The Gift of Cross-Domain Thinking

As I attended workshops and presented them at the annual Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted fall conference this past October, I often found myself wondering – what are the best “gifts” we can give to our students? While Dr. Matt Zakreski and Dr. Dante Dixon, our keynote speakers, spoke of hope, I wondered about additional important gifts, and especially about curiosity, creative and critical thinking, and the genius of cross-domain thinking.

In our increasingly standardized world of teaching, there is often little room for students (and educators) to engage in curiosity and creative and critical thinking, and its resultant cross-domain thinking, invention, and contributions to humankind.

In a July 2025 article in Psychology Today entitled How to Teach a Kid to Think Like a Genius, author Timothy Cook shared a story about an eight year old student who reminded him of Leonardo da Vinci. The student was creating and perfecting a catapult, drawing on his knowledge of physics, art, his environment, and the scientific method of experimentation. The work was highly engaging and the child was in “flow,” a phrase coined by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi. When we are in a state of “flow,” time becomes irrelevant and unnoticed. Curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking rule. In short, the child in Cook’s story was “thinking like a genius”. He was able to see connections across different domains of his knowledge, a skill that is becoming increasingly valuable for today’s kids. With information so readily available at our fingertips thanks to AI and the internet, the ability to discern connections across ideas and disciplines becomes even more important. And this is uniquely human skill.

So how can we facilitate this type of renaissance genius-type thinking in children and ourselves?

First, Cook explains the neuroscience of this genius-type of thinking. “Modern brain imaging reveals that creativity arises from dynamic interaction between different neural networks, particularly the default mode network (associated with spontaneous thought) and the executive control network (linked to focused attention and evaluation) (Benedek and colleagues, 2018).” Genius thinking requires both working in synchrony, and like any other skill, requires repeated and refined practice.

Cook postulates that schools, sometimes accidentally or unintentionally, destroy this process by requiring much testing and time-on-task requirements, often requiring students to process at lower levels of thinking such as recall and recognition. What if, instead, we deliberately created opportunities for curiosity to emerge, and opportunities for creativity and critical thinking to be utilized? What if we asked them to think cross-domain more frequently? For example, could interpreting graphs and creating written “what if” questions be combined? Could students study great artworks and look for evidence of scientific concepts like shadows, invention, or new techniques? What if the connections between math and music were more explicitly explored? The possibilities are endless, but we need to create them. And this work can be done in schools and in homes. Here are some ways:

Design challenges that require students to investigate various time periods. For example, what did transportation look like over the ages? Why did things change? How could one design an improved mode of transportation for the future? What things do you wish were incorporated into modern transportation? How can art and science help you?
Help students look for patterns across domains. What are some of the big unifying concepts…systems, collaboration, classifications, elaboration on existing ideas, etc.? How does knowledge in one domain influence another?
Encourage students to read, watch various programming, and check out websites and information across genres and domains. Kids who are curious about a myriad of topics will become kids who can think more connectively. Cultivate and model curiosity yourself, and make time for it in your life, and the life of children.
Ask students to elaborate on their thinking often. Ask probing questions. Ask them to try on different perspectives or points of view. Questions such as “what would _____ look like, sound like, feel like, or smell like to _____?” generate creative and critical thinking.
Create time and spaces where students can tinker. Curiosity and creativity often generate messes, delightful and quirky messes. These are the cradles of cross-domain thinking, spaces where curiosity drives investigation, and meaningful learning occurs.
Support problem-based learning as a method to force cross-domain thinking. Encourage research across domains before students propose solution/s.

In a world where AI can generate knowledge, only human beings can bridge artificial boundaries to create new things and new ways to do things. Cook sums it all up with this statement, “Every child has the neurological capacity for creative synthesis. It's not an innate talent but a learnable pattern. When we teach children to think like Leonardo da Vinci, to ask questions others overlook, and to synthesize knowledge from seemingly unrelated fields, we're preparing them to create meaning for themselves and to make a positive impact on the world.”

