Design Principles for Critical and Creative Thinking in Teacher Professional Development: A Continued Design Narrative across K-12 and Higher Education Contexts
Keywords:
critical thinking, creative thinking, teacher professional developmentAbstract
Critical and creative thinking are key competencies emphasised in Singapore’s 21st century competencies and several international educational policies and guidelines. While there is consensus among various educational stakeholders on developing these competencies in students, research shows that K-12 teachers are often uncertain about what these competencies entail and how to foster them in the classroom. This paper addresses the teacher readiness issue by building on the author’s work in the K-12 context and extending the continued design narrative in the higher education context. It documents and justifies the design for critical and creative thinking in a teacher professional development course. Design principles of MASTER (Multiplexity in Making, Agency, Space, Transformative Thinking, Embodied Experience, and Reflection) are proposed and elaborated on, and learning activities are introduced. Implications for future study are discussed from three aspects: teachers as critical and creative beings, agentive beings, and relational beings. This paper hopes to shed light on teacher development, specifically the development of these thinking skills.
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