(Albert Einstein)
Learning is a lifelong quest, creating life-long learners requires creating curiosity, Clay P. Bedford noted that:" you can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.'' Learning is not confined to childhood or the classroom, but takes place throughout life and in a range of situations.
''Children are the engines behind their own development. They do not wait passively to be urged to engage... nor do they conservatively avoid new experiences. To the contrary, children create much of their own stimulation by observing and actively experimenting as they play and go through their daily lives" (ETFO, 2010c, p. 34). Children possess a natural curiosity about their surroundings.''
Playdough creations
Art
Imagination
Japanese art
Inquiry
Enthusiasm
Blocks art
This is my crazy idea
How the thinking process develops?
Professor Charles Fernyhough (Professor of Psychology at Durham University, UK), conducts research in inner speech, child’s thinking process development and children’s developing mind, defines the thinking process as: ‘’inner speech’’ which is conscious and active.
It is the kind of cognitive process that can make new connections and create meaning. It is dialogic: it has the quality of an internal conversation between different perspectives.
The language that forms inner speech has all of its acoustic properties stripped away, losing the qualities of tone, accent, timbre (link is external) and pitch that distinguish spoken language. ‘’Vygotsky’’ referred to this stage of internal language as ‘'thinking in pure meanings'’.
We can clearly see some aspects of this process in action in children's private speech, which can be seen to undergo the same transformational processes as it gradually becomes internalized, and then it reaches the stage of being expressed out in a form of ideas.
Go for your thoughts
Idea’s connection find the invention …
The children’s brain that has been stimulated by a particular way of thinking process is showing the most of its ability.
Many inventors come up with their ideas through a detailed and long thought process that is structured and iterative. They think, and try, improve and redo, again and again until the right idea takes shape and form in their head.
New invention ideas are not created only by those with special gifts, they do not just present themselves to people figuratively, they need a well structured an a deep thinking process.
creativity cannot be taught
What is creative thinking?
Many people believe that creative thinking is just coming up with new ideas. They think that divergent thinking, or most known ‘’outbox thinking’’ is the same as creative thinking. But what I figured out is that the unique ideas from outbox thinking must be streamlined with realistic evaluation using critical thinking , zooming in again, to choose and/or improve the best idea(s) among the generated unique ideas.
Creative thinking needs usefulness in addition to uniqueness of outbox thinking. In fact, creative thinking requires inbox, outbox, and new box (ION) thinking skills to achieve innovation.
Riverside inquiry, Henley, UK
Zoo inquiry
Marwell Zoo, Lodon
shell inquiry
Risk taking, in horse riding
Mrs. Bland's school, UK
I once saw a poster that attracted my attention, it says:
''Children are such a nice way to start human beings'' .
The sentiment resonates for me. But, if I were to rewrite the poster, I would probably lean toward something like: Children are a cutting-edge start to human life . They arrive in the world with a built in capacity to explore, grow and develop.