TIEL Institute -- Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning

Divergent Thinking refers to creative thinking that involves a broad and varied production. Divergent Thinking includes the production of options, fluency, flexibility, originality, and risk-taking.

Divergent Thinking can be taught through any subject, yet divergent thinking is rarely taught in school. Art offers a way to teach divergent thinking through observing artwork as well as by creating a work of art. Other possible ways to teach divergent thinking through academic subjects include the following. How many different sentences can you write using one of your spelling words? How many different ways can you solve this math problem? Think of all the alternatives the character in this story might have considered.

Project work includes many opportunities for students to use divergent thinking. Students can think of multiple options for depicting their researched information. Students can learn flexibility when a project does not go exactly as planned. Projects also present opportunities for students to take risks as they try new ways of developing a project.

Divergent Thinking and Appreciation are related through core skills and dispositions. Creative thinking skills included in Divergent Thinking—fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration—are similar to Appreciation for the originality and elaboration found in humanity and nature.

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