Students may have fun playing around with such activities, but may not actually address content in a meaningful, purposeful way, nor actually engage in the higher order thinking intended.Ĭritical thinking involves analysis and evaluation rather than merely accepting ideas or information: understanding of relationships, similarities, and differences looking for patterns classifying and categorizing understanding cause/effect seeing trends and big ideas predicting outcomes considering multiple perspectives making judgments and questioning and reasoning.
Employing critical and creative thinking strategies without first understanding what is involved in these skills and processes or without connecting these thinking skills to appropriate content is likely to result in missing the point and wasting time. In order to teach any skill or content effectively, we must first have a clear understanding of the nature and purpose of the skills and/or content to be taught. They are ways of deeply engaging and interacting with ideas and concepts in meaningful context, building meaning and understanding through multiple processing of ideas and information in increasingly sophisticated levels of thinking, adding depth and complexity to the content being learned, and finding personal relevance in the learning process.
The answer to this crisis, they say, is teaching critical and creative thinking skills in context of content instruction.Ĭritical and creative thinking strategies are not merely “fun” or “cute” activities to be pulled out at the end of the week or semester, or after the state tests are over for the year in order to fill time and entertain students. The findings of this study indicate a significant decline of creativity among American students in recent decades, which the authors describe as a “creativity crisis.” They attribute this decline to overemphasis on standardization in curriculum, instruction, and assessment in American schools-with emphasis on acquisition of information, facts and details, and finding “the right answer” rather than critical analysis and evaluation of content or creative exploration of ideas and innovative thinking. To what extent is this happening? Are gifted students being given opportunities for exploring ideas and developing skills of critical analysis, evaluation, and creativity in classrooms today? Not so much, according to a study reported in Newsweek (2010) by Bronson and Merryman. We also know that, in order to develop these critical and creative thinking skills as thinking habits, students must engage in these kinds of thinking activities frequently, in meaningful, appropriate contexts. This is particularly true of the creatively gifted learner who must find relevance and opportunities for creative synthesis and expression in order to truly engage in the learning process. Gifted students need to be involved with analysis, evaluation, and creative synthesis of data and information, asking new questions and generating innovative ideas, solutions, and products because of their advanced cognitive development, preference for complexity, questioning of the status quo, idealism, and need for social action. We recognize the need for gifted learners to develop and practice higher-order critical and creative thinking skills that go beyond fundamental acquisition of information. Data become meaningful only when individuals perform certain mental operations on those data.” (Taba, 1971, pp. Children develop these thinking skills by manipulating ideas, critically examining them, and trying to combine them in new ways. “Children do not develop their thinking skills by memorizing the products of adults’ thinking. Publisher: Texas Association of the Gifted and Talented (TAGT)
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