Web page: Strategies of Divergent Thinking
Web Page: Psychology Today, "How Convergent and Divergent Thinking Foster Creativity"
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Creative Thinking and
the Inquiry Process
Creative thinking seeks possibilities. It reaches from the known to the unknown to find innovative solutions. While critical thinking narrows your focus, creative thinking broadens it by breaking down barriers and challenging assumptions. Creativity uses divergent thinking to look for many unique answers. Creative thinking is critical to the inquiry process. The chart below indicates creativity’s role during each step.
Creative Thinking | Inquiry Process |
Consider Consider your situation. What question must you answer? What problem must you solve? Start playing around with ideas, materials, and objects. | Question |
Brainstorm Make sketches, write thoughts, discuss ideas, set goals, brainstorm possibilities. Select the most promising ones. | Plan |
Work with Ideas Continue to work with your ideas, but take breaks to let them incubate. Inspiration often arrives through subconscious thought. | Research |
Use Inspiration Use your inspiration. Innovate by writing, graphing, building, recording, designing, performing, organizing. | Create |
Put It Aside Put your creation aside for a while. Then return to evaluate it. Get others’ opinions also. Finally, make improvements. | Improve |
Introduce After improving and polishing your work, introduce it to the world. | Present |
Your Turn Think about a recent project you completed and evaluate your creative thinking. For each step in the inquiry process, rate your thinking from 1 (struggle) to 6 (succeed). The strategies in this chapter will help you improve in each area.
