We love brainstorming; it’s quick, it’s empowering and it’s fun.
But on its own it’s a poor way to solve problems as it usually fails to address what the real problem is and may even offer a form of escapism that gives people license to ignore the existence of the problem altogether.
There’s no point generating ideas before you know which aspect of the problem to tackle… and you can’t decide that before you know what’s actually making the problem happen… which you won’t know until you have a clear definition of the problem… and that’s hard to do unless everyone agrees that it actually is a problem.
So here’s how we do it:
- Acknowledgement: Does everybody accept this is actually a problem? If not, let’s share the bad news because we’re not gonna solve a problem we don’t think exists.
- Definition: What’s the actual problem? Too much X? Not enough Y? The wrong kind of Z? All of the above?
- Causality: Why is it happening? Why is that? And what’s the reason for that? Do these things cause each other? And what’s beneath all that? Why?
- Strategy: Where could we have the greatest impact for the least effort and where should we attack first?
Ok, now you’re ready to brainstorm.
It sounds like a lot of work, but not when you consider the time and effort that goes into ideas that not only don’t work but might actually make things worse.
Gary
Hi Jason
Great post. I could not agree more with you.Brainstorming in education circles is done to death and while it is a good way of creating fluid thoughts and ideas it is normally an intuitive response. The thoughts are random, unedited and not particularly higher level because there is no justification to them. It is the most overused strategy in schools these days and to be frank, students are just getting bored with them as they are a bit predictable and not stretching thinking at this initial stage. Your idea is great because it give purpose, justification, clustering of ideas, establishes a shared language base and taps into prior knowledge. The students are doing a lot more than just celebrating divergent thoughts here. It encompasses many steps up on Bloom’s ladder of questioning all at once!
I am going to try this one out on my students next week and will let you know how it goes.
Gary 🙂
Jason
Hey Gary, thanks for the comment; it reflects what a lot of educators have been saying. If you’re looking for new names or flavours or colour schemes then brainstorming is the way to go: generate the quantity then select for quality. But solving a problem requires analytical, critical thinking to correctly frame the demands and limitations of a real world situation, which might be why Einstein, when asked how he would tackle a problem if only given an hour, replied that he would devote 50 minutes to correctly defining the problem.
Looking forward to your report back once you’ve tried this on students, and as always, let me know if you need any additional material or techniques, as we’ve only scratched the surface with this topic.
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