And you can explore other aspects of Productive Thinking:

CRITICAL THINKING:  
What is critical thinking?
Why teach critical thinking?   
How to teach it effectively?

Motivated Reasoning (why?)   
Ethics of Critical Thinking

PROBLEM SOLVING:   
Problems and Problem Solving   

Basic Problem-Solving Skills

Education for Problem Solving   

Problems in Design & Science

Problem Solving in Schools

Principles & Strategies for Increasing Creativity

• Summaries of scientific principles and practical strategies from Tina Seelig (professor at Stanford) are described in outlines by Aimee Groth & Jessica Stillman (who says "Seelig offers simple but powerful ways to increase your creativity by shifting how you approach problems, including just being more observant and asking better questions") and by Tina Seelig in her talk for Google (video) and her book, inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity.

• The Myth of Right-Brain Creativity:  We can try to Debunk the Left-Brain/Right-Brain Myth but the myth may never die so at least we should Know The Myths because (contrary to popularized oversimplifications) Creativity is both Right Brain and Left Brain with Well-Connected Brain Hemispheres.    {these pages are written by Kara Blacker, Christian Jarrett, Sam Kramer, Arts Academy in the Woods, and Christopher Bergland}   {e.g. In a fascinating research study, brain activities were observed in jazz guitarists during their improvising.  The scientists concluded that "creativity is..."}

• Perseverance, Relaxation, Flexibility:  To describe their complex (and varying) effects, later I say "perseverance is useful... and often is necessary" but... "creativity also can happen when you just relax," and "sometimes perseverance [but at other times flexibility] is rewarded."  Huh?  Well, people are complicated, and so is our creativity.   {do experts agree about what creativity is, and how it happens?}

• Growth Mindset and Creativity Mindset (by Pronita Mehrotra) explains why "growth mindset is especially important in creative work since such work often requires higher levels of perseverance... and resilience [that are] produced by growth mindset.”  For example, Growth mindset in Music by Gerald Klickstein.

• Growth Mindset and Self-View:  Your worldview is your view of the world, used for living in the world.  Your world-view includes your self-view that will improve when you develop-and-use a growth mindset.  Having a growth mindset about creativity — so you believe that you can be more creative in how you think and what you do — will help you be confident that you can do creative things.   /   This attitude is described in a book by David Kelley (founder of IDEO and d.school) & Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence - Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All. (about the book & its authors & excerpts from chapters)   Kelley has a TED Talk (How to Build Your Creative Confidence) and other videos and other options in his links-page.

• Modifying and Combining:  New ideas often come from modifying old ideas (or things) in new ways, and combining them in new ways.  You can increase the range of your creative possibilities — giving yourself more ways to modify and combine — if you know a wide variety of ideas (and things), if you have a wide range of knowledge that you can use creatively.  This is one way to take advantage of the principle (from Louis Pasteur, a very creative scientist) that "chance favors the prepared mind."   {other ways are by preparing before relaxing and with flexible thinking}    /    Boost Your Creativity by Combining Ideas (by Pronita Mehrotra) – examples of breakthroughs that were "based on combining information from different domains that are usually not thought of as related" – making new ideas from old elements & detecting connections between ideas  –  {why did Picasso try to do things he couldn't do?  i.e. why did the chicken cross the road?}

• Collaborative Creativity

Creativity and Collaboration: It's All About Trust and One Mind Catalyzing Another –– and...

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People include Habit 6: Synergize that is "the highest activity in all life" because it "catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the greatest powers within people," as described in condensed summaries:  short (in franklincovey.com's short summaries) & medium-short (in franklincovey.com's more-detailed summaries) & medium-long (by Philip Chowney) & longer (by Carrie Cabral for ShortForm Summaries) and more.   

Build a Creative-and-Critical Community - debates about pros & cons of group creativity -

I.O.U. - I'll continue working on this paragraph during mid-June 2021. -- [[ Creativity in Communities / Community Creativity / personal creativity by individuals and (by interpersonal collaboration) in communities / collective creativity -- habit 6, creative groups, @ brainstorming, @ two styles, @#two -]]

• The Philosophy of Creativity by Scott Barry Kaufman — Wired to Create (samples & Google Talk);

• Critical Thinking Web describes 3 Principles (and more) to improve Creative Thinking;

• creative thinking - understanding & improving (by Robert Harris).

• Videos:  in YouTube you can search for [creativity in life] and [creative thinking] and [ted creativity] plus other terms & combinations.

