As suggested by cognitive scholars, metacognition is the manager of cognitive functioning and accurate cognition (Fiedler, Ackerman, & Scarampi, 2019). Yet, this metacognitive manager has a more difficult task when facing ill-defined problems without a single, correct solution as the ones found in creativity research than when facing problems with a single right solution. Specifically, the absence of a single, right solution makes ill-defined problems more difficult, making the assessment of rightness and wrongness more uncertain. This increased uncertainty, however, should not diminish our enthusiasm to understand metacognition in creative problem solving, something known as creative metacognition.
Educational institutions, governments and private firms acknowledge the importance of creativity, creative skills and creative behavior. The creative process involves generating, evaluating and selecting ideas. Even though evaluating and selecting creative ideas are as important as generating ideas, more attention has been given to idea generation (Rietzschel & Ritter, 2018). This call for research seeks to address this limitation by inviting researchers to pay closer attention to idea evaluation and selection from a metacognitive perspective.
Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is considered a highly relevant cognitive skill with important implications for a wide variety of domains, including education and private and public entities such as government agencies and private firms. Metacognition has been examined in education, memory research, social psychology, business decisions, problem solving and creativity research. In most of the domains, one important difference is between facing problems with single, correct solutions versus facing problems with multiple solutions. By its nature, the problems used in creativity research are problems without a single, correct solution. We claim that the examination of metacognition when solving problems without a single solution is important because it shows significant differences as compared to facing problems with a single right solution as the ones used in education, memory or insight research.
Consequently, we make a call for more research on creative metacognition utilizing problems without single right solutions. Contributions from any domain are welcomed. We just ask researchers to utilize problems without a single, right solution as the task used to examine creative metacognition. Conceptual developments are also welcomed as long as they discuss the implications of metacognition for problems without a single, right solution. What follows is a short list of possible research themes:
• Accurate creative metacognition
• Antecedents and consequences of accurate creative metacognition
• Antecedents and consequences of inaccurate creative metacognition
• Creative metacognition across domains such as education, social psychology, business, public policy, and decision making, among others
• Studies comparing explicitly metacognition in problems with right solutions versus problems without right solutions
• Cultural differences in metacognition
As suggested by cognitive scholars, metacognition is the manager of cognitive functioning and accurate cognition (Fiedler, Ackerman, & Scarampi, 2019). Yet, this metacognitive manager has a more difficult task when facing ill-defined problems without a single, correct solution as the ones found in creativity research than when facing problems with a single right solution. Specifically, the absence of a single, right solution makes ill-defined problems more difficult, making the assessment of rightness and wrongness more uncertain. This increased uncertainty, however, should not diminish our enthusiasm to understand metacognition in creative problem solving, something known as creative metacognition.
Educational institutions, governments and private firms acknowledge the importance of creativity, creative skills and creative behavior. The creative process involves generating, evaluating and selecting ideas. Even though evaluating and selecting creative ideas are as important as generating ideas, more attention has been given to idea generation (Rietzschel & Ritter, 2018). This call for research seeks to address this limitation by inviting researchers to pay closer attention to idea evaluation and selection from a metacognitive perspective.
Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is considered a highly relevant cognitive skill with important implications for a wide variety of domains, including education and private and public entities such as government agencies and private firms. Metacognition has been examined in education, memory research, social psychology, business decisions, problem solving and creativity research. In most of the domains, one important difference is between facing problems with single, correct solutions versus facing problems with multiple solutions. By its nature, the problems used in creativity research are problems without a single, correct solution. We claim that the examination of metacognition when solving problems without a single solution is important because it shows significant differences as compared to facing problems with a single right solution as the ones used in education, memory or insight research.
Consequently, we make a call for more research on creative metacognition utilizing problems without single right solutions. Contributions from any domain are welcomed. We just ask researchers to utilize problems without a single, right solution as the task used to examine creative metacognition. Conceptual developments are also welcomed as long as they discuss the implications of metacognition for problems without a single, right solution. What follows is a short list of possible research themes:
• Accurate creative metacognition
• Antecedents and consequences of accurate creative metacognition
• Antecedents and consequences of inaccurate creative metacognition
• Creative metacognition across domains such as education, social psychology, business, public policy, and decision making, among others
• Studies comparing explicitly metacognition in problems with right solutions versus problems without right solutions
• Cultural differences in metacognition