances individual accountability by encouraging a thoughtful, reflective approach to work. This mindset promotes taking responsibility for one’s actions and decisions, and understanding the impact on the team and organization as a whole. Engaging in critical thinking practices keeps professionals grounded and focused on their actions’ consequences.

In conclusion, the benefits of critical thinking span across several aspects of professional development, making it a vital skill for individuals and teams alike. Encouraging critical thinking in the workplace can lead to successful team collaboration, growth, and overall success in one’s career.

Frequently Asked Questions

What skills are essential for collaborative critical thinking.

Various skills are necessary for collaborative critical thinking, including effective communication, active listening, empathy, open-mindedness, problem-solving, and decision-making. These skills help team members share diverse perspectives, identify biases, and address issues from multiple angles, fostering well-rounded and effective collaboration.

How can critical thinking be applied in a team setting?

Applying critical thinking in a team setting involves asking the right questions, challenging assumptions, evaluating evidence, and fostering a culture of open-mindedness. Teams must encourage members to think critically by creating an environment that promotes the sharing of diverse perspectives, fosters openness and curiosity, and emphasizes clear and concise reasoning.

How does collaboration promote critical thinking?

Collaboration promotes critical thinking by enabling team members to share diverse perspectives, challenge one another’s ideas, and work towards reaching a common goal. This process pushes team members to evaluate their ideas more rigorously and acquire a broader viewpoint, ultimately making them better at analyzing and interpreting information.

Why is critical thinking important for teamwork?

Critical thinking is essential for teamwork because it facilitates informed decision-making, problem-solving, and innovation. A team that adopts critical thinking practices can navigate complex situations more effectively, make sound judgments based on evidence, and efficiently adapt to challenges. This, in turn, leads to higher productivity, improved team collaboration, and the achievement of organizational goals.

What are some effective critical thinking training activities for teams?

Effective critical thinking training activities for teams may include workshops on problem-solving and decision-making strategies, group brainstorming sessions, role playing exercises, and team building activities that promote problem-solving and decision-making skills . These activities encourage team members to think critically, collaborate, and learn from one another in a supportive environment.

Can you recommend any books or resources on critical thinking for team collaboration?

There are numerous resources available to improve critical thinking for team collaboration. Some recommended books include “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge, and “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. Additionally, online resources such as HBR’s short guide on building critical thinking skills as well as training programs covering teamwork and collaboration can be helpful for teams looking to enhance their critical thinking capabilities.

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A few years ago one of us (Kelvin) had the privilege of co-teaching with an experienced first grade teacher, Carolyn Eaton. As part of a research project, Ms Eaton allowed some of her reading lessons to be observed. Here is what Kelvin saw when Ms Eaton was having a conference with Joey. They are reading a book “together”, except that Ms Eaton wants Joey to do as much reading as possible himself. Joey’s comments are capitalized, and Ms Eaton’s are in lowercase.

Can you read the whole book?

OK, then you start this time.

[Joey looks at first page, alternately at the picture and at the words.]

“IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM THERE WAS A TELEPHONE”.

[Actual text: “In the great green room, there was a telephone”,]

“AND THERE WAS A RED BALLOON”,

[Actual text: “…and a red balloon”,]

“AND A PICTURE OF THE COW JUMPING OVER THE MOON”.

[Actual text: “…and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon”.]

“AND THERE WERE…” THREE BEARS?… “LITTLE BEARS SITTING ON CHAIRS”.

[Actual text: “And there were three little bears, sitting on chairs,…”]

Could you read this book with your eyes closed?

SURE; WANT TO SEE ME DO IT?!

Well, not right now; maybe another time. Could you read it without the pictures, just looking at the words? That’s how I do best—when I see the words instead of the pictures.

[Joey pauses to consider this.] MAYBE, BUT NOT QUITE SO WELL.

Let’s try it . [Ms Eaton proceeds to copy the words on a large sheet for Joey to “read” later.]

As Carolyn Eaton’s behavior suggests, there are decisions to make “on the fly”, even during the very act of teaching. Ms Eaton wonders when to challenge Joey, and when to support him. She also wonders when to pause and ask Joey to take stock of what he has read, and when to move him on ahead—when to consolidate a student’s learning, and when to nudge the student forward. These are questions about instructional strategies which facilitate complex learning, either directly or indirectly. In this chapter we review as many strategies as space allows, in order to give a sense of the major instructional options and of their effects. We concentrate especially on two broad categories of instruction, which we call direct instruction and student-centered instruction . As we hope that you will see, each approach to teaching is useful for certain purposes. We begin, though, by looking at the ways students think, or at least how teachers would like students to think. What does it mean for students to think critically (astutely or logically)? Or to think creatively? Or to be skillful problem solvers? Forms of thinking lead to choices among instructional strategies.

Forms of thinking associated with classroom learning

Although instructional strategies differ in their details, they each encourage particular forms of learning and thinking. The forms have distinctive educational purposes, even though they sometimes overlap, in the sense that one form may contribute to success with another form. Consider three somewhat complex forms of thinking that are commonly pursued in classroom learning: (1) critical thinking, (2) creative thinking, and (3) problem-solving.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking requires skill at analyzing the reliability and validity of information, as well as the attitude or disposition to do so. The skill and attitude may be displayed with regard to a particular subject matter or topic, but in principle it can occur in any realm of knowledge (Halpern, 2003; Williams, Oliver, & Stockade, 2004). A critical thinker does not necessarily have a negative attitude in the everyday sense of constantly criticizing someone or something. Instead, he or she can be thought of as astute : the critical thinker asks key questions, evaluates the evidence for ideas, reasons for problems both logically and objectively, and expresses ideas and conclusions clearly and precisely. Last (but not least), the critical thinker can apply these habits of mind in more than one realm of life or knowledge.

With such a broad definition, it is not surprising that educators have suggested a variety of specific cognitive skills as contributing to critical thinking. In one study, for example, the researcher found how critical thinking can be reflected in regard to a published article was stimulated by annotation —writing questions and comments in the margins of the article (Liu, 2006). In this study, students were initially instructed in ways of annotating reading materials. Later, when the students completed additional readings for assignments, it was found that some students in fact used their annotation skills much more than others—some simply underlined passages, for example, with a highlighting pen. When essays written about the readings were later analyzed, the ones written by the annotators were found to be more well reasoned—more critically astute—than the essays written by the other students.

In another study, on the other hand, a researcher found that critical thinking can also involve oral discussion of personal issues or dilemmas (Hawkins, 2006). In this study, students were asked to verbally describe a recent, personal incident that disturbed them. Classmates then discussed the incident together in order to identify the precise reasons why the incident was disturbing, as well as the assumptions that the student made in describing the incident. The original student—the one who had first told the story—then used the results of the group discussion to frame a topic for a research essay. In one story of a troubling incident, a student told of a time when a store clerk has snubbed or rejected the student during a recent shopping errand. Through discussion, classmates decided that an assumption underlying the student’s disturbance was her suspicion that she had been a victim of racial profiling based on her skin color. The student then used this idea as the basis for a research essay on the topic of “racial profiling in retail stores”. The oral discussion thus stimulated critical thinking in the student and the classmates, but it also relied on their prior critical thinking skills at the same time.

Notice that in both of these research studies, as in others like them, what made the thinking “critical” was students’ use of metacognition —strategies for thinking about thinking and for monitoring the success and quality of one’s own thinking. This concept was discussed in Chapter 3 as a feature of constructivist views about learning. There we pointed out that when students acquire experience in building their own knowledge, they also become skilled both at knowing how they learn, and at knowing whether they have learned something well. These are two defining qualities of metacognition, but they are part of critical thinking as well. In fostering critical thinking, a teacher is really fostering a student’s ability to construct or control his or her own thinking and to avoid being controlled by ideas unreflectively.

How best to teach critical thinking remains a matter of debate. One issue is whether to infuse critical skills into existing courses or to teach them through separate, free-standing units or courses. The first approach has the potential advantage of integrating critical thinking into students’ entire educations. But it risks diluting students’ understanding and use of critical thinking simply because critical thinking takes on a different form in each learning context. Its details and appearance vary among courses and teachers. The free-standing approach has the opposite qualities: it stands a better chance of being understood clearly and coherently, but at the cost of obscuring how it is related to other courses, tasks, and activities. This dilemma is the issue—again—of transfer, discussed in Chapter 3. Unfortunately, research to compare the different strategies for teaching critical thinking does not settle the matter. The research suggests simply that either infusion or free-standing approaches can work as long as it is implemented thoroughly and teachers are committed to the value of critical thinking (Halpern, 2003).

A related issue about teaching critical thinking is about deciding who needs to learn critical thinking skills the most. Should it be all students, or only some of them? Teaching all students seems the more democratic alternative and thus appropriate for educators. Surveys have found, however, that teachers sometimes favor teaching of critical thinking only to high-advantage students—the ones who already achieve well, who come from relatively high- income families, or (for high school students) who take courses intended for university entrance (Warburton & Torff, 2005). Presumably the rationale for this bias is that high-advantage students can benefit and/or understand and use critical thinking better than other students. Yet, there is little research evidence to support this idea, even if it were not ethically questionable. The study by Hawkins (2006) described above, for example, is that critical thinking was fostered even with students considered low-advantage.

Creative thinking

Creativity is the ability to make or do something new that is also useful or valued by others (Gardner, 1993). The “something” can be an object (like an essay or painting), a skill (like playing an instrument), or an action (like using a familiar tool in a new way). To be creative, the object, skill, or action cannot simply be bizarre or strange; it cannot be new without also being useful or valued, and not simply be the result of accident. If a person types letters at random that form a poem by chance, the result may be beautiful, but it would not be creative by the definition above. Viewed this way, creativity includes a wide range of human experience that many people, if not everyone, have had at some time or other (Kaufman & Baer, 2006). The experience is not restricted to a few geniuses, nor exclusive to specific fields or activities like art or the composing of music.

Especially important for teachers are two facts. The first is that an important form of creativity is creative thinking, the generation of ideas that are new as well as useful, productive, and appropriate. The second is that creative thinking can be stimulated by teachers’ efforts. Teachers can, for example, encourage students’ divergent thinking —ideas that are open-ended and that lead in many directions (Torrance, 1992; Kim, 2006). Divergent thinking is stimulated by open-ended questions—questions with many possible answers, such as the following:

• How many uses can you think of for a cup?
• Draw a picture that somehow incorporates all of these words: cat, fire engine, and banana.
• What is the most unusual use you can think of for a shoe?

Note that answering these questions creatively depends partly on having already acquired knowledge about the objects to which the questions refer. In this sense divergent thinking depends partly on its converse, convergent thinking, which is focused, logical reasoning about ideas and experiences that lead to specific answers. Up to a point, then, developing students’ convergent thinking—as schoolwork often does by emphasizing mastery of content—facilitates students’ divergent thinking indirectly, and hence also their creativity (Sternberg, 2003; Runco, 2004; Cropley, 2006). But carried to extremes, excessive emphasis on convergent thinking may discourage creativity.

Whether in school or out, creativity seems to flourish best when the creative activity is its own intrinsic reward, and a person is relatively unconcerned with what others think of the results. Whatever the activity—composing a song, writing an essay, organizing a party, or whatever—it is more likely to be creative if the creator focuses on and enjoys the activity in itself, and thinks relatively little about how others may evaluate the activity (Brophy, 2004). Unfortunately, encouraging students to ignore others’ responses can sometimes pose a challenge for teachers. Not only is it the teachers’ job to evaluate students’ learning of particular ideas or skills, but also they have to do so within restricted time limits of a course or a school year. In spite of these constraints, though, creativity still can be encouraged in classrooms at least some of the time (Claxton, Edwards, & Scale-Constantinou, 2006). Suppose, for example, that students have to be assessed on their understanding and use of particular vocabulary. Testing their understanding may limit creative thinking; students will understandably focus their energies on learning “right” answers for the tests. But assessment does not have to happen constantly. There can also be times to encourage experimentation with vocabulary through writing poems, making word games, or in other thought-provoking ways. These activities are all potentially creative. To some extent, therefore, learning content and experimenting or playing with content can both find a place—in fact one of these activities can often support the other. We return to this point later in this chapter, when we discuss student-centered strategies of instruction, such as cooperative learning and play as a learning medium.

Problem-solving

Somewhat less open-ended than creative thinking is problem solving, the analysis and solution of tasks or situations that are complex or ambiguous and that pose difficulties or obstacles of some kind (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). Problem solving is needed, for example, when a physician analyzes a chest X-ray: a photograph of the chest is far from clear and requires skill, experience, and resourcefulness to decide which foggy-looking blobs to ignore, and which to interpret as real physical structures (and therefore real medical concerns). Problem solving is also needed when a grocery store manager has to decide how to improve the sales of a product: should she put it on sale at a lower price, or increase publicity for it, or both? Will these actions actually increase sales enough to pay for their costs?

Problem solving in the classroom

Problem solving happens in classrooms when teachers present tasks or challenges that are deliberately complex and for which finding a solution is not straightforward or obvious. The responses of students to such problems, as well as the strategies for assisting them, show the key features of problem solving. Consider this example, and students’ responses to it. We have numbered and named the paragraphs to make it easier to comment about them individually:

Scene #1: a problem to be solved

A teacher gave these instructions: “Can you connect all of the dots below using only four straight lines?” She drew the following display on the chalkboard:

Exhibit 10: The teacher gave these instructions: “Can you connect these dots with only four lines.

The problem itself and the procedure for solving it seemed very clear: simply experiment with different arrangements of four lines. But two volunteers tried doing it at the board, but were unsuccessful. Several others worked at it at their seats, but also without success.

Scene #2: coaxing students to re-frame the problem

When no one seemed to be getting it, the teacher asked, “Think about how you’ve set up the problem in your mind—about what you believe the problem is about. For instance, have you made any assumptions about how long the lines ought to be? Don’t stay stuck on one approach if it’s not working!”

Scene #3: Alicia abandons a fixed response

After the teacher said this, Alicia indeed continued to think about how she saw the problem. “The lines need to be no longer than the distance across the square,” she said to herself. So she tried several more solutions, but none of them worked either.

The teacher walked by Alicia’s desk and saw what Alicia was doing. She repeated her earlier comment: “Have you assumed anything about how long the lines ought to be?”

Alicia stared at the teacher blankly, but then smiled and said, “Hmm! You didn’t actually say that the lines could be no longer than the matrix! Why not make them longer?” So she experimented again using oversized lines and soon discovered a solution:

Exhibit 11: Alicia’s solution

Scene #4: Willem’s and Rachel’s alternative strategies

Meanwhile, Willem worked on the problem. As it happened, Willem loved puzzles of all kinds, and had ample experience with them. He had not, however, seen this particular problem. “It must be a trick,” he said to himself, because he knew from experience that problems posed in this way often were not what they first appeared to be. He mused to himself: “Think outside the box, they always tell you…” And that was just the hint he needed: he drew lines outside the box by making them longer than the matrix and soon came up with this solution:

Exhibit 12: Willem’s and Rachel’s solution

When Rachel went to work, she took one look at the problem and knew the answer immediately: she had seen this problem before, though she could not remember where. She had also seen other drawing-related puzzles, and knew that their solution always depended on making the lines longer, shorter, or differently angled than first expected. After staring at the dots briefly, she drew a solution faster than Alicia or even Willem. Her solution looked exactly like Willem’s.

This story illustrates two common features of problem solving: the effect of degree of structure or constraint on problem solving, and the effect of mental obstacles to solving problems. The next sections discuss each of these features, and then looks at common techniques for solving problems.

The effect of constraints: well-structured versus ill-structured problems

Problems vary in how much information they provide for solving a problem, as well as in how many rules or procedures are needed for a solution. A well-structured problem provides much of the information needed and can in principle be solved using relatively few clearly understood rules. Classic examples are the word problems often taught in math lessons or classes: everything you need to know is contained within the stated problem and the solution procedures are relatively clear and precise. An ill-structured problem has the converse qualities: the information is not necessarily within the problem, solution procedures are potentially quite numerous, and a multiple solutions are likely (Voss, 2006). Extreme examples are problems like “How can the world achieve lasting peace?” or “How can teachers insure that students learn?”

By these definitions, the nine-dot problem is relatively well-structured—though not completely. Most of the information needed for a solution is provided in Scene #1: there are nine dots shown and instructions given to draw four lines. But not all necessary information was given: students needed to consider lines that were longer than implied in the original statement of the problem. Students had to “think outside the box”, as Willem said—in this case, literally.

When a problem is well-structured, so are its solution procedures likely to be as well. A well-defined procedure for solving a particular kind of problem is often called an algorithm; examples are the procedures for multiplying or dividing two numbers or the instructions for using a computer (Leiserson, et al., 2001). Algorithms are only effective when a problem is very well-structured and there is no question about whether the algorithm is an appropriate choice for the problem. In that situation it pretty much guarantees a correct solution. They do not work well, however, with ill-structured problems, where they are ambiguities and questions about how to proceed or even about precisely what the problem is about. In those cases it is more effective to use heuristics, which are general strategies—“rules of thumb”, so to speak—that do not always work, but often do, or that provide at least partial solutions. When beginning research for a term paper, for example, a useful heuristic is to scan the library catalogue for titles that look relevant. There is no guarantee that this strategy will yield the books most needed for the paper, but the strategy works enough of the time to make it worth trying.

In the nine-dot problem, most students began in Scene #1 with a simple algorithm that can be stated like this: “Draw one line, then draw another, and another, and another”. Unfortunately this simple procedure did not produce a solution, so they had to find other strategies for a solution. Three alternatives are described in Scenes #3 (for Alicia) and 4 (for Willem and Rachel). Of these, Willem’s response resembled a heuristic the most: he knew from experience that a good general strategy that often worked for such problems was to suspect a deception or trick in how the problem was originally stated. So he set out to question what the teacher had meant by the word line, and came up with an acceptable solution as a result.