• Craig Rusbult (editor of this links-page) examines 5 Ways to Creatively Generate Ideas — including Guided Generation (when Critical Thinking stimulates-and-guides Creative Thinking) and Free Generation — and describes some of the ways a freely-creative Generation of Ideas can be hindered;  and how, in an effort to liberate creativity by decreasing these hindrances, we can use Strategies for Thinking* to Reduce Restrictive Assumptions and Adjust (by using Brainstorm-and-Evaluate) the Interactions between Creative Thinking & Critical Thinking (but does it work? Yes and No).

* Thinking Strategies — when you regulate your cognition-and-metacognition by deciding when to avoid metacognition or use it, and how — can help you improve your performing and/or learning (+ enjoying) in many areas of life, to improve your performing now and (by learning more from your experiences) your performing later.

note:  To help you decide whether to click a link or avoid it, links highlighted with green or purple go to pages I've written, in my website about Education for Problem Solving or in this website for THINKING SKILLS (CREATIVE and CRITICAL) we use to SOLVE PROBLEMS.

• strategies for problem-solving creativity (for stimulating-and-using creativity in a process of solving problems) are explained, and are illustrated with 20 historical examples, in Creativity, Innovation and Problem Solving. 

• articles about creativity from Harvard Business Review.

• Models for the Creative Process by Paul Plsek, is a historical review, from 1908 to 1994, concluding with his DirectedCreativity Cycle that "is a synthesis model of creative thinking that combines the concepts behind the various models proposed over the last 80+ years."

• A wide variety of strategies — 31 tools for creativity — are described by Charles Cave in Creativity Techniques plus "What can I do to increase my creativity?" and a link to plenty of ideas and resources in his Creativity Web: Resources for Creativity and Innovation; and a Resource Center with lots of information in 11 categories, including software, magazines, books, organizations, conferences, and websites.  This website is very thorough, worth exploring, is useful for getting a comprehensive overview of the field.

• Another website is much less comprehensive, but is interesting:  Thoughts on Problem Solving was developed by faculty in the Engineering Dept at the U of Michigan.

• Edward de Bono has been influential in the field of creativity, with his Thinking Tools — Lateral Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, Direct Attention Thinking Tools, and more.  On another website, de Bono describes Lateral Thinking and (on a timeline) other ideas & programs.

• Visual-Literacy.org has a creatively organized Periodic Table of Visualization Methods to stimulate creativity, and Stairs to Visual Excellence and in other ways when you click their navigation links.   (hint: to see mouseover-popup “visual representations” on these pages, your browser's Javascript must be enabled)

Perseverance, Relaxation, Flexibility

• Perseverance is useful for creatively generating ideas, and often is necessary for productively transforming ideas into realities.  Thomas Edison, a prolific inventor, said "genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," and "opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  According to Angela Duckworth, the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but is a special blend of passion and persistence she calls "grit" because (says Edutopia about her ideas) "research is increasingly linking a constellation of traits (including grit, passion, creativity, teamwork, loyalty, and honesty) to success throughout life," and (says Angela) "enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare." {review of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance} [[e.g. find pages & videos about edison's perseverance with light bulb, seeing long process as 1000 steps, not 1000 failures, @ws#all ]]   /   You can make creativity an action-verb by combining talent + passion + persevering with tenacious grit (by Fred & Annie, Loud Coffee Press) – creativity & grit: to get productive momentum, dream big and plan small, show up and start to work (by Kate Maria Pennell) – Develop Grit and Amplify Your Creativity (1:35:12 video, by Flow Research Collective with Angela Duckworth (imagine "what is far away from the here and now") & Scott Barry Kaufman [a podcast with transcript] [authenticity, creativity, confidence]).  Imagination, Creativity, and Productivity (by Lisa Canning) asks how imagination and creativity (they're not the same) flow into productivity; she looks at theories of creativity, especially the work of Ned Herrmann.

• Overcoming Procrastination:  Are you avoiding a task that should have high time-priority — due to its urgency and/or importance, or a timing that will let you take advantage of opportunities while they're still available — because it seems overwhelming or unpleasant, or both?  One way to overcome this procrastination is to use a Swiss Cheese Strategy by “poking holes in the task” so it seems less overwhelming.  Then when you're feeling good about what you've already done, and you anticipate the much greater satisfaction you'll feel when you get all of it done, and it's over, you'll be motivated to continue working.    {and more}

• Relaxation and Incubation:  Creativity can be a result of perseverance and hard work, but it also can be stimulated when you just relax.  Sometimes incubation — that occurs when you just “take a break from trying” — can stimulate (allow?) creativity.  If you work on a problem for awhile (to prepare your mind) but don't solve it, and then stop thinking about it, when you return to the problem you may be able to solve it.  How and Why?   /   In her comments on a research study about "aha" moments of insight, Jean Ann Van Krevelen describes another way that Chance Favors The Prepared Mind when, if you "stay observant and open to creative opportunities and solutions... [that previously] you were unaware of, you maximize the possibility of an aha moment."

