Contextualized multiple thinking and creativity

In an era of globalization, continuous action learning, related creativity and thinking are necessary for individuals’ effective practice and sustainable development in a challenging environment. This article proposes a typology of Contextualized Multiple Thinking (CMT) (including technological thinking, economic thinking, social thinking, political thinking, cultural thinking and learning thinking) for re-conceptualizing the nature and scope of creativity in action learning. Creativity in thinking is defined as the ability to create new data, new information, new knowledge and new intelligence from action, and creativity in action as the ability to create new applications for the available data and information obtained, and the knowledge and intelligence needed to design new action. These new definitions of creativity together with the typology of CMT can provide a new systematic framework within which we can conceptualize various approaches to enhancing creativity in a practical manner, including the single creativity approach, the dual creativity approach, the multiple creativity approach and the thinking transfer approach. It is hoped that the above theoretical framework of multiple thinking and creativity in action learning can also provide a new direction for conceptualizing research and development in both the academic and professional fields internationally. Copyright © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.