Why Creative Thinking?

Watch this video of Sir Ken Robinson to get an introduction to creative thinking and its importance.

Robinson forcefully states that our educational system works to uniformly stifle creativity, so much so that the natural instinct present in all children, gradually withers away to nothingness. He decries--and I join him--the current wrong-headed efforts to reform by reinforcing what Robinson calls the "hierarchy of curriculum" formed from the concrete of linear models of thinking and teaching.

This rigid approach, whose tentacles extend back to the dawn of the Industrial Age, is contributing to the malaise of the profession, and by extension, to society as a whole. The effects are readily apparent from the top of the school hierarchy (baffled administrators, top-heavy bureaucracies, resistance to change) to the bottom (cyncial teachers and uninterested students). Robinson contends the entire model is stagnant and useless. He calls not for reform but for "transformation" required to brunt humanity's slide into a "economics not of success but of distress." If this does not occur, we stand to confront its by-products--"social disruption, social dislocation, and social unrest"--with ever exponentially rising frequency.

Robinson calls for a new pedagogy to meet the unprecedented challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. He believes we must encourage the divergent thinking and capacity for creativity that is apparently inherent in us all as children, which is steadily worn away by outmoded educational models. What is needed is a pedagogy that makes connections between the disciplines, makes sense in our students lives, and utilizes a myriad of styles to teach and encourage learning. -Jacob Clark

Cooperative Learning

Not sure what cooperative learning is? Here is a great overview to get you started with this method that is integral to social learning, creativity, and student self-confidence.

The teams-games-tournament (TGT) is a popular way to incorporate this method in your classroom. Here is a step-by-step approach to TGT.

Student Teams Achievement Divison (STAD) is another great way to use cooperative learning. Here is a review on how this method improved student attitude and creativity.

Cooperative learning is great for creative learning because it allows students to take an active role in the way they discover information. Further, because of the social interactions that take place within cooperative learning groups, students are exposed to diverse perspectives that may challenge their own line of thinking, thus opening them up to broader points of view. When students learn to think outside of the box, they learn how to think creatively, thereby becoming better problem solvers. -Christopher Landauer

The model also allows teachers to be creative is setting up the groups or teams. And it gives teams the chance to use their creative resources collectively to meet the requirements of the lesson. Also, it can easily be blended with other models, which, with enough creativity on the part of the teacher, can result in some compelling lessons for students. -Jacob Clark

Synectics

“All students have an ability to be creative if they understand the process of creative thought and if they learn some strategies for engaging in creative problem-solving” (Lasley, 2002)

Synectics is great for creative learning because it allows students to create their own conceptual structures as they encounter new information. Synectics is a step-by-step method for teaching students to learn how to think creatively. Synectics asks students to create analogies for new information that connect to ideas that are familiar to them. -Christopher Landauer

Here is a great way to incorporate synectics into your classroom during an art lesson.

Here is another great resource for teachers seeking more information on this great method that fosters creative thinking.

Direct Instruction

"The creative potential of students is limited by what they know. The first job of the teacher, therefore, is to teach basic skills and knowledge."

Here are some myths regarding Direct Instruction - you will be surprised!

It is difficult to show how Direct Instruction (DI) could foster divergent thinking and creativity. The use of DI is to teach basic skills needed in order for a base knowledge for a topic. Generally, when learning basic skills, there is a "right" answer. Direct Instruction is necessary because it gives students something upon which to build their creativity and knowledge. Generally speaking, you can not conduct a science experiment unless you know how to use the instruments. You can not creatively compose a song unless you know how to play or write music. I believe direct instruction may be the foundation of divergent thinking and creativity. In which case, it would foster divergent thinking. -Ashley Jones

Direct Instruction can also be used in collaboration with other teaching methods. On some topics, before students can begin to think creatively, they must first have a basis of knowledge that must be taught directly. Once they have a foundation, students can begin to think more abstractly about a concept. -Christopher Landauer

Oral Discussion

Oral discussion is a technique that can be very useful in the classroom but as educators we must not assume that all students understand how to properly participate in oral discussions. We must first teach our students how to actively and positively participate in oral discussion before jumping in. Here is a great website that gives some suggestions on teaching students how to properly participate in oral discussion. These are suggestions so feel free to add what you need and delete what you don't to fit your classroom.

