Creative Thinking Can Be Taught, But How?

As I stood next to the President of Singapore and the Designer of the iconic Marina Bay Sands and Jewel at Changi Airport, I felt a tinge of imposter syndrome. A few days later, I attended a discussion about the future of Singapore design and was reminded of the importance of our mission to use visual literacy to nurture creative and critical thinking in youth.?

The World Economic Forum has highlighted the?importance of creative and critical thinking for the future of work and The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is currently in its third draft of a creative thinking assessment for 15 year olds. In the not too distant future, countries will be ranked according to how well students perform in this test. Singapore students for example have always scored well in maths and science, how would they score in creative thinking? A subject where there are no right or wrong answers, where thinking out of the box is required.

First of all, we need to dispel the myth that creativity is only required in certain industries or that it’s a skill reserved for individuals who have retained the creative confidence we are all born with.?

“In fact, to many people, creativity is confined to the arts. In engineering and the sciences however, it is simply called by another name: invention.” (Vives, 2018)

Research has shown that teaching creativity is not only possible but effective, especially when using real problems as a starting point. An analysis of 70 creativity training studies, concluded that a fundamental understanding of the underlying concepts of creativity, combined with “real-world” cases, was the most effective approach to train creativity (Scott, Leritz and Mumford, 2004).

So why don’t we teach it in schools? I’ve spoken to teachers who feel creativity is already infused in the curriculum. Others feel it is difficult to measure or don’t have time to teach it. But why couldn’t we have a creativity class just as we have art or maths? And more importantly how would this class look like?

Well first and foremost it needs to be FUN. We can practise creativity through jokes, puns and riddles.?Humour makes it easier to think more broadly and associate ideas and relationships more freely. Analogies, similes and metaphors invite us to connect many things at once, also a key part of creativity. When there are no right or wrong answers, students who may be weaker at certain academic subjects can shine and be celebrated for being able to tell a joke or solve a riddle.

“Play is the progenitor of culture and innovation.”?Johan Huizinga

Stories of Failure

We can learn about some of the greatest creative minds of our time but not just by focusing on their success - also by celebrating their failures, and the number of prototypes it took to . Research by Columbia University showed that students who are exposed to stories of how scientists ensure failure and struggle to success improved their performance in science class (and that this effect was most pronounced for the lowest performing students). (Lin-Siegler et al., 2016)

Exposure to Innovators

Researchers from Harvard, Stanford, the London School of Economics, MIT, and the U.S. Treasury studied the lives of more than one million inventors in the U.S. and found that "exposure to innovation substantially increases the chances that children become inventors."

“Kids need contact with innovators, hear discussion of innovation within the family, be exposed to media and entertainment that emphasize innovation, and otherwise come in contact with the subject on a regular basis.”

The famous story of Steve Jobs who credits the calligraphy class he took at College with the design sensibilities that made Apple stand out. The 1970s story of how Bill Bowerman, head running coach made a connection between the grid pattern on the waffle maker in his kitchen and a running shoe. This is how the Nike Waffle Trainer was invented.

Entire industries monetise creativity, what can we borrow from them? I’ve started interviewing some of the best creatives out there to capture habits and formulas. Techniques and terminologies such as 'divergent thinking' to generate many ideas and 'convergent thinking' which involves applying critical thinking to selecting only a few of the ideas.

How might this fit into the curriculum?

Emerging subjects such as digital literacy, health and well-being, provide a perfect context to apply creative and critical thinking skills. Why? Because these subjects are inherently fascinating to the generation that can swipe before it can write and because creative and critical thinking are precisely the skills needed to solve the complex problems that arise in these areas. Indeed, the OECD Creative thinking assessment asks students to imagine how a bicycle of the future might look like.?

Finally, creative muscles can be trained through fine-tuning design sensibilities such as curiosity, observation and empathy. Although these sensibilities are innate, our fast-paced digital lives can lead to them being muted.

I've seen for myself many teachers looking for new ways to engage students and I've seen how exposure and freedom to be creative will unleash their own inner creativity. We need to acknowledge there is a formula to fuel the magic that is creativity, and create a generation of creatively confident problem solvers.

“People say: you can’t teach creativity. Then again, creativity is all about reversing assumptions.” Sarah Thurber