Ways of Thinking:
Convergent and Divergent
When it comes
to Critical Thinking and trying to see reality, there are two
important ways of thinking about the world around us.
Complementing each other, they both
are important and useful in problem solving and our ongoing quest for valid understandings
Convergent Thinking: thinking that brings
together information focused on solving a problem (especially
solving problems that have a single correct solution).
This is
probably the most familiar sort of thinking. It takes
various bits of information and uses them to arrive at a single
answer.
Multiple choice questions have various possible answers, only
one of which is the correct answer.
Divergent Thinking: tthinking
that moves away in diverging directions so as to involve a
variety of aspects and which sometimes lead to novel ideas and
solutions; associated with creativity
Where
convergent thinking begins with multiple bits of information and
brings them together for a single solution, divergent thinking
begins with a single bit of information and moves away from it
toward multiple possible solutions.