Common obstacles to solving problems

The example also illustrates two common problems that sometimes happen during problem solving. One of these is functional fixedness: a tendency to regard the functions of objects and ideas as fixed (German & Barrett, 2005). Over time, we get so used to one particular purpose for an object that we overlook other uses. We may think of a dictionary, for example, as necessarily something to verify spellings and definitions, but it also can function as a gift, a doorstop, or a footstool. For students working on the nine-dot matrix described in the last section, the notion of “drawing” a line was also initially fixed; they assumed it to be connecting dots but not extending lines beyond the dots. Functional fixedness sometimes is also called response set, the tendency for a person to frame or think about each problem in a series in the same way as the previous problem, even when doing so is not appropriate to later problems. In the example of the nine-dot matrix described above, students often tried one solution after another, but each solution was constrained by a set response not to extend any line beyond the matrix.

Functional fixedness and the response set are obstacles in problem representation, the way that a person understands and organizes information provided in a problem. If information is misunderstood or used inappropriately, then mistakes are likely—if indeed the problem can be solved at all. With the nine-dot matrix problem, for example, construing the instruction to draw four lines as meaning “draw four lines entirely within the matrix” means that the problem simply could not be solved. For another, consider this problem: “The number of water lilies on a lake doubles each day. Each water lily covers exactly one square foot. If it takes 100 days for the lilies to cover the lake exactly, how many days does it take for the lilies to cover exactly half of the lake?” If you think that the size of the lilies affects the solution to this problem, you have not represented the problem correctly. Information about lily size is not relevant to the solution, and only serves to distract from the truly crucial information, the fact that the lilies double their coverage each day. (The answer, incidentally, is that the lake is half covered in 99 days; can you think why?)

Strategies to assist problem solving

Just as there are cognitive obstacles to problem solving, there are also general strategies that help the process be successful, regardless of the specific content of a problem (Thagard, 2005). One helpful strategy is problem analysis— identifying the parts of the problem and working on each part separately. Analysis is especially useful when a problem is ill-structured. Consider this problem, for example: “Devise a plan to improve bicycle transportation in the city.” Solving this problem is easier if you identify its parts or component subproblems, such as (1) installing bicycle lanes on busy streets, (2) educating cyclists and motorists to ride safely, (3) fixing potholes on streets used by cyclists, and (4) revising traffic laws that interfere with cycling. Each separate subproblem is more manageable than the original, general problem. The solution of each subproblem contributes the solution of the whole, though of course is not equivalent to a whole solution.

Another helpful strategy is working backward from a final solution to the originally stated problem. This approach is especially helpful when a problem is well-structured but also has elements that are distracting or misleading when approached in a forward, normal direction. The water lily problem described above is a good example: starting with the day when all the lake is covered (Day 100), ask what day would it therefore be half covered (by the terms of the problem, it would have to be the day before, or Day 99). Working backward in this case encourages reframing the extra information in the problem (i. e. the size of each water lily) as merely distracting, not as crucial to a solution.

A third helpful strategy is analogical thinking— using knowledge or experiences with similar features or structures to help solve the problem at hand (Bassok, 2003). In devising a plan to improve bicycling in the city, for example, an analogy of cars with bicycles is helpful in thinking of solutions: improving conditions for both vehicles requires many of the same measures (improving the roadways, educating drivers). Even solving simpler, more basic problems is helped by considering analogies. A first grade student can partially decode unfamiliar printed words by analogy to words he or she has learned already. If the child cannot yet read the word screen, for example, he can note that part of this word looks similar to words he may already know, such as seen or green, and from this observation derive a clue about how to read the word screen. Teachers can assist this process, as you might expect, by suggesting reasonable, helpful analogies for students to consider.

Broad instructional strategies that stimulate complex thinking

Because the forms of thinking just described—critical thinking, creativity and problem solving—are broad and important educationally, it is not surprising that educators have identified strategies to encourage their development. Some of the possibilities are shown in Table 24 and group several instructional strategies along two dimensions: how much the strategy is student-centered and how much a strategy depends on group interaction. It should be emphasized that the two-way classification in Table 24 is not very precise, but it gives a useful framework for understanding the options available for planning and implementing instruction. The more important of the two dimensions in the table is the first one—the extent to which an instructional strategy is either directed by the teacher or initiated by students. We take a closer look at this dimension in the next part of this chapter, followed by discussion of group-oriented teaching strategies.

Table 24: Major instructional strategies grouped by level of teacher direction and student focus

As the name implies, teacher-directed instruction includes any strategies initiated and guided primarily by the teacher. A classic example is exposition or lecturing (simply telling or explaining important information to students) combined with assigning reading from texts. But teacher-directed instruction also includes strategies that involve more active response from students, such as encouraging students to elaborate on new knowledge or to explain how new information relates to prior knowledge. Whatever their form, teacher-directed instructional methods normally include the organizing of information on behalf of students, even if teachers also expect students to organize it further on their own. Sometimes, therefore, teacher-directed methods are thought of as transmitting knowledge from teacher to student as clearly and efficiently as possible, even if they also require mental work on the part of the student.

Lectures and readings

Lectures and readings are traditional staples of educators, particularly with older students (including university students). At their best, they pre-organize information so that (at least in theory) the student only has to remember what was said in the lecture or written in the text in order to begin understanding it (Exley & Dennick, 2004). Their limitation is the ambiguity of the responses they require: listening and reading are by nature quiet and stationary, and do not in themselves indicate whether a student is comprehending or even attending to the material. Educators sometimes complain that “students are too passive” during lectures or when reading. But physical quietness is intrinsic to these activities, not to the students who do them. A book just sits still, after all, unless a student makes an effort to read it, and a lecture may not be heard unless a student makes the effort to listen to it.

Advance organizers

In spite of these problems, there are strategies for making lectures and readings effective. A teacher can be especially careful about organizing information for students, and she can turn part of the mental work over to students themselves. An example of the first approach is the use of advance organizers —brief overviews or introductions to new material before the material itself is presented (Ausubel, 1978). Textbook authors (including ourselves) often try deliberately to insert periodic advance organizers to introduce new sections or chapters in the text. When used in a lecture, advance organizers are usually statements in the form of brief introductory remarks, though sometimes diagrams showing relationships among key ideas can also serve the same purpose (Robinson, et al., 2003). Whatever their form, advance organizers partially organize the material on behalf of the students, so that they know where to put it all, so to speak, as they learn them in more detail.

Recalling and relating prior knowledge

Another strategy for improving teacher-directed instruction is to encourage students to relate the new material to prior familiar knowledge. When one of us (Kelvin) first learned a foreign language (in his case French), for example, he often noticed similarities between French and English vocabulary. A French word for picture, for example, was image, spelled exactly as it is in English. The French word for splendid was splendide, spelled almost the same as in English, though not quite. Relating the French vocabulary to English vocabulary helped in learning and remembering the French.

As children and youth become more experienced in their academics, they tend to relate new information to previously learned information more frequently and automatically (Goodwin, 1999; Oakhill, Hartt, & Samols, 2005). But teachers can also facilitate students’ use of this strategy. When presenting new concepts or ideas, the teacher can relate them to previously learned ideas deliberately—essentially modeling a memory strategy that students learn to use for themselves. In a science class, for example, she can say, “This is another example of…, which we studied before”; in social studies she can say, “Remember what we found out last time about the growth of the railroads? We saw that…”

If students are relatively young or are struggling academically, it is especially important to remind them of their prior knowledge. Teachers can periodically ask questions like “What do you already know about this topic?” or “How will your new knowledge about this topic change what you know already?” Whatever the age of students, connecting new with prior knowledge is easier with help from someone more knowledgeable, such as the teacher. When learning algorithms for multiplication, for example, students may not at first see how multiplication is related to addition processes which they probably learned previously (Burns, 2001). But if a teacher takes time to explain the relationship and to give students time to explore it, then the new skill of multiplication may be learned more easily.

Elaborating information

Elaborating new information means asking questions about the new material, inferring ideas and relationships among the new concepts. Such strategies are closely related to the strategy of recalling prior knowledge as discussed above: elaboration enriches the new information and connects it to other knowledge. In this sense elaboration makes the new learning more meaningful and less arbitrary.

A teacher can help students use elaboration by modeling this behavior. The teacher can interrupt his or her explanation of an idea, for example, by asking how it relates to other ideas, or by speculating about where the new concept or idea may lead. He or she can also encourage students to do the same, and even give students questions to guide their thinking. When giving examples of a concept, for example, a teacher can hold back from offering all of the examples, and instead ask students to think of additional examples themselves. The same tactic can work with assigned readings; if the reading includes examples, the teacher can instruct students to find or make up additional examples of their own.

Organizing new information

There are many ways to organize new information that are especially well-suited to teacher-directed instruction. A common way is simply to ask students to outline information read in a text or heard in a lecture. Outlining works especially well when the information is already organized somewhat hierarchically into a series of main topics, each with supporting subtopics or subpoints. Outlining is basically a form of the more general strategy of taking notes , or writing down key ideas and terms from a reading or lecture. Research studies find that that the precise style or content of notes is less important that the quantity of notes taken: more detail is usually better than less (Ward & Tatsukawa, 2003). Written notes insure that a student thinks about the material not only while writing it down, but also when reading the notes later. These benefits are especially helpful when students are relatively inexperienced at school learning in general (as in the earlier grade levels), or relatively inexperienced about a specific topic or content in particular. Not surprisingly, such students may also need more guidance than usual about what and how to write notes. It can be helpful for the teacher to provide a note-taking guide, like the ones shown in Exhibit 11 .

• Main characters (list and describe in just a few words):
• Setting of the story (time and place):
• Unfamiliar vocabulary in the story (list and define):

4. Plot (write down only the main events):

• Theme (or underlying “message”) of the story:

Exhibit 13: Two note taking guides

In learning expository material, another helpful strategy—one that is more visually oriented—is to make concept maps , or diagrams of the connections among concepts or ideas. Exhibit 10 shows concept maps made by two individuals that graphically depict how a key idea, child development, relates to learning and education. One of the maps was drawn by a classroom teacher and the other by a university professor of psychology (Seifert, 1991). They suggest possible differences in how the two individuals think about children and their development. Not surprisingly, the teacher gave more prominence to practical concerns (for example, classroom learning and child abuse), and the professor gave more prominence to theoretical ones (for example, Erik Erikson and Piaget). The differences suggest that these two people may have something different in mind when they use the same term, child development. The differences have the potential to create misunderstandings between them (Seifert, 1999; Super & Harkness, 2003). By the same token, the two maps also suggest what each person might need to learn in order to achieve better understanding of the other person’s thinking and ideas.

Exhibit 14: Maps of personal definitions of “child development”

Mastery learning

This term refers to an instructional approach in which all students learn material to an identically high level, even if some students require more time than others to do so (Gentile, 2004). In mastery learning, the teacher directs learning, though sometimes only in the sense of finding, writing, and orchestrating specific modules or units for students to learn. In one typical mastery learning program, the teacher introduces a few new concepts or topics through a brief lecture or teacher-led demonstration. Then she gives an ungraded assignment or test immediately in order to assess how well students have learned the material, and which ones still need help. The students who have already learned the unit are given enrichment activities. Those needing more help are provided individual tutoring or additional self-guiding materials that clarify the initial content; they work until they have in fact mastered the content (hence the name mastery learning ). At that point students take another test or do another assignment to show that they have in fact learned the material to the expected high standard. When the system is working well, all students end up with high scores or grades, although usually some take longer to do so than others.

As you might suspect, mastery learning poses two challenges. The first is ethical: is it really fair to give enrichment only to faster students and remediation only to slower students? This practice could deteriorate into continually providing the fast with an interesting education, while continually providing the slow only with boring, repetitious material. In using the approach, therefore, it is important to make all materials interesting, whether enrichment or remedial. It is also important to make sure that the basic learning goals of each unit are truly important—even crucial—for everyone to learn, so that even slower individuals spend their time well.

The other challenge of mastery learning is more practical: the approach makes strong demands for detailed, highly organized curriculum. If the approach is to work, the teacher must either locate such a curriculum, write one herself, or assemble a suitable mixture of published and self-authored materials. However the curriculum is created, the end result has to be a program filled with small units of study as well as ample enrichment and remedial materials. Sometimes providing these practical requirements can be challenging. But not always: some subjects (like mathematics) lend themselves to detailed, sequential organization especially well. In many cases, too, commercial publishers have produced curricula already organized for use in mastery learning programs (Fox, 2004).

Direct instruction

Although the term direct instruction is sometimes a synonym for teacher-directed instruction , more often it refers to a version of mastery learning that is highly scripted, meaning that it not only organizes the curriculum into small modules or units as described above, but also dictates how teachers should teach and sometimes even the words they should speak (Adams & Engelmann, 1996; Magliaro, Lockee, & Burton, 2005). Direct instruction programs are usually based on a mix of ideas from behaviorism and cognitive theories of learning. In keeping with behaviorism, the teacher is supposed to praise students immediately and explicitly when they give a correct answer. In keeping with cognitive theory, she is supposed to state learning objectives in advance of teaching them (providing a sort of mini-advance organizer), provide frequent reviews of materials, and check deliberately on how well students are learning. Direct instruction usually also introduces material in small, logical steps, and calls for plenty of time for students to practice.

Direct instruction programs share one of the challenges of other mastery learning approaches: because they hold all students to the same high standard of achievement, they must deal with differences in how long students require to reach the standard. But direct instruction has an additional challenge, in that they often rely on small-group interaction more heavily than other mastery learning programs, and use self-guiding materials less. This difference has the benefit that direct instruction works especially well with younger students (especially kindergarten through third grade), who may have limited skills at working alone for extended periods. The challenge is that reliance on small-group interaction can make it impractical to use direct instruction with an entire class or for an entire school day. In spite of these limits, however, research has found direct instruction to be very effective in teaching basic skills such as early reading and arithmetic (Adams & Engelmann, 1996).

Madeline Hunter’s effective teaching model

A number of direct instruction strategies have been combined by Madeline Hunter into a single, relatively comprehensive approach that she calls mastery teaching (not to be confused with the related term mastery learning) or the effective teaching model (M. Hunter, 1982; R. Hunter, 2004). Important features of the model are summarized in Table 25 . As you can see, the features span all phases of contact with students—before, during, and after lessons.

Table 25: Madeline Hunter’s “Effective Teaching Model”

What happens even before a lesson begins? Like many forms of teacher-directed instruction, the effective teaching model requires curricula and learning goals that are tightly organized and divisible into small parts, ideas, or skills. In teaching about photosynthesis, for example, the teacher (or at least her curriculum) needs to identify the basic elements that contribute to this process, and how they relate to each other. With photosynthesis, the elements include the sun, plants, animals, chlorophyll, oxygen produced by plants and consumed by animals, and carbon dioxide that produced by animals and consumed by plants. The roles of these elements need to be identified and expressed at a level appropriate for the students. With advanced science students, oxygen, chlorophyll, and carbon dioxide may be expressed as part of complex chemical reactions; with first-grade students, though, they may be expressed simply as parts of a process akin to breathing or respiration.

Once this analysis of the curriculum has been done, the Hunter’s effective teaching model requires making the most of the lesson time by creating an anticipatory set, which is an activity that focuses or orients the attention of students to the upcoming content. Creating an anticipatory set may consist, for example, of posing one or more questions about students’ everyday knowledge or knowledge of prior lessons. In teaching about differences between fruits and vegetables, the teacher could start by asking: “If you are making a salad strictly of fruit, which of these would be OK to use: apple, tomato, cucumber, or orange?” As the lesson proceeds, information needs to be offered in short, logical pieces, using language as familiar as possible to the students. Examples should be plentiful and varied: if the purpose is to define and distinguish fruits and vegetables, for example, then features defining each group should be presented singularly or at most just a few at a time, with clear-cut examples presented of each feature. Sometimes models or analogies also help to explain examples. A teacher can say: “Think of a fruit as a sort of ‘decoration’ on the plant, because if you pick it, the plant will go on living.” But models can also mislead students if they are not used thoughtfully, since they may contain features that differ from the original concepts. In likening a fruit to a decoration, for example, students may overlook the essential role of fruit in plant reproduction, or think that lettuce qualifies as a fruit, since picking a few lettuce leaves does not usually kill a lettuce plant.

Throughout a lesson, the teacher repeatedly checks for understanding by asking questions that call for active thinking on the part of students. One way is to require all students to respond somehow, either with an actual choral response (speaking in unison together), another way with a non-verbal signal like raising hands to indicate answers to questions. In teaching about fruits and vegetables, for example, a teacher can ask, “Here’s a list of fruits and vegetables. As I point to each one, raise your hand if it’s a fruit, but not if it’s a vegetable.” Or she can ask: “Here’s a list of fruits and vegetables. Say together what each on is as I point to it; you say ‘fruit’ or ‘vegetable’, whichever applies.” Even though some students may hide their ignorance by letting more knowledgeable classmates do the responding, the general level or quality of response can still give a rough idea of how well students are understanding. These checks can be supplemented, of course, with questions addressed to individuals, or with questions to which individuals must respond briefly in writing. A teacher can ask everyone, “Give me an example of one fruit and one vegetable”, and then call on individuals to answer. She can also say: “I want everyone to make a list with two columns, one listing all the fruits you can think of and the other listing all the vegetables you can think of.”

As a lesson draws to a close, the teacher arranges for students to have further independent practice . The point of the practice is not to explore new material or ideas, but to consolidate or strengthen the recent learning. At the end of a lesson about long division, for example, the teacher can make a transition to independent practice by providing a set of additional problems similar to the ones she explained during the lesson. After working one or two with students, she can turn the rest of the task over to the students to practice on their own. But note that even though the practice is supposedly “independent”, students’ understanding still has be checked frequently. A long set of practice problems therefore needs to be broken up into small subsets of problems, and written or oral feedback offered periodically.

What are the limits of teacher-directed instruction?

Whatever the grade level, most subjects taught in schools have at least some features, skills, or topics that benefit from direct instruction. Even subjects usually considered “creative” can benefit from a direct approach at times: to draw, sing, or write a poem, for example, requires skills that may be easier to learn if presented sequentially in small units with frequent feedback from a teacher. Research supports the usefulness of teacher- directed instruction for a variety of educational contexts when it is designed well and implemented as intended (Rosenshine & Mesister,1995; Good & Brophy, 2004). Teachers themselves also tend to support the approach in principle (Demant & Yates, 2003).

