Guest post by Kimberly Williams, Residential Faculty, English Department
A couple of years ago, in an effort to revamp a class that I had been teaching for years (Advanced Composition), I started researching creative thinking and creativity in the higher education classroom. Last year, I received an MCLI fellowship to conduct my own research in my ENG 102 classrooms, and to that end, I posed this simple question: What happens if I add creative thinking strategies to a classroom that is highly structured for critical thinking?
What happened is that the course expanded — for me and for my students. The class became more inclusive, adding aspects for people whose thought processes are naturally non-linear. It was exciting, and, for me, a naturally creative thinker who learned in graduate school to become a more analytical thinker, it felt important to build and deliver curricula that met the needs of different types of students. The output was still the same; they were going to write the dreaded research paper, regardless. But our approaches into the assignment varied more, and with better results. The dreaded research paper wasn’t even so dreaded anymore. What did I do next? I did what any motivated academician does: I did more research over the summer.
This reading I did this time was framed differently. I wasn’t brand new to the subject any more, and I had my own research to reflect on and refer to while reading. Still, some of the ideas felt brand new because I had set this pile of unread articles aside for a year in order to conduct my own primary research. As I read, I was, for example, reminded by Robinson (cited in Gibson) that at the age of five, a child’s potential for creativity is 98%. By the each of 15, it has diminished to 12%. Experts pin this statistic on our educational system, and our constant emphasis of being ‘right’ over taking risks with learning (Sternberg). So integrated some creative thinking strategies into the higher education classroom is, in some ways, a way of helping students return to a very natural way of thinking, a way that 98% of us possess young children.
One of my favorite quotes from my summer reading comes from Steinberg, “Stored knowledge can be inert and essentially unusable. Analytical skills can help one evaluate existing ideas, but they cannot help one come up with ideas of one’s own; nor can they help one adjust to a world that is changing rapidly and leaves behind people who cannot flexible adapt” (“Wisdom” 10). It’s not just that teaching with creative thinking strategies is inclusive and reaches more students. It’s that our students need to know these strategies because they will be useful to them in the future. It will make them more employable. It will help them stay employable. As I read, it realized the marked gap between what professors ask from their students and what employers hope their future employees will be able to do. Industry and businesses want creative thinkers who can communicate and collaborate (Starko).This is what they hope to hire in college graduates in the twenty-first century. From this point alone, critical thinking strategies, while incredibly necessary, become more meaningful to our students when accompanied by a complement of creative thinking strategies as well.
Creative thinking strategies (which can be employed in any discipline) not only reach and engage more students than classes that are designed for or privilege critical thinking only; creative thinking strategies also prepare students for the world that awaits them.
Recommended Reading for Incorporating Creative Thinking in Higher Education Classrooms (in MLA Style)
Brinkman, David. “Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity.” Arts Education Policy Review, vol. 111, 2010, pp. 48-50, Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Christensen, Tanner. The Creativity Challenge: Design, Experiment, Test, Innovate, Build, Create, Inspire and Unleash Your Genius. Avon: Adams Media, 2015. Print.
Gibson, Robyn. “The ‘Art’ of Creative Teaching: Implications for Higher Education.” Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 15, no. 5, Oct. 2010, pp. 607–613., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Hargreaves, Janet. “Risk: The Ethics of a Creative Curriculum.” Innovations in Education and Teaching International, vol. 45, no. 3, Aug. 2008, pp. 227–234., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Karakas, Scott L. “Creative and Critical Thinking in the Arts and Sciences: Some Examples of Congruence.” Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table, 2010.
Academic OneFile, Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Michalko, Michael. Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques, 2nd ed. Berkeley, Ten Speed Press, 2006. Print.
Starko, Alane. “Creativity on the Brink.” Educational Leadership, Feb. 2013, pp. 54–56., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Sternberg, Robert J. “Creative Thinking in the Classroom.” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, vol. 7, no. 3, 2003, pp. 325–338., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
—. “Wisdom, Intelligence, and a New Model for Creativity Synthesized: Liberal Education.” Liberal
Education, 2009, pp. 10–15., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.
Wang, Amber Yayin. “Exploring the Relationship of Creative Thinking to Reading and Writing.” Thinking Skills and Creativity, vol. 7, 2012, pp. 38–47. Elsevier, Accessed 5 Sept. 2016.
White, David A. “Gifted Education: Thinking (with Help from Aristotle) about Critical Thinking.” Gifted Child Today. vol. 33, no. 3, Summer 2010, pp. 14-19., Accessed 23 Aug. 2016.