Creative and Critical

Thinking
 Creative and Critical Thinking
Albert Einstein was travelling to universities in a chaueur driven car, delivering
lectures on his theory of relativity.One day while in transit, the chaueur
remarked:
“Dr.Einstein, I have heard you deliver that lecture thirty times. I know it by
heart and bet I could give it myself”. “Well, I will give you the chance,” said
Einstein. “They don’t know me at the next college, so when we get there I’ll puton your cap, and you
introduce yourself as me and give the lecture”.
The chauffeur delivered Einstein’s lecture awlessly. When he finished, he started to leave, but one
of the professors stopped him and asked a complex question led with mathematical equations and
formulas. The chaueur thought fast. “The solution to that problem is so simple”, he said, “I’m
surprised you have to ask me. In fact, to show you just how simple it is, I’m going to ask my chaueur
to come up here and answer your question.”
—Readers Digest
 Creative and Critical Thinking
• Q-1. Explain creative and critical thinking plays vital
role for better communication?
• The world we exists moves on basis of
communication. Communication skills not only
determine our relationship with others but also
change one's personality or an individual’s career.
Creative and critical thinking play vital role in
communicating our ideas, generating new ideas and
in taking decision after doing analysis of situations.
Critical thinking and problems solving ability are
essential skills that lead to success in professional and
personal life.
 Creative and critical thinking:
• Critical thinking is the intellectual and purposeful activity that involves
the process of making reasoned judgment or reasoned decision It
helps in conceptualizing situation, analysis skill and synthesizing. It
plays vital role in evaluating information gathered from experience,
observation, reflection, reasoning or communication resulted in
belief, judgment, decision or action
• On creative thinking, Frey writes “as a thinking process
associated with imagination, insight, invention, innovation,
ingenuity, intuition, inspiration, and illumination”
• According to Beyer, creative and critical thinkers are skeptical
but same time, they are open minded and have an ability to
look the problems from different points of view with value
fair mindedness, respect evidence and reasoning, clarity and
precision. They use argument and some appropriate criteria
on conditions for their judgments. (Arguments, it is a
proposition or a statement with supporting evidence).
Argument play vital role for supplying reasoning to identify,
evaluating and constructing judgments. It helps to develop
logical reasoning that helps to examine the relationship
among different statements or data. It helps creative and
critical thinkers to accept the multiple points of view on the
problem. Critical thinker uses many procedures such as
asking questions, making judgments and identifying
assumptions. When the question is asked from a critical
prospective it takes time to answer.
• The proficiency in critical thinking develops an ability to understand
the complex phenomena of the problems and helps to solve the
complex problem or difficult issues. Creative and critical thinking
enable one to look at the both sides of the problem (the negative and
the positive sides) and to take appropriate decisions along with higher
level of reasoning and comprehension of situations. As result of it one
is able to define the problem, take the actions towards an aim, make
decisions and conduct retrospective evaluation.
•
Steps for Improving Critical Thinking;

• Seek out ideas - old or new

• Take an action:
• Be open minded and flexible:
• Ask good questions:
• Develop reflective thinking skills:
• Use triggers:
Process of creative Thinking
• Creative thinking includes a number of ways to solve a
conflict.
• First of all, one needs to identify or recognize the root cause
of the problem. All types of information need to be
counted.
• The second step is to associate with the approach towards
the matter and the people involved. (This step however is
risky as it is required to know the type of personalities the
people carry.)
• Third is awareness of subsequent step engages in thinking
or attempting to find possible solutions to determine the
conflict.
• The next step includes evaluation and finally the selection
of the best solution to resolve the conflict.
• According to Paul and Elder critical thinking is the process of “taking our thinking
apart” along ith identify the following Elements of Thought (also known as Parts of
Thinking)
• Purpose of our thinking
• Questions we are trying to answer
• Information needed to answer the question
• Inferences or conclusions we are coming to
• Concepts or key ideas we are using in our thinking
• Assumptions we are taking for granted
• Implications of our thinking
• Points of View we need to consider
• In communication, the Elements of Thought guide the critical-thinking process both when a
person is receiving (decoding) a message or sending (encoding) a message. The Elements provide
a better understanding of the context of the information, the problem, or the decision. The ‘Paul
Elder Model’ provides a transferable applicable guide to all disciplines. The following examples
demonstrate how students may use the Elements of Thought to “take apart” their thinking to
solve the problems of communication barriers. For better understanding of communication
barriers, Students can ask following questions using critical and creative thinking.
• What is the purpose of learning barriers?
• What are the causes of different types of barriers? / What is the root cause ?
• How it is affecting the communication process of the organization.
• How to overcome this problem?
• What information is needed to solve the problems of barriers ?
• What are the points of view of different types of barriers? .