Teaching Approach and the Development of Divergent Thinking Abilities in Primary Schools

S ummary . This research was designed to evaluate the effects of differing teaching approaches on divergent thinking abilities, the hypothesis being that informal, progressive teaching would promote these abilities more than formal, more subject‐centred teaching. Two‐hundred‐and‐eleven children, 11 to 12 years old, of all ability levels, were tested, half coming from ‘Formal’ and half from ‘Informal’ primary schools which were matched for verbal reasoning quotient (VRQ) and socioeconomic background. The results showed that pupils from the Informal schools were significantly superior in divergent thinking abilities. The difference in means often reached the .01 level of significance and was in no case in the unpredicted direction. The hypothesis was thus confirmed. A subsidiary hypothesis—that the correlation between VRQ and divergent thinking abilities would decrease as the VRQ of each sub‐group rose—was also supported. As expected, these correlation values were generally higher in the Informal schools.