Learning to think together: Creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration and epistemic control

Area of Science:

• Education
• Cognitive Science
• Social Science

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic and climate crises highlight the urgent need for advanced problem-solving and interdisciplinary collaboration skills.
• Current global challenges necessitate enhanced creative and collaborative thinking abilities to mitigate potential social, economic, and cultural catastrophes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To synthesize research on creative collaboration across disciplines.
• To outline a framework for scaffolding collaborative thinking in educational settings.
• To equip students with creative responses to complex problems.

Main Methods:

• Literature synthesis on creative collaboration.
• Development of a framework to foster metacognitive understanding and epistemic awareness.
• Emphasis on epistemic shifting, perspective-taking, and cross-disciplinary communication.

Main Results:

• The proposed framework enhances students' metacognitive understanding and epistemic awareness.
• Students develop epistemic humility, empathy, and control through structured collaboration.
• The framework facilitates meaningful perspective-taking and cross-disciplinary communication.

Conclusions:

• Further research is needed on the benefits of interdisciplinary metacognition in diverse learning contexts.
• Educational approaches should move beyond adversarial critical thinking towards inclusive collaboration and emergent creativity.
• Developing creative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary skills is essential for future problem-solving.