Creativity and critical thinking in our classrooms by JunTian

Summary: Good thinkers are able to exercise sound reasoning and reflective thinking to make good decisions underpinned by values such as respect. They ought to be able to generate novel ideas. In the face of challenges, they are unafraid to manage complexities and ambiguities. All teachers must believe that all students can think well and be creative, and thus provide our students with opportunities to develop their critical and inventive thinking. Critical and inventive thinking should be developed from a young age.This brings me to the second principle for developing thinking, which is, good thinking should be deliberately developed within the context of subject disciplines and the total curriculum. This means that we need to teach students how to think critically and inventively in different subject disciplines. We need to model and guide students through the thinking process, using questioning so as to make the thinking explicit and visible in the learning. Most importantly, schools and classroom culture must consistently support and develop students’ thinking


Opinion: In order to cultivate students with critical thinking and creativity, I feel that the responsibility of teachers is the biggest. Teachers have to frequently ask students questions and encourage them to answer in different and special methods. This fosters creativity and allows student to get used and feel comfortable in answering questions.  Critical thinking and creativity is extremely important as it is definitely applicable to any jobs students wish to have in the future. Therefore schools and teachers should experiment ways to cultivate creativity and critical thinking in academic subjects so that students learn how to apply thing in the future.