Critical Thinking, Questioning and Creativity as Components of Intelligence

For a long time, intelligence has been viewed as a fixed trait and solely connected to analytical skills and memory-based capacities. However, in our fragile, uncertain and unknowable world, this kind of abilities does not necessarily promotes success in life and, more specifically, in university. With this paper, we aim to present a project whose objective is to throw light to a modern notion of intelligence. We will show how intelligence can be characterised by an integrated set of high order cognitive skills: critical thinking, questioning and creativity. We propose to design innovative instruments to characterise and assess this contemporary notion of intelligence. Furthermore, since these skills are modifiable, rather than fixed, we will design, implement and evaluate strategies to promote higher level questioning, critical thinking and creativity in university students, and, ultimately, enhance intelligence.