• Flexibility and Perseverance:  Sometimes tenacious perseverance is rewarded.  At other times, flexibility pays off.

Sometimes PERSEVERANCE is needed, so DIG DEEPER.		Sometimes FLEXIBILITY is needed, so DIG ELSEWHERE.

Thus, perseverance and flexibility are contrasting virtues.  When you aim for an optimal balancing of this complementary pair, self-awareness by “knowing yourself” is useful.  Being flexible in your thinking about “where to dig” and “how to dig” are two kinds of...

• Thinking with Flexibility:  If an Opportunity Presented Itself, Would you Notice? (by Jay Gordon Cone) explains why “yes” is more likely if you can think flexibly with a prepared mind.  And if (as in a pivotal period of life-experiences for Peter Buffett) you have learned skills that prepare you to take advantage of the opportunity.  And on a much smaller scale, How I didn't Learn to Ski (and then did) with Persevering plus Flexibility with Insight.

Being Creative when we Learn and Define

a context:  When we're thinking creatively about creativity – as in our descriptions of what creativity is – it's useful to think about process & products & styles, in different areas of life.  A few of the many ways to describe creative process are Multiple Creativities (by “thinking” with Multiple Intelligences), and/or Adaptive Creativity (by improving an existing solution) & Innovative Creativity (by developing a new solution) and Generative Creativity (to generate many options for a solution);  the "and/or" is due to overlaps between these ways to use process.  Here are two of the ways your process-of-thinking can be creative, when you Define and Learn, with Proactive Creativity by recognizing “deficiency gaps” in a current situation, and imagining a way to make things better in the future, and with Knowledge-Gathering Creativity by doing creatively clever “detective work” to gather knowledge that is old and new, made by yourself and by others.  Let's look at these two related aspects of creative thinking.

Proactive Creativity to Define:  When you Define a Problem, you can be proactive — defined as "acting in anticipation of future problems... intending to produce a good result or avoid a problem, rather than waiting until there is a problem" — when you use prediction to recognize a problem (an opportunity to make things better) so (with a decision to “go for it”) you can design-and-do actions to help make things better in the future, or at least avoid making things worse.  A creatively proactive defining & doing is more likely to happen if you are able-and-willing* to recognize “deficiency gaps” in a current situation or idea, if (with critical thinking) you can see how it's inadequate and (with creative thinking) you can imagine that it could be improved.  At this point (after you have defined a problem-solving objective) you can try to solve this problem by generating options & evaluating options, making decisions, and doing actions.  Many things in life will be “made better (or not made worse)” only if people are creatively proactive in defining a problem and deciding it should be solved.   Because most important life-situations involve other people, often a useful process for proactive defining is by asking (to understand with empathy) “what do they want?” and (to understand with self-empathy) “what do I want?” and – based on your understandings of others & self and aiming for a win-win outcome (by using Habit 5 and Habit 4) – “what do we want?” and then pursuing your problem-solving goals with decisions & actions that will help you achieve the win-win outcomes you want.    /    * it's "able and willing" because Proactive Creativity often requires a Creative Questioning of the way things are, and this questioning may lead to resistance by defenders of the status quo.  Many people are not willing to question because they don't want to experience the resistance.

Three Parts of a Process:  What is the relationship between proactivity and gathering knowledge?  My basic model of problem solving has two stages – Define and Solve – beginning (in the top line of my basic diagram) with "Learn so you understand more accurately-and-thoroughly" followed by "Define your Objective, Define your Goals for a Solution." {and in the bottom part of the diagram, trying to Solve the Problem with cycles of Generate-and-Evaluate}   But the time-sequence of "Learn" and "Define" can be reversed, because Learning more is useful in two ways:  your improved knowedge can help you recognize a deficiency-gap and Define your Objective-and-Goals;*   it also will help you Solve the Problem, because your improved understanding will help you be more effective in creatively Generating Options (for a Problem-Solution) and critically Evaluating Options.   /   * Because you can Define more proactively when you Learn more, your Proactive Creativity (when you proactively Define so you can Solve) can be improved by your...

