Teach Secondary 13.7

T hanks to the rapid adoption of new technologies, we’ve all had to become used to living in a world characterised by constant and rapid change. Given how creativity can help with adapting to such change, plus the considerable number of social and ecological problems we face that will require creative solutions, it’s increasingly important that we find ways of educating children that don’t limit the natural creativity they were born with. CREATE CREATIVITY Alice Guile explains how a pioneering psychological study can vividly show what happens to students’ creative thinking abilities as they get older If we can further develop children’s skills at thinking creatively, and find space for them to entertain imaginative possibilities alongside the learning of facts, we’ll see the emergence of children readily able to apply facts in the process of solving practical problems. Creative geniuses In 1968, psychologists George Land and Beth Jarman commenced a fascinating study into creative thinking, using a test they had previously developed to evaluate the creative thinking abilities of NASA scientists. In its initial guise, the test had tasked those scientists with imagining alternative uses for a paper clip, with those scoring over a certain amount being designated creative geniuses. The psychologists felt, however, that the fundamentals of the test were so simple that children would be able to complete it. They therefore proceeded to set the same test for 1,600 3- to 5-year- olds, and then retested them at ages of 10 and 15. Finally, they set the test for 280,000 adults with an average age of 31. They found that 98% of the 5-year-olds attained scores that were comparable to those NASA participants deemed creative geniuses – but then came a dramatic drop-off. The same could be said of just 30%when the same children were tested again at the age of 10. The ‘creative genius’ proportion fell again to 12%when the group were tested at 15, while among the adult group, that designation applied to only a shocking 2%. Convergent and divergent From this, the psychologists concluded that there are two types of thinking – convergent and divergent . Divergent thinking relates to the imagination, and the thought processes involved in coming up different possibilities. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is all about discernment, the act of making choices and efforts at finding correct answers. The occurrence of divergent thinking, followed immediately by convergent thinking can have a powerful effect. The former will see the formulation and exploration of multiple possibilities, before the latter filters and evaluates the potential outcomes of those possibilities. The problem in schools is that the emphasis we place reaching correct answers means that we’re asking our students to engage in convergent and divergent 22 teachwire.net/secondary