CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS
Every human has the ability to think which is the processes of logical thought, but not all uses their thinking skills effectively. The mental activities that process information, make connections, decision making, and coming out with new ideas are known as thinking skills. Thinking skills are often used in problems solving, decisions making, planning, asking questions, analysing new experiences, or organising and structuring informations. Effective thinking skills are not something that people were born with, instead it makes it progress as time goes by. In complicated situation, good thinkers are able to identify and analyse problems and make justified evaluations. After making justified evaluations on current situations, one must be able to explore fresh ideas and seek creative solutions by thinking outside the box or beyond the paradigm. Besides that, employees also seek someone that is able to think holistically and systematically. It is important to apply the ability to observe institutional culture and operations, holistically and systemically. Learning facts and recalling back what we had learned are considered as the simplest thinking skills while higher order skills are analysis, synthesis, problem solving and evaluation. Since the building blocks of thinking are the cognitive operations or processes of thinking skills, there are several core thinking skills such as focusing, remembering, gathering, organising, analysing, connecting, integrating, compiling, evaluating and generating.
Firstly, focusing is overlooking other stimuli while fixating to the pieces of information that is chosen while remembering is storing informations that has been obtained and then retrieving it when it is needed. Secondly, gathering is bringing the related informations that are needed for cognitive processing to the conscious mind. Thirdly, organising means arranging information systematically so it can be used more effectively. Fourthly, analysing can be defined as he breaking down of information by investigating parts and relationship so that its organisational structure can be understand easily. Next, connecting is the ability to link between relative items or pieces of information. Furthermore, integrating is connecting and combining information for a better understanding of the relationship between the information while compiling is in charge of forming a whole or building a structure or pattern by assembling parts from diverse elements together. Moreover, evaluating is determining the reasonableness and quality of ideas or materials on order to suggest and defend one’s point of view. Lastly, generating is the creation of new information, fresh ideas, products, or ways of perceiving things.
Thinking is classified into four types which are convergent or analytical thinking, divergent thinking, critical thinking, and creative thinking. Firstly, convergent thinking or better known as analytical thinking is solving problems or making informed decisions by bringing facts and data together from different sources and then applying logic and knowledge. Secondly, divergent thinking is exploring its various components and producing brand new ideas and resolutions by breaking a topic apart. Thirdly, Critical thinking is the ability to think distinctly and sensibly regarding our actions and belief. Usually, someone with critical thinking skills is able to comprehend the logical linkage between ideas, analyse, form and evaluate arguments, and distinguish inconsistencies and common errors in reasoning. Lastly, creative thinking is the formation of new ideas from established thoughts, theories, rules, and procedures (Kelly, 2011).
Both divergent and convergent thinking skills are classified as critical thinking skills. Critical thinking refers to the process of actively analyzing, synthesizing and/or evaluating and reflecting on information gathered from observation, experience or communication and is focused on deciding what to believe or do. Critical thinking is considered skills of higher order, such as analysis, synthesis, and problem solving, inference, and evaluation. From time to time a person may also flips back and forth between convergent and divergent thought as people solve problems or make decisions. People also examine the facts and circumstances to assess the root cause when they first look at a problem. Then, through divergent thinking, they explore new and innovative options, then switch back to convergent thinking in order to limit them to one practical option.
While creative thinking can be defined as a way to look at problems or circumstances from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox approaches (which at first might seem unsettling). A unstructured process such as brainstorming can promote creative thinking, as well as a structured process such as lateral thinking. Therefore, creative thinking is the ability to think differently: seeing a problem or issue from a new perspective or direction. This often allows you to find a new solution, or even see that a solution is not necessarily needed for the problem.The need for creative thinking exists because of the natural tendency of our brains to collapse into some' short cuts’ (SkillsYouNeed.com, n.d).
As a university student, it is crucial to implement both critical and thinking skills in our life. I used to be a debater back in my high school and matriculation days that requires me to use critical ?thinking skills heavily because all of the argument has to be based on facts. Hence, I had to use the seven steps of critical thinking. Firstly, I had to identify the problem or question based on the motion that I received. Next, I had to gather data, opinions and arguments from various sources so that I can understand the issues from different perspective and points of view. I also had to evaluate the data whether the sources are reliable or not and whether the information is enough to strengthen my stand for the given motion. I had to be unbiased when it comes to information and had to establish the significance of the information. Afterwards, I can finally make my judgement by weighting all the strengths and limitation of all possible options before presenting my arguments. In my opinion, my experience in debate had enhance my critical thinking skills and that I should always keep on enhancing it.
That day in my Graduate Success Attribute class, the lecturer gave us several in class activities based on the topic creative thinking. It was indeed a fun experience and it challenged me to think outside the box by being creative. The lecturer taught us to respect and never ridicule or mock one’s opinions or thoughts no matter how absurd it is. Some of the activities are we had to give our opinions on how to motivate university students to ensure students’ consistent learning and the answer should not be a logical answer. Next, there was an activity named “Unrelated Relations” where two words that had no relations at all were given to us and we had to build a sentence that has to be funny as possible based on the words given such as the words ring and flight. Out of all the activities, my personal favourite is the last activity known as “Imagination and Visualisation”, an object is given to us and we had to make some modification or improvement so that the object will work more efficiently. The object that we received is an umbrella. Some of the modification we made are we built an automatic light that is place inside the umbrella that switch on when it is dark, install heater at every edge of the umbrella so that it keeps us warm when it is raining, and a specification that can adjust the size so that it is not limited to only one person. We had a laugh and a great experience that challenges us to think outside the box.
Reference:
Kelly, J. (2011, September). Thinking.
Retrieved from http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/.
SkillsYouNeed.com, © 2011- 2019. (n.d.). Creative Thinking Skills.
Retrieved from https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/creative-thinking.html.