What is this technique about
In the world of vocational training, especially within some of its more technical branches, there is the idea that creativity is not important and that learning should be based on learning to repeat a series of tasks, nothing is further from the reality of our world of work.
Nowadays, professional profiles demand people who are capable of carrying out the tasks that machines could never do, people being able to develop creative or alternative thinking, providing solutions different from those that usual logical thinking would lead us to. Because of this, the lateral thinking technique is essential, based on not rejecting any initial idea, on shuffling all the possibilities.
Both ways of thinking must be mutually supportive, it can be said that creative or lateral thinking allows ideas to be reached and the logical one to develop them.
The father of lateral thinking, Eduard Bono, affirmed that, this has as its aim the creation of new ideas, new ideas are normally related to the field of technical invention; however, the invention of new technical devices is only one of the many aspects that derive from creativity. New ideas are drivers of change and progress in all fields, from science and art, to politics and personal happiness.
Taking into account that we are going to work on a way of using the mind, it is not approached as a concrete task, a case to be solved, but rather it will be lived in the classroom as the training of a way of thinking. For this, individual thought and group work are sought to enhance that inexhaustible source of alternative paths that listening to others entails.
When talking about Lateral Thinking, we are not talking about a technique in itself, but about a way of solving problems using creativity, imagination and alternative paths.
For this, it can be carried out with different approaches in the classroom, from group work techniques with a stage director, in which the questions that are asked are the protagonists for solving enigmas, to individual exercises for training critical and creative thought.
This will allow students to get out of the usual points of focus, to look at the problem from other points of view and provide critical and creative solutions.
