Flexible Thinkers Research Articles

The modern methodological conceptions and the development of anglo-american economics in the 20th century

Purpose: The aim of this article is to reconstruct the basic methodological assumptions that are relevant to contemporary conceptions of the science of economics developing in English and American literature during the 20th century. Methodology/approach: The paper aims to outline the logical structure of scientific theories in economics, which determines the objectivity of this science. Theoretical testing of hypotheses is performed by referring to more general and higher theoretical knowledge. Findings: The prevalence of utilitarian attitudes described in the article, which limit economic cognition to cost and profit calculations and economic processes to activities around profit maximisation, promotes the instrumentalisation of the norms and principles of this science, and indirectly indicates the absence of other autonomous values besides profit. Practical implications: Making the starting point in this article expressed in the work of British and American classics writing in the twentieth century demonstrates that they were moderate and flexible thinkers, as the structure of their theories reflects the changes that occurred in the leading methodological currents of the time. Originality/value: In every epoch of the development of the science of economics, there are concepts that consciously need to be guarded against variability (e.g. the concept of truth) and to strive to ensure that methodological concepts form as coherent a scientific belief system as possible.

Creativity Specialization: Does Diversity in Creative Skills Matter in Team Innovation?

This comprehensive study investigates the role of diverse creativity relevant traits in collaborative innovation. An initial screening with 301 participants evaluated everyone’s dominant creativity skill. In a subsequent session, 50 teams based on their dominant creativity skill participated in a creative idea-generation and selection task either in a homogeneous (all specialized in same creativity domain) or in diverse-skill (each member with unique creativity domain) group. As hypothesized, the diverse-skill groups generated more ideas than the homogeneous original, fluent, and flexible thinkers but not from elaborate thinkers groups. The diverse-skill groups also outperformed the homogeneous original thinkers groups in the originality of ideas generated. Elaboration of ideas mediated the relationship between the quantity and the quality of ideas in both generation and selection phases. The current study extends creativity research by highlighting the importance of a multidimensional approach to creativity in a collaborative context that is controversial in the current literature.

The concrete zoetrope: engaging students in pre-cinema with an eye towards the future

ABSTRACT Today’s students and practitioners of media have a growing and ever-changing number of options and technologies for applying design principles. From mobile devices to virtual reality, digital platforms and modes of production have changed the marketplace and continue to challenge both students and teachers alike to become adaptive learners and flexible thinkers. The ubiquity of digital screens and mediated space has, to some degree, rendered the formal elements of moving images less visible, if not invisible, and yet, designing to these underlying principles has driven the development of new technologies in cinema, virtual and augmented reality, social media, journalism, and games for centuries. Therefore, it may be useful to re-examine these underlying principles and formal elements of the moving image with students to gain a better understanding of the perceptual conditions whereby such experiences can be understood and crafted into new technologies and platforms. This article examines the formal elements of the moving image with an eye towards teaching practices and the development of future applications by tracing the experiments and discoveries of scientists, philosophers, artists, and thinkers throughout history who have endeavoured to discover and advance moving image technologies. By excavating early animation and cinematic devices such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope and examining their roots in physiology, medicine and mathematics as well as entertainment, students can develop a broader understanding of the current states of existing and emerging technologies, envision new applications for the movement-illusion, and re-establish an understanding of animation and the moving image as a fundamentally interdisciplinary endeavour.

Individual Differences in Revising (and Maintaining) Accurate and Inaccurate Beliefs About Childhood Vaccinations

ABSTRACTThis study examined relationships between several individual differences measures and belief revision after reading a text refuting common misconceptions about childhood vaccinations. Individual differences included preexisting accurate and inaccurate beliefs on the topic, prior knowledge about how vaccinations work, need for cognition, and flexible thinking. Dependent measures included an essay assessing vaccination support and a readministration of the preexisting topic beliefs inventory immediately after reading and after a 2-day delay. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated belief consistency effects in that preexisting accurate and inaccurate beliefs stably predict their postreading counterparts. Above and beyond these effects, readers higher in need for cognition were more likely to gain accurate beliefs about childhood vaccination at immediate and delayed time points. However, a backfire effect was also observed such that readers higher in flexible thinking were more likely to gain inaccurate beliefs, with concomitant lower values on accurate beliefs; this effect was present immediately and at a delay. The findings confirm that people can display a strong “myside bias” even when reading refutations, but that higher need for cognition affords opportunities for appropriate knowledge revision. At the same time, our findings suggest an alarming, potentially detrimental aspect of refutational texts: They may introduce opportunities for some learners to acquire novel misconceptions, especially if they are more flexible thinkers. Future directions of the current work are discussed.

