There is no scientific evidence that brainstorming will or will not help generate ideas and at times, if not monitored, groups can become too social and lose sight of what they are focusing on. However, with that said, brainstorming can produce some great things as well. When groups get together to put ideas together it can boost morale, enhance an educational or work experience, and promote team work.
For a teacher it is important to remember a few key points when you break students off into groups for brainstorming or problem solving in general. These are:
- Focus - You want the group to solve the problem and to do it as well as possible. Communicating this to your students is key. You don't just want a lot of solutions but you want the students to take their solutions and see how good they can make them while working together.
- No negativity - When you have students in a group situation and you want everyone to feel like they can share ideas or thoughts you absolutely do not want criticism. It should be stressed that there are no bad ideas, but take the ideas and improve upon them to make them all that they can be. This helps students lift one another, work together and ultimately raise self esteem.
- Strange is not bad - Just as you express to students that there are no bad ideas make sure they know that thinking outside of the box is welcome. Great innovators do not think inside of the box and we should foster a student's creativity as much as possible.
A teacher can present the problem, give the student all the information necessary, carefully choose which students will be in which groups and possibly give them a foundation of where to start by asking questions or posing ideas. There are many ways to go about brainstorming so be sure you are clear to your students.
Some subjects that this is good for are things like history. You can give students a historical situation and ask them what a leader could have done and what the outcome would have been. You can ask how many different solutions there were to different historical issues and what the end result would have been if different roads would have been taken. When talking to teens about life situations brainstorming is good. Research has shown that if you do situational brainstorming and have teens come up with ways to handle different scenarios they are more likely to follow through in a like manner. This is great for teaching kids to say no to drug use, underage drinking, sexual promiscuity and other negative behaviors.