Knowledge-Gathering Creativity to Learn:  During your process of Defining-and-Solving a Problem you can Learn more by doing creatively clever “detective work” to gather knowledge* that is old and new, made by yourself and others.  You can MAKE knowledge that is new,  and you can FIND knowledge that is old {is already existing} by REMEMBERING it in your personal memory or LOCATING it in our collective memory, in what is recorded {is culturally remembered} in books, web-pages, journals, audio & video recordings, etc.   /   Your process of gathering knowledge can use creative thinking — when you creatively ask “how can I MAKE it?” and “where can I FIND it?”, when you think about creative ways to be systematically thorough in your searching — and always should use critical thinking, so your ideas (your understandings & predictions) are logical and are based on reality, are based on observations that are true because they correspond to the reality of what did happen, or what is happening.

* knowledge is observations, plus ideas that include predictions.    {when you effectively combine relevant knowledge with creative thinking and critical thinking, the result is productive thinking}

{more...  about the process of generating observations and predictions that are old & new, made by yourself & others;   and about using the many ways to gather many kinds of knowledge}   {and from other authors, [[ find ]]

Strategies to Liberate Creativity

by Optimizing the Productive Interactions
of Creative Thinking with Critical Thinking

When you effectively combine Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking with relevant Knowledge, the result is Productive Thinking.  When you're trying to "effectively combine" creativity & criticality & knowledge so you can solve a problem, asking “how do they interact?” and “how should they interact?” are important questions.

In principle, Critical Thinking and accurate Knowledge are always mutually supportive, with beneficial interactions, because:  critical evaluation helps you construct accurate ideas-knowledge;  and the more you truly know (when your ideas are accurate, are true because they correspond to reality) the better you can evaluate.

But the interactions are more complex, with more variation in productivity, when Creative Thinking is combined with Critical Thinking or with Ideas-Knowledge, because...

    these interactions can be beneficial, which occurs when your critical Evaluation (of an Old Idea that's part of your Ideas-Knowledge) stimulates-and-guides your creative Generation (of a New Idea), when you creatively Revise the Old Idea to Invent a New Idea.
    or the interactions can be detrimental in two ways, if Creative Thinking is hindered by its interactions with Ideas-Knowledge, or with Critical Thinking.

Free Creativity:  The next two sections examine strategies for optimizing the productive interactions of creative thinking with KNOWLEDGE and with CRITICAL THINKING, by increasing beneficial interactions while decreasing detrimental interactions to encourage Free Creativity.

1. Strategies to Liberate Creative Thinking

Usually, relevant knowledge will help you be more creative.  But not always.  Why?  Viewing a situation from new perspectives can increase creativity.  By contrast, your creativity will decrease if your knowledge of “the way things are” becomes a certainty about “the way things must be” and this rigidly restrictive assumption hinders your ability to "view... from new perspectives" and your creative generation of new ideas about “other ways things could be.”

These interactions are described in Dimensions for Thinking: a Framework for Curriculum and Instruction (Marzano, et al, 1988):

    Human “theories of the world” are essential to our learning and making sense of the world.  However, there is a curious paradox about schemata.  Just as they are the basis of human perception and understanding, so too are they “blinders” to interpretations that fall outside their scope. ...  Creativity involves the ability to go beyond the schema normally used to approach a problem... and reframe the problem so it might appear in a different light.  Characteristically, the creative person has the ability to look at a problem from one frame of reference or schema and then consciously shift to another frame of reference, giving a completely new perspective.  This process continues until the person has viewed the problem from many different perspectives.

Craig Rusbult describes “combining the best of old & new” and using Strategies for Thinking to Reduce Restrictive Assumptions — so your knowledge of “the way things have been” won't become a certainty about “the way things always must be” — to let you escape ruts-of-thinking, so you can creatively imagine “the way things could be.”

• People in the community of education (and business,...) should recognize, appreciate, and encourage different styles of creativity.  In a research-based essay (Two Dimensions of Creativity: Level and Style), Gerard Puccio (describing ideas of M.J. Kirton, as in Adaptors & Innovators - Why New Initiatives Get Blocked) describes the advantages & disadvantages in two styles of creative people, who function primarily as adaptors (whose focus is improving an existing situation) or innovators (who develop and advocate new solutions).  Puccio says, "Instead of valuing one style, an organization should respect and value the adaptive and innovative styles of creativity.  Individuals within an organization can work more effectively together by capitalizing on each others' strengths, rather than punishing each other because of individual differences.  If an atmosphere of openness and trust prevails in the organization, then the adaptors and innovators will be able to join their creative talents to propel the organization to success. ...  Individuals will manifest their creativity in different ways, and both styles of creativity are valuable."