But there are limits to its usefulness. Some are the practical ones are pointed out above. Teacher-directed instruction, whatever the form, requires well-organized units of instruction in advance of when students are to learn. Such units may not always be available, and it may not be realistic to expect busy teachers to devise their own. Other limits of direct instruction have more to do with the very nature of learning. Some critics argue that organizing material on behalf of the students encourages students to be passive—an ironic and undesirable result if true (Kohn, 2000, 2006). According to this criticism, the mere fact that a curriculum or unit of study is constructed by a teacher (or other authority) makes some students think that they should not bother seeking information actively on their own, but wait for it to arrive of its own accord. In support of this argument, critics point to the fact that direct instruction approaches sometimes contradict their own premises by requiring students to do a bit of cognitive organizational work of their own. This happens, for example, when a mastery learning program provides enrichment material to faster students to work on independently; in that case the teacher may be involved in the enrichment activities only minimally.

Criticisms like these have led to additional instructional approaches that rely more fully on students to seek and organize their own learning. In the next section we discuss some of these options. As you will see, student-centered models of learning do solve certain problems of teacher-directed instruction, but they also have problems of their own.

Student-centered models of learning

Student-centered models of learning shift some of the responsibility for directing and organizing learning from the teacher to the student. Being student-centered does not mean, however, that a teacher gives up organizational and leadership responsibilities completely. It only means a relative shift in the teacher’s role, toward one with more emphasis on guiding students’ self-chosen directions. As we explained earlier in this chapter, teacher-directed strategies do not take over responsibility for students’ learning completely; no matter how much a teacher structures or directs learning, the students still have responsibility for working and expending effort to comprehend new material. By the same token, student-centered models of learning do not mean handing over all organizational work of instruction to students. The teacher is still the most knowledgeable member of the class, and still has both the opportunity and the responsibility to guide learning in directions that are productive.

As you might suspect, therefore, teacher-directed and student-centered approaches to instruction may overlap in practice. You can see the overlap clearly, for example, in two instructional strategies commonly thought of as student-centered, independent study and self-reflection. In independent study, as the name implies, a student works alone a good deal of the time, consulting with a teacher only occasionally. Independent study may be student-centered in the sense that the student may be learning a topic or skill—an exotic foreign language, for example—that is personally interesting. But the opposite may also be true: the student may be learning a topic or skill that a teacher or an official school curriculum has directed the student to learn—a basic subject for which the student is missing a credit, for example. Either way, though, the student will probably need guidance, support, and help from a teacher. In this sense even independent study always contain elements of teacher-direction.

Similarly, self-reflection refers to thinking about beliefs and experiences in order to clarify their personal meaning and importance. In school it can be practiced in a number of ways: for example by keeping diaries or logs of learning or reading, or by retelling stories of important experiences or incidents in a student’s life, or by creating concept maps like the ones described earlier in this chapter. Whatever form it takes, self-reflection by definition happens inside a single student’s mind, and in this sense is always directed by the student. Yet most research on self-reflection finds that self-reflection only works well when it involves and generates responses and interaction with other students or with a teacher (Seifert, 1999; Kuit, Reay, & Freeman, 2001). To be fully self-reflective, students need to have access to more than their existing base of knowledge and ideas—more than what they know already. In one study about students’ self-reflections of cultural and racial prejudices (Gay & Kirkland, 2003), for example, the researchers found that students tended to reflect on these problems in relatively shallow ways if they worked on their own. It was not particularly effective to write about prejudice in a journal that no one read except themselves, or to describe beliefs in a class discussion in which neither the teacher nor classmates commented or challenged the beliefs. Much more effective in both cases was for the teacher to respond thoughtfully to students’ reflective comments. In this sense the use of self-reflection, like independent study, required elements of teacher- direction to be successful.

How might a teacher emphasize students’ responsibility for directing and organizing their own learning? The alternatives are numerous, as they are for teacher-directed strategies, so we can only sample some of them here. We concentrate on ones that are relatively well known and used most widely, and especially on two: inquiry learning and cooperative learning.

Inquiry learning

Inquiry learning stands the usual advice about expository (lecture-style) teaching on its head: instead of presenting well-organized knowledge to students, the teacher (or sometimes fellow students) pose thoughtful questions intended to stimulate discussion and investigation by students. The approach has been described, used, and discussed by educators literally for decades, though sometimes under other names, including inquiry method (Postman & Weingartner, 1969), discovery learning (Bruner, 1960/2006), or progressive education (Dewey, 1933; Martin, 2003). For convenience, we will stay with the term inquiry learning.

The questions that begin a cycle of inquiry learning may be posed either by the teacher or by students themselves. Their content depends not only on the general subject area being studied, but also on the interests which students themselves have expressed. In elementary-level science, for example, a question might be “Why do leaves fall off trees when winter comes?” In high school social studies classes, it might be “Why do nations get into conflict?” The teacher avoids answering such questions directly, even if asked to do so. Instead she encourages students to investigate the questions themselves, for example by elaborating on students’ ideas and by asking further questions based on students’ initial comments. Since students’ comments can not be predicted precisely, the approach is by nature flexible. The initial questioning helps students to create and clarify questions which they consider worthy of further investigation. Discussing questions about leaves falling off trees, for example, can prompt students to observe trees in the autumn or to locate books and references that discuss or explain the biology of tress and leaves.

But inquiry is not limited to particular grade levels or topics. If initial questions in a high school social studies class have been about why nations get into conflict, for example, the resulting discussions can lead to investigating the history of past wars and the history of peace-keeping efforts around the world. Whether the topic is high school social studies or elementary school biology, the specific direction of investigations is influenced heavily by students, but with assistance from the teacher to insure that the students’ initiatives are productive. When all goes well, the inquiry and resulting investigations benefit students in two ways. The first is that students (perhaps obviously) learn new knowledge from their investigations. The second is that students practice a constructive, motivating way of learning, one applicable to a variety of problems and tasks, both in school and out.

Cooperative learning

Even though inquiry-oriented discussion and investigation benefits when it involves the teacher, it can also be useful for students to work together somewhat independently, relying on a teacher’s guidance only indirectly. Working with peers is a major feature of cooperative learning (sometimes also called collaborative learning). In this approach, students work on a task in groups and often are rewarded either partially or completely for the success of the group as a whole. Aspects of cooperative learning have been part of education for a long time; some form of cooperation has always been necessary to participate on school sports teams, for example, or to produce a student-run school newspaper. What is a bit newer is using cooperative or collaborative activities systematically to facilitate the learning of a range of educational goals central to the academic curriculum (Prince, 2004).

Even though teachers usually value cooperation in students, circumstances at school can sometimes reduce students’ incentives to show it. The traditional practice of assessing students individually, for example, can set the stage for competition over grades, and cultural and other forms of diversity can sometimes inhibit individuals from helping each other spontaneously. Strategies exist, however, for reducing such barriers so that students truly benefit from each other’s presence, and are more likely to feel like sharing their skills and knowledge. Here, for example, are several key features that make cooperative learning work well (Johnson & Johnson, 1998; Smith, et al., 2005):

• Students need time and a place to talk and work together. This may sound obvious, but it can be overlooked if time in class becomes crowded with other tasks and activities, or with interruptions related to school (like assemblies) but not to the classroom. It is never enough simply to tell students to work together, only to leave them wondering how or when they are to do so.
• Students need skills at working together. As an adult, you may feel relatively able to work with a variety of partners on a group task. The same assumption cannot be made, however, about younger individuals, whether teenagers or children. Some students may get along with a variety of partners, but others may not. Many will benefit from advice and coaching about how to focus on the tasks at hand, rather than on the personalities of their partners.
• Assessment of activities should hold both the group and the individuals accountable for success. If a final mark for a project goes only to the group as a whole, then freeloading is possible: some members may not do their share of the work and may be rewarded more than they deserve. Others may be rewarded less than they deserve. If, on the other hand, a final grade for a group project goes only to each member’s individual contribution to a group project, then overspecialization can occur: individuals have no real incentive to work together, and cooperative may deteriorate into a set of smaller individual projects (Slavin, 1994).
• Students need to believe in the value and necessity of cooperation. Collaboration will not occur if students privately assume that their partners have little to contribute to their personal success. Social prejudices from the wider society—like racial bias or gender sexism, for example—can creep into the operations of cooperative groups, causing some members to be ignored unfairly while others are overvalued. Teachers can help reduce these problems in two ways: first by pointing out and explaining that a diversity of talents is necessary for success on a group project, and second by pointing out to the group how undervalued individuals are contributing to the overall project (Cohen, Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004).

As these comments imply, cooperative learning does not happen automatically, and requires monitoring and support by the teacher. Some activities may not lend themselves to cooperative work, particularly if every member of the group is doing essentially the same task. Giving everyone in a group the same set of arithmetic problems to work on collaboratively, for example, is a formula for cooperative failure: either the most skilled students do the work for others (freeloading) or else members simply divide up the problems among themselves in order to reduce their overall work (overspecialization). A better choice for a cooperative task is one that clearly requires a diversity of skills, what some educators call a rich group work task (Cohen, Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004). Preparing a presentation about medieval castles, for example, might require (a) writing skill to create a report, (b) dramatic skill to put on a skit and (c) artistic talent to create a poster. Although a few students may have all of these skills, more are likely to have only one, and they are therefore likely to need and want their fellow group members’ participation.

Examples of cooperative and collaborative learning

Although this description may make the requirements for cooperative learning sound somewhat precise, there are actually a variety of ways to implement it in practice. Error: Reference source not found summarizes several of them. As you can see, the strategies vary in the number of how many students they involve, the prior organization or planning provided by the teacher, and the amount of class time they normally require.

Table 26: Strategies for encouraging cooperative learning

Instructional strategies: an abundance of choices

Looking broadly at this chapter, you can see that choices among instructional strategies are numerous indeed, and that deciding among them depends on the forms of thinking that you want to encourage, the extent to which ideas or skills need to be organized by you to be understood by students, and the extent to which students need to take responsibility for directing their own learning. Although you may have personal preferences among possible instructional strategies, the choice will also be guided by the uniqueness of each situation of teaching—with its particular students, grade-level, content, and purposes. If you need to develop students’ problem solving skills, for example, there are strategies that are especially well suited for this purpose; we described some (see, “Problem solving strategies” in this chapter). If you need to organize complex information so that students do not become confused by it, there are effective ways of doing so. If you want the students to take as much initiative as possible in organizing their own learning, this too can be done.

Yet having this knowledge is still not enough to teach well. What is still needed are ideas or principles for deciding what to teach. In this chapter we have still not addressed an obvious question: How do I find or devise goals for my teaching and for my students’ learning? And assuming that I can determine the goals, where can I find resources that help students to meet them?

Chapter summary

Teaching involves numerous instructional strategies, which are decisions and actions designed to facilitate learning. The choice of strategies depends partly on the forms of thinking intended for students—whether the goal is for students to think critically, for example, or to think creatively, or to solve problems. A fundamental decision in choosing instructional strategies is how much to emphasize teacher-directed instruction, as compared to student- centered models of learning. Teacher-directed strategies of instruction include lectures and readings (expository teaching), mastery learning, scripted or direct instruction, and complex teacher-directed approaches such as Madeline Hunter’s effective teaching model. Student-centered models of learning include independent study, student self-reflection, inquiry learning, and various forms of cooperative or collaborative learning. Although for some students, curriculum content and learning goals may lend themselves toward one particular type of instruction, teaching is often a matter of combining different strategies appropriately and creatively.

On the Internet

< www.glossary.plasmalink.com/glossary.html > This web page lists over 900 instructional strategies— about ten times as many as in this chapter! The strategies are arranged alphabetically and range from simple to complex. For many strategies there are links to other web pages with more complete explanations and advice for use. This is a good page if you have heard of a strategy but want to find out its definition quickly.

< www.olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/alpha.html > Like the web page above, this one also describes instructional strategies. It includes fewer (about 200), but they are discussed in more detail and organized according to major categories or types of strategies—a good feature if you have a general idea of what sort of strategy you are looking for, but are not sure of precisely which one.

Aronson, E. (2001). In the jigsaw classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Benson, B. & Barnett, S. (2005). Student-led conferencing using showcase portfolios. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee C., Marshall, B., & William, D. (2004). Working inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86 (1), 8-21.

Bothmer, S. (2003). Creating the peaceable classroom. Tuscon, AZ: Zephyr Press.

Britt, T. (2005). Effects of identity-relevance and task difficulty on task motivation, stress, and performance. Motivation and Emotion, 29 (3), 189-202.

Brophy, J. (2004). Motivating students to learn, 2nd edition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Brown, D. (2004). Urban teachers’ professed classroom management strategies: Reflections of culturally responsive teaching. Urban Education, 39 (3), 266-289.

Brookfield, S. (2006). The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Chesebro, J. (2003). Effects of teacher clarity and nonverbal immediacy on student learning, receiver apprehension, and affect. Communication Education, 52 (2), 135-147.

Cooper, P. & Simonds, C. (2003). Communication for the classroom teacher, 7th edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Cronbach, L. & Snow, R. (1977). Aptitudes and instructional methods: A handbook for research on interaction. New York: Irvington.

Crutsinger, C., Knight, D., & Kinley. (2005). Learning style preferences: Implications for Web-based instruction. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 23 (4), 266-276.

Davidson, J. & Wood, C. (2004). A conflict resolution model. Theory into Practice, 43 (1), 6-13.

Emmer, E. & Stough, L. (2001). Classroom management: A critical part of educational psychology, with implications for teacher education. Educational Psychologist, 36 (2), 103-112.

Gibbs, J. (2003). Moral development and reality: Beyond the theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Good, T. & Brophy, J. (2002). Looking in classrooms, 9th edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Gordon, T. (2003). Teacher effectiveness training. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Guerrero, L. & Floyd, K. (2005). Nonverbal communication in close relationships. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hawkins, J. (2006). Accessing multicultural issues through critical thinking, critical inquiry, and the student research process. Urban Education, 41 (2), 169-141.

Heimann , M. Strid, K., Smith , L., Tjus , T., Ulvund , S. & Meltzoff, A. (2006). Exploring the relation between memory, gestural communication, and the emergence of language in infancy: a longitudinal study. Infant and Child Development , 15(3), 233-249.

Hunter, R. (2004). Madeline Hunter’s Mastery Teaching, Revised Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Jones, T. (2004). Conflict resolution education: The field, the findings, and the future. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 22 (1-2), 233-267.

Jones, V. & Jones, L. (2006). Comprehensive classroom management: Creating communities of support and solving problems, 6th edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Katz, L. (2000). Engaging children’s minds: The project approach. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishers.

Kohn, A. (2006). Beyond discipline: From compliance to community. Reston, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Kounin, J. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Lyman, F. T. (1981). The responsive classroom discussion: The inclusion of all students. In A. Anderson (Ed.), Mainstreaming Digest (pp. 109-113). College Park: University of Maryland Press.

Marks, L. (2003). Instructional management tips for teachers of students with autism-spectrum disorder. Teaching Exceptional Children, 35 (4), 50-54.

Marsh, A., Elfenbein, H. & Ambady, N. (2003). Nonverbal “accents”: cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. Psychological Science, 14 (3), 373-376.

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Educational Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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19 Creative Thinking Skills (and How to Use Them!)

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In a fast-moving world, being able to find new perspectives and create innovation is an increasingly valuable skill . Creative thinkers are often at the forefront of driving change, solving problems, and developing new ideas. Not only that, but those who bring creative thinking to how they work are often happier, more productive, and resilient too!

So you might be asking yourself, how can I develop my creative thinking skills and think more creatively at work?  Whether you want to supercharge your interpersonal skills, advance your career or be happier and more satisfied in the work you do, it pays to learn to think more creatively.

For many people, creative thinking is the key that unlocks solutions, promotes diverse thinking, and leads to better relationships and job satisfaction. So how can you get started with creative thinking?  As passionate believers in the value of creative thinking, we’re here to help and truly think unleashing your creativity can be key to your personal development!

In this post we’ll define what creative thinking is, highlight the benefits, explore 19 key creative thinking skills and give you some examples of how to apply them in the workplace . Let’s dig in!

What is creative thinking?

Why is creative thinking important, what are the benefits of creative thinking.

• What are creative thinking skills?  
• Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them)
• How to use creative thinking skills at work?

How to improve your creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking is the ability to approach a problem or challenge from a new perspective, alternative angle, or with an atypical mindset. This might mean thinking outside of the box, taking techniques from one discipline and applying them to another, or simply creating space for new ideas and alternative solutions to present themselves through dialogue, experimentation, or reflection.

Bear in mind that the number of different creative approaches is as vast as the number of creative thinkers – if an approach helps you see things differently and approaching a challenge creatively, follow that impulse.

While there are some proven methods and guidelines that can help you be a better creative thinker, remember that everyone can be creative and finding what works for you is what is important, not the terminology or specific framework.

One misapprehension about creative thinking is that you have to be skilled at more traditional creative skills like drawing or writing. This isn’t true. What’s important is that you are open to exploring alternative solutions while employing fresh techniques and creative approaches to what you’re working on. 

You don’t need to be a great artist or even work in a traditionally creative field – we believe everyone is capable of creative thinking and that it enriches your personal and professional lives when you learn to be more creative.

Another misconception about creative thinking is that it applies only to the ideation or technically creative parts of the process. All aspects of our lives and interactions with people and challenges can benefit from creative thinking – from the ability to see things differently.

At work, thinking creatively might mean finding better ways to communicate, improve your working practices, or developing and implementing fresh solutions too.

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning, and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking.

As organizations and people grow, they often develop tried and tested ways of operating. While it’s important to have solid working practices and processes, unswerving dedication to the norm can lead to stagnation and a lack of innovation and growth. 

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking. Simply put, creativity and creative thinking are part of what helps businesses and individuals succeed and grow .