ASSESSING STUDENTS’ LEARNING IN PROJECT-BASED LEARNING APPROACH

Students’ passive learning has motivated educators constantly to seek innovative ways to encourage students and improve their learning outcomes. Project-Based Learning (PBL) may be a particularly productive method for transforming practice in ways that support students learning. However, the implementation of PBL is challenging because it requires substantial change to teaching and assessment. The purpose of this paper is to explore new assessment methods that are needed in assessing students’ performance in PBL and how teachers can employ these methods in their practices. The insights provided by Project-Based Learning approach are essential for promoting effective teaching and learning. PBL provides students with an opportunity to engage in the learning process by working collaboratively to solve real-world problem. Moreover, PBL offers the potential to help students become reflective and flexible thinkers who can use knowledge to take an action. This paper emphasizes that the formative approach should be integrated throughout the assessment process, but it should be balanced with observation and tests or tasks in order to provide comprehensive information about student progress and outcomes. Sustained project-based learning is not a simple task for teachers, therefore, teachers need to be involved in professional development programs to get more understanding about what and how assessment might be realized in the project-based approach.

Under the surface

For young children to develop into innovative and flexible thinkers, settings must enable ‘deep-level learning’, explains Jan Dubiel

Thinking about thinking and emotion: the metacognitive approach to the medical humanities that integrates the humanities with the basic and clinical sciences.

Medical knowledge in recent decades has grown prodigiously and has outstripped the capacity of the human brain to absorb and understand it all. This burgeoning of knowledge has created a dilemma for medical educators. We can no longer expect students to continue memorizing this large body of increasingly complex knowledge. Instead, our efforts should be redirected at developing in students a competency as flexible thinkers and agile learners so they can adeptly deal with new knowledge, complexity, and uncertainty in a rapidly changing world. Such a competency would entail not only cognitive but also emotional skills essential for the holistic development of their professional identity. This article will argue that metacognition--“thinking about thinking (and emotion)”--offers the most viable path toward developing this competency. The overwhelming volume of medical knowledge has driven some medical schools to reduce the time allocated in their curricula to the “soft-option” humanities as they tend to consider them an expendable “luxury.” Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, has moved away from the traditional conception of the medical humanities as “the arts,” composed of art, music, and literature, toward an approach that integrates the humanities with the basic and clinical sciences, based on metacognition. This metacognitive approach to the humanities, described in this article, has three goals: 1) to develop students as flexible thinkers and agile learners and to provide them with essential cognitive and emotional skills for navigating medical complexity and uncertainty; 2) to elicit in students empathy and tolerance by making them aware of the immense diversity in human cognition (and emotion); and 3) to integrate the humanities with the basic and clinical sciences. Through this metacognitive approach, students come to understand their patterns of cognition and emotions, and in the group setting, they learn to mindfully calibrate their thinking and emotions. They gain a humbling appreciation of the fallibility of the human mind/brain and how cognitive biases and misperception can lead to medical error. They come to appreciate the complex interplay between cognition and emotion, and the importance of cognitive monitoring and emotional regulation. In the group setting, students also gain a sense of perspective of their thinking patterns and emotions in relation to those of their peers. Perspective taking and mindfulness engender tolerance and empathy, which ultimately serves as a platform for working collaboratively in teams as medical professionals. Students become aware of the social context in which thinking and learning occur, and this further shapes their professional identity. Thinking, learning, and interacting in the group setting ultimately induces a shift from self-preoccupation and an individualistic approach to knowledge toward an appreciation of collective cognition and empathy towards others. In this article, I describe the metacognitive approach to the medical humanities at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and how it is designed to develop students as agile learners and flexible thinkers with the mindful capacity for cognitive and emotional monitoring and regulation. Thinking and learning in the group setting of the colloquium ultimately also fosters the student’s professional identity.

