What is Vertical Thinking

In this chapter, children from a 4th grade class at a rural primary school in Trinidad and Tobago participated in a three-week vacation camp with a curriculum based on design thinking. Design problems drawn from the lives of the children were used to stimulate deep thinking and engagement. The focus of the design problems allowed students to practice and build a variety of thinking abilities. They practiced both lateral thinking and vertical thinking at different parts of the design challenges. They applied critical thinking abilities of inquiry, analysis, inference, and argument. The students also practiced metacognition as they reflected on their design choices and decisions, and thought of strategies to be successful throughout the three weeks of the study. These results suggest that design-based education can play a role in developing critical thinking skills in an engaging way, even in an under-resourced context at elementary level.