Whether your team or business thinks of itself as a creative one, you can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of creative thinking if you want to grow , deliver change, and help your team bring their best selves to work. 

Using creative thinking skills at work creates b enefits not only in the ways we solve problems but also in how we approach everything from communication to self-fulfillment, task management, and growth . Bringing a culture of creative thinking into a workshop or group is often the job of a talented facilitator but whatever your role, there are benefits to thinking more creatively. Let’s explore some of the benefits of thinking creatively at work and in your everyday life!

Build empathy

• Bust assumptions  
• Become a better problem solver  

Find ways to move quickly and effectively

• Increase happiness

Discover new talents and promote learning

• Boost resilience and deal with adversity

Boost your CV and employability 

Empathy and creative thinking go hand-in-hand. By practicing creative thinking skills and regularly looking for new ideas and points of view, you can actively become better at understanding your colleagues, customers, and even your family and friends. One of the major barriers to having productive and meaningful relationships is an unwillingness to see things from a perspective other than your own or failing to understand how another person is feeling. 

By developing this skill, you can engage more meaningfully and honestly with people, ideas, and perspectives in all aspects of life. What’s more, because of the benefits that creative thinking can bring, you’ll actively want to see things from new perspectives and be more empathic : something that’s fundamental to creating real change.

Bust assumptions 

Assumptions can be harmful in both our personal and professional lives. Whether it’s making assumptions about why someone is behaving the way they are in a workshop or what features will make your customers happiest, holding onto incorrect or inadequately formed assumptions can be problematic . It can create difficulty and tension in relationships and what’s more, it can lead to the development or introduction of solutions that are simply unfit for purpose.

Using creative thinking skills to challenge assumptions, build clarity, and see things from new perspectives can be transformative. If an assumption someone else makes feels incorrect, think about why and try to find out more. If someone challenges an assumption you hold, be open and listen.

Become a better problem solver

An example of not being a creative thinker is sticking to a tried and tested approach and sticking to the norm in every situation without considering whether trying something new might not lead to better results.

When looking to solve a problem or create innovative solutions, going outside of what you know and being open to new ideas is not only exciting, but it can create more impactful solutions too. You might even try using problem-solving techniques alongside some of the creative thinking skills below to find the absolute best solutions!

Some processes and working practices can be slow, especially in large organizations with many moving parts – but do they all have to be? Thinking creatively can help you find lean, actionable solutions that you can put into practice quickly and test ahead of bigger changes .

Experimentation and a willingness to take risks are vital to growth and change, and creative thinking helps create a climate conducive to finding and trying quick, effective solutions. 

Increase happiness and satisfaction

Finding fresh, appropriate solutions to problems can be incredibly satisfying and is a fast-track to finding happiness both in and out of work. Bringing your whole self to a situation and being enabled to think outside of the box is a great way to feel valued and engaged with what you are doing.

Feeling frustrated with how a situation or process at work is going? Try developing and employing your creative thinking skills alongside your colleagues to find a better, happier way to collaborate! Feel unfulfilled or that not all of your skills and interests are being utilized? Consider how you might creatively deploy the skills or talents that make you happy and scratch that itch.

As children, we are encouraged to see things differently and try new things as part of our learning and growing process. There’s no reason we shouldn’t do this as adults too! Trying new things and learning to think creatively can help you find new skills, talents, and things you didn’t even know you were good at.

Staying curious and following what interests you with an open mind is a prime example of what a small change in thinking can achieve. Remember that creative thinking is a gateway to learning and by actively developing your creative toolset, you can grow and discover more in all walks of life – a surefire path to personal development.

Get better at dealing with adversity

It’s easy to get frustrated when problems seem to come thick and fast and existing solutions or methods don’t work. Adversity is something all of us will face at some point in our personal and professional lives but there are ways you can become more able to handle problems when they arise .

A strong suite of creative thinking skills is an important aspect of how we can build resilience and be more flexible when adapting or creating change. By exploring alternative ways of thinking, you’ll be better prepared to face adversity more openly and find alternative ways to resolve challenges in whatever context they emerge.

Creative thinkers are valuable employees at organizations of any size. Whether it’s championing innovation, creating change in policy, or finding better ways to collaborate, people who can effectively solve problems and leverage their creative thinking skills are better positioned for success at work.

Consider how you might plug your skills gap and boost your CV by developing your creative skillset and you won’t just be more successful – you’ll be happier and more engaged at work too! 

Whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life.

What are creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking skills are the methods or approaches you might use when trying to solve a problem differently and explore a fresh perspective. While some of these skills might come naturally to you, others might need a more considered, purposeful approach.

For example, you might be a natural visual thinker who is great at presenting and interpreting visual information but you might not be so good at freely experimenting or creating space for reflection. In this case, you might try some brainstorming exercises to loosen up your experimentation muscles or create scheduled time for reflection in your working routine.

While creative professions like artists, writers, or designers may see more obvious uses for creative thinking skills, all professions can benefit from developing and deploying creative thinking . If you find yourself having difficulty at work or in need of inspiration or motivation, finding space to build on your creative skillset is a way to not only move forward but have fun while doing so.

If you think you’re not creative or have no creative thinking skills, we’re here to tell you that whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life : you might just need a little push or to reframe how you think about creativity!

Save time planning your next creative workshop

Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them) 

Creative thinking skills come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from things like abstract thinking and storytelling to finding ways to radically plan projects or recognize organizational patterns .

In this section, we’ll explore each of the example creative skills below and talk about how you might use them in your personal and professional practice. We’ll also point out some things to watch out for where appropriate so you can make the most out of your new creative skills and avoid potential setbacks.

We’ll also include a method from the SessionLab library that will help you practice and explore each skill, whether alone or with others .

Feel free to read and explore the creative thinking skill which feels most interesting or applicable to you and come back and experiment with others in the future!  

Some example creative thinking skills include:

Experimentation

Open-mindedness, lateral thinking.

• Pattern recognition   

Deep and active listening

Challenging norms, lean organization, simplification, radical planning.

• Collaborative thinking

Data collection

• Interpretation and analysis

Interdisciplinary thinking

Frameworks and rulesets, micro and macro thinking, visual thinking, abstract thinking, storytelling.

Note that this list is not exhaustive, and there are many more ways of thinking creatively – try to see these creative skills as a jumping-off point for seeing things differently and exploring creative thinking at work . 

Let’s get started!

A core creative skill is the ability to experiment and try new things, whether that’s in your personal practice, in a closed environment, or even in the field. It can be easy to fall short of implementing new ideas or following through with creative projects because critical judgment or overthinking gets in the way . A good experimenter is a self-starter who makes informed decisions to kickstart projects and test hypotheses. 

Think of a painter who throws paint at a canvas and introduces new materials without overthinking or being self-critical. While not everything they try will be perfect, that’s the point – not every experiment needs to be successful in order to teach you something useful. By experimenting, you can try things that might prove useful or will lead you towards new solutions and better ideas. Remember that the act of experimentation is generative and often fun so be sure to give it a try!

One thing to watch out for is being sure to effectively capture the results of your experiments and to continue developing and iterating on the results. Experimentation is a great place to start, but remember that it is part of a larger process. Without effective documentation, you might not trace what delivered the best results and be unable to reproduce the outcomes. Experimentation is a great example of why creative freedom should be paired with a strong process in order to be at its best. 

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

Four-Step Sketch is a great method for promoting experimentation. By following a process that enables quick brainstorming before development, you can help build an experimental mindset that also generates results.

Open-mindedness is a critical element of creativity and one of the best creative thinking skills you can try to build if you’re new to the practice. Being open-minded means being receptive to new ideas, different ways of thinking, and perspectives which are not your own. It means not closing down conversations or ideas prematurely and trying to actively explore what is presented to you.

Imagine that a colleague comes up with an idea that is so far out of the status quo it seems off-the-wall and bizarre. Being open-minded means actively engaging with what is presented and to refrain from forming judgments before first understanding where your colleague is coming from .

Your colleagues’ initial idea might not be perfect, but being open-minded and truly attempting to understand their perspective means you can create dialogue, foster creativity, and move forward as a team. 

Being open-minded doesn’t mean accepting every new idea and agreeing wholesale with every different opinion. While you should always try to be open and receptive to new ideas and other perspectives, you should also critically appraise and engage with them as part of a larger creative process. Don’t be so open-minded you have no strong opinions of your own!

Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR)   #issue analysis   #empathy   #communication   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can foster the empathetic capacity of participants to “walk in the shoes” of others. Many situations do not have immediate answers or clear resolutions. Recognizing these situations and responding with empathy can improve the “cultural climate” and build trust among group members. HSR helps individuals learn to respond in ways that do not overpromise or overcontrol. It helps members of a group notice unwanted patterns and work together on shifting to more productive interactions. Participants experience the practice of more compassion and the benefits it engenders.

Open-mindedness is particularly useful when it comes to meaningfully communicating with others. Whether its developing the ability to walk in the shoes of someone else or building empathy and listening skills, Heard, Seen, Respected is a great method to try when learning to be more open-minded.

Lateral thinking is a prime example of how we can creatively solve real-world problems in a measurable and easy-to-understand manner. Deploying lateral thinking means using reasoning or non-traditional logic to find an indirect or out-of-the-box approach to solving a problem. 

A simple example might be a challenge like: we need to increase revenue. Traditional thinking might mean considering hiring new salespeople to try and get more direct sales. A lateral approach might mean engaging more with current customers to reduce churn, working with external partners to get new leads, working to get sponsorship, piloting an affiliate scheme or any number of new ways to solve the existing problem.

Broadly speaking, lateral thinking often means stepping back and considering solutions or approaches outside of the immediately obvious.

One potential danger with lateral thinking is spending time to create new solutions to problems that don’t need them. Not every problem needs to be solved laterally and the best solution might actually be the most straightforward. Be sure to tap into existing knowledge and appraise a problem before trying something radical to avoid wasted time or frustration!  

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Developing your lateral thinking skills comes more naturally to some than others. The Creativity Dice is a great method for getting out of linear thinking habits and moving into different ways of thinking.

Pattern recognition 

Pattern recognition is the ability to recognise existing or emerging patterns and make connections based on the patterns you have discerned . While pattern recognition goes back to our prehistoric roots, being able to spot patterns outside of the ordinary and consider what may not be immediately obvious is a vital creative thinking skill for today. 

Consider how meetings between some members of a team might often end in conflict. While it might first seem that these two people just can’t get along, it might actually be that certain emotional triggers are being tripped or the format of the conversation isn’t working. Looking beyond your initial impressions and from a new perspective might let you find a repeating pattern that isn’t immediately obvious.

When trying to spot patterns, try to be mindful of existing biases so you avoid bending what is happening to fit a pattern you might be expecting. Be sure to interpret all data fairly and honestly, even if you believe a pattern is already forming. 

Affinity Map   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Most of us are familiar with brainstorming—a method by which a group generates as many ideas around a topic as possible in a limited amount of time. Brainstorming works to get a high quantity of information on the table. But it begs the follow-up question of how to gather meaning from all the data. Using a simple Affinity Diagram technique can help us discover embedded patterns (and sometimes break old patterns) of thinking by sorting and clustering language-based information into relationships. It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused

Pattern recognition is a skill that benefits from thoughtful practice. Try starting with a deliberate pattern-finding process like Affinity Map to build the ability to see patterns where they might not first be obvious.

While it might not seem like it at first, being a good listener is a creative thinking skill. It asks that a person not only try to understand what is being said but also to engage with the why and how of the conversation in order to reframe prior thinking and see things from a new perspective.

Deep listening or active listening is not only hearing the words that someone is saying but actively seeking to interpret their intent, understand their position, and create a positive space for further conversation. Not only does this create a deeper conversation for both parties, but this act of engagement and understanding leads to more creative and dynamic results too. 

Think of a workplace grievance that one person might have against another. Without actively listening and trying to understand the core issues from the perspective of everyone involved, you might not only fail to solve the issue but actually make staff feel less heard and valued too.

By employing this creative thinking skill in such a conversation you can see things more clearly and find a way to creatively satisfy the needs of everyone involved. 

Active Listening   #hyperisland   #skills   #active listening   #remote-friendly   This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Trying to be more present in conversations is a great place to begin building your deep listening and active listening skills . Want to supercharge the process as a group? Try a role-play activity like Active Listening to more thoughtfully see and reflect on how important this skill can be.

Not all established working practices are the best way of doing things. People who practice this creative thinking skill are likely to question the status quo in search of something new which can deliver meaningful change. While any challenge to the established order needs to be conducted respectfully and thoughtfully, thinking of how to go beyond the norm is how innovation occurs and where creative thinkers excel.

When trying to practice this skill, be prepared to question existing methods and frameworks and ask if there might be a better way outside of the limits of the current system. 

As with lateral thinking, it’s important to recognize that not everything is a problem that needs to be solved and so you may need to be selective in which norms should be challenged – otherwise, you may never make it out of the front door!

Additionally, challenging the established order often means questioning the work someone else has already done. While this is a necessary part of growth, it should always be done constructively and respectfully.  

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

Challenging norms without a considered approach can be ineffective and potentially frustrating. Taking the time to build shared understanding and push in the same direction with What, So What, Now What? is a great way to explore how your existing process is or isn’t working and challenge norms productively.

Creative thinking doesn’t mean being disorganized or chaotic just because you have an abundance of ideas. In order to facilitate creative thinking, it’s important to stay organized and approach the process with the right framework, mindset, and space. As a creative thinking skill, lean organization means considering what you absolutely need to do in order to make things happen, versus what you don’t.

Think of how a large, multi-discipline team might go about organizing themselves for a big project. While it’s vital everyone is aligned and kept up to date, a traditional system of scheduled meetings might not be the most productive. Lean organization means considering the needs of the team, the project and thinking creatively about what you need to stay organized, and keeping unnecessary admin to a minimum.

Thinking creatively about organization is something all leaders should practice but any project can benefit from thinking through the process by which it will be accomplished. 

MoSCoW   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   #remote-friendly   MoSCoW is a method that allows the team to prioritize the different features that they will work on. Features are then categorized into “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”. To be used at the beginning of a timeslot (for example during Sprint planning) and when planning is needed.

Lean organization often means being honest and realistic about what is absolutely necessary versus nice to have. MoSCoW is an effective agile framework for planning work and also reframing your approach to organizing time, tasks and more!

Simplifying, presenting or decoding any information is a vital skill when working with others. In a creative thinking context, simplification is the act of seeing what is important about a task or piece of data and stripping away the extraneous parts to see things more clearly.

Some problems can feel unassailable because of their complexity or scale – simplification allows you to reconsider a problem in simple terms and reframe it in a way that means you can approach it productively. 

An example of using this creative thinking skill at work might be when presenting the results of a project to the rest of your organization. People working on other teams and in different disciplines could become disengaged if exposed to too many complex moving parts or it might simply be a waste of time to discuss every detail.

By simplifying a project into more succinct terms, you not only can help your group connect with the material swiftly but also boil a project down to its most important elements . This is a great way to creatively re-energize a project and identify where you can make an impact immediately. 

6 Words   #ufmcs   #red teaming   This tool is designed to help critical thinkers focus on a core idea by writing a short phrase summarizing their thoughts into a set number of words that are clear, concise, and accurate. This idea is based on a complete short story written by Ernest Hemingway: “For sale, baby shoes – never worn.” Six Words forces people to synthesize their ideas in a succinct and meaningful way, cutting away fluff and distilling the idea to its bare essence.

One way of practicing simplification is by summarising or condensing thoughts, ideas of stories into a more concise, compressed form . 6 Words is a method for cutting away extraneous material from ideas that engages creative thinking and reframing approachably – great for groups!

Any major project requires some measure of planning in order to succeed, especially when working with others. But are there times where overplanning or traditional working processes feel too slow or frustrating for the project at hand? This is where these creative thinking skills come in handy! Radical planning is a way of approaching project planning from an alternative angle in order to generate fast, effective results.  

When taking this planning approach, you will often shuffle the order of the normal planning process in order to create alternative outcomes and cut out elements you may not need. For example, with the backcasting workshop activity, the approach is to think of desired outcomes up to twenty years in the future and work backward to figure out how we can make small steps today.

You might also try planning with a mindset of what you and your team can each achieve immediately and in a more experimental fashion with an activity like 15% solutions . 

By approaching planning with a creative thinking mindset, you can surface ideas and plans which may not have come up with a more traditional planning process. Another great benefit is to question the normal manner in which your team or organisation approaches planning and can help your team find a method that works best for you!

Backcasting   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   Backcasting is a method for planning the actions necessary to reach desired future goals. This method is often applied in a workshop format with stakeholders participating. To be used when a future goal (even if it is vague) has been identified.

Collaborative thinking 

Effective collaboration requires us to bring many different skills together, but consciously considering how to be a more effective collaborator is worth mentioning separately. When a creative thinker approaches collaboration, they will try to think of how to use alternative approaches to make the collaborative process more effective while also helping everyone on the team contribute and be heard.

An example is when it comes to getting work done in meetings – if the current process isn’t enabling everyone to collaborate effectively, you might employ creative thinking to try finding an alternative format, consider working asynchronously, or timeboxing parts of your agenda.

The best collaborators also find ways to champion the work of others and create a safe space for everyone to contribute – it might not be enough to assume collaboration will be accomplished when you get people in a room.

Employing this creative thinking skill can make all the difference when it comes to job satisfaction, interpersonal relationships and group outcomes too! Try approaching your collaborative projects more mindfully and see how it changes things for you!

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing   #teamwork   #team   #leadership   #collaboration   In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Working together on a task as a team is an effective way of kickstarting collaborative thinking, especially if you approach the task mindfully . The Marshamllow Challenge with debriefing is a proven method for engaging teamwork and by adding reflection time afterward, your group can share and build on what they learned.

Collecting data might seem like a solely analytical skill, but it is another area where creative thinking can lead to productive, unexpected and transformative results. Approaching the data collection process creatively might mean trying new techniques or sources, or simply reconsidering the how and why of your data collection processes.  

Imagine you are running a survey to measure customer happiness. You might try asking traditional survey questions, but find that your response rate is low and furthermore, your approach might be invasive and actively decrease happiness too!

