This study examined the efficacy of ‘writing oriented mind map’ activities with respect to the
enhancement of creative and critical thinking skills by the inquiry thinking skill among
pre-service science teachers in college. Ten ‘writing oriented mind map’ activities were
presented as teaching materials to students over one semester. The experimental group showed
a statistically meaningful improvement in creative thinking skills (p <.05). In addition, the three
sub-elements of creative thinking skills, fluency, flexibility and originality, all showed
statistically meaningful improvement (p <.05). There was, however, no significant statistical
improvement in critical thinking skills with respect to the inquiry thinking skill (p >.05). The
sub-element of critical thinking skills, ‘making hypotheses’, showed a statistically meaningful
improvement (p <.05), but there were no significant statistical improvements in the recognition
of problems, control of variables, transformation and interpretation of data, making conclusions,
and generalizations (p >.05).