Inspiring Students to Think More Creatively

• In Event: Instructional Impacts on Student Learning and Motivation

Abstract

Inspiring students to think creatively has long been considered a goal of education. However, efforts to engender creative thought in students have been met with only mixed success. Here we present a new experimental manipulation, called the perspective-shift paradigm, designed to improve students’ ability to think creatively. Undergraduate students (N = 96) with declared majors in biology, physics, art, and theater were tested using the uses of objects task. Results indicate that the perspective-shift effect makes a significant difference in students’ ability to think creatively, both in the quantity and quality of the uses they produced.

Authors

• Denis Dumas, University of Maryland - College Park

• Kevin Niall Dunbar, University of Toronto