If you were to approach this problem creatively, you might find that using a simplified form, asking for feedback at a different point in the customer journey, or utilizing an alternative measurement scheme delivers the data you are looking for. In many cases, thinking about the questions you are asking from a new point of view is what unlocks a better data collection process.

The key to this creative thinking skill is to try looking at the data collection process from a new, preferably customer-centric perspective while also considering why and how you are collecting data. You will likely find that by asking for input from your customers more creatively, you create space for more creative responses too!

3 Question Mingle   #hyperisland   #team   #get-to-know   An activity to support a group to get to know each other through a set of questions that they create themselves. The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. It’s useful in the early stages of team development and/or for groups to reconnect with each other after a period of time apart.

3 Question Mingle is a get to know you activity that does double duty in demonstrating the power of approaching data collection creatively. By creating their own questions, a group can really think about what they want to know, how they ask questions, and how the results differ. Be sure to give it a try!

Interpretation and analysis

Interpretation skills can be varied though in a creative thinking context it means being able to successfully analyze an idea, solution, dataset, or conversation and draw effective conclusions. Great interpreters are people with a desire to listen, understand, and dig deeper in order to make their interpretation fully realised.

One of the ways creative thinking can improve interpretation is in helping us challenge assumptions or initial readings of data in order to consider other possible interpretations and perspectives.

Say your product is having a problem with losing lots of new customers shortly after signing up. You do a survey and people say that they leave because the product isn’t useful to them. Your initial interpretation of that data might be that you’re not the right fit for these customers or that the product needs new features.

If you were to apply creative thinking to the interpretation of this data, you might conduct further research and see that the product is fine, but people didn’t find the right features for them and that your onboarding process needs to be improved.

The key here is interpreting the data from various perspectives and then correlating that with other sources to form an accurate and representative interpretation, rather than going with your initial assumption . By following this process, you might also find that the way you are collecting data is flawed (perhaps not asking the right questions) or that more research and data collection is needed.

So long as you are sure to have data points and analysis to back up your findings, it pays to explore alternative interpretations so you can avoid bias and find the most accurate takeaways . 

Fishbone diagram   #frame insights   #create   #design   #issue analysis   Fishbone diagrams show the causes of a specific event.

Effective interpretation and analysis isn’t possible without a thorough exploration of the problem or topic at hand. Fishbone Diagram is a simple method for not only surfacing insights but framing them in a way that allows for proper and multi-perspective analysis.

Einstein is quoted as saying, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In this mold, sometimes the best ideas and solutions come from fields and disciplines outside of our own. By considering how someone with a different skillset to your own would solve a problem or deploy solutions, you can often find ideas and techniques you may never have considered. 

Consider being tasked with improving employee happiness. A social media manager with a background in illustration and events management would likely try a very different approach to a sales manager who is used to a culture of incentives and bonuses. If you were trying to develop a new product, think of how a developer would approach deciding on key features versus an academic or a customer success manager? 

The important thing here is to try and use the perspective, skill set , and approach of another field or discipline to first consider and then solve a problem more fully . Where possible, try and include people from other disciplines in the process and try to avoid making assumptions.

As with all creative thinking skills, being open-minded and sourcing the expertise and opinions of others where necessary is vital when creating true innovation.

Mash-Up Innovation   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Interdisciplinary thinking isn’t just for radical academics. By combining ideas from disparate fields in a fast, fun manner, Mash-Up Innovation is great for building creative thinking skills and generating results in one fell swoop!

All creative thinking skills are about reframing things in a new way of finding alternative approaches. This can often mean abandoning an existing framework and thinking outside of the box. That said , another way of applying creative thinking is by bringing rulesets, constraints, or frameworks to your approach in order to trigger deeper creative work and tap into a problem-solving mindset . 

Consider a simple task like trying to generate more customers. With free reign, there are innumerable ways to accomplish this. But what happens if you create a rule like, we cannot spend any money, or, these must be driven by social media alone. In order to accomplish your goal under these conditions, you must think more creatively and deeply, deploying more concentrated problem-solving skills than if you could try any approach you wanted. 

Alternatively, you might approach a problem with a framework that forces you to think under specific circumstances or with a rigid set of steps. Six thinking hats is a great workshop activity that asks participants to frame and reframe a problem from six different angles. While it might first seem counterintuitive, the use of rules or frameworks can create fertile ground for creative thinking and lead to more realized solutions!

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Not all problems are created equal. Depending on how much it directly affects you, you might see a given problem as being more or less important than your colleagues, leading to a different response and approach to solving the problem. This creative thinking skill is all about being able to switch between seeing the bigger picture while also considering how something might manifest on a smaller scale.

Think of how frustrating it can be when an executive team makes sweeping changes that affect frontline staff in a way they might not have anticipated. Micro and macro thinking means seeing both problems and potential solutions from multiple perspectives and adjusting accordingly. 

Another key aspect of applying this approach is knowing the limits of your own knowledge and involving stakeholders from all levels of an organization to inform your ideation and problem-solving process.

If you’ve never worked in support and don’t regularly talk to your support team, you might not understand how a change to helpdesk software could impact your team and your clients – remember that a big part of any change in perspective is doing the research and talking to who will be affected ! 

Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm   #idea generation   #brainstorming   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   #online   A divergent process to generate ideas and understanding from different perspectives.

Learning to practice micro and macro thinking often starts with first listening to and understanding the needs and perspectives of others . Especially those who have varied positions in relation to the problem, solutions, or organization you are working with. Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm is an effective method of surfacing insights and perspectives quickly and productively.

Of all the creative thinking skills on this list, visual thinking might be one you are most familiar with. Visual thinking is a method of processing, learning, and presenting information and concepts with visual assets such as images.

Visual thinking is often associated with creative thinking because of the consumption and creation of images at its heart. Don’t let this make you think you have to be able to draw in order to be a visual thinker.

Applying this creative thinking skill means being able to interpret visual information, present concepts in an often simple visual manner, and communicate in a way that is more universally understood.  Drawing stick people is actively encouraged!

Visual approaches to problem-solving can help foster shared understanding and help people be more succinct or creative in their ideas. Remember: if an idea is too complex to be put into pictures, perhaps it needs further refinement .

Imagie-ination   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Images have the ability to spark insights and to create new associations and possible connections. That is why pictures help generate new ideas, which is exactly the point of this exercise.

While you might be able to jump straight into direct applications of visual thinking, it can help to try an exercise where you and a group explore using images simply and engagingly. Imagie-ination helps unlock the power of visual thinking as a team while also helping generate ideas too!

Abstraction or abstract thinking is the art of taking things out of their normal context and presenting them in a radical new light . While most creative thinking skills utilise abstraction in some form, it’s worth noting that actively trying to take an idea from one context and place it in another is a creative approach all on its own.

Think of Pablo Picasso’s cubist portraits – by taking something as common as a human face and bringing abstraction to his process, he created something radically different and innovative. You can create a similar effect by recontextualizing ideas, concepts, and problems and by looking at them from different, perhaps even conflicting points of view.

Abstract thinking is often built on engaging with absurdities, paradoxes, and unexpected connections . As such, it can often be fun, wild and surprising, and is a great way to generate creative ideas even in those who might be resistant to other forms of creative thinking. Lean into the weird!

Forced Analogy   #divergent thinking   #zoom   #virtual   #remote-friendly   People compare something (e.g. themselves, their company, their team) to an object.  

Forced Analogy is a quick, fun activity you can use to promote abstract thinking. Comparing one thing to another seemingly unrelated thing asks for a creative approach to context and metaphor and can really unlock a groups divergent thinking process.

Telling stories or narrativizing a problem can help us not only see things differently but understand where we share common ground with others. Everybody tells stories – whether that’s explaining our employment history, telling colleagues about what happened at the weekend, or when creating user personas and journeys. 

Leverage this inclination to help people not only realize they are creative thinkers by nature but to help them share something of themselves too!

As a creative thinking skill, storytelling is about applying our natural proclivity for stories into new situations or thinking about how to reappraise or present material narratively . Think of the basic storytelling concept like the idea that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end – how might we bring this thinking to a tough challenge, a new product, or when solving a customer complaint?

You might even use storytelling tropes like the hero’s journey when exploring ideas or company conflicts. Whichever way you go, remember that stories are a universal element of culture and you have a rich lineage to dip into if you need a new perspective. 

Telling Our Stories   #hyperisland   #team   #teambuilding   To work effectively together team members need to build relations, show trust, and be open with each other. This method supports those things through a process of structured storytelling. Team members answer questions related to their childhood, young adulthood, and now; then weave them into a story to share with the rest of their team.

Telling Stories in a collaborative space is one of the best ways you can approach creative thinking through narrative . By doing this activity as a team, you can help a group see the benefit of applying storytelling approaches outside of more traditional forms.

How many times have you had a tough problem that you can’t seem to solve so you get frustrated and leave your desk. Then, when you’re on a walk, standing in the supermarket, or falling asleep, a solution seems to arrive out of thin air? Often, you’ll find that creating space to reflect on a problem is an effective way to find a way forward.

The trick with making reflective space work as a larger part of your working practice is knowing when to take time to reflect, building space into your regular schedule, and finding techniques that allow things to surface effectively.

This might mean going for a walk with the intention to be present in noticing the world around you and gaining insights that can help your situation. It might also mean remembering to take time to rest or simply read and give your brain something good to chew on.

I notice, I wonder   #design   #observation   #empathy   #issue analysis   Learn through careful observation. Observation and intuition are critical design tools. This exercise helps you leverage both. Find clues about the context you’re designing for that may be hidden in plain sight.

In a creative thinking context, reflection often means giving an idea time to unfurl and to resist the temptation to force it – by creating space to observe and reflect with I notice, I wonder you might see new ways of thinking emerge naturally.

How to use creative thinking skills at work? 

At SessionLab, we’ve found many of the above creative thinking skills helpful when finding better ways to collaborate , handle workplace challenges or generate new ideas . Here are just a few small examples of things we’ve done that have benefited from thinking creatively as a team.

Using creative thinking to facilitate a site redesign

Using creative thinking to improve team communication, using creative thinking to improve collaboration.

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change.

When we began working on a site-wide redesign, we had to deploy a large number of creative thinking skills to make the process smooth and effective.

When first determining how to approach the project and scope the work, we reviewed how we had worked together on large projects in the past. While we saw there was room to improve, finding the best way to proceed and make the changes we needed was no easy task.

Challenging the entire process from start to finish with a creative thinking mindset and trying to stay open to alternative methods where possible was what unlocked the process for us. By reconsidering how we were running meetings, sharing feedback, and collaborating, we were able to identify where we were going wrong and then try alternative approaches more freely.

When it came to implementing solutions, we were also sure to  stay open to experimentation while challenging our core assumptions of what would work and wouldn’t. This really helped us refine the working process and tailor it to our particular team and goals.

Another example came with finding a new approach when work stalled on a specific page. For our features page, we began by following the standard approach we had developed – writing the copy and structuring the page first before then following with illustrations and images.

In this case, our existing approach got us to an impasse : it felt difficult for our designer to be creative and find the best way to translate ideas into images if the copy had already been defined and the structure felt too rigid. What we decided to do was to reverse the workflow completely and allow the designer to create design elements before we wrote the copy and implemented too rigid a structure.  

Throughout the project, creative thinking allowed us to challenge whether the existing way we did something was the right one and gave us scope to experiment and be open when finding solutions. Not only did this help us solve the immediate problems as they arose but they helped us come up with a great new design too! 

Creative thinking can come in extremely handy when it comes to communicating. If one form of communication or working process isn’t working, approaching the discussion with a creative thinking mindset can help resolve the immediate issue and create lasting change in how we converse and work together too. 

Like many virtual teams, we faced the challenge of some meetings feeling unproductive . The issues ranged from overrunning, crosstalk, not everyone feeling heard or able to contribute, or getting lost in ancillary discussions that were not productive or necessary. In an online setting, it can be hard to keep everyone on track and for things to run smoothly without accidentally talking over one another or causing frustration. 

When it came to crosstalk, we wanted to avoid the frustration of interruption and disruption but also wanted to ensure people did not feel like they couldn’t contribute . Using the finger rules technique in a remote setting allowed people to easily show when they wanted to speak and what they wanted to discuss without disrupting the flow of the meeting.

We also found that the reason some daily meetings felt unproductive was because the meetings were for the purpose of daily updates and there didn’t always feel like there was a lot to say, thus leading to frustration or unproductive time being spent in these meetings.

In this example, we moved to a weekly format while also ensuring that we continue daily check-ins on Slack. This approach meant that we cut down on unnecessary meetings while still ensuring everyone’s needs were met .

This method is an example of creatively approaching a communication problem by thinking outside of the box and being prepared to challenge core assumptions . While we all wanted to stay informed, it really helped to reconsider the methods for staying informed and whether our current approach was the best way to achieve what we needed. It was also useful to reassess how we approached meeting agendas and goal-setting – follow the link for more on that if you’re having difficulty with unproductive meetings!

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change .

Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

A final example is how we approached collaborating on creating the new design. While all projects at SessionLab feature collaboration between multiple parties, in this case we wanted to create space for everyone on the team to contribute.

We found that when trying to collectively brainstorm in a live, remote session, it became difficult for everyone to contribute and reflect on what was being shared by other members of the team effectively .

Some people had been able to prepare less than others, other people were less aware of all the circumstances of the project, or others were less able to switch gears during their working day. This led to some contributions being missed, a messier working process, and a feeling of being rushed – all of which lead to less effective outcomes than we might have hoped for.

In this case, we thought of how asynchronous work , reflection time, and some small process changes might help solve the problems we were running into. We wanted to be able to respond to what was being shared more effectively while also creating space for everyone to contribute in a way that was most productive for them.

Starting the brainstorming session in personal MURAL boards asynchronously and on our own time meant everyone was able to ideate at the time that was best for them and without any distractions . By then encouraging review and reflection on other people’s boards ahead of the main session, we were able to properly take in ideas and let them develop without feeling hurried.

This approach reduced the amount of time we actively spent working together in a meeting while improving the quality of the work . It helped people engage with the process, reduced potential frustration, and also meant we were more able to respond fully to the suggestions of others. This was a great example of how thinking creatively and learning from others can help create better outcomes and a more streamlined process. 

It’s also worth noting that reflecting on our conversation with Anja Svetina Nabergoj regarding asynchronous learning and finding inspiration there was part of what helped this process along. Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

Creative workshops and meetings made easy

Whether you find that creative thinking doesn’t come naturally, if your skills need some attention, or even if you just want to try new ways of working, it can be difficult to know where to begin .

Thinking about the creative thinking skills above and considering which you might be missing or could benefit from purposeful attention is a great place to start, though there are also some concrete ways you can approach the process and improve your creative thinking abilities in a pinch. Let’s see how! 

Be present and aware of how you feel

Create space for new ideas, look to others for inspiration, throw yourself into new things, encourage creative thinking in others.

All skills get better with practice and creative thinking is no exception. Whether it’s active listening, experimentation or any other creative thinking style, it’s okay to not get it right the first time . The very act of being open to new approaches and perspectives is itself a way to improve your creative thinking skill set. However you try to implement creative thinking, know that exploration, iteration, and practice are fundamental parts of the process.

Try starting small and practice your creative thinking skills in your interpersonal relationships and collaborative projects. Take note of how it goes and try building up to larger and larger implementations of your creative thinking approaches. 

A key part of cultivating or improving any new skill is to be fully present and aware when utilizing that skill. Consider how a sculptor needs to be aware of their materials, how they handle the material and place them on the board in order to be truly successful. Being present in the moment is important for any collaborative process, but is an especially vital aspect of creative thinking.

If you find yourself frustrated, excited, engaged, or stuck, make a mental note of how you are feeling and consider how you might do things differently. Staying present and actively engaging with how a situation makes you feel before responding is one of the most effective ways of cultivating and improving your creative thinking – be sure to give it a go! 

As with many aspects of creativity, it’s not always effective to force it. Good ideas and finding new approaches can take time and an important part of the creative thinking process is creating space not only for reflection but to rest and allow things to surface. This might mean building more quiet, mindful time into your routine, reading and finding new inspiration, or simply learning to take a break. 

While this can be difficult to get into the habit of, it does get easier with time. Try blocking out reflective time in your calendar or letting others know that you are taking the time in order to make it stick and avoid interruptions. Reflective space is important and useful, and by treating it as such, you can help ensure it happens and doesn’t get discarded or forgotten about.

One of the biggest barriers to thinking creatively is simply not being open to what is in front of you. Whether it’s rushing to use an existing solution without investigating alternatives, failing to listen or be present when something new is being presented, or sticking with your existing assumptions, a failure to stay open and reserve judgment can kill creative thinking.

Try to stay open and apply creative thinking without pressure or being overly critical in order to improve those skills and let more creative approaches surface in the future. 

One of the best ways to find new perspectives and alternative ways of thinking is by looking to others. Whether it’s finding inspiration from other creative thinkers via conversation, reading and researching new sources, or simply listening and observing, looking outside of yourself is one of the most effective ways you can jolt your creative thinking. 

Try finding sources outside of your normal circles, whatever the medium. It can be very easy to get into creative bubbles that might unwittingly exclude new forms of thinking. By broadening your social, creative and critical circles , you can be exposed to all kinds of potentially inspiring or creatively engaging ways of thinking and doing.

It’s hard to create space and an opportunity for new ways of thinking if you stick to the same routines and activities. You’ll often find that trying new things and exposing yourself to new hobbies, skills and approaches can be massively engaging and exciting too.

An important aspect of creative thinking is applying the learnings from one discipline or approach to another. If a developer were to throw themselves into learning how to dance, they might learn something they can apply to their role as a developer.

An open and honest desire to explore new experiences in and outside of your working life is a vital ingredient in the creative thinking process. Try saying yes to doing new things wherever you can find them – being alive to possibility and engaging in the world is a great way of supercharging your creativity! 

Creativity is even better when shared. Whether it’s crowdsourcing new ideas, iterating together, or helping others build their creative thinking skills, sharing the experience is often a useful and generative process for all involved.

