Creativity and critical thinking in the age of AI Teaching resources
Guidelines - What we want to foster in students
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Lifelong learning - Workers will need to practice flexibility and adaptability to change (Davies, Fidler & Gorbis, 2011). It is essential to encourage students' love for learning.
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Entrepreneurial competency – Entrepreneurship is creativity in the work world. To foster entrepreneurship, we need to nurture curiosity, originality, motivation and implementation, while taking risks (Ehrlin, Insulander & Sandberg, 2016).
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Critical thinking together with creative thinking – In the future workers will need to examine problems and raise personal insights (Davies, Fidler & Gorbis, 2011). Therefore, it is important to weave education for critical thinking to evaluate problems, with creative thinking to generate solutions (Paul & Elder, 2008). Critical thinking has been valued in education for long, yet creative thinking has been neglected.
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Inter-disciplinary creative problem-solving – Workers will need to creatively problem solve around diverse issues (Davies, Fidler & Gorbis, 2011). Therefore, weaving diverse disciplines in learning is required.
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Ethics – The challenge of educators is to nurture an approach of care and humanity toward positive use of technology, since with the exponential advancement so grows the risk of negative use (Kurzweil, 2005).
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Resources for practice in teaching and learning processes -
The Thinking Together-Creating Future Program
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To promote the competencies listed above in AI times, Raising Creative Thinkers offers student and educator books, teaching tools, and professional development online workshops, which together provide a holistic program:
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1. Books - Our books ignite exploration by stories, poems, art, science, nature and environment, thus implementing an inter-disciplinary approach. The books are based on the 5 Es strategy, by which students practice Creative Problem-Solving skills. We offer a unique Creative Problem-Solving student book, starting early as elementary school. Knowing that to stimulate such learning, we first need to establish a safe environment, Michelle Korenfeld offers the Anti-Bullying STEAM Curriculum, to build a pro-social community of learners. For educators we provide a practical teaching inspiration book, a guidebook and an inspiring book to revive creativity, and to learn to identify the educator's and the students' individual creative potential, outlining a plan to toward fulfillment.
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2. Teaching tools - Our Teachers Pay Teachers store offers PBL (Project Based Learning) implementation tools for k12, and tools to establish a safe environment supporting creativity. The store will soon offer formative assessment tools, for students to track their creative learning autonomously toward educational products. Several tools are elaborated upon in Michelle Korenfeld's teacher book, Michelangelo in the 21st Century.
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3. Professional development - Transformational enriching workshops using Michelle Korenfeld's paintings to ignite creativity, together with practice-based weaved with the research-based guidance. The teachers gain a holistic view of teaching critical and creative thinking in AI times, professional creativity and efficacy. They enjoy curiosity and intrinsic motivation themselves, to ignite students. They practice Creative Problem Solving, and learn to direct students to use AI toward leveraging their own thinking, and to critically assess information, constructing learning toward achievement.​​​
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Learn more at the Books section on this website.
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Contact to learn more about professional development!
Further reading
​Davies, A., Fidler, D., Gorbis, M. (2011). Future Work Skills 2020. Institute for the future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute. www.iftf.org, pp. 8-13.
Ehrlin, A, & Insulander, E., & Sandberg, A. (2016). The Transformation of Creativity in Entrepreneurial Learning in Teacher Education: A Critical Reflection, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 41, No. 6, pp. 35-51.
Paul, R., Elder, L. (2008). The Thinkers Guide to the Nature and Functions of Critical and Creative Thinking. Kindle edition, part 1.
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Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is Near. Penguin Books, pp. 7-34, 335-336.
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