Knowledge organisation and creative thinking
Abstract
This paper establishes the grounding of creative thinking in relation to how knowledge is organised. The central idea consists in considering thought as an exploration of the existing knowledge structures which a person has. The way information is represented determines which connections can be established among such representations, whilst the resulting knowledge structure determines how it can be used, that is, which kind of thought can be supported by it. Since logic demands involve relationships and few, but strict, links, creativity is grounded on a variety of relationships and a large amount of links. The first kind of structure, hence, can support deduction, implication, exclusion and any other logical operation, since the connections are very strict. This notwithstanding, logical structures are
very poor bases for creative thinking, as the strictness of the connections constrains the amount of links and, consequently, the number of exploration paths that can be followed. Important educational implications can be drawn from this framework, especially the detachment of contents in subjects, and the overwhelming logical organisation of the curriculum and the assessment procedures.
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