Try bringing a group together to explore thinking creatively together or run a workshop on developing creative thinking skills in the workplace. Not only will it help your participants with their own creative discovery, but it will also help you develop your own creative skills. 

Over to you

As facilitators and advocates of the power of workshops, we’re passionate about how creative thinking can improve many aspects of a group’s personal and working lives. At its heart, creative thinking is an empathic, generative act, and by bringing those concepts to the fore, we believe everyone can see better outcomes when solving problems, generating ideas or communicating with others. 

We hope we’ve given you some great examples of creative thinking at work and how you might discover and nurture your own creative thinking skills . That said, this list is by no means exhaustive and there are many more ways you might try thinking creatively. Think of this post as a jumping-off point for further exploration and creative development!

Do you have any concepts or approaches you’ve used to become a better creative thinker? Did you find any of the creative thinking methods above particularly helpful? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below!

Very nice information. Thanks for posting such an informative blog. Creative thinking is an unconventional thinking that looks at an issue from different perspectives. Innovative thinking is a thinking that converts / commercializes a creative idea into practical application.

The Fosbury Flop is a very good example of a creative idea and trend when we apply “the learnings from one discipline or approach [Engineering] to another [High Jump].”

thanks alot…very informative and thoroug

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Home > Books > Organizational Conflict - New Insights

How Task Conflict Can Support Creative Problem Solving in Teams by Stimulating Knowledge Sharing, Critical and Creative Thinking and Meta-Cognition

Submitted: 07 December 2020 Reviewed: 12 February 2021 Published: 28 March 2021

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.96600

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This study explores how task conflict can support creative problem solving in teams and the cognitive processes applied. As multidisciplinary teams can be diverse in nature, they may not always partake competently in the pooling of information, and as a result task conflict may arise due to differences in mental models. Under certain conditions task conflict is considered to be beneficial to creative problem solving because it stimulates knowledge exchange and integration and constructive criticism to reach co-created decisions and solutions. Four case studies were conducted to analyse the discourse of teams carrying out design and innovation projects. Task conflict was found to have a positive impact on creative problem solving in the application of four cognitive processes: knowledge processing, critical and creative thinking and metacognition (team self-reflection). Task conflict was positively related to creativity in the proposal of solution alternatives. The successful application of the cognitive processes was dependent on an awareness of when task conflict is appropriate and high level social skills. The findings have implications for managers of teams solving complex problems. They highlight how the cognitive processes can be constructively used to stimulate and manage conflict to effectively solve problems in teams.

• creative problem solving
• task conflict
• knowledge sharing
• critical thinking
• creative thinking
• meta-cognition
• cognitive processes

Author Information

Louise kiernan *.

• University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Ann Ledwith

Raymond lynch.

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

Institutions and businesses are increasingly reliant on multidisciplinary teams to develop innovative solutions. Creative problem solving can occur in a variety of settings such as entrepreneurship, new venture research and development, and science [ 1 , 2 ]. Many problems in organisations are complex and ill-defined and therefore orchestrate the need for the methods and processes of multidisciplinary teams which is now common place [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Team, creative problem solving is considered to be a key contributor to a company’s competitiveness [ 6 , 7 ]. Successful team cognition is when knowledge is distributed, shared and integrated within a team to make informed evaluations, judgements and decisions, during problem solving [ 8 ].

Alternative views and opinions when solving complex and ill-defined problems can result in the consideration of a wider array of perspectives and relevant information, which can ultimately result in more informed decision making [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. The sharing and elaboration of diverse perspectives can steer group members to avoid early agreements and snap decisions by encouraging divergent thinking to explore alternative requirements and solutions [ 2 , 11 ]. However the cognitive processes necessary for creative problem solving have had limited study, in the literature [ 12 ]. It has also been shown that the formation of functionally diverse teams does not automatically lead to knowledge sharing and subsequent creative problem solving and disciplinary differences may cause disagreements [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Alternatively teams may form an early consensus in the form of groupthink, where team members opt for team cohesion at the expense of the further examination of the problem elements [ 16 ]. Team creativity and performance has been shown to benefit from task conflict [ 17 , 18 , 19 ].

Task conflict is believed to support the exchange and integration of distributed information held by each team member, making for more informed judgements, decisions and solutions [ 14 , 20 ]. The benefits of task conflict are associated with the constructive challenging of other’s opinions and ideas; the encouragement of assertive, independent and unbiased thinking, to balance opposing arguments [ 21 , 22 ]. These benefits are however subject to strong social, communication and collaboration skills [ 20 , 23 ]. While conflict can be viewed as communication through dialogue, the components of communication that determine how conflict may support teams has not been significantly addressed [ 20 , 24 ].

From the perspective of a discourse study around conflict, this study builds on the discussion that views conflicts as episodes of social interaction that are constructed between team members [ 24 , 25 ]. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore how through dialogue teams manage task conflict and the cognitive processes applied during creative problem solving.

2. Team cognition in creative problem solving

Previous research on creative problem solving has focused on individual, rather than on team cognition but there is now increased recognition of the importance of understanding team cognition [ 1 ]. Team creativity relates to the processes that integrate diverse views to create useful and novel solutions [ 26 ]. Studies have found task conflict to relate positively to creativity [ 27 ]. Task conflict is considered to promote divergent thinking to explore the problem area and broaden the scope of ideas [ 2 ]. The process of creative problem solving involves a number of steps. The first step is the identification of the problem scope and problem elements in order to provide some structure to the problem [ 28 ]. Ideation then occurs where one or more ideas are developed. The next step is concept development where selected ideas from the previous stage are further developed, critiqued and evaluated to identify difficulties with the solution. The final step is the refinement of solutions and their implementation [ 6 ]. Although numerous forms of team cognition may facilitate team creative problem solving, we focus on four forms of thinking that have a strong influence.

The following cognitive processes are instrumental to creative problem solving [ 29 ]. Firstly, as creative problem solving is focused on generating multiple solution options it has mainly been associated with creative thinking. Creative thinking is divergent with the purpose of creating a range of novel ideas [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]. It is linked to ideation and brainstorming [ 33 , 34 ]. In many creative industries such as design and innovation, the solution space can be large in the iteration of multiple ideas which calls for creative thinking [ 35 ]. Design and Innovation studies have linked heightened levels of creative thinking to creative performance [ 32 , 36 ]. Individuals with advanced creative thinking skills, are deemed to have more originality, and novelty in their outcomes. Tests to determine levels of divergent and creative thinking measure fluency, flexibility and originality [ 37 , 38 ]. Team creativity concerns the production of novel and useful ideas to produce products, processes and procedures by a team of people working together [ 39 ]. Team work is beneficial to creativity as groups are able to produce novel, creative outputs due to quality interactions and diverse cognitive inputs of the team members [ 40 ]. The working definition of creative thinking for this study is defined as:

Divergent thinking to explore and generate alternative ideas and options [ 41 ] .

Secondly, while creative thinking is intrinsic to creative problem solving it is not sufficient in addressing the scope of many complex problems. Creative problems, such as design and innovation problems are ill-defined [ 42 ] and un-structured [ 43 ]. These problems often have multiple ways to represent the problem, multiple solution paths, emergent sub problems, goals that conflict, requiring distributed knowledge to solve them [ 42 , 43 ]. Therefore many work place problems require convergent as well as creative and divergent thinking [ 44 ], which has not been extensively studied [ 45 ]. In creative fields like design, concept generation involves alternating between convergent and divergent thinking [ 46 ]. This has been attributed to a co-evolution process where the solution and problem space are explored and constructed in parallel [ 47 , 48 ]. This entails alternating between the creation of solutions and then the further structuring of the problem as solution generation surfaces a need for further information. Convergent thinking is deductive and logical, involving evaluation, judgement and analysis. Convergent thinking can support the creative process. As alternative options are created through divergent thinking, convergent thinking is applied in a sense making process in order to select the more viable solutions for further development where divergent thinking is applied once again [ 49 , 50 ]. These alternating cycles are thought to be so frequent that cognitively they occur concurrently in the ideation process [ 45 ]. Critical thinking is associated with convergent thinking as it is deductive and logical and includes the skills of analysis, interpretation, inference and evaluation [ 51 , 52 ]. It involves questioning the reliability of knowledge and sources, and converging on answers and decisions [ 52 , 53 ]. It involves being able to provide rational arguments to defend a position taken [ 54 , 55 ]. The working definition of critical thinking for this study is defined as:

Convergent, logical and deductive thinking to interpret, analyse and judge information [ 41 ].

Thirdly, Along with the application of critical and creative thinking, functioning communication is essential for teams to create and share information, make decisions and coordinate their efforts [ 56 , 57 ]. Mol et al. [ 8 ] define team cognition as “an emergent state that refers to the manner in which knowledge is mentally organized, represented and distributed within the team” (p. 243). Teams do not always pool distributed knowledge successfully due to difficulties in understanding other team members, the task, and a tendency to agree rather than look for clarifications or elaborations [ 58 ]. Therefore, communication and knowledge processing are key aspects of the collaboration process [ 8 , 56 ]. The presentation of information clearly during creative problem solving can improve creative outcomes [ 32 ]. Knowledge processing relates to the collaborative process of the co-construction of knowledge where team members interact with each other to build shared new knowledge [ 59 , 60 ]. Activities include active discussions such as asking for feedback and clarifications [ 61 ]. The working definition of knowledge processing for this study is defined as:

The process of elaborating, explaining, clarifying and exchanging information [ 41 ].

Lastly, Reflective thinking or meta-cognition is identified as one of the essential creative problem solving skills to control and monitor the process [ 51 ]. The literature has shown that metacognitive skill is synonymous with creativity and open ended problem solving [ 62 , 63 ]. The ability to switch between divergent and convergent thinking requires metacognitive knowledge about when, how, and why to alternate between these processes [ 64 , 65 ] Meta-cognitive activities are around planning the management of the problem solving process, monitoring the progress and ability of the team, and evaluating the success of the methods used [ 62 , 66 , 67 ]. The main elements of meta-cognition are: planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s problem solving strategies [ 62 , 68 , 69 ]. The working definition of meta-cognition for this study is defined as:

Self-reflection through planning, monitoring and evaluating oneself or the team [ 41 ] .

While these are the main cognitive processes involved in creative problem solving, multi-disciplinary teams can fail to collaborate and disagreements may occur due to differences in views and opinions [ 13 , 14 , 58 ].

3. Task conflict

Teams engage in discussions and negotiations to integrate diverse perspectives and ideas and this can cause conflict [ 70 , 71 ]. Task conflict relates to disagreements about the task, including differences in judgements, opinions and alterative directions [ 72 , 73 ]. Four meta-analyses have been carried out to understand the effect of conflict on team performance, including [ 17 , 70 , 74 , 75 ]. The findings from these studies is incomplete but some of the findings show that task conflict can improve creative problem solving when certain conditions prevail. While the findings unanimously found process and relationship conflict to negatively influence team interactions task conflict can enhance team interaction through debate to consider a greater amount of information, opinions and ideas to create an in-depth understanding of the task [ 19 , 76 ].

Task conflict has been associated with enhanced creativity in inter-organisational teams [ 77 , 78 ]. Task related disagreements among team members are a key driver for rich collective knowledge structures emerging from knowledge exchange, which has a positive influence on team creativity [ 40 ]. Task conflict is considered to aid creative problem solving and group decision making because it defers decision making and triggers critical thinking and constructive criticism to evaluate solutions [ 17 , 79 , 80 ]. During the negotiation of conflict several opinions can be shared and integrated to support solutions and decisions [ 9 , 81 ] As groups participate in task conflict they acquire a deeper learning and more knowledge of the problem elements. As individuals are willing to hear other perspectives they can then examines their own position and adjust [ 73 ] to reach common ground [ 82 ]. Task conflict can provide the team with the opportunity for further thinking to broaden the problem and promote novel and creative problem-solving solutions [ 20 ]. Micro conflicts for teams solving complex unstructured and ill-defined problems can be beneficial by decreasing uncertainty [ 14 ]. The benefits of task conflict are not automatic, Teams must be willing to communication in order to mitigate against the potentially negative influence that task conflict can create [ 20 , 72 ].

The discussions of the team members during episodes of conflict can determine if conflict has a positive influence on teams. Gheorghe et al. [ 40 ] argue that the ability of teams to process information rests on the cognitive processes and individual representations, as well as on the quality of interactions that take place among group members. It can take team members several turns of speech to negotiate and resolve task conflict [ 25 ]. Task conflict can instigate collaboration, and social skills are necessary for effective collaboration to resolve conflicts [ 23 ]. A collaborative approach with the application of social skills can reduce task conflict transforming to dysfunctional forms of conflict like relationship conflict. [ 23 , 83 ]. There are two approaches to resolving conflict, either through degenerative and competitive dialogue or through generative and collaborative dialogue [ 24 , 84 ]. In degenerative discussions, the focus is not on forming a shared understanding, and the competitive nature of this approach often ends in a win or lose outcome [ 84 ]. In a generative dialogue the conflict is used as a vehicle to promote discussion and debate with the ultimate aim of arriving at a shared understanding. Collaboration, means focusing on shared goals, accommodating and integrating the positions of others [ 24 ].

While a number of studies have addressed the social skills necessary for collaborative problem solving such as [ 23 , 85 ] there have been limited studies that have explored the cognitive processes involved in managing task conflict during creative problem solving. Many studies on conflict involve retrospective studies e.g. [ 70 ] and researchers have proposed that studies on conflict processes, require observational studies to understand the micro conflicts in the course of discussions [ 14 ]. They argue that examining the social-cognitive processes during the back and forth exchanges during conflict in creative problem solving, can provide insights into why task conflict can benefit team performance.

We propose that limited levels of task conflict can have a beneficial impact on creative problem solving by stimulating certain cognitive processes to encourage information exchange and negotiation, to build constructed knowledge within the team. Producing a creative output involves finding connections among seemingly unrelated concepts, requiring a complex knowledge structure facilitating groups to shift between perspectives [ 40 ]. In turn this will stimulate iterative episodes of idea exploration and evaluation to arrive at considered solutions. The purpose of this study is to understand how task conflict can support creative problem solving in teams and the cognitive processes used in the process.

Case studies were used to investigate design teams working in context at the front end of innovation projects and explores the dialogue of the participants to understand their cognitive processing. The research methodology was chosen to understand the context dependent and complex interconnected processes of creative problem solving. An important part of team creative problem solving is verbal communication and conversation.

5. Data collection

There were four cases in the study. Two of the cases involved two teams within each case, this is summarised in Table 1 . A case was determined by the context and the project. Therefore, if two teams worked on the same project within the same environment this made up one case. The first case consisted of a bio-medical fellowship program (MedDev1), the second an undergraduate project (Students), the third a professional practice case (Consultants) and the fourth an additional bio-medical case (MedDev2). All data collected was from the front end of the design and innovation process.

Case study profile.

Observations were carried out during meetings and work sessions. The raw data was audio recorded and transcribed. Field notes were taken during and shortly after observations episodes to correctly record the activity (Cohen et al. 2007). The research data analysed for each case is summarised in Table 2 .

Details of data collection.

6. Data analysis

The analysis followed protocol and conversation analysis studies in creative research [ 86 , 87 ]. The turn taking during conversations was analysed during meetings, e.g. [ 87 ]. The team dialogue was audio recorded, transcribed and imported to NVIVO and organised per case study. Analysis was both manual, in reviewing the data and digital, in the use of NVivo to theme the codes. The data was first divided into manageable chunks of topic segments. Topic shifts or changes were considered to be a suitable means to define topic segments as, topic shifts and changes start and finish through cooperation and consensus [ 88 ]. How a topic shift, or change occurred was assessed to determine if the participants reached agreement or if they changed topic without agreement. Expressions of agreement came in the form of utterances such as: uh, yeah, yes, mm, and Ok (ibid). Content analysis was applied in the deductive analysis of text data from the team discussions, through a systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns [ 89 ]. The four cognitive processes selected from the literature (knowledge processing, critical thinking, creative thinking and meta-cognition) were allocated to the utterances of each participants. Table 3 shows the cognitive processes explored and descriptors for each [ 41 ]. There was some overlap for example where an utterance could overlap two cognitive processes.

Descriptor of each cognitive process.

Reliability is about the degree to which findings can be repeated in subsequent studies, even by other researchers. An inter-rater reliability study was performed with a second coder, to code a portion of the data according to the descriptions of the themes provided by the researcher. The results showed a Kappa coefficient of: 0.718.

7. Findings

Critical Thinking (40%)

Knowledge Processing (34%)

Meta-Cognition (27%)

Creative Thinking (7%)

Table 4 outlines the number of topics segments per team at each phase with task conflict. While the teams were solution orientated and proposed several solutions to problems they engaged in limited creative thinking. As teams shared knowledge this surfaced a diversity in opinions and views which triggered task conflict. To resolve the conflict and arrive at a united position the teams iteratively alternated through the cognitive processes outlined, in a cycle of information sharing and elaboration, solution generation, solution evaluation and reflection ( Figure 1 ).

Number of topic segments per team at each phase with task conflict.

Team creative problem solving cognitive processes.

Table 5 provides an example of four topic segments from the Med Dev 2 case. The team were at the stage of developing and selecting solution directions for their project. Their aim was to develop an:

Concept development discussion.

KP: knowledge processing, CT: Critical thinking, CRT: Creative thinking, MC: meta-cognition.

“easier way to manage faecal matter from an Ileostomy 1 in a way that reduces the risks of skin complications and improves security in its management.”

