Introduction

The second family group consists of frameworks for understanding critical and creative thinking, which we subsume under the more general term productive thinking. By productive thinking (a term used by Romiszowski, 1981), we understand what Bloom refers to as analysis, synthesis and evaluation and various combinations of these and other processes, when they lead to deeper understanding, a defensible judgment or valued product. It may involve planning what to do and say, imagining situations, reasoning, solving problems, considering opinions, making decisions and judgments, or generating new perspectives. The phrase captures the idea that this kind of thinking is not confined to the analysis of existing arguments, but is also concerned with generating ideas and has consequences for action. It makes little sense to separate critical thinking from creative thinking, since in many situations they overlap and are interdependent.

Thinking as conceptualised within the frameworks included in this family is considered to involve more than cognition, since most theorists also specify dispositions which they believe to be extremely important in the development of productive thinking. Allen and colleagues who limit themselves to argument analysis (Allen, Feezel, and Kauffie, 1967) are exceptions to this generalisation. It should be noted that the role of dispositions was one of the issues which divided the American Philosophical Association's expert panel on critical thinking, although the majority (61%) did regard specific dispositions to be integral to the conceptualisation of critical thinking and 83% thought that good critical thinkers would have certain key dispositions (Facione, 1990).