I.O.U. - Later, maybe in late-2022, I will read web-pages — found by searching for [creativity ruts] or [creative thinking outside the box] or [assumptions hinder creative thinking], etc — to learn more, and select additional pages for linking-to in this section.

2. Strategies to Liberate Creativity

so it becomes a more-free creativity
by reducing the hindering interactions
of Creativity with CRITICAL THINKING:

A blending of creativity and critical thinking is necessary for productive thinking that produces a high-quality solution for a problem.  But creativity can be hindered by its interactions with critical thinking, for reasons that are psychological and/or sociological, affecting individuals and groups.

First we'll look at a distinction (when asking “what does critical mean?”) and then a “brainstorming” strategy to liberate creativity.

A hindering is more likely when critical is “emotionally charged” (due to the intention of a critical thinker, or perception by others) instead of critical thinking just being logical thinking.  The meaning of "critical" is important, and it's why my links-page for CRITICAL THINKING begins with a clarification of what critical does mean, and doesn't mean:

To avoid misunderstanding, in the context of "critical thinking" we need to understand what "critical" does mean, and doesn't mean.  In this context, critical thinking is just logical thinking;  critical thinking is not necessarily being “negatively critical” as in a commonly used meaning of the word.  In fact, a more accurate term would be logical thinking (re: its process) or evaluative thinking (re: its goal).  The result of evaluation can range from positive to negative, from acceptance to rejection or anything in-between.

In an effort to decrease a hindering-of-creativity by critical thinking — especially if it's emotionally charged (by intention and/or perception) but also if it's mainly logical — one strategy is to temporarily adjust the creative/critical interactions by focusing on creativity for awhile.  How?

Brainstorm-and-Evaluate occurs in two phases:  During a creative Brainstorming Phase, critical feedback (from self & others) is temporarily reduced, to encourage confidently free creativity in generating lots of ideas, aiming for innovation.  Later, these ideas are evaluated in a critical Evaluating Phase.

During a Brainstorming Phase, you can relax and be wildly creative because you have the confident assurance of knowing that your innovative ideas won't be “put into action” before they have gone through an Evaluating Phase, so unwise actions can be avoided.  The goal of this strategy is to allow the effective operation of both creativity and criticality, at different times in an overall process of creative-and-critical problem solving.

The Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) says, "The fundamental principle of ideation [the process of generating ideas] is to be cognizant of when you and - your team are generating ideas and when you are evaluating ideas – typically keeping these two tasks separate, and only mixing the two intentionally."

MindTools has a “how to do it” overview of brainstorming plus other Creativity Tools and a wider range of thinking strategies in their Full Toolkit.

The Creative Education Foundation can help you improve your Creative Problem Solving (using the CPS Process) by combining creative divergent thinking (as in brainstorming) with evaluative convergent thinking.  They offer programs & workshops, both in person and online.   {wikipedia}

Creative-while-Critical Multitasking?  No.

Scientific research (in psychology, neurology,...) shows that we don't think by multitasking, instead we shift back & forth between thinking in different ways, each with a different focus and purpose.  The goal of various brainstorming strategies — thinking strategies in which you intentionally try to be “creative without critical” temporarily, by first creatively Brainstorming, and then critically Evaluating — is to optimize interactions between creativity & criticality, so the overall result is more productive.

making adjustments:  During your process of problem solving — when you are using creative-and-critical cycles of Generate-Evaluate-Generate-Evaluate-... — two variables you can adjust are the focusing and timing in your half-cycles & cycles.  For example, your critical thinking can be delayed or immediate.

    delayed critical thinking:  In a particular half-cycle of creatively Generating Option(s) you may want to try generating many options (as in brainstorming) while you are intentionally avoiding any evaluation of options, to promote a Free Generation of Options.
    immediate critical thinking:  But in other phases of your overall problem-solving process,* you may find it useful to critically Evaluate one option, and then immediately use your Quality Check (that provides feedback about the option's Quality) to guide your creative Generation of a better version of this option, with Guided Generation of an Option.
    Of course, during these adjustments of focus you also will adjust your timings by deciding whether the time for each half-cycle (when you Generate or Evaluate) will be short or long, so your cycling will be fast or slow.  Often you will do this automatically, without thinking much about the timing.
    * You choose what you will do in each phase of your problem-solving process, trying to more effectively coordinate your process of design by making wise action-decisions about “what to do next.”

Evaluations  –  Does brainstorming work?

