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This paper offers a theoretical and research-based view of needed changes in 21st century visual art and design preservice programs, toward the preparation of artist/teacher/researchers who possess a critical balance of creative, critical, and self-directed skills and dispositions for effectiveness and success. To prepare teacher candidates as dynamic, collaborative and reflexive 21st century thinkers and creative problem solvers, design thinking provides a capacity view. Best-practice research in cognitive science, teaching and learning, and the visual arts and design lead to frameworks for building cultures of dynamic thinking and learning.
The realities of life in this fast-paced, 21st century global economy demand a new breed of citizens-those who are able to use creativity and reason to meet complex challenges and those who can access their critical, imaginative, and practical skills with wisdom for success and purpose in life (Ingalls Vanada, 2012; Sternberg, 2008). In A Whole New Mind, Pink (2005) states that "the keys to the kingdom are changing hands," and that those who hold them are the creative and empathic connection makers who can create for function and design (p. 1); match critical thinking with compelling, persuasive and meaningful narratives; and successfully cross over disciplinary boundaries to combine disparate ideas into a new whole. Nearly two decades ago, the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (U.S. Department of Labor, 1991) pressed for advancing balance of creative problem solving, reasoning, and decision-making skills in our youth. Friedman (2004) in The World is Flat, brought further awareness to the importance of developing "a creative class" for economic reasons, claiming that the United States lacked educational emphasis on creative and interdisciplinary thinking compared to other countries (e.g., design and technology, art and science, math and music).
Overall, educational systems have continued to emphasize study within siloed disciplines, sacrificing balance and quality thinking for higher test scores in a narrow subset of disciplines (President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, 2011), using pedagogies that stifle creativity and self-directed learning (Robinson, 2001). In turn, this decline has affected many college students' abilities for becoming "fully literate in critical thinking and creative processing" (Smilan, 2007, p. 242). In The Global Achievement Gap, Wagner (2008) also points to the inadequate development of the K-12 student's basic skills necessary for success...