Setting Off Sparks of Curiosity and Creativity

In the summer of 2010, Newsweek pronounced—on its cover no less—that the United States was suffering from a “Creativity Crisis.” The co-authors of the cover story, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, quite ably synthesized cutting-edge research about how to create the conditions for promoting creativity and offered specific ideas on how to address the crisis.

Conventional wisdom, they reported, perceives creativity as emerging almost spontaneously from divergent thinking, that is, from the kind of thinking that can go off in many directions and generate new ideas. New research, however, has shown that creativity also requires convergent thinking, the ability to sharpen focus, to narrow down, to synthesize ideas and information. Schools, they argue, need to offer students opportunities to do both divergent and convergent thinking.

Add to these findings the new article from the Harvard Educational Review, in which Susan Engel from Williams College makes a compelling case for promoting greater curiosity in schools. She calls for a “shift in the way we see the traditional role of a teacher, from one who answers questions to one who elicits them.”

Continue reading Rothstein's post on the Harvard Education Publishing Group's Voices in Education blog.