A sports approach to ideation

In ball-playing sports such as football, rugby or basketball there is an approach to learning known as non-linear pedagogy which advocates a more ‘hands-off’ approach to teaching and learning within physical education (PE) embracing both technical and cognititve skills.Through the manipulation of certain constraints, rather than prescriptive instruction different information is presented to the learner. In turn, the learner is challenged and channelled to find their own movement solutions to the problems they face or the goals they need to achieve. The set constraints, which relate to the performer, the environment or the task, are the boundaries in which the learners can search for those solutions. In this way, learners are encouraged to make their own discoveries. This approach works for ideation too. Indeed the ideation workshop is very much a non-linear pedagogic approach raising the awareness of ideation tools through manipulation of constraints.

Thinking aloud a tool for ideation

Speaking or saying out loud means to say what you are thinking, to verbalise aloud with your voice, as opposed to just thinking it. Although talking to ourselves out loud is sometimes frowned upon, hearing ourselves speak can help memory recall. Moreover, saying something out loud is not only a powerful cue to retrieve pre-existing ideas but can also help generate new ideas. The writer Heinrich Kleist of the Enlighenment era describes his habit of using speech as a thinking method and writes that active speech helps to turn the obscure thought into a whole idea. That is, it’s not thought that produces speech but, rather, speech is a mental process that in turn generates thought. Or, ideas come with speaking. Self-talk, then, or thinking aloud can be seen as an ideation tool. Reference: Kleist (1805). On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking. Ed. and Trans. by David Constantine. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004).