Among experts “the correct answer” is debated, with some saying YES (IF...) but others NO.*   Disagreements occur due to variations in:  techniques, application-strategies & leadership, situational contexts;   goals (what do you want to happen? how do you define success?);   research methods, re: designing experiments, making observations, interpreting observations, communicating conclusions.

* This "YES...NO" page – assembled by me, Craig Rusbult – has links to pages by experts (especially Mark McGuinness, Bob Sutton, Jonah Lehrer) who are advocates & opponents, along with my summaries and comments.  Two insightful pages from Mark McGuinness (LateralAction.com) are Why Critical Thinking Is Not a Creativity Killer and asking (with pros & cons) Is Brainstorming a Waste of Time?   /   Here are some useful web-resources:

A Review of Brainstorming Research - Six Critical Issues for Inquiry by Scott Isaksen of the Creative Problem Solving Group.

Resolving the Paradox of Group Creativity by Andre Walton, in Harvard Business Review.

Wikipedia examines research about creativity and some "challenges [i.e. hindering factors] to effective group brainstorming."

You can find a wide variety of ideas about creative brainstorming in PAGES (10 tips - 11 Best Ways - 8 Tricks - 17 Methods - 10 Techniques - 5 Weird Techniques - Driving with Brakes Off & On - and many more) and VIDEOS (6 Ways - 3 Techniques - 3 Social Strategies - Done Right - and more when you search YouTube for [creative brainstorming techniques] and [ted brainstorming] and other terms).     { i.o.u. - Later, maybe in June 2021, I'll carefully examine these pages/videos and others, trying to find those that are most interesting-and-useful. }

here are some rough-draft "scraps" of ideas:  [[ guided generation can be used for new ideas, but is a natural outcome of generating additional ideas while also evaluating ideas, so it's described above -- some correlation, but no linkage (either way) because people can generate without revision, and guided-gen is just another way to creatively generate, it just happens to be a way-to-generate that occurs in the context of generate-and-evaluate cycles, while evaluating

adaptive vs innovative

GUIDED (with small or big) + FREE with BIG CHANGE -- For example, instead of trying to modify an Old Idea so it becomes a similar New Idea that's only slightly modified, you may want to try generating a “newer” New Idea;  you can do this by trying to reduce restrictions on your thinking – by not assuming “the way things have been” is “the way things must be” – to allow a freely creative Generation of New Ideas.   {e.g. A very useful way of "not assuming" is by developing-and-using a growth mindset.}

Teaching Creativity in Schools:
Education for Creative Thinking

Plenty of “creativity training” is used in the business community, done by companies for their own people, or by other companies (or individuals) who offer this kind of education.

There is some activity in K-12 schools and higher education.  But the rare “thinking skills” programs that are available tend to focus on critical thinking more than creative thinking, although some combine critical thinking with creative thinking, and a few focus on creativity.

This section includes Resources and Creativity-Promoting Activities:

Resources  –  Improving our Education for Creativity

The Quest for Creativity in Schools (by Beth Holland for Education Week)

Creativity, Culture and Education (home - story & people - programs - publications) has a searchable Research Library that includes their research & reviews.

Yes, You Can Teach and Assess Creativity!

Edutopia asks (re: assessment & creativity while interviewing Angela Duckworth) In Schools, Are We Measuring What Matters?

Adobe describes their research showing why Creativity Should be Taught as a Course – and Adobe provides support for creativity education in k-12 & higher, plus business.

Videos:  You can search YouTube for [creative thinking in schools] and [ted creativity in education] and other terms & combinations.    {i.o.u. – Soon, maybe in June 2021, I'll link to individual videos.}

ERIC Digests have excellent overview-summaries about education that stimulates creativity (and curiosity) in counseling and in classrooms (for young children and for gifted in language arts) and adults – and you can search for more about creativity and CRITICAL THINKING and other topics.   And ERIC (its FAQ) lets you search for ideas about thinking skills (creativity & creative thinking and critical thinking, decision making,...) and much more,...

including (by people from ERIC) the Educator's Reference Desk.

The International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State University offers a thorough education in creativity, although I'm sure they say “this is just a start, a launching pad for your own explorations.”  You can read their Creativity Collection of students' work – projects and theses (abstract & whole) – and search the Center's Creative Studies Research Guide.

 
Creativity-Promoting Activities
that Improve Growth Mindset

Promoting Creativity:

With an effective general strategy, teachers can promote creativity by letting their students do activities that provide opportunities to be creative and stimulate creativity, while encouraging students so they are expecting to “do it better” because they are developing-and-using a growth mindset, and helping students learn useful principles & strategies for increasing their creativity.

