Creative and Critical Thinking Evaluation

According to Rawlinson (2017), critical and creative thinking involves the process of making a reasoned judgment which involves conceptualization, analyzing, synthesis and evaluation of data which could either be gathered through observation, experience or reflection. It is characterized by various factors which include dispositions, criteria, argument, reasoning, point of view and application of the criteria procedure.

K-6 evaluation program as stated by Tseng, Gardner, Yeh, (2016)

In many schools, the curriculum involved ensures that critical and creative thinking lessons are well designed and thus help in improving the level of thinking and the responses given. The lessons are structured in a model involving five stages which provides an opportunity to the students in the provision of new ideas and knowledge.

The strategies involved in this program are as follows:

First is questioning in which active learners are determined by their frequent rate of asking questions which helps in improving their productivity and learning skills. Metacognition is involved, and it questions one’s learning processes and thus helps in development, implementation, and evaluation of plans.

Secondly is the fluency, originality, and elaboration where the students are given a chance of coming up with ideas, combining them in new ways, categorizing them and applying creativity to be in a position of connecting the ideas.

Visualization follows where the students apply sensory information or knowledge which mainly helps in planning, goals setting and organization. Next is mind mapping which involves taking notes in the form of images and this eases the level of understanding.

Point of view being the next ensures that the student evaluates ideas in multiple dimensions. This is useful to the students in that it helps broaden their thinking. Next are analogies which enable the students in dealing with complicated situations.

Encapsulation follows which enables the students in synthesizing information which then leads to decision making which involves assessing and evaluation of various alternatives and expected outcomes. Lastly is the plus, minus, interesting (PMI) which gives the students an opportunity of determining whether the ideas in context have positive or negative impacts.

Experimental evaluation design

Critical and creative thinking highly advocates for a problem-based environment since it the environment that gives the learners an opportunity of coming up with new ideas in regards to the situation they are involved in.  This kind of environment calls for an instructional strategy which comprises of methods and techniques that help in enhancing creativity and critical skills.

Creative and critical thinking are correlated, and they are both applied in problem-solving. They involve three major processes which include synthesizing, articulation and imagination. The instructional strategy is used as the experimentation design, and it comprises of various stages which include analysis of the learners which involves identifying various solutions to different problems and this is because the main aim involves determining the needs for the question to come up with solutions. Next is context analysis in which the teaching involved is organized in such a way that it gives an opportunity for selecting a strategy, the method or techniques to apply. This is followed by organization of instructional objectives in which the learner is required to note down objectives which are measurable in terms of the question at hand. Then the instructional strategy is developed which involves brainstorming, problem-solving and discussions thus enhancing thought and analytical thinking skills. This is then followed by implementation and then assessment. In implementation involves delivery or application of the strategy in the curriculum while assessment involves assessment of the performance which involves multiple thinking and solution of various perspectives which encourages high order thinking skills.

Data collection involving the plan

Through stratified random sampling the use of questionnaire is then preferred method which is divided into two parts. The reason for using the questionnaire is because it helps in getting personal information especially if an open-ended questionnaire is used (Ghanizadeh, 2017). The questionnaire is meant for determining the performance of the students in terms of critical and creative thinking and it is a descriptive study since it involves determining the relationship between critical thinking and learning styles adopted b the students.

As stated earlier the questionnaire entails two parts where the first part asks information concerning the demographic environment while the other part contains general questions which are open ended due to the related benefits.

Results and conclusions involving data collection method

From the responses given in the questionnaire, we can deduce that most of the students apply the deductive reasoning skills and also students whose learning style is convergent portray better academic performance as compared to other learning styles. Other determining factors include age, gender and ethnic group. It can also be noted that there exists a negative relationship between critical thinking and divergent learning style meaning that for students with the divergent learning style have poor performance in terms of academics. Lastly, critical thinking does have a positive correlation in relation to an accommodating learning style.

References

Ghanizadeh, A. (2017). The interplay between reflective thinking, critical thinking, self-monitoring, and academic achievement in higher education. Higher Education, 74(1),  101-114.

Rawlinson, J. G. (2017). Creative thinking and brainstorming. Routledge.

Tseng, H., Gardner, T., & Yeh, H. T. (2016). Enhancing students’ self-efficacy, elaboration, and critical thinking skills in a collaborative educator preparation program. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 17(2), 15-28.

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