CREATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKING

ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Wednesday Nov. 25, 2005

Henderson Annex

9:00-11:30

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Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Intelligent behaviour arises from a balance between analytical, creative and practical abilities and that these abilities function collectively to allow individuals to achieve success within particular socio-cultural contextsSternberg 1988, 1997, 1999

Framework for thinking about Thinking

According to Sternberg intelligent behaviour consists of the application and melding of three types of thinking, all of which can be learned or enhanced. Creativity is a balance between these three forms of thinking. 

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: 1. Creative Ability

This includes divergent thinking as it is the ability to think of or generate new, novel, and interesting ideas. But it is also the ability to spontaneously make connections between ideas, or groups of things -- ones that often go unnoticed, or undiscovered by others. 

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:2. Analytical Ability

This includes the ability to think convergently in that it requires critical thinking and appraisal as one analyzes and evaluates thoughts, ideas, and possible solutions. This type of thinking is key because not all ideas are good ones, some need to be culled. People use this type of thinking to consider implications and project possible responses, problems, and outcomes.  Commonly we think of this ability as "critical thinking" at its best.

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:3. Practical Ability

The world is full of people who have good ideas, as well as ones who can pick ideas apart. However, the basic key to creative work must include the ability to use practical thinking. This is the ability to translate abstractions and theories into realistic  applications. It is the skill to sell or communicate one's ideas to others, to make others believe that ideas, works, or products are valuable, different, useful, innovative, unusual, or worthy of consideration.  It is finding a potential audience for one's creative work. 

Overview of Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:

Creative Abilities: generate invention, discovery, and other creative endeavours

Analytical Abilities: evaluate, analyze, compare and contrast information

Practical Abilities: tie everything together by allowing individuals to apply what they have learned in the appropriate setting.

CREATIVITY

If you had to provide a working definition of

creativity, how would you define it?

What is Creativity?

Creativity is a mental and social process involving the discovery of new ideas or

concepts

Creative and Critical Thinking Compared

Critical Thinking Creative Thinking

Analytic

Convergent

vertical

probability

Judgment

Focused

Objective

Answer

Left brain

Verbal

Linear

Reasoning

Yes but…..

Generative

Divergent

Lateral

Possibility

Suspend judgment

Diffuse

Subjective

An answer

Right brain

Visual

Associative

Richness, novelty

Yes and…….

Creativity

Has been attributed to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the social environment, personality traits, and chance. It has been associated with genius, mental illness, humour and REM sleep. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques.

Scientific Approach… Formal starting point for the scientific study

of creativity from the standpoint of orthodox psychological literature, is considered to have been J.P. Guilford’s 1950 focus on a scientific approach to conceptualizing creativity and measuring it psychometrically

Parallel time: we get approaches to teaching creativity techniques: brainstorming (Alex Osborn), lateral thinking (de Bono)

Current ideas about creativity…

Current ideas in creativity view it in terms of how we view learning: fixed trait or malleable? If you think it is malleable, you will grow more readily as a learner, than if you think it is a fixed trait.

Educators need to promote creativity in class so that students see this possibility.

Our Context: What are some strategies to get at creativity?

Cognitive and Affective Strategies:

Cognitive: Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, Elaboration

Affective: Curiosity, Complexity, Risk Taking, Imagination

Creative Processes to get at Creativity

These 8 creative processes lay a foundation upon which creative learning develops. Teachers’ use of them in the classroom means that creative potential and creative skills can be detected and developed at the same time.

Cognitive Strategy #1: Fluency

Fluency: involves generating as many ideas as possible

Quantity breeds quality: the more ideas that children can think of, the more likely are original ideas to emerge

Example: list all the things that are green; list all the creatures we may see on our field excursion; how many experiments can you create using these two magnets?

Cognitive Strategy #2: FlexibilityFlexibility: involves approaching things in alternative

ways, from different viewpoints or perspectives, and responding in a variety of categories

Example: change the rules of one of these games – chess, scrabble or snakes and ladders so that you play to lose (the one who loses is the winner).