The team were trying to reach a conclusion on the selection of a final solution. Agreement was slow to reach, as solutions were evaluated, critiqued and judged by the team members before reaching a decision. Task conflict prompted the evaluation of solutions put forward by team members and strong negotiations ensued before any common ground was reached. There were a number of options that the team were considering which were around removing the risks of skin complications that can occur when using ileostomy bags. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the viability of the options. The example in Table 5 is a proposal put forward by L suggesting that users would cut the proposed solution to their size. He uses knowledge processing to share this information and critical thinking in providing a rational for the proposal. Team member R instigates task conflict by disagreeing with the proposal and uses critical thinking to argue that it allows too much room for error. While L accepts R’s argument he counter argues to justify his solution with a material that would stretch to size with an undersized hole. The team members continue to share information and then L picks up the argument again to propose that it is acceptable for users to cut a hole in the product. While this is accepted by K it is not accepted by RS who argues that the solution may not be any better than the original product which leaks. L provides a further argument to justify his proposal over the existing solution. While the team have not reached an agreement the task conflict that has ensued has forced the elaboration of information between the team members and an evaluation of the potential risks associated with the proposed solution.

The discussion continues and a new line of argument is introduced by L in Table 6 around the requirement for a solution to adhere to manufacturing requirements. He argues against a proposal that had been put forward earlier by R arguing that it complicates the manufacturing process. A number of counter arguments proceed further. There is still no agreement between the team members in reaching a solution path but a further analysis of proposed solutions have been put forward through the exchange of knowledge processing and critical thinking brought about by task conflict.

Concept development discussion 2.

As consensus did not occur in the previous topic, K shifts the topic to propose a different solution. The response to this is more positive, as creative thinking is used to develop the solution instead of critiquing it. K proposes how the idea could work. Both R and K then build on the idea and establish an agreement on the solution path. Another observation is that when solutions were rejected in the previous topic segments and critiqued in the course of conflict episodes the team members were forced to consider alternatives or adjustments to solutions. This shows a clear relationship between task conflict and creativity ( Table 7 ).

Concept development discussion 4.

The discussion continues with further back and forth exchanges of critical thinking which then results in an agreement on a solution direction and a conclusion of the topic ( Table 8 ).

Concept development discussion 4 continued.

A final observation as witnessed in the data presented was that at no stage did the task conflict head towards relationship conflict which has been shown to be a risk and a reason why some researchers do not support the benefits of task conflict [ 70 ]. The teams showed an advanced level of social skills in recognising how to benefit from the conflict. For example, in Table 8 L actively argues against his own solution to ensure that all risk associated with the solution are uncovered. In Table 7 the teams avoided conflict during episodes of idea generation in order to suspend judgement to let ideas flow.

8. Discussion

Our findings have a number of implications. Firstly, the significant contribution of this paper to the literature on conflict management is in showing how task conflict can stimulate cognitive processes that facilitate teams to partake in creative problem solving. The topic segments depicting conflict as presented here are representative of discursive social interactions, illuminating the cognitive processes and results of the conflicts [ 24 , 90 ]. They present an understanding of the generative dialogues that are used in instances of task conflict during creative problem solving. The findings highlight that the negotiation of conflict can prompt teams to share diverse information and perspectives, negotiate and elaborate on that information to arriving at co-created solutions as shown in Figure 1 . Task conflict prevented premature agreement by challenging the status quo and instigating new lines of thinking. As team members shared diverse knowledge and perspectives with knowledge processing this triggered task conflict. To negotiate the conflict and arrive at a united goal, the teams iteratively cycled through episodes of creative thinking in the proposal of ideas, critical thinking to judge and evaluate the ideas and the perspective of others and metacognition to reflect on the suitability of the strategies engaged with by the team.

Secondly, another finding was that task conflict is indirectly and positively connected to team creativity [ 78 ]. The findings show however that conflict was not associated with creative thinking and that the topic segments that displayed creative thinking were not topics that had instances of task conflict. Team members appeared to recognise where and when to use conflict and did not critique early ideas. However, there was evidence to show that the task conflict that occurred in preceding topics often forced a rethink in terms of solution directions and it was this, that prompted the teams to use creative thinking to come up with alternative solutions. This required a balance in the management of the conflict in that, while task conflict led to a creative rethink on solution paths, it was important that task conflict did not stifle creative thinking in the flow of alternative ideas. This supports Kiernan et al. [ 91 ] who showed that task conflict impacts positively only at certain stages of the creative process, the problem definition and concept development phases. While they recommend moderate levels of conflict at these phases they argue that conflict has the potential to have a damaging impact at the ideation phase by stifling the fluency of ideas. Therefore the focus for teams at the ideation phase should be on producing a breath of ideas which is desirable for creative problem solving [ 92 ].

The third contribution points for a need to have advanced social skills [ 23 ] and a heightened awareness of when and how to apply these skills. It is about understanding when the introduction and the continuation of task conflict can benefit the progress of the team. It has been shown that enhanced communication, [ 20 ] social skills, [ 23 ] and generative dialogues [ 24 ] are necessary to support the negotiation and beneficial impact of task conflict. This study provides empirical evidence that the use of the cognitive processes of knowledge processing, critical thinking, creative thinking and meta-cognition were linked to advanced social, communication and collaboration skills that supported the teams to partake in, control and gain from the conflict. Many team members demonstrated this with being able to build strong arguments but also in knowing when not to argue. Team members also regularly built on the arguments of others in order to build on a position being advocated to the group. This concurs with the literature which shows that this is a differentiating factor between experts and novices during episodes of conflict in design problem solving [ 91 ].

With respect to the inconclusive findings in the literature with regard to the benefits of task conflict, this research has made a fourth contribution to show that task conflict can benefit creative problem solving and should be encouraged. This study has highlighted the cognitive processes that are verbally uttered and how they are used to both instill and resolve task conflict. These findings have implications for how creative problem solving teams are managed. This study proposes that while task conflict can support creative problem solving it needs to be managed carefully. Advanced social, communication and collaboration skills need to be developed. This can be reached by facilitating the application of the cognitive processes outlined. These cognitive processes can serve as an aid to support teams to start and then negotiate the conflict. The levels of collaboration and social skills applied will determine how well teams function and an experienced facilitator may be necessary to both instigate and manage the negotiation of task conflict to ensure that the level of conflict does not escalate to unmanageable levels. This may be even more necessary when facilitating more novice and inexperienced teams. The level of conflict observed in this research was moderate. Higher levels of conflict could have a counterproductive impact on team interaction resulting in prolonged delays in decision making. This supports the literature which stresses that heightened and prolonged episodes of task conflict could be detrimental to a team’s ability to move forward [ 17 , 79 ].

9. Conclusions

The findings highlight how task conflict can benefit creative problem solving in teams by prompting team members to engage in a social exchange by applying cycles of the cognitive processes of; knowledge processing, critical thinking, creative thinking and meta-cognition. These cognitive processes were instrumental in supporting both divergent and convergent thinking and suspending decision making to process additional information and explore alternative ideas. While conflict was positively related to creativity it was not associated with creative thinking, however previous episodes of conflict often resulted in subsequent topic segments of creative thinking. The ability to apply the cognitive processes appeared to depend on advanced social and collaborative skills pointing to a possible difference between how experts and novices might compare in managing conflict.

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• An ileostomy is an opening in the abdominal wall that’s made during surgery. The end of the ileum (the lowest part of the small intestine) is brought through this opening to form a stoma.

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Exploring the Landscape of Cognitive Load in Creative Thinking: a Systematic Literature Review

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• Published: 24 February 2024
• Volume 36 , article number  24 , ( 2024 )

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• Ingrid P. Hernandez Sibo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3275-3691 1 ,
• David A. Gomez Celis 1 &
• Shyhnan Liou 1 , 2  

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Creative thinking, recognized as a fundamental life skill, is a complex process influenced by cognitive load. While literature has addressed the integration of cognitive load theory into creative thinking research, a comprehensive synthesis is lacking. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review and deductive thematic analysis, drawing from 33 eligible articles sourced from Web of Science (WoS), the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), and Scopus electronic databases. Thematic analysis identified diverse roles of cognitive load within creativity studies, including mediator, moderator, independent variable, dependent variable, and as a component of the theoretical framework. Management strategies for cognitive load in creativity research involve the use of external resources, environmental interventions, and self-regulation. Methodological considerations regarding internal and external validity are also discussed. This review offers implications for researchers and practitioners, informing future research directions and contributing to the effective management of cognitive load in creative thinking practices.

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Hernandez Sibo, I.P., Gomez Celis, D.A. & Liou, S. Exploring the Landscape of Cognitive Load in Creative Thinking: a Systematic Literature Review. Educ Psychol Rev 36 , 24 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09866-1

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Does creative thinking contribute to the academic integrity of education students?

Yovav eshet.

1 Behavioural Studies Department, Zefat Academic College, Safed, Israel

Adva Margaliot

2 Faculty of Sciences, Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, Tel-Aviv, Israel

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The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, upon personal request.

The current research focuses on the nature of the relationship comprising personality traits, creative thinking, and academic integrity. Scholars have confirmed that personality traits and creative thinking correlate positively with academic integrity. However, a discussion of academic integrity, personality traits, and creative thinking is missing in the scholarly literature. This study used a questionnaire survey based on the Big Five Factor to identify personality characteristics, the Academic Integrity Inventory, and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The sample included 976 students studying in four academic colleges in Israel, of which two are teacher training colleges and two colleges awarding a degree in education. The findings show that most of the students (71%) reported they had cheated at some point during their academic studies, and only one-fifth (21%) thought that they would condemn their peers’ lack of integrity. Creative thinking students and emotionally stable persons tend to be more ethical. Hence, we conclude that it is recommended to deliver creative thinking courses in the teacher’s educational training programs to improve creative thinking levels, reduce academic dishonesty, and create more effective curricula.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected education, and teacher education, in various ways. As a result of the closure of universities and schools, teachers and students have had to adapt to remote teaching rapidly. Teacher education is no exception. The need to create learning environments for student teachers doing their teacher education preparation implied decisions, choices, and adaptations to meet the expectations of students and the requirements of teacher education ( Carrillo and Flores, 2020 ).

More so, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that creativity is essential for adapting to unexpected events or situations (e.g., other pandemics, conflicts, and earthquakes). For example, creative adaptability has been related to coping behaviors in stressful situations ( Orkibi, 2021 ), or to preparing students to deal with unknown scenarios ( Li et al., 2021 ). Creative teaching for overall learning and development has been established in recent research ( Levanon, 2021 ). Current educational curricula for future educators’ focus mainly on teaching knowledge (content) and developing intellectual skills ( Albar and Southcott, 2021 ). Yet, mere teachers’ content knowledge may not be sufficient ( Yenen, 2021 ). Accordingly, information may be used for the sake of thinking and acting creatively. Studies have revealed that the impact of teachers on the development of young children’s creative thinking skills is considerable ( Albar and Southcott, 2021 ). Hence, creative thinking is considered a primary objective of teaching and learning instruction ( Pesout and Nietfeld, 2021 ). Furthermore, it has also been established as a significant 21st-century skill ( Albar and Southcott, 2021 ) that applies to today’s market and employability ( Adegbite and Adeosun, 2021 ). There is a constantly growing number of professionals, who adapt to new conditions, know how to be creative, and make ethical decisions. These changes challenge the modern notion of education ( Niepel et al., 2015 ). Accordingly, teaching creativity has become an important goal in teacher instruction’s curricula associated with promoting teaching quality ( Kimhi and Geronik, 2020 ).

Creativity is a multifaceted construct articulated differently and traditionally measured as creative thinking ( Ivancovsky et al., 2021 ; Park et al., 2021 ). Many theories have been developed, focusing on different aspects of it ( Sternberg and Karami, 2022 ). It is generally defined as the ability to produce novel, original responses to task constraints ( Ivancovsky et al., 2021 ). Moreover, creativity has been associated with ethical decision-making ( Niepel et al., 2015 ). It is a prerequisite for cooperating and working, and hence, it may be thought of as a crucial educational goal (Perri et al., 2009 in Niepel et al., 2015 ). In this context, recent scholarship has stressed the high cost of unethical behavior (e.g., academic dishonesty), including damaging one’s public image, losing someone’s trust, potential legal prosecution, and financial loss ( Rengifo and Laham, 2022 ).

Academic dishonesty is related to the deterioration of educational goals, specifically ideas that impact learners’ intellectual, civic, and psychosocial development. Differently expressed, academic dishonesty prevents students from acquiring and developing integrity and fairness, thus mis-preparing them for their futures ( Krou et al., 2021 ). Recent studies have established that unethical conduct (dishonest behavior) is manifesting on a global scale ( Zhang et al., 2021 ), and more concretely, in the educational sector ( Krou et al., 2021 ). Therefore, the need for qualified teachers who positively impact students’ achievements on the one hand, and utilize proper guided training, on the other hand, is essential ( Yenen, 2021 ).

Research dealing with the interaction between creativity and unethical behavior has admitted inconsistent conclusions ( Zhang et al., 2021 ). Some (Beaussart et al., 2013; Gino and Ariely, 2012; Walczyk et al., 2008; Wang and Si, 2014 in Zhang et al., 2021 ) have established a link between creativity and dishonesty. Yet, others have found the opposite correlation, arguing that higher creativity is a synonym of ethics, caring, and pragmatic decision-making (Keem et al., 2018; Mumford et al., 2010; Bierly et al., 2009 in Zhang et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, studies could determine that personality traits play a significant role in creativity. These are mostly contradictory research insights ( Jirásek and Sudzina, 2020 ), which include those concerning the relationship of creativity to ethical misbehavior ( Kapoor et al., 2021 ).

Comprehending future educators’ creativity is crucial ( Levanon, 2021 ) to constructing future pedagogical strategies and preparing teachers for a constantly evolving educational reality ( Yenen, 2021 ; Wu and Kyungsun, 2022 ). In this context, research on the relationship comprehending creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty is scanty. Thus, there is a need for a more detailed understanding of the underlying relationship between creative thinking and academic dishonesty. Based on Guilford (1950) Divergent Thinking and Torrance (1966) construct, McCrae and Costa (1987) Big Five Factor construct, the present study investigates the correlation between creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty in education students. The main research question is: What is the relationship between personality traits, creative thinking, and academic dishonesty among education students?

Theoretical background

Creative thinking.

Creative thinking is traditionally described as detecting previously unidentified relationships and producing original and novel experiences as a new pattern, including the skill to evaluate, improve, and generate novel solutions ( Yang and Zhao, 2021 ). The research field of creativity measurement is constantly growing ( Said-Metwaly et al., 2020 ). Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking is an example of one of the tools scholars in the social sciences that have developed since the 1960s ( Said-Metwaly et al., 2017 ; Park et al., 2021 ). Based on the notion of divergent thinking, which has been defined as thinking “that goes off in different directions” ( Guilford, 1959 , p: 381), this is ascribed to the skills that produce multiple ideas connected to remote previous associations, and diverse thinking paths combined to find new alternative and innovative solutions.

Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking instrument employs fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality dimensions to measure creative thinking behavior ( Torrance, 1966 ). Fluency applies to creating ideas and generating numerous responses. Flexibility applies to cognitive and conceptual diversity and elasticity, namely articulating responses through multiple categories. Elaboration assesses ideas’ level of development and improvement. Originality applies to a unique cognitive skill, and one may also see it as an initial, novel, uncommon, or exceptional, articulating unusual responses. Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking has a Verbal and Figural format, each of which has two parallel forms: A and B ( Torrance and Haensly, 2003 ). These tests have been acknowledged in more than 2,000 publications, and recent research is available in more than 35 languages ( Said-Metwaly et al., 2020 ).

Studies in education focus on creativity as a creative potential ( Runco et al., 2010 ; Barbot et al., 2011 ), namely the skill to produce innovative and valuable solutions. This potential may be thought of as an amalgam of intellectual and personality characteristics, among which one may count divergent thinking abilities, imagination, openness, curiosity, and independence ( Anderson and Graham, 2021 ) and executive functions ( Khalil et al., 2019 ). The relationship comprehending creative capacities (e.g., creative thinking) and personality traits has been the object of considerable research ( Theurer et al., 2021 ). Research has established that creative thinking dispositions are directly determined by personality traits ( Ayyildiz and Yilmaz, 2021 ). For example, Li et al. (2022) , found that neuroticism has a negative impact while conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion have a positive impact on creativity. Other research studies have gained contradictory insights ( Jirásek and Sudzina, 2020 ).

Personality traits

Personality traits represent stable patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors manifest in individuals interacting with their environment ( Gouveia et al., 2021 ). Today, the five-factor model, or FFM, is the most widely used model of personality structure ( Sleep et al., 2021 ). It was developed from a lexical approach using trait descriptive adjectives to identify the structure of personality traits ( Gouveia et al., 2021 ). The FFM categorizes individual personality according to five main dimensions: Openness to experience—reveals the extent of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and inclination for innovation and diversity; conscientiousness—reflects an individual’s propensity to self-discipline, duty, and goal achievement; extraversion—refer to energetic, positively emotional, assertive, friendly, and talkative individuals; agreeableness—refers to likely to show compassion and cooperation toward others rather than suspiciousness and antagonism; and neuroticism (or emotional stability—the person’s propensity to be emotionally stable and to exhibit calm behavior)—reflects the likelihood to experience often unpleasant emotions, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability. The FFM is mainly assessed through the Ten-Item Personality Inventory—TIPI ( Gosling et al., 2003 ; Gosling, 2021 ).

Creative thinking and personality traits

As previously stated, creativity (measured as divergent thinking) has been associated with personality traits ( Weiss et al., 2021 ). Thus, multiple studies have addressed the relation of the FFM traits to creativity ( Puryear, 2020 ), but they have not established a systematic nature. Furthermore, recent scholarship has postulated that the above findings may be far from conclusive ( Jirásek and Sudzina, 2020 ). More specifically, it has been argued that the relationship comprising these two is complex and multidimensional ( Krumm et al., 2018 ), leading scholars to contradictory results ( Kaspi-Baruch, 2019 ). However, over the last 20 years, the FFM has become the most dominant approach to assess the nexus of creativity and personality ( Puryear, 2020 ).

It has been argued that openness to experience could enhance creative thinking ( Kaspi-Baruch, 2019 ). Scholarly reports show that individuals scoring high on this trait have the skill to produce new, original solutions ( Pesout and Nietfeld, 2021 ). Moreover, previous meta-analytical research has determined that openness to experience ( Puryear et al., 2017 ) is a sound and robust predictor of creativity even when predominantly assessing creativity through idea generation parameters such as divergent thinking tests ( Tran et al., 2020 ). In this context, research concerning the nexus of creativity or divergent thinking with openness to experience ( Fürst et al., 2016 ) establishes positively significant correlations ( Theurer et al., 2021 ). Thus, we posit:

H1 : The higher the personality trait of openness to experiences, the higher the creative thinking level.

