Interdisciplinary Critical and Design Thinking

Despite the importance of design thinking, there has been little research on interdisciplinary augmentation and the clear articulation of cognitive domain effects is still missing. The present study explores students' perceptions of and experiences in critical thinking and students' creative design ability in different study disciplines and explores correlations between students' attitudes and beliefs towards critical thinking and their design thinking ability. A sample of 268 students aged 2123 years was collected. The students' majors include preservice technology and engineering teachers' education, chemical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering. For all subjects, critical thinking and design thinking are considered important interdisciplinary capabilities. Our findings suggest that the students' critical thinking might markedly affect their creative design ability. The ways in which each discipline is taught can be transferred across different knowledge and skill domains. We found that the most creative designers are mechanical engineering students, especially in terms of the originality and usefulness of design, while their divergent thinking ability might be improved with methods used in technology and engineering teacher education. Electrical and computer engineering students can benefit when interdisciplinary methods for improving understanding are applied as evidenced by the chemical and mechanical engineering curriculum. We also suggest that female students, who dominate in divergent thinking and critical thinking, might improve team learning and decision-making where transferable skills can be enhanced along with pedagogical content knowledge. These findings have implications for interdisciplinary innovation learning and creative design assessment.