Complexity, Inquiry Critical Thinking, and Technology: A Holistic and Developmental Approach

Among the skill and competency areas being addressed in national education plans and by prominent educators are collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. In this chapter, a fifth C is added to that list—namely, contemplation. The argument to be presented in this chapter involves two assumptions: (a) technologies can play an important role in developing these competencies, and (b) to be effective in developing the five C’s, a holistic and developmental approach seems appropriate. Given those assumptions, the solution approach here is that a learner should be considered as a whole person and not simply a cognitive processor. Moreover, promoting effective learning involves developing stable and persistent changes in what a person knows and can do. Consequently, developing habits of inquiry and reasoning takes time and is not likely to happen in one unit of instruction, nor in one course. The earlier those habits are developed, the more likely they are to persist and to be applied to multiple domains of inquiry.