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a ready-to-run workshopTeaching Creative Thinking
Instructional Strategies · Workshop

Teaching Creative Thinking (Workshop)

Everything you need to lead this with your staff or PLC: a minute-by-minute run-of-show, what to say, what to hand out, and how to make it stick. Pick the length that fits your slot.

Key takeaway

Creative thinking, generating ideas that are both novel and useful, is widely treated as an inborn trait some lucky students have, when it is in fact a developable capacity supported by teachable techniques and classroom conditions, so teachers can deliberately build students' creativity rather than leaving it to the gifted few, and doing so matters because creativity is increasingly essential and often schooled out of students.

Format
PLC / team meeting
Length
45 minutes
Group size
Any (works 4-40)
Who can run it
Any teacher-leader
You will need
Slides (5)Printed handoutA task that could invite creativityA timer
Aligned to
Learning Forward: Rigorous ContentInTASC 8: Instructional StrategiesResearch on creativity, divergent thinking, and creative pedagogy
Share / assign

Why it works

Creative thinking, the generation of ideas that are both novel and useful, is one of the most valued and least deliberately taught capacities in education, partly because of a persistent myth: that creativity is an inborn trait, a gift some students have and others lack, which can be displayed but not taught. This myth is both false and harmful. It is false because creativity, while it varies, is substantially a developable capacity supported by teachable thinking techniques and by classroom conditions that enable or suppress it, not a fixed endowment. It is harmful because it leads teachers to leave creativity to the supposedly gifted few rather than developing it in all students, and because, worse, conventional schooling often actively suppresses creativity, rewarding the single right answer, convergent thinking, and compliance so consistently that students' creative capacities, strong in early childhood, measurably decline through schooling. So teaching creative thinking is partly about building a capacity and partly about not crushing one students already have. Doing it well rests on understanding what creative thinking involves and what supports it. Creative thinking draws on divergent thinking, generating many, varied, and original ideas, which is distinct from the convergent thinking (narrowing to the single best answer) that schooling emphasizes, and students need practice in both, with divergent thinking particularly neglected. Several teachable techniques support it: generating many ideas before judging any (separating ideation from evaluation, since premature judgment kills creative flow); making unexpected connections and combinations; approaching problems from different angles and reframing them; building on and transforming existing ideas; and using structured creativity techniques (brainstorming done properly, SCAMPER-type prompts, analogical thinking) that prompt novel idea generation. Classroom conditions matter as much as techniques: creativity requires psychological safety (the freedom to propose unusual ideas without ridicule or penalty), tolerance for ambiguity and the unconventional, tasks that are genuinely open rather than having a single predetermined answer, time to explore and iterate, and valuing original thinking rather than only correct answers. The teacher's stance is pivotal: a teacher who welcomes unusual ideas, resists rushing to the right answer, poses open problems, and treats wrong-but-interesting thinking as valuable fosters creativity, while one who rewards only the expected answer suppresses it, often without meaning to. A few honest points: creativity is not the opposite of knowledge or rigor, deep knowledge in a domain is the raw material creativity works with, so building creative thinking complements rather than replaces content learning; creativity is domain-relevant, so it is developed within subjects, not only in a generic creativity lesson; and novel-and-useful means creative thinking is disciplined, not mere novelty, so it includes judgment about which ideas are good, not just generating many. A caution: fostering creativity does not mean abandoning standards or correctness where they apply; it means also valuing and developing the generative, divergent, original thinking that schooling tends to neglect, in balance with the convergent thinking it already emphasizes. The workshop helps teachers treat creative thinking as developable, build it with teachable techniques and enabling conditions, and avoid the schooling patterns that suppress it, so all students develop as creative thinkers.

The research: Research on creativity, divergent thinking, and creative pedagogy.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

    The core activity: build creative thinking with techniques and conditions

    The heart of the session is treating creative thinking as developable and building it with teachable techniques and enabling conditions, while avoiding the patterns that suppress it.

    Creativity is teachable, and often schooled outCreative thinking is a developable capacity, not an inborn gift of the few, yet conventional schooling, rewarding the single right answer, measurably suppresses it. Teaching the techniques and building the conditions develops creativity in all students rather than crushing it.

    Facilitator notes

    Novel and useful, not mere noveltyCreative thinking generates ideas that are both original and good, so it is disciplined, including judgment about which ideas work, not just producing many. Fostering it means developing generative thinking in balance with the convergent thinking and standards that still apply.

    Adapt it

    Participant handout

    One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

    K12 Academics · Professional Learning

    Teaching Creative Thinking: developable, built, not crushed

    Build creativity in all students: teach divergent-thinking techniques and enabling conditions, and avoid the single-right-answer patterns that suppress the creativity students already have.