What have you tried? How are you growing students in cross-domain thinking at home and in school? As always, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Together we grow.

- Jackie Drummer, Past President and Current Board Advisor

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Science and the Arts

By Dal Drummer • November 10, 2025

Almost every week we see headlines in the news lamenting the current state of students and education. Titles such as these – “Chronic Absenteeism Continues to Plague School Systems,” “Why Do Students Spend So Much Time on Their Phones?,” “Should Phones Be Banned From the Classroom and Will That Improve Test Scores?" – are prolific and often worrisome. This often leads to proposed solutions, some which undoubtedly have been tried (both successfully and unsuccessfully) in the past. Why do educational leaders (and politicians) continue to “reinvent the wheel” by proposing and utilizing the same (but re-branded) solutions to student learning problems over the years, dropping one after another in favor of a latest “trend” that will supposedly fix everything? Why aren’t we getting results? I feel the above questions are related and may have an easy solution, one that has produced many studied and practical results. It is a solution that I have experienced in my decades of teaching as well. Recently I read an article in K-12DIVE entitled Drawing connections between art and science can improve academic outcomes by Briana Mendez-Padilla. K-12DIVE is a news outlet that provides business journalism and in-depth reporting on trends in the pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education sector. In this article, students in Mississippi had persistent low test scores until the school decided to make changes and incorporate the arts (and even artists) to work with and alongside the sciences. As a result, test scores rose significantly, as did social interactions between students. In this article, the author points out that today’s teachers are often competing with technology for kids’ attention. Just taking away technology doesn’t insure greater learning, nor does ignoring it. Teachers need to utilize what attracts kids to technology if they want better attendance and better learning. The author points out that students learn best in different ways (as we know); some students have auditory learning preferences, some kinesthetic, and some visual. Some learn best by reading, others not. Many of today’s students are also heavily into music, movement, and video. This is evidenced by their “plugged in” behaviors and their preference for online creation and viewing. It then stands to reason that the more ways a teacher can present material or allow students to learn using their technology, the more the students will be involved in their learning. Learning or showing evidence of learning can be much more than drawing a picture of the plant cycle (straight out of the science book) or making a shoebox diorama, practices of the past. As educators, we need to move our practices into spaces that our students inhabit. Some simple examples about different ways of learning/demonstrating wave action using science and the arts together could be students acting out wave action through dance using their different music choices (singly or in groups). Teachers could also, using light, prisms, and paints, show how colors can mix and affect how we see our world, and then critically analyze the use of light and color in water portrayed in historic and contemporary works of art (found online, of course). Or students could create music that they feel mimics wave action, mixing and remixing existing music or creating their own. Many of them have technological expertise and a great desire to use it. By teaching our curriculum in their world, using the arts as a vehicle, will, many believe, generate renewed excitement in learning. Finally, in order to develop curricular connections between science and the arts, administrators have to deliberately set aside time for curricular collaboration. Collaboration isn’t something that just magically happens; it takes time, interest, and creativity to connect them, a marriage of will and skill! Professional development time should be used to develop curricular connections, therefore enhancing teachers’ skillsets. Better teaching makes for better student outcomes. Coordination between the arts and sciences shouldn’t take much of a monetary investment; it can often be free, and the results can be priceless. Many free connections exist within community arts organizations, and they can enhance a school or school system. I know this because of my decades of experience as a visual arts specialist and arts coordinator in Milwaukee’s Lincoln Center of the Arts. The arts and sciences have much in common. In fact, through the Renaissance period, the arts and sciences weren’t two separate fields. They were one! They have many connections. Let’s put them back together using today’s technology! See a need for this in your child’s school? Share this article (and others) with them. For more information I direct you to the following articles. https://artsintegration.com/what-is-arts-integration-in-schools/ https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/articles-and-how-tos/articles/collections/arts-integration-resources/what-is-arts-integration/ https://www.edutopia.org/topic/arts-integration/ - Dal Drummer, WATG Board Advisor

The Importance of Intellectual Peers for Gifted Students

By Jenna Cramer • November 10, 2025

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