Divergent Thinking: The Possibilities are Endless!

Although this is a continuation on my blog posts from a previous course, I would like to take a moment for those first-time readers to describe a little bit about myself.  I am a 4th year student at Brock University in the Concurrent Education Child and Youth Studies program.  I come from a large family of 6 children all born under 9 years (my mom loves to brag about!) and which also means that I am no stranger to conflicting views and perspectives.  In the past, I have explored many opportunities with working with children and youth, for example teaching Sunday School, working full-time at a daycare, being a support staff worker for a child with autism, and most recently being a performing princess at children's birthday parties (extravagant, I know!).  Teaching and working with children has always been an area of interest to me, in that it never seizes to amaze me their insight and the extraordinary ways they think.

As I previously mentioned, growing up with so many siblings really helped shape my understanding of multiple intelligences and ways of thinking.  An area of interest that really sparked me in last week's first lecture was the importance of divergent thinking.  Divergent thinking is the ability to generate many different ideas in response to a problem (Sternberg & Williams, 2010).  This form of thinking focuses on the importance of creativity in children and youth and has been shown to positively influence problem solving skills.  Convergent thinking, however, is the process of finding a single correct answer (Sternberg & Williams, 2010).  This form of thinking was the most common form of thinking required when I went to school and I think significantly affected how I perceive myself creatively.  To this day, I do not consider myself overly creative and find myself looking for that one right answer.  This is an area where I would like to grow in for I believe what convergent thinking is, is lazy thinking.  Encouraging divergent thinking should be necessary in schools because it can really open up your eyes to a whole new world and amazing outcomes can come from it.  As a future teacher, I want to inspire my students to think outside the box and to explore their mind, in all its' glory because ultimately, the possibilities are endless!

References

Sternberg, R. J., & Williams, W. M. (2010). Educational psychology (2nded.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.