The uncertainties and multidimensional crises faced by today’s society also shape the civic qualities individuals should possess. Critical thinking skills, along with their public qualities, are the civic skills required by today’s society. There is limited educational sciences research on Hannah Arendt’s treatment of thinking as political action with moral responsibilities. This case study examined argument-based discussion sessions held by university students regarding Turkey’s social problems, based on Hannah Arendt’s understanding of citizenship. The analysis covered six argument-based discussion sessions on Turkey’s social problems, a discussion session based on general evaluations, written evaluation forms, and individual interviews. Participants included 44 teacher candidates enrolled in the education faculty of a university in Central Anatolia. Data collection was conducted during the researcher’s Critical and Analytical Thinking course. The findings suggested that discussions based on critical thinking had transformed into a pluralistic forum by creating a public context where individuals could express their uniqueness through words and actions. In the discussions, students—within their experience of political existence—tried to form ideas while expressing their individual identities and also being nourished and tested by the views of others. Plurality-based interaction supported establishing connections and clarifying personal opinions. The effort to understand different ideas entailed visiting the mind of another and thinking with an expanded mindset. Participating in discussions as a listener also provided important gains. The students who listened used their metacognitive thinking skills throughout the whole research process.
Digital information environments expose preadolescents to misleading content before verification routines are fully developed. This study examined pre–post patterns in disinformation evaluation across a two-session instructional sequence combining media-literacy orientation, guided news-analysis activities, researcher supervision, and interaction with Pimpoyo, a generative-AI chatbot using Socratic questioning and a ZPD-inspired rationale. The sample comprised 152 Spanish students aged 10–14 years. Longitudinal evidence came only from the pre–post group (n = 80); a baseline-only reference group (n = 72) contributed baseline information. The primary outcome comprised 24 measurement-equivalent indicators expressed on a 0–25 scale. Indicator-level changes were differentiated: the clearest increases clustered around cues available within the focal message, including sensationalism, alarmist format, writing quality, tone/style, and timeliness, whereas triangulation/lateral reading did not change reliably and externally oriented verification remained mixed. The overall composite increased from M = 11.90 to M = 15.90, t(79) = 6.18, p < .001, d_z = 0.69. These indicator-level patterns are exploratory and are not formal comparisons between psychometric reasoning domains. Self-perceived competence changed, whereas perceived task difficulty did not; these secondary findings do not demonstrate metacognitive recalibration. Because only one group was followed longitudinally and the sequence bundled several instructional components, observed changes cannot be attributed specifically to AI, Socratic prompting, or any single component. The findings identify a potentially important distinction between focal-message scrutiny and external verification for future controlled research.
This study investigated the relationships among mental imagery, visuospatial processing, creative performance, and academic achievement in university visual communication design students. A sample of 156 undergraduate students majoring in visual communication design completed the Mental Imagery Test (MIT), Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM), and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), while their academic performance in design studio, typography, digital imaging, and visual theory courses was assessed through course grades. Results indicated significant positive correlations between mental imagery abilities and both creative performance and academic achievement across all design-related courses. Visuospatial processing, operationalized here as figural-inductive visuospatial reasoning, partially mediated the relationship between mental imagery and academic performance in design studio and digital imaging courses, while creative self-efficacy emerged as an additional mediator for typography performance. Gender differences were minimal, with males showing slight advantages only in spatial transformation tasks. These findings underscore the importance of developing mental imagery and visuospatial skills within visual communication curricula and suggest that targeted cognitive training interventions may enhance both creative output and academic success in design education contexts.
Creativity is the core driving force for humans to break through existing boundaries and promote continuous social progress, and its positive impacts have been widely recognized. However, creativity also has a dark side, namely, malevolent creativity, which poses significant potential harm to society. Therefore, it is necessary and meaningful to conduct research on malevolent creativity to prevent its negative impacts. Based on the 4P model of creativity, this study explored the impact mechanism between social exclusion and malevolent creativity (Study 1) and the effectiveness of a group counseling intervention for self-concept clarity (Study 2). Study 1 conducted a field questionnaire survey (N= 1567). The results showed that social exclusion not only directly increased malevolent creativity, but also indirectly predicted it through the independent mediating effects of reduced self-concept clarity and heightened negative emotions, as well as through the serial mediating effect whereby reduced self-concept clarity led to increased negative emotions, which in turn predicted malevolent creativity. Trait mindfulness moderated the impact of social exclusion on self-concept clarity, with higher levels of trait mindfulness alleviating the negative effects of social exclusion on self-concept clarity. Study 2 utilized a group counseling intervention (N= 30) and demonstrated that the experimental group experienced a significant increase in self-concept clarity and a significant decrease in malevolent creativity after the intervention. The study's conclusions provide educators with references and insights for correctly understanding the impact of social exclusion and for offering interventions to enhance self-concept clarity.