The relationship involving creativity and conscientiousness is ambiguous ( Kaspi-Baruch, 2019 ) and has remained equivocal. Some scholars are confident there is a positive relationship, while others contend that the relationship is negative, and finally, others have found no relationship whatsoever ( Taggar, 2021 ). Recent scholarship has shown that separately analyzing creative idea generation (e.g., divergent thinking) versus creative production (e.g., creative achievement) reveals that conscientiousness correlates strongly and positively with creative production measures ( Tran et al., 2020 ). Accordingly, there is a call for a more accurate understanding of the above relationship ( Taggar, 2021 ). Research connecting creativity with low conscientiousness levels has revealed significant positive correlations ( Sadana et al., 2021 ). Thus, we posit:

H2 : The higher the personality trait of conscientiousness, the higher the creative thinking level.

Extraversion is positively correlated with creative thinking ( Gocłowska et al., 2019 ), often entailing higher interactivity and possibility exploration ( Tran et al., 2020 ). In addition, there is scholarly evidence that extraversion represents a strong predictor of creativity ( Tohver and Lau, 2020 ; Giancola et al., 2021 ). Thus, we posit:

H3 : The higher the personality trait of extraversion, the higher the creative thinking level.

Agreeableness is a negative predictor of creativity ( Kaspi-Baruch, 2019 ). Some studies have attested a negative relationship between this trait and creative accomplishments ( Batey et al., 2009 ). Other scholars showed that high levels of agreeableness are negatively related to creativity ( King et al., 1996 ). However, other studies have found non-significant findings concerning the relationship between agreeableness and creativity (e.g., Furnham and Bachtiar, 2008 ). Yet, scholars still widely contend that personality is a crucial factor stimulating or hindering creativity ( Giancola et al., 2021 ). Thus, we posit:

H4 : The higher the personality trait of agreeableness, the lower the creative thinking level.

Although research has not established the relationship between neuroticism (reverse-scored as emotional stability) and creativity ( Fürst et al., 2016 ), neuroticism is often considered a negative predictor of creativity ( Krumm et al., 2018 ; Feist, 2019 ). Some research studies speak of a negative nexus between neuroticism and creativity ( Sung and Choi, 2009 ). However, other research has found non-significant relationships connecting the above (e.g., Berenbaum and Fujita, 1994 in Giancola et al., 2021 ). As to meta-analysis, a recent study could determine neuroticism’s slight negative effect on creativity ( Puryear, 2020 ). Thus, we posit:

H5 : The higher the personality trait of emotional stability, the higher the creative thinking.

Academic dishonesty

Research confirming the ubiquity of academic dishonesty as a normalized student behavior goes back for decades ( Krou et al., 2021 ). The phenomenon of academic dishonesty represents a severe and extensively researched problem in education and psychology. Furthermore, unethical conduct threatens higher education’s integrity ( Lee et al., 2020 ). Personality traits are essential to understanding dishonest behavior ( Eshet et al., 2021 ). In addition, there is a general tendency to believe that creative individuals often tend to engage in and justify unethical conduct ( Loesche and Francis, 2020 ). Despite the extensive literature on the subject ( Lee et al., 2020 ), there is still a gap in the research literature regarding the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and academic dishonesty among education students.

Academic dishonesty and personality traits

Studies discussing the predictors of academic dishonesty (e.g., cheating) have argued that personality traits embody general conductive proclivities that impact studying behavior ( Lee et al., 2020 ). In addition, academic dishonesty research has repeatedly employed the personality traits’ model ( Peled et al., 2019 ; Steinberger et al., 2021 ). It has been revealed that personality determines cheating behavior due to its impact on personal beliefs, and one’s attitude toward learning and studying ( Eshet et al., 2021 ). Studies have shown that personality determines cheating behavior due to its impact on individuals’ beliefs about themselves and others ( Steinberger et al., 2021 ).

Some research has shown that individuals with high levels of openness to experience have negative attitudes toward academic dishonesty ( Peled et al., 2019 ). Other studies have revealed that this trait has an almost insignificant relationship ( Giluk and Postlethwaite, 2015 ; Lee et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, studies have shown that this trait is a sound predictor of academic integrity ( Malesky et al., 2022 ). Studies on conscientiousness have shown that students who score high on this trait demonstrate a low cheating tendency and can regulate their behavior ( Peled et al., 2019 ; Malesky et al., 2022 ). Some research has shown that individuals who score high extroversion are more predisposed to cheating behavior ( Nguyen and Biderman, 2013 ). Other studies have revealed that this trait has an almost non-existent relationship with academic dishonesty ( Malesky et al., 2022 ). Agreeableness was found to have controversies on their influences ( Giluk and Postlethwaite, 2015 ; Peled et al., 2019 ). Studies have found that neuroticism has a relatively null relationship to academic dishonesty ( Eshet et al., 2021 ). Thus, we posit:

H6 : Personality traits impact academic dishonesty.

Creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty

Research indicates that individuals with creative personalities are more likely to engage in unethical behavior, such as cheating ( Loesche and Francis, 2020 ). Nonetheless, the relationship between creative thinking and academic dishonesty has not been extensively examined. The most influential line of research on the relation between creativity and unethical behavior suggests a positive relationship between the constructs ( Ścigała et al., 2021 ). Nevertheless, there is a common perception that people with a high level of creative thinking have a greater propensity for academic integrity. Academic studies have confirmed that students with a high level of creative thinking have a higher tendency to reduce unwanted behavior and improve their academic integrity level ( Shane et al., 2018 ). Based on this, we posit:

H7 : The higher the creative thinking, the lower the academic dishonesty.

The research model

As outlined earlier, there is a gap in the research literature regarding the relationship between creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty among students in general and particularly in education students. Besides, there are not enough studies on the relationship between Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking and academic dishonesty, as far as we know. This study sought to elucidate the dimensionality of Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking in the Israeli context and its relation to ethical conduct and personality in the academic setting. Thus, based on the literature above, the research model presents the relationship between creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty ( Figure 1 ).

Structural model for creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty in education students.

The research model presents personality traits (measured by extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, and emotional stability), creative thinking (measured by fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality), and academic dishonesty (measured by academic misconduct, academic integrity, and acceptable behavior).

Methodology

Participants/sampling.

The sample comprised 976 education students from eight academic colleges in Israel. The probability (stratified) random sampling method was employed in data collection. The participants were requested to complete a four-part questionnaire. Eighty-two percent of the students were women and 18% were men. The respondents’ ages ranged from 18 to 44, with a mean of 26.80 years. The participants’ grade point averages ranged from 20 to 100, with a mean of 85.69 points.

Instruments/materials

Creative thinking was assessed using the Hebrew version of the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking (TTCT) by Runco et al. (2010) , which included a drawing question that examines four characteristics: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. The inter-rater reliability was Kappa = 0.83.

The survey employs the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale by Gosling et al. (2003) , which comprises 10 items developed to evaluate the personality traits of the participants on a five-point Likert scale, in which 1 means “Not true at all” and 5 “Very true.” Each attribute, in turn, is informed by a double statement. The reliability of this questionnaire as measured by Cronbach’s alpha is questionable (0.82).

Academic dishonesty was measured by the Academic Misconduct Scale ( Bolin, 2004 ) and indirectly by the Academic Integrity Inventory ( Kisamore et al., 2007 ). These instruments have been adapted and validated to the Israeli context by Peled et al. (2019) . The Academic Misconduct Scale contains 10 items on a five-point Likert scale, in which 1 means “Never” and 5 “Many times.” Its reliability is excellent (0.91 Cronbach’s alpha). The Academic Integrity Inventory consists of 8 items on a five-point Likert scale, in which 1 means “Very unlikely” and 5 “Very likely.” Its reliability is acceptable (0.75 Cronbach’s alpha).

Socio-demographic variables

The questionnaire contains a series of socio-demographic items relating to the participants’ age, gender, previous achievements, and course enrolment type.

Plan of analysis

Complete information maximum likelihood estimates were computed employing the Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) program ( Arbuckle and Wothke, 1999 ). The model was examined for the goodness of fit using χ 2 , comparative fit index (CFI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) fit indices. CFI values above 0.90 and 0.95 indicate adequate and good model fit, respectively, and RMSEA values below 0.08 and 0.05 indicate acceptable and good model fit, respectively ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ).

The descriptive statistics and correlations between the research variables are presented in Table 1 . A weak negative correlation was found between academic misconduct and the following personality traits: conscientiousness ( r  = −0.229, p  < 0.01), agreeableness ( r  = −0.160, p  < 0.01), emotional stability ( r  = −0.145, p  < 0.01), and openness to experiences ( r  = −0.110, p  < 0.01). In addition, a weak positive correlation was found between academic integrity and the personality traits: agreeableness ( r  = 0.130, p  < 0.01), emotional stability ( r  = 0.087, p  < 0.01), and conscientiousness ( r  = 0.074, p  < 0.01).

Descriptive statistics and inter-correlations among variables.

n =  976.

A weak negative correlation was found between academic misconduct and creative thinking characteristics: flexibility ( r  = −0.093, p  < 0.01) and originality ( r  = −0.068, p  < 0.05). Also, a weak negative correlation was found between acceptable behavior and the creative thinking characteristics originality ( r  = −0.075, p  < 0.05).

Academic dishonesty was modeled by latent variables that measured personality traits and creative thinking. The data fit the academic dishonesty model well ( χ 2  = 2,120, N  = 976, df  = 76, p  < 0.001, CFI = 0.820, and RMSEA = 0a.081). The R 2 of the model is 0.32; in other words, the predictors of academic dishonesty explain 32% of the variable’s variance. The structural model is diagrammed in Figure 2 .

Structural model for determinants of academic dishonesty with standardized coefficients.

The analysis results indicate that the variance in academic dishonesty is explained by the research variables related to the Big Five Model: openness to experiences (confirming H 1 ), conscientiousness (confirming H 2 ), extraversion (confirming H 3 ), agreeableness (not confirming H 4 ), and emotional stability (confirming H 5 ) and to creative thinking: flexibility, elaboration, and originality.

As shown in Figure 2 , the traits that impact academic dishonesty are conscientiousness and emotional stability. The total effect of the Big Five personality traits is negative. Among the five personality traits, emotional stability has the most significant impact. The higher the level of emotional stability, the less a person will be engaged in academic misconduct. The rest of the traits have a similar effect on academic dishonesty. The higher the level of each of the following personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, the lower the students’ tendency to cheat. Thus, hypothesis H 6 is confirmed.

The study also found a negative correlation between age and academic dishonesty, indicating that older students tend to have more academic integrity. Creative thinking was found to have a negative effect on academic dishonesty. In other words, the more creatively a person thinks, the lower will be the level of academic misconduct. Thus, hypothesis H 7 is confirmed.

The current study examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits, creative thinking, and academic dishonesty. The study’s results show that this relationship is indeed significant. Furthermore, most of the students (73%) declared that they had engaged in academic dishonesty at some point in their studies. But, only about one-fifth (22%) would condemn this behavior.

In line with the literature ( Peled et al., 2019 ), our study found a significant positive effect of emotional stability on the tendency to engage in academic misconduct. In other words, students with high levels of emotional stability have a lower tendency to academic dishonesty. This may be because students who are high on this trait tend to regulate their emotions and have a sense of security, allowing them to be less influenced by stressful conditions and behave more ethically.

Finally, extraversion was found in this study to have a negative impact on academic dishonesty as well. This result contradicts previous findings ( Giluk and Postlethwaite, 2015 ) that postulated a relationship between the personality trait of extraversion and the tendency to cheat. One possible explanation for this result may be extraversion’s personality trait characteristics, their high motivation to learn, and their proactive personality ( John et al., 2020 ).

The current study also showed a significant impact of the Big Five personality traits on creative thinking. Following previous research ( Shi et al., 2016 ), openness to experience positively affected creative thinking. The personality trait of extraversion was found to have a positive effect on creative thinking as well. This finding is supported by preceding studies ( Gocłowska et al., 2019 ). Interestingly, in contrast to Feist (2019) and Krumm et al. (2018) , we found that emotional stability (H 5 ) and agreeableness (H 4 ) positively affect creative thinking. Hence, the findings from our study refute our hypotheses H 4 (the higher the personality traits of agreeableness, the lower the creative thinking level) and H 5 (the higher the personality traits of emotional stability, the lower the creative thinking level). In line with the literature, neuroticism may be positively or negatively related to creativity according to different contexts and environments ( Roth et al., 2021 ). Finally, contributing to the findings of Baer (2017) , the personality trait of conscientiousness (H 2 ) and creative thinking were found to be positively linked.

Regarding the relationship between creative thinking and academic dishonesty, we found that students with high levels of creative thinking have a higher tendency to academic misconduct. These findings contradict previous scholarly research ( Gino and Ariely, 2012 ; Gutworth and Hunter, 2017 ), who stated that creative individuals have a higher tendency to academic misconduct. In other words, creative thinking is positively related to academic integrity. These results may be due to the tendency of a creative thinking person to respond to different input creatively and not passively learning together with the self-confidence and ability to succeed at a domain-specific task.

In light of the current study’s findings, we are inclined to agree with Shane et al. (2018) in recommending teaching students to enhance their creative thinking to help them enhance academic integrity. In other words, by enhancing creative-thinking tasks, students will improve their learning skills and avoid unwanted unethical behaviors like academic dishonesty.

Conclusion and practical implications

As previously stated, creative thinking is among the most sought skills in the 21st century, both at work and in lifelong problem-solving. Teachers and educators oversee preparing the new generation for their future and the demands of their jobs. Although educational institutions are increasingly demanding their professionals utilize Creative Thinking, these same institutions often offer inadequate and underdeveloped training. Furthermore, some scholars stress that the educational system diminishes creativity ( Ritter et al., 2020 ). All the more so, the importance of being creative to adapt to unexpected circumstances (e.g., COVID-19 Pandemics, Crises, Earthquakes, etc.).

Professional knowledge and skills, which are first learned through education training, are vitally important in the teaching profession’s educational context. Teacher training offered at faculties of education plays an essential role in equipping candidates with professional knowledge and skills in all dimensions and supporting their professional development. The process of teacher training directly affects the quality of education youth receive, namely through the quality of teaching ( Albar and Southcott, 2021 ). Therefore, prospective teacher training research is constantly discussed, examined, and re-adapted to new and changing demands. Furthermore, scholarly research based on neural examination suggests that learning mechanisms and creative processes differs across domains ( Khalil and Moustafa, 2022 ). Various standards or competencies are determined to ensure that trained teachers can reach the desired level for the current era ( Yenen, 2021 ).

Additionally, academic integrity is crucial among education students who must act in unique ways to encourage their future students to find their own unique ways of expression and demonstrate their unique skills. In line with the literature, promoting and maintaining academic integrity is a significant concern ( Chugh et al., 2021 ; Eshet et al., 2021 ). The research literature has not directly investigated the relationship between creative thinking and academic dishonesty. Thus, we sought to examine how education students perceive academic integrity, how they express creative thinking, and how the relationship between the two constructs is expressed. Therefore contributing to the knowledge gaps on concerning the relationship between creative thinking, personality traits, and academic dishonesty. The present study has demonstrated that creative thinking positively impacts academic integrity. Thus, teaching creative thinking reduces academic dishonesty at educational levels and may also reduce any future academic misconduct or professional. In line with the literature, there is a strong positive correlation between Academic Dishonesty and future professional dishonesty ( Artiukhov and Liuta, 2017 ; Eshet et al., 2021 ).

Our research’s practical implication and main contribution concerns identifying and evaluating the students’ tendency to engage in academic misconduct and their level of creative thinking, which will enable a better understanding of how to support creative thinking and academic integrity in teachers’ training. It is recommended to instruct creative thinking courses in the teacher’s educational training programs to improve creative thinking levels, reduce academic dishonesty, and create more effective curricula.

Following the literature ( Yamamoto, 2019 ), teachers should be willing to use novel methods, ideas, and approaches to stimulate innovation and creativity in their students. For example, teachers can (i) provide opportunities for sparking and enlarging their students’ creative processes, (ii) enhance pedagogies that maximize students’ practices for problem-solving situations where originality and inventive practices develop, (iii) reduce the lecture format and seek natural collaboration and interaction among students/learners, (iv) encourage problem-solving interactions and student autonomy by presenting conflicted learning tasks, and (v) promote problem-solving approaches using real problems and allowing the students to explore new innovative and creative ideas to develop new solutions to real-world problems.

Limitations and future research

The current study’s limitation is in the sample, which is comprised students who are still in training. The current study did not examine people who have already completed their training and work in actual jobs. In addition, the Academic Integrity Inventory is a self-report questionnaire. Therefore, there is a limited perception of the concept of academic dishonesty among respondents compared to the concept of academic dishonesty defined in the research literature.

Since the current study was conducted with a sample of students in teacher training, it will be interesting and contribute to examining how the relationship between the Big Five personality traits, creative thinking, and academic dishonesty is expressed in teachers’ actual professional performance. Therefore, as a suggestion for future research, we recommend conducting a similar study among teachers who already work in actual pedagogical positions.

Author’s note

YE is a lecturer at Behavioural Sciences Department, and Digital Learning Designer at Zefat Academic College. His PhD is from Haifa University, Faculty of Management in excellence and outstanding performance. His M.A. is from Haifa University, Public Administration and Policy School. YE’s research areas include Public Administration, Outstanding Employees, Academic Dishonesty. AM, Dean of the Science Faculty in Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology & the Arts; lecturer of Science Education, Creativity, and supervising M.Ed. students in their research projects, developer courses of creative cognition as high order thinking skill, research willingness of students’ academic collaborative writing in online courses and her PhD is from Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Social Science.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical review and approval were not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the patients/participants or patients/participants legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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