Innovate.

The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.

- Edward De Bono

Divergent thinking is the ability to generate many different original ideas in response to a given problem.

There are probably a number of reasons why divergent thinking is difficult to encourage in the classroom:

It takes a great deal of time to incorporate activities that support divergent thinking

Divergent thinking’s difficult to grade

It’s difficult to allow for the possibility of failure as an acceptable outcome; consequently, risk-taking in projects is generally not rewarded

Succeeding on standardized tests, where you have to identify the single best answer, requires convergent thinking

Instructional Design Fusions offers many strategies and tools for divergent thinking here.