This blog series is made possible by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.
“When reasoning fails, Imagination saves you!
When Intuition fails, reason saves you!”
– L.D. Crane
Critical thinking is what makes the world clearer. Creativity makes the world a more vivid and expressive experience. While creativity and critical thinking are often considered to be very different from one another, they share many similarities. Both creativity and critical thinking involve cognitive and social processes. [1] In fact, they work so well together that they can be combined into critical creativity.
Critical creativity is about producing new ideas, while also encouraging us to question them. [2] Critical thinking involves convergent thinking. Convergent thinking is the process of narrowing down ideas into a simple, logical solution. Creativity, on the other hand, often takes the form of divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the non-linear process of exploring many different possibilities or solutions. [3]
Creativity sparks imagination and invites thinking outside of the box. Research describes the relationship between critical thinking and creativity as a partnership between ‘the critic’ and ‘the creative.’ The creative tries new, unconventional ideas, while the critic works to understand and evaluate those ideas.[1]
Creativity is often believed to only be developed through the arts, while critical thinking is often limited to just math and science. Many of your everyday activities emphasize critical creativity, even if you do not realize it. This process can be broken down into four connected steps: Inquiring, Imagining, Doing, and Reflecting. Inquiring is making connections between experiences. Imagining is being able to create ideas. Doing is putting those ideas into practice. Reflecting is looking back on the experience to understand them better. [2]
To foster critical creativity in children, we must practice it as caregivers. We need to think outside the box and evaluate ideas. Activities that encourage curiosity, imagination, hands-on practice, and reflection naturally invite innovative thinking. For example, a building challenge encourages creativity through brainstorming, while also engaging critical thinking through planning and testing. Critical creativity is an essential element for innovation to blossom.
[1] Park, Ji Hoon & Li, Yitian & Niu, Weihua. (2023). Revisiting Creativity and Critical Thinking Through Content Analysis. Journal of Creativity. 33. 100056. 10.1016/j.yjoc.2023.100056.
[2] Vincent-Lancrin, S. et al. (2019), Fostering Students’ Creativity and Critical Thinking: What it Means in School, Educational Research and Innovation, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/62212c37-en.
[3] O’Reilly C, Devitt A, Hayes N. Critical thinking in the preschool classroom – A systematic literature review, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 46, 2022,101110, ISSN 1871-1871, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2022.101110.
