Thinking Creatively and Critically: Importance in Education

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The creative is critical and the critical is creative
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The creative is critical and the critical is creative
Creative and critical thinking help in generating knowledge. Creative thin king involves
things that are original or new that is created and has value. Critical thinking on the other hand is
the type of thinking that is used to question any assumptions and validate as well as invalidate
some current belief or things that have been confirmed to be true previously (Kabilan, 2009, p.2).
Knowledge is thus created by the culmination of creativity and assumptions that are generally
acceptable. Thus it is important to be able to separate the general creativity and assumptions. The
two types of thinking are normally separated regarding the realistic and concrete ideas when
compared to original or abstract ideas. However, in order to generate acceptable and new
knowledge both creative and critical thinking need to interact together.
In the school curriculum, learners develop the various capabilities through creative and
critical thinking since they study how to evaluate and generating the knowledge, clarifying ideas
and concepts, solve problems, consider alternatives and seek possibilities. Creative and critical
thinking involves the learners deep and broad thinking, using skills, or dispositions and/or
behaviors such as logic, imagination, reason, resourcefulness and innovation in the various
learning areas in their lives and at school and beyond (McPeck, 2016, p. 47). The form of thinking
that is purposeful, productive and intentional should be the central point of effective learning.
Through the application of thinking skills in sequence, the learners develop an understanding that
is increasingly sophisticated that involves the processes that can apply whenever they come across
life challenges, new ideas or unfamiliar information. Additionally, the development of knowledge
that is progressive concerning thinking and the practice to use thinking strategies can cause
increased management of and motivation for personal learning among the students. In this case,
they become more autonomous and confident thinkers and problem-solvers (Johnson, 2009, p.51).

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The response to the twenty-first challenges that are characterized with complex social,
environmental and economic pressures needs the young people to be highly innovative, creative,
adaptable, and enterprising with the confidence, motivation and skills of using creative and critical
thinking purposefully. The everyday capability combines the two types of thinking such as creative
and critical reasoning (Gibson, and Klocker, 2014, p. 429). Though these two are strongly linked
and not interchangeable and thus bring complementary dimensions to learning and thinking
(Swartz, and Parks, 2014, p. 46). Critical thinking should be at the core of many intellectual
activities that involve students learning to develop and recognize an argument, apply evidence that
supports this argument, draw the best conclusions and apply the information in solving problems.
The critical thinking examples of skills involve interpreting, evaluating, analyzing, sequencing,
explaining, comparing, inferring, reasoning, questioning, testing, hypothesizing, generalizing and
appraising.
Critical thinking includes students learning to apply and generate new ideas in contexts that
are specific, seeing the situations that have been in existence in new ways, identifying explanations
that work as alternatives, and making or seeing new links towards the generation of outcomes that
are positive (Jackson, 2016, p. 649). This involves the combination of parts to come up with
something that is sifting, original and refining ideas towards the discovery of possibilities,
construct objects as well as theories and act using intuition. The results of creative endeavors can
also involve complex images or representations, performances as well as investigations of
computers and digital generated outcomes or involve virtual realities.
Concept formation involves a mental activity that is used to compare, classify, contrast
ideas, events and objects. The concept learning can involve abstract or concrete ideas and has a
close alienation with metacognition. In such a case what is learnt, can be put into use as future

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examples. It involves underpinning the elements of organization (Paul, 2013, p. 29). Dispositions
that include intellectual flexibility, inquisitiveness, mindedness that is fair and open,
reasonableness, the readiness of trying new ways while doing things, consideration of alternatives
and persistence promotion are all enhanced by creative and critical thinking.
Knowledge needs to have some background facts that make it to be considered a reality.
This is why mathematics uses reason in justifying their methods and formulas. For instance,
memorizing area under the curve of a bell is quite different from the understanding of how the
area is derived. In this case, proofs are very useful in proving concepts in mathematics although
they are not hard to understand but are concrete (Flood, 2011, p. 44). All these are part of critical
or creative thinking. Creative aspects need to be applied when trying to come up with proofs that
have some difficulties. Creative solving of problems that involve mathematics can apply the
sense of perception as the method of acquiring knowledge. In the problems, the situations in real
life allow ideas to be acquired and thus require that the attention of the learners be focused on
understanding that is actual or real, involving concepts rather than applying the usual method of
memorization of the facts that relate to concrete problems.
For instance, the calculation of tree replanting in the forest is depended on the
circumstances that surround the issues faced while the factors are depended on situations. Thus,
the creation of personal solutions to the problems is more effective than the search for solutions
that exist (Baker, Rudd, and Pomeroy, 2001, p. 181). However, in relation to mathematics, when
a given problem has a solution that is known to exist, there is no need of searching for new or
additional solutions to the same problem. There is always an exception to all cases and thus new
knowledge could be formed from a personal or completely new solution. This could form new
knowledge by using creative thinking and is capable of coming up with a new solution that is