Here is another great way to incorporate oral discussion into your classroom.

When using oral discussion you must consider the lesson being taught. Oral discussion may not be the technique to use when teaching a topic such as division but it would work out great teaching a lesson on tolerance or a novel that the class has read as a whole.
The teaching phases of oral discussion are:
The teacher must identify the focus for discussion.
The teadcher must pose the question for discussion: Use a key question that is an umbrella question that foster dialogue but there is no one correct answer; devil's advocate the teacher purposefully instigates a controversial stand on an issue; or the teacher can let the students ask questions to generate their own questions before the content is covered.
The teacher must foster participation to alleviate students from monopolizing the discussion.
The last phase the teacher summarizes the students' position for closure of the discussion.

-Shronne Williams

Mnemonics

Here are some creative ways to help bolster memory in your classroom.

Divergent thinking and creative learning are displayed using the instructional method of Mnemonics. Students connect words and phrases to ideas that are easily remembered and often times ideas that mean something to them. The keyword method allows students to take an unfamiliar word and creatively change it into something more meaningful for the individual student. Pegword illustrations allow students to take unfamiliar words and transform them into illustrations meaningful to the student. The link strategy allows students to connect ideas together. These are all examples of how Mnemonics fosters divergent thinking.
-Ashley Jones

As our experience with mnenomics shows, we can be wildly creative with what we come up with to help us remember things. Words, associations, pictures, pegs, keys, links--those we choose to use may not make any sense to anyone else. But they are ways we've created to remember and learn. Perhaps the most creative of the models....
-Jacob Clark

Concept Formation

The concept formation model is used to give students the ability to differentiate a set of ideas presented byt the teacher. This models lends itself to higher order thinking for the students. This model makes the students more active participants in their learning.

Here is a great website that will give you more information on concept formation.

-Shronne Williams

Concept formation allows students to "connect their experiences with the available data." (Lasley, p. 177). Not only do students have freedom of data grouping in CA, they can also come up with different/creative ways of labeling their groups. Divergent thinking is prevalent throughout the CA process as students are constantly connecting words and ideas together.

-Ashley Jones

Concept Attainment

The concept attainment model forces each student to creatively see the whole concept through its parts. The student views the world differently in this model and has to construct new ideas in order for the concept to make sense to them. This method in particular, speaks to Ken Robinson's idea of childhood genius. This method is based upon the natural curiosity of children to "figure things out" for themselves. Abstract ideas are especially useful to teach through this method as students must creatively describe and categorize abstract concepts that are often difficult to explain. The teacher presenting the material and method in a game-like manner can also be effective for all ages.

-Amanda Reeber

This method can be difficult to incorporate into everyday classrooms, so here are some examples to get you started.

Here is a step-by-step guide that I have found helpful in getting the most out of this creative method.

Inquiry

This site is a must-see for teachers as excited as we are about inquiry-based learning.

Need ideas for discrepant events? Look no further than this site with additional helpful links included.

As a Chemistry teacher, I have found this book to be invaluable in my curriculum planning.

A discrepant event designed to illustrate a particular problem that students are intended to solve begins this model. Obviously, the effectiveness of the discrepant event at prompting student thinking is limited only by the teacher's own imagination. The instructor can be as inventive (or fool-hardy) as portraying an historical figure before the class to prompt a lesson on an event in history, or conducting a quick experiment whose results will "wow" students. How creative teachers can be in devising a discrepant event determines how well they can capture students' attention, draw them toward the problem at hand, and promote divergent thinking to solve the problem as students progress through the model. Creative thinking allows teachers and students to make connections between data, knowledge, other disciplines, etc. This is why Robinson insists that creativity must be infused into our students' learning--so we can leave the linear model behind.

-Jacob Clark

Inquiry allows for creativity and divergent thinking. In the extension phase of inquiry, students can connect their inquiry topic to many other topics and ideas. For example, while completing an inquiry activity, a student may come up with a new discrepant event to discover after completing analysis of data and the extension phase. The student may also discover a connection between the inquiry topic and a topic they have previously studied. If inquiry is completed in a science classroom, a student may have stumbled upon a new discovery. Some of most useful objects in the world were created/discovered by "mistake".

-Ashley Jones