Computers should replace teachers: Look at this statement from different viewpoints- those of children, parents, teachers, and the Ministry of Education and decide whether you agree.

Cognitive Strategy #3: Originality

Originality: involves producing unusual, unique or clever ideas and combining known ideals

into some new form. Ideas may be original to society, or original to a child or group at a

particular time and place. Example: Find a way for Jack and Jill to get

water from a well on the hill so that they do not have to walk down carrying a heavy bucket full of water

Create your own alien; based on a planet in our solar system

Alien Adventure

Create your own alien, taking into account: Where does your alien live? What type of planet does it live on and where on this planet? Water? Swamp? Dessert? Tundra?

What does your alien eat? How does your alien catch its food? How does your alien see? Why does it

see in this way? How does your alien move? Why does it move in this way?

Cognitive Strategy #4: Elaboration

Elaboration involves stretching or expanding upon things and adding to an idea to make it more interesting or complete

(teacher stealing) Example: improve both the ladder and the

fire extinguisher so that they are more effective in times of emergency.

Create an alternative ending to the story Add a new element to a board game to

make it more challenging

Affective Strategy #1: Curiosity

Curiosity involves encouraging children to wonder, to be inquisitive, to follow intuition, to question and to seek

problems and information Example: what if all the trees in the world

were destroyed by human carelessness. What would the world be like?

What if the wolf in Red Riding Hood was telling the story, what would he say?

Affective Strategy #2: Complexity

Complexity involves feeling challenged to seek many different, difficult or complex

alternatives, bringing structure out of chaos and seeing gaps in information or situations.

Example: what are the things to consider in choosing a new pet?

Design a piece of playground equipment that is imaginative and fun to play on, is safe, and requires children to cooperate as they use it.

Affective Strategy #3: Risk Taking

Risk taking is having the courage to share ideas, take a guess; exposing oneself to criticism or failure and being prepared to

justify or defend ideas. Example: Survival on the moon activity

Survival on the Moon activity Your mission is to rank 12 items. Put

them in numerical order from the most important to the least important.

Work with your group to decide what is needed. Here is the list: tanks of oxygen, five gallons of water, stellar constellation map, food concentrate, nylon rope, first aid kit, parachute, signal flares, magnetic compass, box of matches

Affective Strategy #4: Imagination

Imagination involves putting oneself in another place or time, building mental

images and feeling intuitively Example: an Easter egg lands on your

doorstep six months late. Imagine why it may be so late, and make up a story about it.

Creativity strategies……

Fluency Curiosity

Flexibility Complexity

Originality Risk Taking

Elaboration Imagination

How do you start with these strategies? Begin by picking a theme of study, and try to incorporate these ideas into the learning…..say Fairytales…..

Using Specific Creativity Techniques

In conjunction with the eight creative thinking skills, there is a variety of important methods and techniques that may be considered basic to developing creative thinking:

Brainstorming

Scamper

Forced Relationships

Attribute Listing

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Brainstorming

Useful technique to help us be open minded and to generate many ideas and it is an integral part of the problem-solving process.

Principle of deferred judgment is important since too often good ideas can be lost by evaluating too quickly or too much.

Rules for Brainstorming

1. Criticism and praise are ruled out

2. Free-wheeling is welcomed. The wilder the ideas, the better. Offbeat and silly ideas may trigger practical breakthroughs that might not otherwise occur.

3. Combination and improvement are sought. Group members are encouraged to combine and “hitchhike” ideas.

4. Quantity is wanted. The larger the number of ideas, the greater the chance of reaching the best solutions.

Scamper

S ubstitute: replace parts or materials

C ombine: mix, join with other things

A dapt: alter to suit new conditions

M odify, Magnify, Minify: make smaller or larger, change the shape

P ut to another use: give a new purpose

E liminate, Elaborate: remove or add parts

R everse, Rearrange: turn inside out or upside down, move parts

Scamper the Story of Cinderella: using scamper to provide guidelines for creative questions.

Substitute: What do you think would have happened if Cinderella had lost her necklace instead of her glass slipper?

Combine: How do you think the story might have changed if the prince had had the same character as the stepmother?

