NOTES & QUOTES FROM CHAPTER 2: Creative and Inventive Thinking: Collaborative Inquiry, Open-Ended Problem Solving, and Innovation
Innovation is a place where thinking meets up with problems to do new things and do old things in new ways...Imaginative problem solving, technology-related applications, and collaborative inquiry have important roles to play in creating tomorrow's innovators (31).
Thoughtful Problem Solving and Inquiry
Problem-solving is at the heart of mathematics: inquiry is equally important to science education. Both are compatible with developing highly refined reasoning skills...Creative and innovative thinking are important skills needed to meet the challenges of living and succeeding in the twenty-first century (Robinson, 2011). These skills should be near the center of education; they amplify enthusiasm for learning and generate new solutions for the most pressing problems of today and tomorrow (32).
Creative and innovative thinking is now such an important part of analytical problem-solving in math and collaborative inquiry in science that it cannot be ignored. As the content standards and Common Core suggest, the worth of the ideas created has a lot to do with how the problem being solved is defined (33).
Teachers can promote creativity by making collaboration a normal part of the daily routine and encouraging students to express themselves using multiple media (34).
The Societal Impact on Creative and Critical Thinking
Developing a deep understanding of a subject or process naturally leads to an application. Along the way, it is important that neither science nor its mathematical and technological tools be separated from humanism... there is often a tendency to put too much weight on information you like and too little on data that contradicts your assumptions (35).
As students develop critical thinking skills, it becomes more natural to approach a task in a realistic way, while leaving room for unconventional, spontaneous, flexible, and original ideas. Sometimes this is done within a preexisting paradigm, and at other times, it means breaking out of conventional boundaries (35).
Being good at thinking means being able to form alternative explanations and demonstrate intellectual curiosity in a manner that is flexible, elaborate, and novel to the thinker (36)...Reasoning, criticism, logical analysis, searching for supporting evidence, and evaluating outcomes might all be considered part of critical thinking. Activities that support this involve clarifying problems, considering the alternatives, strategic planning, problem solving, and analyzing the results. Creative thinking may be viewed as fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration (36)
The skills developed in this area would result in the creation of unique expressions, original conceptions, novel approaches, and demonstration of the ability to see things in imaginative and unusual ways (36).
Thinking Across Subjects and in Everyday Life
One way to look at modes of thought across disciplines is through symbolic, imagic, and affective thinking. Symbolic includes words, numbers and other symbol systems. Imagic is visual, spatial, tonal, and kinesthetic. It involves the kind of imagery used by mathematicians and architects, sound relationships explored by musicians, and the movement found in sports and dance. Affective thinking works with emotions and feeling to direct inquiry. All three modes of thinking build on reasoning and intuiting to connect the analytic to the intuitive (37).
Bill Gates-- "You need to understand things in order to invent things beyond them."
Effective instruction in mathematics, science, and technology provokes students to create their own questions and think of innovative applications in the world outside of school. As students become interested in such intellectual invention, it is important that the teachers hold off on their judgements and let the evidence itself be the judge (37).
Mathematicians, scientists, and technology workers use the tools of science and mathematics to collect, examine and think about data. Conclusions are formulated and outcomes explained. Like scientists, students can reason, analyze, criticize, and advocate--while avoiding dangerous materials and problems that are developmentally inappropriate (37).
Stanford's D.School teaches people to be innovative collaborators
Multiple Thinking Points Prior to Knowledge
There is a tendency to think of the scientific method and mathematics problem solving as clear and clean; you formulate hypothesis, organize experiments, collect and analyze data, and interpret the findings...the reality is far less clear-cut and tidy (38).
Creative and critical thinkers tend to be reflective as they think problems through, flexible when they consider original solutions, and curious as they pose new questions. The research evidence suggests that giving students multiple perspectives and entry points into subject matter increases thinking and learning (Costa and Kallick, 2009).
Almost any important concept can be approached from multiple directions (to be continued....)
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