Year: 2024 | Month: April | Volume: 11 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 363-381
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20240441
Teaching Creative Thinking Skills in Educational Institutions in Nigeria
Douglas O. Nwaokugha1, Iyalagha Ebradouye2
1,2Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education University of Port Harcourt
Corresponding Author: Douglas O. Nwaokugha
ABSTRACT
Creative thinking is a multidisciplinary concept that falls within the brackets of higher order thinking skills and its teaching in educational institutions in the 21st century has become inevitable in Nigeria in particular and the global community at large, because change occurs in split seconds with prospects, challenges and corresponding crises that keep man in a complete state of apprehension and loss without corresponding skills to explore the environment to man’s advantage. Using the philosophical methodology, the paper discusses the teaching of creative thinking skills in educational institutions in Nigeria. The paper acknowledges that the inability of educational institutions in Nigeria to prioritize the teaching of creative thinking skills is responsible for the near to nothing level of productivity that exists in the Nigerian society compared to the number of educated persons in Nigeria. The paper strongly maintains that making the teaching of creative thinking a norm in Nigeria can be a springboard for entrepreneurial revolutions that can checkmate social vices in Nigeria. The paper makes recommendations, part of which are that education should be repositioned to prioritize the teaching of creative thinking to would-be teachers in the training of teachers in teacher education institutions, that instructional delivery across all tiers of education should be based on problem based and project based approaches that prioritize practical instead of theory, a development that demands providers and sponsors of education to be more committed and that the curriculum of educational institutions in Nigeria should incorporate realities of the 21st century among others.
Keywords: Education, Teaching, Creative teaching, teaching creative thinking
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