Kathy A. Fitch
Winter Quarter, 2002
College of DuPage

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Characteristics of Critical and Creative Thinkers

As you consider the following lists of traits, think about which most and least typically describe you as a thinker, and which you'd most and least like to describe you.

1. Dwelling comfortably in the land of "no single correct answer":   School often emphasizes and rewards coming up with correct answers quickly and reliably.  All of us know, however, that many of the problems and puzzles we face in life will not yield to a single correct answer.  Raising children, negotiating relationships, solving thorny personnel issues at work, deciding whether or not to change careers--in all of these real-life situations and many more like them we are faced with multiple choices, none of which are guaranteed to be correct.  Those with highly honed critical and creative thinking skills learn to dwell comfortably in this land of conditions and possibilities, gradually becoming ever more adept at solving problems and making sound decisions based on the best available evidence at the time.  Highly evolved critical and creative thinkers are always open to the possibility that what counts as the "best" answer is subject to change as conditions warrant.  Uncertainty, of course, is never wholly easy to deal with, but developing our thinking skills can go a long way toward making it easier to cope with a world in which there is no teacher's manual with answers to life's problems helpfully listed in the back.

2. Understanding that "no single correct answer" doesn't mean that some answers aren't better than others in the instance at hand.  We can identify worthwhile answers and solutions even when there's more than one choice.  How?  Good answers are those that encompass the greatest amount of the available evidence, that are consistent with the information we've gathered, that do the best job of providing satisfactory solutions under the current circumstances, and so on.  Sound complicated?  Think of all of the possible ways of analyzing and responding to a Shakespeare play--Romeo and Juliet, for example.  Hundreds of thousands of essays analyzing that play have been written, and no two of them are exactly the same.  Indeed, many of them contradict each other!  We wouldn't have much difficulty identifying the good essays and the bad ones, though, for all of the good essays would add, somehow, to our understanding of the play, enriching our experience of it.  Bad essays would either simply repeat what has been said already, thus failing to enrich our understanding, or would offer such outlandish interpretations that they seemed not to be based on the play at all. Similarly, there are many means of raising children.  Parents who are already successfully raising one child may think that they've learned everything there is to know about childrearing, but once a second child comes along, they'll often discover that the strategies that worked well with child number one simply don't suit child number two.  No question about it, there is no single correct method of raising children.  Nonetheless, we can all agree that some approaches work better than others in the instance at hand.

3. Formulating Questions:  Many have observed that there are no such things as a stupid questions--with the exception of those that go unasked. Questions, in other words, are inherently good things because they prompt our thinking. Strong thinkers know how to generate interesting questions that lead them down new paths, and they recognize that even questions that might seem sort of silly, at first, can actually prove quite valuable.  Note that children are famous question askers, sometimes generating ten or more of the things in a single breath!  Somewhere along the way, many of us lose that ability to generate questions so prolifically, perhaps because we've been shushed too many times by parents or teachers, or perhaps because we've lost our childlike awe of the world, along with our voracious curiosity about how the world works.   

4. Switching critical lenses with growing ease, and recognizing that one's critical lens determines what one sees:  You may have heard the saying, "When you're only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  That saying is an excellent illustration of the importance of critical lenses.  "Critical lens," is shorthand for "perspective" or "point of view."  In college, the general education courses you take are designed to familiarize you with a variety of critical perspectives, so that you learn to think like a biologist, an economist, a psychologist, a sociologist, a chemist, a writer, and so on.  One goal of college is to help us become "well-rounded," which means that we should be familiar with a variety of ways of looking at the world, and we should be able to discern the connections and contradictions afforded by those varying perspectives.  Even seemingly simple observations grow richer and more complex when we have a variety of perspectives to bring to bear on them.  For instance, I've often noted that the front porches that were so common in my childhood neighborhood are quite rare here in suburbia. Nearly every house comes with a backyard deck, these days.  Why?  The sociologist in me wonders if living in such crowded conditions makes us prefer the privacy of a backyard deck to the public display of a front porch.  My inner sociologist also wonders whether our mobility makes us much less likely to know all of our neighbors--and thus want to greet them from our front porches as they pass--than we were when families spent their entire lives in a single neighborhood.  From a psychological perspective, I wonder how much of the backyard deck phenomenon is a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses," an observation which, in turn, makes my economic frame of mind kick in:  why are so many of us willing to pay so much--tens of thousands of dollars--for a living space that's only really usable for a few months a year in this part of the country.  Then, of course, my English teacher self takes over to contemplate writing a poem or an essay about porches and decks and all they reveal about our changing society.

