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Mathematics and Life 64 About Divergent thinking

About Divergent thinking


Divergent means different, non routine, away from the normal. We use the phrase diverse views to express something non traditional or different from the normal

In his epic work Guilford Model of Structure of Intellect, J. P. Guilford used the term divergent operation to represent a higher level of thinking skills as can be seen in the figure below 


Let's understand it through some examples -


Cognition is the ability to recognise, identify, something / someone correctly. Among the operations that our intellect does, recognising a symbol, person, touch, smell is considered as the bare minimum quality to be called an intelligent person. A child recalls alphabets, numerals, identified his mother among many other family ladies. 


Memory is the next level of intelligence in terms of operations. Memory is the ability to retain what has been seen, learnt, taught etc. In the formal education and examination system, memory is too much tested. Most questions are based on simple memory recall. All the questions like who, when, where, by whom, which end up answering something that is memory based. 


Very objectively speaking, unfortunately, our entire education system just centres around these two lowest levels of intelligence operations - cognition and memory.


Divergent production or thinking is the intellectual ability to think differently. It is a much needed ability to be a creative person. The same instruments, same alphabet, same situation creates different reactions to a creative mind and it produces creative products through divergent operation. 


Lateral Thinking propagated by Edward de Bono is also an example of Divergent thinking. Divergent thinking and lateral Thinking are used interchangeably as can be seen the 12 minute video link below - 


https://youtu.be/Imf3ecfBqsA


In my Ph. D. work, I developed Divergent Instructional Strategy for enhancing achievement and creativity at the elementary level mathematics. The divergence was on key aspects of content, method, defining what is it to know maths and so on……


Dr Prakash Moghe

Moghe Education Consultancy

8085906062, 7489447223

drpnmoghe@gmail.com 

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Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 20, 2021 at 8:39 AM

    Guilford model has always been so complicated for most of the people.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Snehal PrabhuneMarch 20, 2021 at 10:20 AM

    If you can share some insights from your research, with examples

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dr Prakash MogheMarch 21, 2021 at 9:04 AM

    Will share research based worksheets soon.....

    ReplyDelete

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