Power, stability of power, and creativity

Power hierarchies are an essential aspect of social organization, create stability and social order, and provide individuals with incentives to climb the hierarchical ladder. Extending previous work on power and creativity, we put forward that this relationship critically depends on both the stability of the power hierarchy and the relevance of creative efforts to power. Across three experiments, we show that when power positions are unstable, low power individuals are more flexible thinkers, are less avoidant and process information more globally. Consequently, they achieve more creative insights, especially when being creative is relevant to power. As such, when the power hierarchy is unstable, those lacking power hold the power to creativity.

More than a matter of getting ‘unstuck’: flexible thinkers use more abstract representations than perseverators

Why do people perseverate, repeating prior behaviours that are no longer appropriate? Many accounts point to isolated deficits in processes such as inhibition or attention. We instead posit a fundamental difference in rule representations: flexible switchers use active representations that rely on later-developing prefrontal cortical areas and are more abstract, whereas perseverators use latent representations that rely on earlier-developing posterior cortical and subcortical areas and are more stimulus-specific. Thus, although switchers and perseverators should apply the rules they use to familiar stimuli equally reliably, perseverators should show unique limitations in generalizing their rules to novel stimuli, a process that requires abstract representations. Two behavioural experiments confirmed this counterintuitive prediction early in development. Three-year-old children sorted cards by one rule, were asked to switch to another rule, and then were asked simply to continue their behaviour, with novel cards. Perseverators applied the rule they were using (the first rule) just as reliably as switchers applied the rule they were using (the second rule) with familiar cards; however, only switchers generalized their rule to novel cards. This finding supports an early link between active representations that support switching and abstract representations that support generalization. We interpret this synergy in terms of prefrontal cortical development.

Jumping the PBL Implementation Hurdle: Supporting the Efforts of K–12 Teachers

While problem-based learning (PBL) has a relatively long history of successful use in medical and pre-professional schools, it has yet to be widely adopted by K–12 teachers. This may be due, in part, to the numerous challenges teachers experience when implementing PBL. In this paper, we describe specific hurdles that teachers are likely to encounter during the implementation process and provide specific suggestions for supporting teachers’ classroom efforts. Implementation challenges relate to 1) creating a culture of collaboration and interdependence, 2) adjusting to changing roles, and 3) scaffolding student learning and performance. By supporting teachers’ initial and ongoing efforts, we anticipate that more teachers will recognize the potential of PBL as an effective instructional approach for developing learners who are flexible thinkers and successful problem solvers.

Turning the Machine into a Horn of Plenty

The communitarian and utopian movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have commanded considerable attention from American historians. Fourierism, Owenism, and Transcendentalism, for example, have received thoughtful book-length treatments, as have later movements, such as those sparked by Edward Bellamy and Eugene V. Debs. Cultural and intellectual historians have attempted to identify common themes, to place these crusades in broader historical context, and to relate them to more conventional reform movements. In two interesting but not entirely persuasive books, Edward K. Spann examines efforts to create an ideal society in America between 1820 and 1920. According to Spann, men such as Adin Ballou, the spiritual leader behind Hopedale, George Ripley, the driving force behind Brook Farm, and even Bellamy and Debs were generally pragmatic, flexible thinkers who sought workable solutions to the vexing problems of their worlds. More important than occasional experiments with extreme practices, such as Fourier's support for Free Love, were the practical efforts undertaken by these reformers to sustain a spirit of community and of cooperation, and to blunt-not to rejectthe competitive, individualistic spirit of urban, industrial society. For Spann, the supporters of cooperative communities at Brook Farm, Hopedale, and New Harmony, for example, struggled to harness modern technology and economic forces in order to perfect society. This argument links men like Ballou and Ripley (as well as their followers) to the rise of the middle class in nineteenth-century America and to more broadly based cultural responses to urbanization and industrialization. In Brotherly Tomorrows, Spann develops this argument in a series of brief