A creative perspective on academic writing pedagogy in Higher Education: Using the DREAM model to develop creative and critical thinking in student academic writing

Abstract

Writing is a brain process. Literature in the research fields of creativity, critical thinking in relation to argumentation, as well as academic literacy pedagogy, has in the past 30 years, indicated that creative thinking and critical thinking are essential cognitive skills that are inseparably associated in academic writing. However, academic support is insufficient to help students, especially international English as an Additional, (EAL) students, in academic writing. Students struggle to voice their understanding and construct argument in their disciplines at the levels necessary within subject-specific disciplines. This paper introduces the DREAM (Discovering, Refreshing, Engendering, Adapting, Measuring) model, designed to develop student writers’ creative and critical thinking in academic writing pedagogy in higher education. The DREAM model and its general design for pedagogical implementation are introduced through a critical lens to review theoretical analysis, as well as empirical studies of questionnaires, interviews, observations, and diary notes. It analogises the stages of the DREAM model to those of the Creative Problem Solving (CPS). It also explicates specific cognitions for tasks at each stage of the DREAM model with theoretical analysis of creative thinking and critical thinking for knowledge transformation and argumentation. Finally, with literature analysis about the gap between the expectation of disciplinary lecturers on student writers’ writing tasks and the current academic writing pedagogical approaches, the article suggests a wide use of a DREAM model pedagogical framework across disciplines to support student writers to achieve in academic writing.