Creating meaning. The importance of Arts, Humanities and Culture for critical thinking development

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the need for Arts, Humanities and Cultural Studies to be widely studied within Higher Education. Research shows that such topics are necessary for the development of critical thinking, this type of analysis being innate to these domains. In this paper, I introduce the concept of creating meaning, which I define as the link between creative thinking and critical thinking and as the first attribute of a critical thinker. Before making inferences, judgements or decisions, one must identify the framework of a problem, determine the parameters of the discussion and reflect upon assumptions. These are propaedeutic to a good discussion and are prerequisites of a good critical thinker. Arguing that creativity is not a separate process from critical thinking, I aim to demonstrate that the Arts, Humanities and Cultural Studies are the promoters of critical thinking. Because disciplines in these fields are likely to create environments that foster critical thinking and encourage the production of meaning, I argue that these necessarily belong in all curricula of Higher Education.

KEYWORDS:

• Creating meaning
• critical thinking
• critical thinking dispositions
• higher education
• humanities
• arts
• culture

Acknowledgements

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission/EACEA under Grant 2016-1-PT01-KA203-022808.