Adapt: how would the story change if it took place in the present time? Modify: Retell the story with the prince being a giant. Magnify: how would the story have changed if Cinderella had been

identical twins instead of one person? Put to use: How would Cinderella have used her broom to help her if

the Fairy Godmother had not appeared? Eliminate: Retell the story without the Fairy Godmother. Rearrange: What would have happened if the ugly sister had found

the slipper instead of the prince? Reverse: retell the story, with Cinderella having the personality of the

wicked stepmother, and the stepmother having Cinderella’s personality (loving and kind)

Activity: Scamper a…..

A pencil A bird Your shoe A telephone A flower A banana A car

Forced Relationships

To think of many new and unusual possibilities it is necessary to force our thinking beyond the obvious and the ordinary. Forced relationships help to look at new possibilities by putting unrelated ideas together to create ideas or to help solve a problem

Forced Relationships Example

Ask students to think of four unrelated objects for example: chocolate, computer, scissors, and socks.

Then present a problem statement: “how can we overcome the trash problem in the playground?”

Students must take each object in turn and associate it in some way with solving the problem:

Computer: email parents to come to a meeting about the issue

Chocolate: use chocolate as a reward for picking up trash Scissors: cut the paper garbage into tiny bits so that it can

be recycled for the art room. Socks: if there is no garbage can nearby; and you see

garbage while playing, stick it in your sock.

Attribute Listing

A technique used to generate many new ideas by examining closely the main attributes or characteristics of a topic, problem or object and thinking of ways to improve each attribute. This helps us to consider possibilities we may otherwise overlook if we view the object or problem only in a more general way

Attribute Listing Examples What are the attributes of an

outstanding product? How can we improve our classroom? Change your teddy bear so that it is

more unusual and fun to play with.

Bloom’s TaxonomyCreating

Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things: designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing

EvaluatingJustifying a decision or course of action: checking, hypothesizing, critiquing,

experimenting, judging

AnalyzingBreaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships: comparing,

organizing, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

ApplyingUsing information in another familiar situation: implementing, carrying out, using, executing

Understanding Explaining ideas or concepts: interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, classifying,

explaining

RememberingRecall information: recognizing, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding

Instant Activities

Junkology Box Quickliners Creative Connections Personal Logo Story Chain Creative and Fluent Thinking

Challenges

Critical Thinking

What is Critical Thinking?

Refers to the quality of thinking Involves thinking through problematic

situations about what to believe or how to act where the thinker makes reasoned judgments that embody the qualities of a competent thinker.

Skills related to an overall ability to Critical Thinking:

1. Finding analogies and other kinds of relationships between pieces of information

2. Determining the relevance and validity of information that could be used for structuring and solving problems

3. Finding and evaluating solutions or alternative ways of treating problems

1. Analogies: Reason through the use of analogies

Two things compared; there needs to be a decision about whether the likeness is enough to make a conclusion reasonable

Example: just as an elephant is huge when compared to a fly, it is small when compared to a skyscraper; just as our galaxy is huge compared to our solar system it is small compared to the universe.

Analogies

Emu: Australia :: penguin ___________1. Continent

2. Cold

3. Antarctica

4. Feathers

Self Talk through analogies

Ask: What is the relationship between an emu and Australia?

An emu comes from Australia and an penguin comes from where? Where does a penguin live?

Then survey the choices: Continent is a place but not a specific place; cold describes a place; Antarctica is a place and penguins live here, feathers are part of a penguin but not a place

More Analogies: find the most accurate relationship Teeter is to tooter as jungle is to (elephant, gym, Africa) _________ Uncle is to niece as aunt is to (nephew, cousin,

brother)____________ Rattle is to snake as chirp is to (bird, cricket, chipmunk)

_____________ Peas are to carrots as meat is to (cow, beef, potatoes) _______ Salt is to sugar as sour is to (sweet, bland, tart)_______ Airplane is to pilot as train is to (conductor, caboose, engineer)

___________ Sound is to ear as scent is to (smell, nose, hear) __________ Talking is to yelling as giggling is to (snickering, laughing,

chuckling) _____________ Race is to track as swim is to (meet, stroke, pool) ________ Surfing is to waves as skiing is to (hills, snow, slopes) __________

2. Develop Deductive Reasoning Deductive reasoning is general to specific:

theory, hypothesis, observation, confirmation Is evidence based Looks at invalid/valid arguments For an argument to be sound it must be

valid and the premises true as well This is a valid argument but not true:

Everyone who eats steak is a quarterback. John eats steak. Therefore John is a quarterback.

