How Many Roads? Critical Thinking and Creativity in Higher Education and Mathematics

We present a decade’s work in higher education and teaching subjects in Mathematics in what refers to critical and creative thinking (CCT) at a Portuguese University. Thus, this study aims to summarize and interconnect the contributions of cooperative work among teachers interested in fostering more systematic and intending to foster critical and creative thinking in Portuguese and in parallel with reflecting on their pedagogical practice. The research question: How have CCT practices in the authors’ courses changed, driven by their participation in the cooperative work of their research group? The analysis was 3-folded 1) the learning methodologies, 2) the exploratory studies, and 3) the results of the projects. We did a narrative literature review of 17 papers and a book chapter using the three groups analyzing the theme in which (at least) one of the authors appeared. The results revealed that integrating into the cooperative group allowed the two teachers to transform aspects of their practices and contribute to training the students, preparing them for the changes in this century’s daily life and labor market. Teaching using active learning strategies does not necessarily promote CCT development, but the change is still in progress. Professional learning communities are drivers for education.