Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science PART A (i)

Part A i Creative Thinking Nature of Science

Stein, Smith, Henningsen, and Silver (2000) define Cognitive Demand as, “The kind and level of thinking required of students in order to successfully engage with and solve the task.

A problem that requires only memorisation is at the low end of cognitive demand. 
A problem that requires students to make connections between ideas in new ways requires a high level of cognitive engagement and therefore is at the high end of cognitive demand.
Research has shown that using high cognitive demand tasks in ways that support rigorous thinking will lead to increases in student learning. (Stein et al. 2009).

Creative Thinking is required to make Observations: What do you notice?

Observation is much more than merely using our senses;
it also involves a mental process which, may be partly conscious and partly unconscious.

Observation is one of the hardest skills to master mainly because we are so easily distracted and we look for the obvious.

Observation requires
• patience
• time
• creative space
• imagination
• making connections to prior knowledge or experience
• curiosity

You need to allow your mind to meander with no specific destination, imagine, look for patterns and relationships – those which are known and those which are unexpected or seem to be unusual and create uncertainty.
(2017 article in “Current Biology” UC Santa Barbara Study Shows Our Brains Wired To See The Big Picture, But We May Miss The Obvious)

Image from : 
https://www.theatlantic.com/…/this-article-wont-cha…/519093/

In this image – what do you notice?
What patterns can you see? What relationships can you see? What have you seen before?
What are the unusual things you notice?
Are you in a quiet place? Have a deeper look, focus – now what else do you see that you didn’t see before?
Is this unexpected?
Are you certain or uncertain?
What do imagine?