Develop Inductive Reasoning Inductive reasoning is observation,

pattern, tentative hypothesis, theory Bottom up approach Discovery process But, it can be misleading: all people you

have met from Vancouver wear fleece jackets, then all people in Vancouver wear fleece.

3. Finding and evaluating solutions or alternative ways to look at Problems

Use the Creative Problem Solving or Future Problem Solving process

This process helps to solve in effective and imaginative ways.

Good to use with moral philosophy and issues

Good to use with real life problems However, there are 6 steps and it does take

time and students need to be able to commit to it; teacher needs to be able to model it

CPS Process

1. Fact Finding: students ask questions about the problem to determine available facts and consider resources that may help them find answers

2. Problem Finding: clarify and define major problem

3. Idea finding: students generate as may ways and ideas and strategies to solve the problem

4. Solution finding: students decide on criteria for judging ideas and apply them to find a solution. Some criteria might include: which ideas have the greatest potential?

5. Apply criteria: grid it

6. Acceptance finding: develop a plan of action

Five Steps to Critical Thinking: how to approach it all….by the Critical

Thinking Consortium

1. Background Knowledge: Information about a topic required for thoughtful reflection. Students can’t think deeply about a topic if they do not know

anything about it. Questions to ask: What Background information do students

need to make a well – informed judgment.

2. Criteria for Judgment: Consideration or grounds for deciding which alternative's) is the most appropriate. Students need help in thinking carefully about the criteria to

used when judging various alternatives.○ Is my estimate accurate?○ Is the interpretation Plausible?○ Is the conclusion fair to all?○ Is my proposal feasible?

Five Steps to Critical Thinking3. Crucial Thinking Vocabulary: Students require the vocabulary or

concepts that let them make important distinctions among the different issues and thinking tasks. This include: Inference and direct observation Generalization and over generalization Premise and conclusion Bias and point of view.

4. Thinking Strategies: There are strategies that are useful for guiding one’s performance when thinking critically. Making Decisions: Making a framework of the issues, steps to

problem solving.) Organizing Information: Graphic organizers, Pros and cons, Venn

Diagrams. Role Taking: Have students put themselves in the other person’s

shoes.

Five Steps to Critical Thinking5. Habit of Mind: Being able to apply criteria and use

strategies is only useful if students have the habits of mind of a thoughtful person. This include: Open-Minded: Consider evidence opposing their view

and to revise their view should the evidence warrant it. Fair-Minded: Are students willing to give impartial

consideration to alternative points of view and not simply impose their preferences?

Independent-Minded: Are students willing to stand up for their firmly help believes?

Inquiry or ‘Critical Attitude’: Are student inclined to question the clarity of and support of claims and to seek justified beliefs and values.

From: Critical Challenges. By the Critical Thinking Consortium.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Use Bloom’s taxonomy: highest level to create projects: Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things

Designing, constructing, planning, producing inventing

Destination Imagination Instant ChallengesA creative problem solving program that has

students solve instant challenges as well as larger team solutions.

Example: Your Challenge is to build a Far…Out Shelter. You must give a short presentation that explains who lives in the shelter and any special features you have included.

Time: you have 5 minutes to build your Far…Out Shelter and prepare your presentation and one minute to present it.

Materials: Newspaper and Tape

Other Critical Thinking Activities

Philosophical questions Critical Challenges Across the

Curriculum www.qisforquestion.com

Questions

Contact Marielle Wiesinger

Brock Elementary Challenge Centre

604-713-5766

mwiesinger@vsb.bc.ca