Divergent Thinking Can be Taught

The following is a series of lessons I used to teach learners how to engage in divergent thinking.

This week we've spent a great deal of time considering messages and media as part of the Key Concepts of Media Literacy . We've viewed many images and videos and by mid-week it was time to focus on writing skills.  

We began by looking at The Branded Baby 

  

Students were asked to work independently to answer the following Open Response questions.

1.  Who would have been involved in the construction of this message?

2. What might have been discussed as they were creating this message?

3.  What is "The Branded Baby" trying to say?

4.  What assumptions have been made in creating this ad?

5. How well does this image represent reality?

6. Is this a positive or negative message?

7. Who might not understand this message?

Notice which question is absent: Describe the ad. I discussed with the students why I would not expect them to waste time answering such a question.  They recognized that it involves a low-level thinking skill  (summary or retell) and was not relevant to the kind of thinking they were being asked to do.

In the Ontario school system, students are expected to not only answer questions, but provide explanations, reasons, justifications and evidence to support their thinking.  It was this that I was looking for when assessing.  

Before beginning the task, we reviewed what they would need to think about when writing their responses.  We co-constructed the following chart.

If you notice, the left-hand side demonstrates understanding of genre.  It is about structure, mechanics and application of skills.  I deliberately left the right-hand column blank and will explain why later.  Responses ranged from sophisticated to simplistic.

Here is a sample answer for question one:

I think the ad people and the companies of all the brands would have been involved in constructing the ad because you would need permission to put those ads on the babies.

Not a bad answer. It includes a restatement, a reasonable answer and a justification.  What it does not demonstrate though is high level and divergent thinking, nor a detailed explanation that is carefully crafted. The question for educators becomes: How do we teach students to think divergently and reflect this in their writing?  Can divergent thinking be taught?

Yes, it can.

Which brings us to our next activity.  I placed the following sign under the document camera and inquired about the purpose of the ad. Needless to say, it provoked strong reactions.

We began with the obvious answer:  the community wants to close the library and will burn all the books.    The question of course is why?  Students tossed out a few reasonable ideas and justified them.  I pointed out that once a reasonable answer had been determined most thinkers would now stop. 

Good thinkers take time to think more deeply.  They consider alternative and less obvious reasons.  Students had to think harder and began to suggest some very interesting scenarios that might lead to this sign being posted.

After several minutes of this,  I pointed out that they had made an enormous assumption about the sign.  What was it?  They spent a great deal of time trying to identify the assumption.  In the end two students figured it out,   the sign was actually meant to convey the opposite to what they had been thinking - citizens were trying to prevent the closure of the library.  This is indeed the case.  Tax cuts might lead to the closing of the library and citizens have begun a campaign to prevent it.


I then placed the following chart front at the front and reviewed the steps to thinking with my students.

1. Start with the obvious.
2.  Average thinkers stop when they've obtained the obvious answer.
3. Take time to consider alternative, less obvious and opposite ideas to what you had been thinking.
4. Think about the assumptions you are making that might prevent you from seeing other possibilities.
5. Explain.


Students were then sent back to their desks and asked to use this process to improve one of their answers on The Branded Baby assignment.  Most students finished the task, but one student was frustrated and unable to come up with an alternative to his original idea.  I suggested he abandon the task.  This is important for students to understand.  Thinking can't be rushed.  Ideas need time to develop and it is ok to put work aside.

My grade seven students now have a better understand of the thinking process.  What is now needed is multiple opportunities to practise.  Divergent thinking can be taught.