FROM CRITICAL THINKING – TO CREATIVITY: STEPS TO UNDERSTANDING

Abstract

The paper contributes to the study of correlation between critical and creative thinking as the twenty-first century skills vital to succeed and stay competitive in the modern Information Age. The aim of the research is to ground a possibility of facilitating creativity with the help of critical thinking. The concepts of creative thinking and critical thinking are analysed. A synergetic correlation of creativity and critical thinking, with mutual reinforcement of both, is argued. Critical thinking is getting more innovative character, while creativity is raising to a higher level with more realistic results. To investigate the mechanism of reaching a creative result through critical thinking, original Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives and learning behaviours was compared with its revised version of 2001. It was highlighted that both versions of the taxonomy presuppose that critical thinking skills complement and reliably enable the creation of innovative ideas and new realities. The revised version recognizes and emphasises the creativeness of the critical thinking and, vice versa, the necessity of critical judgments in creating new products. The relevance of critical thinking skills for the development of creativity was considered with the help of an integrative model of critical and creative thinking proposed by L. Combs, K. Cennamo, and P. Newbill. It illustrates that critical and creative thinking overlap when it goes about the generation and refinement of ideas – at the level of high-order thinking processes, according to B. Bloom’s taxonomy. The article argues that collaboration of critical and creative thinking starts even earlier – namely, at the stage of setting a target for innovation, collecting information, interpreting and applying it – and continues throughout the entire path of constructing an innovative idea, its reflective evaluation and practical implementation. That is, critical thinking ensures self-regulation of creative thinking at all stages of creative activity and serves as a methodological tool of the creative process. It is concluded that application of critical thinking to creativity leads to better-grounded decisions, unbiased attitudes, more innovative solutions and higher quality deliverables.