Creative and Critical Thinking

An informed citizenry will benefit from applying both creative thinking and critical thinking in solving the challenges of our society

Challenges of Our Society

Creative Thinking

Creative thinking engages paradox, encountering gaps, challenges, opportunities, or concerns, and then looking for significant new connections by developing:

many possibilities

varied possibilities (from diverse perspective or point of view)

original or unusual possibilities,

Details to enrich or expand possibilities (Brookfield, 2008).

Creative thinking is often described as a divergent process in which we begging with single question or at a sole point of view but expand the search in lots of diverse directions, generating broader mixture of emerging possibilities. We prefer to use the more familiar word "generate" when our goal is to seek many, varied or unusual possibilities, or to add details and expand on existing possibilities (Sternberg, 2009).

Critical thinking

On the other hand, critical thinking engrosses investigating possibilities fairly, carefully, and then centering your actions and thoughts by

analyzing and organizing possibilities

developing and refining promising possibilities

prioritizing or ranking option, and

Deciding on or choosing certain options. (Brookfield, 2008)

Critical thinking is also often called convergent thinking, which is the process of attempting to take many different ideas and draw them together toward a single goal or result (Facione, 2007).

Effective problem solving incorporates both- generating and focusing not just one or the other. Generating many ideas will not be enough by itself to help you solve a problem. Similarly, if you rely only on the focusing side, you may have too few possibilities from which to choose. It has been felt that successful problem solver can, and do, learn to use both his/her creative and critical thinking harmoniously (Brookfield, 2008).

Challenges Facing the Youth in today's Society

The majority of the problems hitting the youth of today are not constrained to anyone religious or ethnic group, but influence the young people ...