"Creatively Speaking on the Power of the Imaginative Mind

What is divergent thinking? Divergent thinking is not the same as creativity. Divergent thinking is the fundamental part of the creative process. Being non-creative is simply in a sense that you do not know how to be creative. During this video Sir Ken Robinson had mentioned a project called "Break Point and Beyond," which was a study about divergent thinking. It had been said that throughout this study that the capacity to see connections is to see more than more one answer to a problem. This study was longitudinal throughout the whole process because they retested subjects to see if anything had changed over a span of 10+ years. In order to score high on the test the divergent thinking of 3 – 5 years old is 98%. In three years they retested individuals to see whether or not their thinking will increase or decline and it had declined to 32%. In five more years they retested again when individuals were between the ages of 13 - 15 and found out that it declined again to 18%. Due to this research it had been stated that divergent thinking declines because once students enter the age level for school and they become educated there is only one answer when solving problems. There are several capacities in which divergent thinking can be maintained with the right conditions: 1. Standardized tests, 2. Narrowing curriculum, and 3. STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. There are other disciplines that benefit most from a broad based approach to education. Linking across the curriculum is a good way when trying to make connections between different ways of thinking.