Creativity and critical thinking are key skills for the complex and globalized economies and societies of the 21st century. A new project at the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) aims to support higher education institutions to enhance the quality of their teaching to foster students’ creative and critical thinking. The project will build an international community of practice around teaching, learning and assessing creativity and critical thinking in higher education. How do institutions currently foster and assess these skills as part of their teaching? How could they improve their practices? How can the higher education sector use these practices to enhance the quality of its teaching internationally?

The Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies is one of the higher education institutions participating in the project, together with more than 20 institutions from around 14 countries, including other national institutions. Under the coordination of researcher Elsa Estrela, teachers from ULHT’s Computer Engineering and Veterinary Medicine courses will design and document pedagogical activities and assessments, participating in professional development plans with the aim of intentionally promoting creativity and critical thinking. The effects of pedagogical interventions on students and teachers will be monitored through quantitative methodologies, involving the application of a pre- and post-test questionnaire, and qualitative reports to provide evidence of the effects of the different pedagogies tested.

The project is in its second year of development and has been very fruitful regarding the synergies that the participating national institutions have developed, namely in the preparation of data collection tools in Portuguese, as well as in the preparation of specific training for teachers.

Research Team

• Elsa Estrela
• Manuel José Damásio
• Célia Pires
• Carla Galego
• Sónia Vladimira Correia
• Alcina de Oliveira Martins
• Maria de Nazaré Castro Coimbra