Divergent Teachers

As an ELA educator, the first thing that comes to mind when I begin to think about the word Divergent is the series of novels by Veronica Roth. Tris Pryor, the main character, embodies divergent thought in that she does not follow one school of reasoning in her dystopian world and solves her problems by thinking outside the expcted. But divergent thinking has more relevance in our lives as educators than just as the title and premise of this YA novel.

As Toni Bernhard, J.D., points out in her article on Psychology Today, "...divergent means 'developing in different directions' and so divergent thinking opens your mind in all directions." As educators, this might seem like our every day multi-tasking, but it is not. It is really the idea of, pardon my over-used turn of phrase, "thinking outside of the box." A great push has gone on in public education as of late to encourage this kind of thinking in our students as John Spencer relates, "In the future, students will need to be nimble. They will need to know how to experiment, iterate, and pivot. This is where divergent thinking becomes so critical. Divergent thinking is what allows students to make connections between seemingly random ideas. In the process, they find innovative solutions by looking at things from different angles, often finding inspiration from surprising contexts." But what about us as educators? Don't we need this school of thought?

While teachers are being encouraged to expand students' divergent thinking, what is really being done to push that same thinking in our educators? Are they being fed canned curriculum that does not allow them to test their powers of divergent thinking? Are teachers being allowed to 'hack' their classrooms to try new things, or are they told that on day 27 they must be on lesson 27 of the grammar curriculum? How many divergent thinkers are leading their students in their classrooms or being stifled by scripted lessons? Are the divergent thinkers the innovative educators? Are we giving educators the time to think divergently?

My hunch is that educators who are given the freedom and the time to try new things- hack their lessons, go off-script, or more importantly, throw away the script- are going to be more divergent thinkers. Moreover, these educators are more likely to innovate with the tools provided or find tools that might not seem to be useful in the classroom, and hack the classroom with those tools. In all, they're going to find new ways to be effective and inspiring in classroom.

How can we help educators become more divergent in their own thinking? Go back to John Spencer's ideas for teaching divergent thinking to students. What if we used them in our next inservice? Couldn't each of his seven suggestions help build divergent thinking in faculty and staff? Why limit divergent thinking to our students when we can build our faculty and staff to think critically and divergently to solve problems that have yet to present themselves in our ever-evolving, technology enhanced classrooms?

My goal this fall is to assess fellow educators and identify if there is a link between divergent thinking and technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge by utilizing a version Guillford's measures shared by Peter Nillson. I will also utilize a version of of the TPACK survey by Dr. Denise Schmidt et al. My versions of these assessments contain some modifications and will be compared to identify if there is any correlation between the the knowledges and divergent thinking.

I'd love to hear from others about how they've used or experienced divergent thinking (or divergent thinking exercises) with faculty and staff in training and inservice, and whether it influenced you or the staff into any 'aha!' moments. Was there a particular exercise in divergent thought that seemed to resonate? Feel free to share your experiences with me to help me answer some of these questions. I'd love to see how we can evolve our professional development and teacher education to include more opportunities to think outside the cinderblock.