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Where do Ideas Come From?
Scaffolding Creative Thinking in the Classroom
Teruni Lamberg (United States)
Creative ideas are not simply generated in a vacuum. If we want students to think creatively and find novel solutions to problems, we must explore how creative ideas originate. This means we need to find ways to help students develop habits of mind that facilitate creative thinking. In this article I explore how creative ideas are formed by examining the question, “Where do ideas come from?” Several ideas for procedures teachers can use to encourage students to think creatively are presented.
Creative thinking involves generating interesting problems as well as identifying or redefining problem situations. When a problem is identified, the individual is likely to experience cognitive dissonance. This dissonance plays a critical role in the creative thinking process because it motivates the individual to seek solutions. The creative thought process involves making connections between a person’s existing schema and new information in novel ways. It is a way of seeing. The depth and quality of ideas that students produce are influenced by the environment we provide for them. Too often, we fail to provide students with adequate time and experiences to germinate rich ideas. When students claim they don’t have anything to write about, or the work that they produce lacks depth, we need to critically examine the quality of the experiences we have provided them, and ask ourselves whether the problem might not originate there.
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Where do Ideas Come From? Scaffolding Creative Thinking in the Classroom