5. Honing the perceptual skills that feed the pool of "intellectual raw data" that makes complex conceptions possible:  If I didn't stop to notice all of those backyard decks, I'd never end up tempted to write about them.  To think, in short, we must take the time to notice our worlds, collecting data about them through our senses, our experiences, and our reading and research. Makes sense, doesn't it?  After all, it's pretty tough to become strong thinkers if we haven't anything to think about!  Sayings like "stop to smell the roses," or "wake up and smell the coffee!" remind us of how important it is to slow down and notice our worlds.  Keen perceivers make strong thinkers. Once again, this is an area in which children tend to be very strong.  For instance, one spring, as I cleaned my gardens in preparation for planting, two little girls who live on my street came to join me.  Soon, we were all happily digging--I with an eye toward getting the garden cleaned at last, they with an eye toward worm hunting!  They discovered all sorts of worms:  long ones, short ones, fat ones, and thin ones.  They picked up the worms to examine them more closely, letting them wriggle wetly across their palms.  They "accidentally" cut some of the worms in half, noting that each half continued to wriggle.  Before long, they'd sent me into the house to rummage up some jars they could use for their budding worm farm, and were peppering me with questions about what worms ate, what their purpose was, how they reproduced, and so forth.  More than a few grade school science teachers would have envied me that teaching moment, I'm sure!  Both learning and the hunger to learn begin in simply noticing.

6. Knowing how to move from both the general to the specific (deduction) and the specific to the general (induction):  Strong thinkers can both apply general principles to individual cases and extract general principles from a collection of individual cases. 

7. Understanding and appreciating both fixed and organic forms:  For instance, a strong writer should be able to write in a variety of circumstances.  He or she should know when and how to write very formal things such as resumes, letters of application, and business letters, but should also be aware of when and how to create more fluid forms.  Similarly, a strong thinker should know when and how to apply specific formulas, and when and how to get along without them.

8. Developing a willingness to be an explorer, not an expert:  Thinking is a journey whose destination is often uncertain.  Critical and creative thinkers learn to enjoy the journey despite or because of its uncertainty.  As an old cruise-line ad used to put it, "Getting there is half the fun!"  Learning, by definition, requires stepping out of our areas of expertise.  We can do so tentatively and nervously (a little discomfort is probably unavoidable, but too much is clearly paralyzing), or with an explorer's spirit.

9. Making cross-disciplinary, cross-media connections:  Unlikely connections can lead to valuable insights. Think, for instance, of the design of a spiral staircase, which is said to have inspired understanding of the double-helix structure of a DNA Molecule.  Similarly, Sigmund Freud's influential psychoanalytic theories were heavily influenced by Greek mythology.

10. Willingly setting aside the widely accepted "correct" answer to explore other options:  For years, the idea that ulcers are caused by diet and stress was accepted as gospel in the medical community.  Indeed, when the idea that bacteria may play an important role in the formation of ulcers was first introduced, it was considered so controversial that it was dismissed out of hand by many experienced doctors.  Years later, even as the debate rages on in medical journals, antibiotic treatment of ulcers is routine, bringing relief to thousands of people each year.  Can you think of other ideas or inventions that were once considered outlandish but are now standard, accepted parts of our lives?  

11. Considering the moral and ethical domain:  No human is an island.  Because our ideas, our actions, and our decisions effect others,  many of the most  Valuable Intellectual Traits of critical and creative thinkers fall into the realm of morals and ethics.

Traits Associated with Creative Thinkers

Elliott et al. Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning.

Tolerant of Ambiguity  |  Flexible  |  Original  |  Intelligent  | Independent  |  Able to  Synthesize   |  Perseverance |  Insightful |  Visualize  |  Fluent |  Sensitive | Connected  |  Resilient  |  Intuitive  |  Self-critical   |   Risk-taker |  Knowledgeable |  Analytical |  Curious  |  Focused  |  Imaginative  |

Kathy A. Fitch
Winter Quarter, 2002
College of DuPage

Learning Links

Teaching Portfolio

English 102

Honors English 102

English 102 Online

Policies