Creativity and Critical Thinking
Strategies for New Faculty
Strategies for Developing Creativity & Critical Thinking
Creativity:
- Provide students with work that they are interested in. Working for stickers and competition will not produce creative work.
- It is not necessary to eliminate stress, but the classroom stress levels should be tolerable.
- Keep learning goals realistic and relevant.
- Classroom climate impacts creativity. Keep the tone positive, and students will be more open to new experiences and generate more ideas.
- Avoid the temptation to fix problems and keep students happy at all times.
- Identify and utilize the skills and knowledge of expert mentors in the field, and give students every opportunity to build a broad knowledge base.
- Allow students to have conflicting opinions and ideas, but follow through with a cool-down time and an opportunity to reconvene and reassess their work.
- Keep the size and scope of projects manageable, and encourage generation of multiple ideas instead of one elaborate one.
- Help students find a zone that provides manageable challenges, but does not produce unmanageable anxiety.
- Consider diversifying groups by skill levels, beliefs, experiences, or backgrounds. Amabile et al. • Intrinsic motivation has a direct relationship to creativity. • Provide students with work