Cultivating divergent thinking in mathematics through an open-ended approach

The purpose of this study was to develop a program to help cultivate divergent thinking in mathematics based on open-ended problems and to investigate its effect. The participants were 398 seventh grade students attending middle schools in Seoul. A method of pre- and post-testing was used to measure mainly divergent thinking skills through open-ended problems. The results indicated that the treatment group students performed better than the comparison students overall on each component of divergent thinking skills, which includes fluency, flexibility, and originality. The developed program can be a useful resource for teachers to use in enhancing their students' creative thinking skills. An open-ended approach in teaching mathematics suggested in this paper may provide a possible arena for exploring the prospects and possibilities of improving mathematical creativity.