Convergent and divergent thinking in task modification: A case of Korean prospective mathematics teachers' exploration

Abstract

This study investigated how 38 secondary mathematics prospective teachers modified textbook tasks for convergent and divergent thinking while learning to teach mathematics during university coursework. The coursework focused prospective teachers' attention on their analyses of textbook tasks in terms of potential affordances and constraints for creativity education and implementation of textbook task modification and micro-teaching. Prospective teachers were asked to consider studies from general perspectives on creativity education, studies on enhancing creativity by increasing or maintaining levels of cognitive demands in tasks, and studies about encouraging creativity thinking by facing and dealing with ambiguity or pathologies and misconceptions when modifying textbook tasks and micro-teaching. Findings indicated that prospective teachers had different types of textbook task modification for creativity education that fell into four categories: no meaningful change, blind variability, orthodoxy, and creativity. In addition, prospective teachers actively linked theory and practice centered on textbook tasks and textbook task modification for creativity education and the citations to which they referred varied according to the task quadrant into which their textbook task modification was categorized.