 
Building Bridges:

When we show students how they use a similar problem-solving process (with design thinking) for almost everything they do in life, we can design a wide range of activities that let us build two-way educational bridges,

• from Life into School, building on the experiences of students, to improve confidence:  When we help students recognize how they have been using a problem-solving process of design thinking in a wide range of problem-solving situations,... then during a classroom design activity they can think “I have done this before (during design-in-life) so I can do it again (for design-in-school)” to increase their confidence about learning.

• from School into Life, appealing to the hopes of students, to improve motivation:  We can show each student how they will be using design thinking for "almost everything they do" in their future life (in their future whole-life, inside & outside school) so the design-thinking skills they are improving in school will transfer from school into life and will help them achieve their personal goals for life.  When students want to learn in school because they are learning for life, this will increase their motivations to learn.

 
Improving Educational Equity:

When we build these two bridges (past-to-present from Life into School, and present-to-future from School into Life) we can improve transfers of learning — in time (past-to-present & present-to-future) and between areas (in school-life & whole-life) for whole-person education — and transitions in attitudes to improve a student's confidence & motivations.  This will promote diversity and equity in education by increasing confidence & motivation for a wider range of students, and providing a wider variety of opportunities for learning in school, and for success in school.  We want to “open up the options” for all students, so they will say “yes, I can do this” for a wider variety of career-and-life options, in areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and non-STEM.

 
Designing Curriculum & Instruction: 

An effective strategy for a Goal-Directed Designing of Curriculum & Instruction is to...

• DEFINE GOALS for desired outcomes, for ideas-and-skills we want students to learn,

• DESIGN INSTRUCTION with learning activities (and associated teaching activities) that will provide opportunities for experience with these ideas & skills, and help students learn more from their experiences.    {more about Defining Goals and Designing Instruction}

[[ I.O.U. - Later, maybe in late-2022, I'll find and link-to some general resources for creativity-promoting activities.

Creative Conversation  (with planning-and-improvising)

[[ iou - this section will continue being developed in mid-June 2021 ]]

Everyday Living:  [[intro - this is a topic that will motivate students and will help them form two-way bridges between life & school for an extremely valuable skill (creative conversation) they know is important for them (and everyone else) in many ways ]]

Principles: [[life provides many opportunities for creative improvisations in projects & activities (each of these general categories can include conversation as a common real-life application)  /  a 50-50 principle from music – of sometimes (but not always) meeting expectations, by smoothly blending expectations with some surprises, in a creative mixture – can be used in art (music, stories, drama, comedy,...) and in conversation (that can use stories) -- e.g. when you listen to music, you have musical expectations and music that is “interesting” has a mixture of what is expected (for stability & understanding) and is unexpected (for variety/spice), and CT is especially useful for adding the unexpected -- you also can do this in conversation.

Finding Topics: [[find pages for linking-to

Creative Improvising: design a plan that includes planning to creatively improvise:  e.g. you can use the strategy of Vin Scully -- who justifiably was honored by many "hall of fames" during his long career as a baseball announcer for the Dodgers (in Brooklyn & Los Angeles) -- who would prepare thoroughly before each game, and then during the game he would plan to decide "what to say and when" based on what was happening during each inning, each pitch, each play;  during times with action he would colorfully describe the action, and during times of no-action he would colorfully tell stories (about players, history,...) based on his preparation. ]]

Creative Improv:  [[yes and... is a general strategy used in comedy improv, can be used in general improv of many kinds, including conversation

General Strategies [[find pages & videos for linking-to

Creative Detective Work  (i.e. Creative Scientific Investigation)

[[ iou - this section will continue being developed in mid-June 2021 ]]

[[what does a detective do?  scientists are detectives, they just have a different focus-for-investigation;  combining, as in CSI

[[e.g. the creativity-and-logic of Sherlock Holmes, combining creative info-finding [clue finding] with creative logic (with deduction,...) - Holmes as Scientist & Artist -

[[an unfortunately common real-world application, investigating news to determine if it's "fake news" or is reliably accurate  /  facts + interpretation, two aspects of accuracy  /  we should use only a correspondence definition for truth (I use broad definitions for problem-etc because they're useful for education, but use a narrow definition for truth, with precision)

I.O.U. - Later, maybe in June 2021, this section will have more information about creativity-stimulating activities & programs, for K-12 and beyond.   {and there will be more in the links-page for TEACHING ACTIVITIES}

I.O.U. – This section will continue being developed later (maybe late-2024?), becoming more complete & coherent.  I'll use some ideas in this brown box, with lots of condensing and revising.