    1. A task that could invite divergent, creative thinking:
    2. A technique I will teach (generate before judging, reframe, connect):
    3. How I build psychological safety for unusual ideas:
    4. How I keep tasks genuinely open and give time to iterate:
    5. How I build creativity within my subject, alongside knowledge and rigor:

    Make it stick

    Creativity is built and protected, not left to the gifted few. Close by setting the follow-up:

    Common questions

    Isn't creativity something you're born with, not something that can be taught?
    Creativity varies between people, but it is substantially a developable capacity rather than a fixed inborn trait, and the born-with-it belief is both inaccurate and harmful to students. The research picture is that creative thinking is supported by teachable techniques (ways of generating and developing ideas) and by classroom conditions that enable or suppress it, so it can be deliberately built, not merely displayed by the lucky few. The harm of the myth is twofold. First, believing creativity is inborn leads teachers to leave it to the students who seem naturally creative and not to develop it in everyone, when in fact all students can grow their creative thinking with the right techniques and conditions. Second, and more striking, conventional schooling often actively suppresses creativity: students' creative capacities, which are strong in early childhood, measurably decline through years of schooling that reward the single right answer, convergent thinking, and compliance, so the issue is not only failing to teach creativity but unintentionally crushing the creativity students arrive with. This means teaching creative thinking is partly building a capacity and partly protecting one from being schooled out. None of this denies that some people have more creative aptitude than others, just as with any capacity, but aptitude is a starting point, not a ceiling, and the teachable techniques (separating idea generation from judgment, making connections, reframing problems) and enabling conditions (psychological safety, open tasks, valuing originality) genuinely develop creative thinking in all students. So the accurate and far more useful stance is that creativity is developable and worth teaching deliberately, and that avoiding the common schooling patterns that suppress it is as important as building it.
    Doesn't focusing on creativity mean sacrificing knowledge, rigor, and correct answers?
    No, creative thinking is not the opposite of knowledge and rigor; deep knowledge is the raw material creativity works with, and creativity itself is disciplined, aiming at ideas that are useful as well as novel, so developing it complements rather than replaces content and standards. The worry imagines a trade-off, creativity versus rigor, but it rests on a misunderstanding of both. Creative thinking in any domain draws on deep knowledge of that domain: you cannot generate genuinely novel and useful ideas in science, writing, or mathematics without substantial knowledge to work with, so building students' knowledge is not opposed to their creativity but is its foundation, which is why creative thinking is developed within subjects rather than as a generic content-free skill. And creativity is not mere novelty or anything-goes; the definition is ideas that are both novel and useful, which means creative thinking includes judgment about which ideas are actually good, a disciplined, evaluative dimension, not just free generation. So fostering creativity does not mean abandoning correctness where it applies or lowering rigor; it means also developing the generative, divergent, original thinking that schooling tends to neglect, in balance with the convergent thinking (narrowing to the right answer) that schooling already emphasizes heavily. The problem the skill addresses is that schooling is so lopsided toward convergent, single-right-answer thinking that the divergent, creative side is suppressed, so the correction is to add and protect creative thinking, not to replace rigor with it. A strong education develops both: deep knowledge and rigor, and the creative capacity to use that knowledge to generate novel, useful ideas, and these reinforce rather than undermine each other.
    How do I actually teach creative thinking in my regular subject lessons?
    You build it into your subject through specific techniques and conditions rather than treating it as a separate creativity unit, since creative thinking is domain-relevant and best developed within the content students are learning. On the techniques side, several moves fit into ordinary lessons. Separate generating from judging: when you want ideas, have students generate many before any are evaluated, since premature judgment shuts down creative flow, so a brainstorm or ideation phase precedes the critical phase. Invite divergent thinking: ask questions and set tasks that have many possible good responses rather than one right answer, prompting students to generate varied, original ideas. Teach connection-making and reframing: prompt students to link ideas across contexts, combine things unexpectedly, and look at a problem from different angles. Use structured creativity prompts (proper brainstorming, analogical thinking, SCAMPER-type questions) applied to your content. On the conditions side, which matter as much, build psychological safety so students can offer unusual ideas without ridicule or penalty, which means how you respond to unexpected answers (with interest rather than correction) is pivotal; keep some tasks genuinely open rather than having a single predetermined answer; give time to explore and iterate rather than rushing to closure; and visibly value original thinking, not only correct answers, including treating wrong-but-interesting ideas as worthwhile. Crucially, you do all this within your subject, applying creative thinking to real content, which both develops creativity and deepens learning, rather than bolting on generic creativity exercises. And you watch your own default habits, since the biggest thing many teachers can do is stop inadvertently suppressing creativity by rewarding only the expected answer and rushing past divergent thinking. So teaching creative thinking is less a separate curriculum than a set of techniques and a classroom stance woven into how you already teach your subject, aimed at developing the generative, original thinking alongside the content.

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