2° Task. Stephen Brookfield on Creative & Critical Thinking

Stephen Brookfield on Creative & Critical Thinking

Doctor Stephen Brookfield
A professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, leading scholar on critical and creative thinking and adult learning. He has published 15 books on teaching adult learning, critical thinking, discussion methods and critical theory. His most recent book “Teaching for critical thinking”; tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions.

Dr. Stephen defined critical thinking as a process by which we become aware of the assumptions that frame the ways we think, like scholarship, life decisions, etc.

Creative thinker
- A creative thinker is able to view ideas and practices from multiple viewpoints. - A creative thinker can generate interpretations and perspectives and responses that are different from the mainstream.
-A creative thinker is able to communicate a thought through a variety of different ways visual, graphics, kinetic.
- A creative thinker has the ability to look at things from multiple viewpoints and have multiple responses.  

Kind of assumptions

·         Causal: Cause and effect

·         Prescriptive: Assumptions about how things should happen, we should behave

·         Paradigmatic: Framing, structuring assumptions viewed as obvious, common sense, taken for granted.

4 key intellectual traditions

v  Analytic Philosophy: A student who thinks critically is good at constructing and deconstructing arguments, knows

v  Natural Science: Critical thinking is basically the application of the scientific method

v  Critical Theory: Critical thinker is someone who has heightened political consciousness who is very alert to the way that power moves within this society

v  Pragmatism: Knowledge as something that’s constantly reinvented were open to new ways of thinking.

What most help students to think critically &/or creatively?

- Circle of voices (Group Activity): Group of five people. Individuals reflect on the discussion topic (1 minute). In the first round of this activity each person of the group has their turn to give their response to the question that they have thought about in the opening minute. In the second group you can only talk about what somebody else said which can be disagreements, questions, elaborations, illustrations.
- Chalk Talks: Instructor writes a question in the middle of the board, from 5 to 10 minutes of silence is declared, students write responses to the question on the board whenever they feel ready, those who are not writing you say your jobs is to look for connections between the post that are going up to draw lines when you see connections or to draw lines connecting comments that seem opposed to each other.

- Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ): Brief evaluation tool, it takes the last 5 minutes of class.
 1. Moment most engaged as learner
 2. Moment most distanced
 3. Action most helpful
 4. Action most confusing
 5. What surprised you most?

In conclusion, Dr. Brookfield give us a speech about the main concepts, kinds and techniques about creative and critical thinking in which plains how university instructors can challenge students' assumptions and model the exploration of alternative perspectives. He also presents several practical activities that encourage creative and critical thinking in the classroom.