How can educators make students think more creatively?

Educators build creative thinking through problem-solving activities, design challenges, brainstorming sessions and creativity exercises woven into ordinary lessons. Research shows classrooms where teachers deliberately nurture creativity see real achievement gains, and the teacher’s two constants are modelling creativity and stimulating it at every chance.

Parents can nurture creative thinking at home, but children spend a great share of their learning hours in classrooms, so the skill has to be cultivated there too. The field even has a name for it: creative pedagogy, which transforms passive, teacher-reliant students by creating space for engaging, responsive learning. Aleinikov’s 2013 definition says it “teaches learners how to learn creatively and become creators of themselves and creators of their future.”

Why does creative thinking belong in the classroom?

Creative thinking, the ability to produce new and innovative ideas, pays into everything a student does: problem solving, critical thinking, communication and self-confidence, and it is a key social skill besides.

The research is encouraging on two counts. First, creativity is pliable: studies (Brophy, 2006; DeHaan, 2009) show creative thinking responds to circumstances, collaboration and motivation among them, which means it can be taught. Second, teaching it pays: Schacter, Thum and Zifkin (2006) demonstrated that classrooms where teachers deliberately nurtured student creativity saw measurable achievement gains.

How can teachers build creative thinking into lessons?

Problem-solving activities

Every lesson or assignment can carry one activity that requires thinking outside the box, designing a new product to solve a real need, for instance.

Design challenges

Ask students to design something: a new ending to a story, an addition to the school building, a piece of furniture that does not exist yet. Situation-based ideation works too: “you are stranded on an island with limited supplies; what do you do?” Or role plays where one student leads and must convince the others to join their team. Each challenge stretches creative problem solving and asks students to see the world in new ways.

Brainstorming sessions

Creative thinking flourishes in groups. Set a topic and ask for as many ideas as possible, explicitly including the crazy ones; volume first, judgment later, is the rule that unlocks the innovative solutions.

Creativity exercises

Short warm-ups, physical and mental, that exercise the creative muscles before the main work: word association, picture prompts, “unusual uses for a paperclip.” Small, regular, and cumulative.

Which tools help?

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats gives every student a defined direction of thinking within a discussion, and Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert casts the class as a team of experts running a fictional enterprise, so the curriculum arrives disguised as their job. Both slot into an ordinary timetable, and both pair well with interactive learning methods generally.

A classroom trains whichever skill it rewards. Reward only right answers, and you grow answer-finders; reward good questions and bold attempts, and you grow thinkers.

The teacher’s role in all this is immense, controlling as they do the environment where students spend hours each day. Two practices matter above everything: be a role model for creative thinking yourself, and find ways to stimulate it at every opportunity. The development of creativity is continuous, and teachers are its indispensable keepers.

Dr. V.S. Gayathri is a Certified Dyslexia Therapist, an Orton-Gillingham trained literacy specialist, and the founder of Flourishing Kids. She has delivered over 4,000 hours of one-to-one reading and spelling intervention, helping children across multiple countries build stronger literacy skills. She works with educators as well as parents. Get in touch for a free 15-minute conversation.