[[ these ideas will be combined with those above, about everyday creativity

[[ in all areas of life, including relationships, we can more effectively liberate self from personal ruts, to reduce restrictive assumptions about “how I (or we) must be” and “how I must do”  /  flexibility is an important part of creativity -- with creative thinking in idea-generation, then following up with productive action  /  you can "reduce ruts" by thinking in new ways about other people, with understandings that are deeper & more accurate, based on better empathy, in relationships & also in traditional design projects {link to dp-mo.htm#empathy & #emrel}

[[ but only some decisions (not all) are made by creatively generating options and critically evaluating options, because many decisions are made in other ways, e.g. by habit or by using subconscious intuitions when you do generate-and-evaluate but this is done very quickly and sub-consciously] [or it could happen so quickly that basically you just generate one option and immediately do it] @ thinking strategies

[[ learning and teaching:  you can improve yourself, and (as teacher/coach) improve others.

[[ i'll put the ideas below into one of the sections (there are several) about Generative Creativity:

maybe consider option and decide to not do, but maybe just never creatively thought of it (generated it) as an option.

must generate an idea-for-option (with creative thinking) so you can evaluate it (with creative thinking)

e.g. dinner party in Part 3 of Guided Creativity -- if compare B-vs-C and choose C, the quality of your decision-and-action was decreased (because you did C instead of B2) by your lack of creativity / you didn't think of way to make B better, to creatively generate B2 as best option

Time Machine with Life Editing, using Control-Z to Undo/Redo

oops, apology -- error/sin of omission, should have done it but didn't -- if mistake involves another person, apologize for error of omission, oops, i didn't consider it and decide no, it wasn't due to unwise values or priorities -- instead, just didn't think of it as an option to consider / my failure wasn't due to a lack of wisdom in logically evaluating the options (A B C D) that i creatively generated

[[ these ideas will be a new section, connected with "What is creativity?" earlier:

somehow new and somehow valuable:  Wikipedia begins with a broad definition of creativity as being "somehow new and somehow valuable," but later they define it more narrowly as "novel and useful,... original and worthwhile."  If you think flexibly – by using the broadening "somehow" in your thinking – you can expect personal creativity more often.  Why?

First, because your creativity can be useful (for “making things better” with problem solving) without being original in a strict narrow definition of original.  A result of your creativity can be "somehow valuable" if it's locally new for your situation, even if it's not globally new in the history of the world, so your result could not be patented.  When you proactively find useful problems to solve usually they won't be globally new, because most ways to “make things better” aren't unique to you, they also have been done in the lives of other people.  But when you define-and-solve a problem independently by yourself, it's "somehow new" because it's new for you.   /   And you can effectively use general process-principles and process-strategies by customizing them for your unique personal situation, to stimulate your own creativity.

Second, broad definitions are educationally useful.  By thinking of creativity as "somehow new and somehow valuable" we can help students recognize that THEY often are creative, even when they're not inventing something “totally original” like a light bulb or cell phone.  This will help us build two-way bridges between school and life, for transfers of knowledge-and-skills, and for transitions of attitudes that include a growth mindset of thinking "I can do better (by learning from life-experience) when I invest intelligent effort in improving."    {design curriculum & instruction so students will do creativity-promoting activities}

[[ maybe use these ideas:

NARROW vs BROAD -- My definition of personally-useful everyday practical creativity — which claims that a fluent generation of ideas-for-options can be creative, even if these options aren't “new and innovative” — is broader than a claim that "if an idea isn't innovative, it isn't creative" that often is assumed when describing strategies for improving innovative creativity.

and a difference between my perspective (that includes a fluent generation of ideas-for-options even if these options aren't necessarily "innovative" and "new") and narrower perspectives on creativity.

You use practical Generative Creativity, with pragmatically useful many times every day, whenever you write a brief "title + introduction" to explain that I want this page to include traditional "creation of new idea" and also pragmatically useful creativity -- practical, productive -- everyday, for life, in context of problem solving -- and / my broad definition of PS is useful for this, to "pull things together" and integrate things.

pragmatically useful creativity -- practical creativity -- productive in everyday life, in context of problem solving --

ProMotion (practical creativity) --

David Perkins says, "Creative thinking is thinking patterned in a way that leads to creative results. ...  The ultimate criterion for creativity is output.  We call a person creative when that person consistently gets creative results, meaning, roughly speaking, original and otherwise appropriate results by the criteria of the domain in question." / getting "appropriate results" requires critical evaluation.

include self-disclaimer?  re: many educators using narrower definitions.