Easily Incorporate Creativity into Your Curriculum
Understanding and teaching divergent thinking.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” — Albert Einstein
Divergent thinking is the foundation of all creative thinking. It implies that we have alternatives for what we’ve done, learned, experienced, and known. EVERYONE IS CREATIVE. Understanding divergent thinking can help us realize this.
Schools traditionally focus on convergent thinking — deciding on the best solution for a problem. Students must choose which answer is correct in order for their understanding to be acknowledged.
Unfortunately, this one-sided focus leads to the belief that there is only one correct way to solve problems in our lives. This belief is not only false, but also damaging to our creative potential. The great news is that it doesn’t have to be like that. Empowering and teaching creativity can be simple and practical if we understand it. Creativity is a subject just like history or English.
The best way to become more creative is to learn about creativity.
The opposite of convergent thinking is divergent thinking — the act of generating multiple solutions to a problem or multiple uses for an object. Think of George Washington Carver’s 300 uses for peanuts. At the time, peanuts only had one use, to be eaten.
After Carver created his list of original uses, peanuts had multiple applications that included lotions and oils. His demonstration of divergent thinking led to innovative ideas that changed people’s lives around the world.
Divergent thinking is like brainstorming and provides us with guidelines to successfully ideate. Adhering to these guidelines can result in surprising and unique solutions to problems. Facilitating divergent thinking and following its guidelines can change your classroom and how students view themselves and others. It can change the way you view your students.
Learning about creativity can lead to compassion as we begin to understand common ways of thinking and shared fears. Students may become more open to new ideas and accepting of differences. They’ll feel empowered to solve problems in their lives.
Youth are starving for creativity.
The 4 Guidelines for Divergent Thinking
- Don’t judge ideas — Save that for convergent thinking. Don’t mix the two. Any idea goes, no matter how things have turned out in the past or what is possible. Accept and don’t judge.
- Think of wild and absurd ideas — Let go of reality. Original ideas require we go beyond what has been done or what is possible. No idea is too ridiculous.
- Go for quantity over quality — Think of lots and lots of ideas. Not all will work, but you may be surprised by your solutions if you go beyond the first useful solutions.
- Build on the ideas of others — We’re all in this together. Ideas spark other ideas. Everyone is contributing to a common goal. It doesn’t matter who offered what ideas. Build on other people’s ideas so that everyone benefits from our collective creativity.
How do we teach divergent thinking and provide students with opportunities for application? Simple. Display the 4 guidelines for divergent thinking somewhere in your classroom or environment. Explain them to students — this can take under 10 minutes. Provide intentional opportunities for students to practice.
Keep it simple.
Begin with a simple and quick activity. I like using what I call 30 Second Person. I give each learner a pipe cleaner and instruct them to use them to create a person within 30 seconds. There is no judgment. There are no right or wrong answers. Everyone’s answers are correct. Have students observe, without judgement, each other’s people.
The point of this activity is that everyone had the exact same resources, time, and instructions, and everyone’s answers were different and still correct. There’s not just one way to create a person from a pipe cleaner.
You can use the definition of divergent thinking I used above. It informs learners that there are multiple solutions to problems in their lives. Explain the 4 guidelines. This will help them know about divergent thinking, but not necessarily understand it. Understanding comes through experience.
Provide an example, like George Washington Carver. Everyone can relate to stories. Stories provide information, inspiration, understanding about the world and ourselves, and common experiences we all encounter.
Finally, allow learners to apply their new knowledge of divergent thinking. This can take a couple minutes or be a month-long project. Use divergent thinking activities before class, as brain breaks, or to assess student learning. Here are some examples of what these might look like.
Before you introduce a new topic, choose an object that is related to you content you’re about to cover. Ask students to write down 5 potential uses for the object. Encourage wild and absurd ideas. Model this by offering impossible and ridiculous examples. Collect the ideas and write them on the board.
Having students write down ideas can help increase environmental safety because of the anonymity when sharing ideas. You’ll be the one presenting ideas in front of the class, not the shy, introverted learner. It’s less threatening since students aren’t required to share in front of others. There should be no judgement of ideas offered.
How many ways might students ask questions for solving problems? Asking multiple questions from different perspectives can lead to new insights and new and useful ideas. Give students a question about the content being taught. Why was King George so mean? Have them think of 10 other questions to ask about King George’s life that might cause him to be mean.
Assessment: After covering a topic, chapter, article, etc., ask students to think of 10 alternative names or titles for the content covered. What are 10 alternative names for the Revolutionary War or for the Civil Rights movement? Use their answers to evaluate their understanding of the material.
Creativity is the most important skill of the 21st century, yet we often don’t teach it and actually discourage it in our classrooms. Understanding divergent thinking and its 4 guidelines is a simple way to infuse a creative mindset into your learning environment. It doesn’t require complex and time-consuming instruction. It can take around 10 minutes to introduce, and 5 minutes or less to apply. The results are energizing. Students learn about creativity, gain compassion for others, and discover a whole approach to life.
