Critical and Creative Thinking

A central goal of contemporary education is to improve the thinking skills of students, and the notions of critical thinking and of creative thinking provide focusses for this effort. As educators we would like our students to be better critical thinkers. This implies thinking more effectively within curricular subject areasunderstanding the reasoning employed, assessing independently and appropriately, and solving problems effectively It involves, as well, improved thinking skills in dealing with real life problems-in assessing information and arguments in social contexts and making life decisions. We also want students to be more creative-not simply to reproduce old patterns but to respond productively to new situations, to generate new and better solutions to problems, and to produce original works . These goals of fostering critical thinking and of fostering creativity are generally considered to be quite separate and distinct. Critical thinking IS seen as analytic. It is the means for arriving at judgments within a given framework or context . Creative University of Manitoba