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Computational Thinking and Creativity

In the decade between 2002 and 2012, the number of Bachelor degrees awarded in Computer and Information Sciences fell by more than 17%, the largest decline for any field in that time period. While graduation rates in Computer Science have been ticking up more recently, we still do not produce enough graduates to fill the growing demand for STEM jobs prompting Obama to comment: “Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job.”

One reason for the low number of STEM graduates is the high attrition rate (~50%) due to students who switch their major. Students whose first exposure to a programming language is in college find the coursework and getting good grades challenging. Researchers studying this phenomenon found that, “due to the difficulty experienced in learning to program, some students drop from the major all together instead of continuing and learning a different programming language or choosing an alternative technology track.” One clear solution is to start introducing computer science fundamentals, or computational thinking, earlier in schools. Computational thinking is an approach to formulating problems in a way that computers and other tools could be used to solve them.

Proponents of introducing computational thinking in K-12 point out, “All of today’s students will go on to live a life heavily influenced by computing, and many will work in fields that involve or are influenced by computing. They must begin to work with algorithmic problem solving and computational methods and tools in K-12.” That leads us to the next problem – how do you introduce a kindergartner to algorithms and programming concepts?

One approach that is gaining traction worldwide is the Computer Science Unplugged project. Initiated at the University of Canterbury, it uses games and activities to expose children to the kind of thinking that is expected of a computer scientist, all done without using any computers. One reason that the Unplugged approach is becoming popular is that it requires less commitment and resources to introduce children to computational thinking. But what exactly does computational thinking involve?

Mitchel Resnick, professor at MIT whose group created the Scratch programming language for kids, and his collaborator identified three dimensions of computational thinking – computational concepts (the concepts designers employ as they program), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they program), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves).

In our newest after-school program, currently in pilot, we are using the unplugged concept to not only introduce children to computational thinking concepts (like sequential logic, conditionals or flowcharts) but also creative thinking (changing perspectives, associational and analogical thinking) and storytelling. During this program children will create a puppet show that incorporates some programming and creative thinking elements, to make a fun and interactive final show.  

Both computational thinking and creative thinking are now considered critical 21st century skills. In fact, merging creative thinking exercises in computer science education has actually been shown to improve learning of computational thinking. Our goal with this program is to help children grow into more effective problem solvers.

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Analogical Reasoning

In the early 1860s, when Leo Tolstoy was teaching writing to children of Russian peasants, he hit upon an interesting way to bring more creativity into the exercise. He asked his students to write a story on the proverb, “He eats with your spoon and then puts your eyes out with the handle.” The result of his exercise surprised even him.

After some initial hesitation, his students approached the challenge with an unexpected enthusiasm and produced a much better composition than the one Tolstoy had himself written. Tolstoy commented on the quality of his students’ work in an article with, “Every unprejudiced man with any feeling for art and nationality, on reading this first page written by me, and the following pages of the story written by the scholars themselves, will distinguish this page from all the others, like a fly in milk, it is so artificial, so false, and written in such a wretched style.”

While Tolstoy was simply trying to motivate his students to write with more vigor and authenticity, he accidently introduced his students to a key creative thinking skill – analogical reasoning.

Analogical reasoning is the ability to find relational similarity between two situations or phenomena. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein in their book, Sparks of Genius, consider analogical reasoning to lie at “the heart of what it means to think creatively” and a skill that many scientists rate as the most important one to possess.

In fact, several discoveries in science can be traced back to finding the right analogy. For instance, early geneticists likened genes to beads on a string to help them understand how traits are passed along. While this simple analogy couldn’t explain everything, it did suggest possible mechanisms for inherited traits. Making analogies is a fundamental way of thinking applicable not just in science, but in almost every field like mathematics, religion and literature. Robert Frost’s metaphor of life to a journey in “The Road Not Taken” is especially powerful because of the unique associations it invokes each time.

While it’s clear that analogical thinking plays an important role in creative thinking, what exactly does it involve? Underlying analogical thinking are three mental processes – Retrieval (with a current topic in working memory, a person may be reminded of an analogous situation in long-term memory), Mapping (aligning the two situations on the relational structure and projecting inferences), and Evaluation (judging the analogy and inferences).  

The MindAntix brainteaser, Proverbial Tales, inspired by Tolstoy’s challenge to his students, aims to strengthen the mental processes used in analogical reasoning. Using proverbs from different cultures, users have to construct an original story that reflects the meaning of the proverb, forcing them to go through the different stages of retrieval, mapping and evaluation.

As Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein point out, “There is so much to be learned by analogizing that we must not neglect to learn how. Like every other tool for thinking, the capacity within ourselves and our children ought to be nurtured, exercised, trained.”