Exploring Teachers' Responses to a Workshop for Developing Critical & Creative Thinking Through Storytelling

Current Malaysian educational policy requires school teachers to include critical and creative thinking in their classrooms; however, few teachers have been trained to do so. The research investigated an approach for developing teachers’ critical and creative thinking through story writing. Qualitative research methodology was employed to explore teachers' understanding and views of the program. The results yielded four main themes, namely: Benefits, Challenges, Satisfaction and Improvement of the Writing Thinking Stories (WTS) program. Participants acknowledged that the program presented new ways for teaching critical and creative thinking (CCT) in a meaningful environment. Some challenges included overcoming caution when being creative; integrating philosophical concepts into their stories and a lack of fluency in English resulting in some participants requesting the chance to write stories in their mother tongue in groups. There was general satisfaction with the program, although some participants expressed a need for training in Community of Philosophical Inquiry (COPI) prior to the program. All in all, the WTS program resulted in teachers successfully producing short thinking stories that integrated values and CCT in a fun and meaningful way. Keywords: Story writing, Critical and Creative thinking, community of philosophical inquiry