Thinking Together

Key ideas

There is substantial evidence that teaching programmes that focus on thinking, can improve pupils’ academic performance, cognitive processing and problem solving abilities.

A wide range of measures including IQ tests, reasoning tasks, noting particular words, gauging change in social behaviours and even assessing the novelty of ideas are currently made to assess improvements in thinking.

Further work is needed to more accurately measure development of thinking.

It is not curricular materials alone that influence improvements in pupils thinking.

It is not clear exactly which aspects of teachers’ pedagogy, approaches or beliefs most strongly influence the development of pupil’s thinhing.

Metacognitive approaches appear to be very influential.

Aspects of mediational pedagogy lihely to affect pupils thinhing are: the nature, sequence and frequency of questions posed creating time for thinhing opportunities recognizing value of collaborative processes (including sharing perspectives and rationalizing propositions to each other) providing challenging tasks and challenging pupils’ ideas and suggestions encouraging reflection of the thinhing processes and learning outcomes supporting transfer and connectivity of thinhing outcomes and processes to other contexts

8 Development of creative thinking
Leonardo da Vinci was wrong. But he was insightfully wrong. He came to a mistaken idea about flight, but the pattern of thinking behind the idea was exemplary.

(D. Perkins, The Eureka Effect)

Even brilliant thinkers can generate ideas that are incorrect. Students in classrooms are often concerned about sharing their inner thoughts or novel ideas because they may be deemed wrong by others. However, like da Vinci (Perkins 2000: S), they may also proffer ingenious solutions to problems. When challenged to think creatively they may feel anxious because, as Roth (1995) highlights, each individual has his or her own way of interpreting anything, so producing new or innovative ideas can involve something of a risk. Creative thinkers, such as da Vinci, are able to generate unique visual interpretations (in a variety of forms) of the world around them, invent machines and even write original prose. Creative thinking can therefore manifest itself in many forms. Various perspectives and definitions of thinking creatively will be considered in this chapter. Creative thinking will then be compared and contrasted with critical thinking. The various ways in which creative thinking is supported and nurtured through various thinking programmes and pedagogical approaches will also be considered.

Defining creative thinking

Creative thinking is defined in many ways (see Figure 8.1). It is essentially perceived by Swartz et al. (1998) as the generation of possibilities. They describe creative thinking as ‘the active use of our creative imaginations’. They suggest that we generate ideas as a result of our past experience, which furnishes the raw material of creative thought, and our ability to take apart and creatively combine ingredients from past experience. They highlight how we often do not consider other ways of looking at things; we tend to establish habits or routinized ways of doing things. For example, when packing the shopping you

Figure 8.1 Definitions of creative thinking
might pack the heaviest things at the bottom of the carrier, lightest at the top. Therefore, at the checkout you put the heaviest things, such as jars, tins and bottles on to the counter first. Bread and other light, fragile goods are always last to be placed for packing. When students come into a new class at the beginning of term, they usually sit in the same place each time for the subsequent classes – but often they are not told where to sit, they just do it. It appears that once we have a ‘method that works’, we don’t expend extra time or energy considering alternatives, unless a problem arises. For example, if a package of cheddar cheese is broken open by the adjacent tin in the shopping bag, or if students sat together are disruptive. Then it seems appropriate and obvious to reflect on what is happening and consider alternate approaches or ideas. Creativity, then, involves divergent thinking (as indicated in Figure 8.2a) the ability to come up with new, original ideas, which by its nature will be unusual. It could be described as the antipathy of critical thinking, which involves scrutiny of given information, data or evidence of some kind (indicated in Figure 8.2b).

Originality of creative thinking

Original ideas can be so on a number of different levels. Ideas can be original to the person involved; original within the learning community

a Divergent thinking which is creative (each arrow indicating original thinking developing from the problem, situation, issue, need, task or challenge).
b Convergent thinking, which is more critical in nature (each arrow represents an aspect of critically scrutinizing given information in some way).

Figure 8.2 The contrasting nature of creative and critical thinking
(group or classroom or school); or original within a country or the world as a whole (Robinson 2001). Creativity is the ability to see things in a new way, to see problems that no one else may even realize exist, and even develop new, unique, and effective solutions to these problems. As Lipman, emphasizes, it may illustrate many characteristics (200S: 245). It should be original, but not purposeless or inappropriate (Sternberg 200S). The originality may offer a ‘fresh’ or even astonishing idea and it should be productive, resulting in valuable outcome(s). It should involve imagination that explores realms of possibilities. It should celebrate those who think independently and do not necessarily conform to others’ views. It should involve searching and experimentation. It should be holistic, recognizing connections between part-whole and means-end relationships. It should be expressive in the way ideas are conveyed. It can be maieutic in nature, illustrating creative caring for others. It can be inventive, that is original, and offer potentially promising ideas, but it may not necessarily be practicable or immediately valuable.

Creativity and intelligence

Fisher (2000: 1S8) indicates how we become creative when we are able to look at things from a new perspective. He relays how Einstein believed the key to learning was flexible thinking and that ‘To raise new questions, new problems, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination, and makes real advances’. Robinson (2001: 111) describes creativity as a function of intelligence, drawing on different capabilities. He suggests that creativity is not only found in great men or women, whose visionary ideas have historically shaped the world we currently live in and that the ‘creatives’ in a company department who keep irregular hours, don’t wear ties, and arrive at work late because they’ve been struggling with an idea appear to be set apart from the rest of us by their extraordinary gifts. He elucidates how the word ‘creativity’ itself, mistakenly, suggests some sort of separate faculty like memory or sight. Creativity is also not confined to special activities such as, painting a picture, composing a poem, choreographing a dance or sculpting a figure. These activities require diligence and persistence as well as creativity. Scientists, technologists, business people, educators, in fact anyone can be creative in the things that they do. The innovation of new techniques, new products, new selling strategies, new approaches to preparing for examinations are all ways these people can be creative. Somewhat unlike critical thinking, however, new ideas and innovative approaches often take time to develop. They may need nurturing or cogitating upon. They may even need critical review to assess their viability. How a creative suggestion is refined, modified or improved requires critical appraisal, this suggests the close association between creativity and critical thinking, described by Alec Fisher (2001) as critico- creative (considered again later).

Robinson (2001: 115) emphasizes how creativity also involves doing something, for example within mathematics, engineering, music, business, whatever, so creativity requires a context. He elaborates how creativity can be rooted in imaginative thought, in envisaging new possibilities.