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HOW
ELASTICTHINKING
Can Stretch Superintendents’ Minds
for Enhanced Problem-Solving
By Dr. David E. Bartz, Professor Emeritus, Department of Educational Leadership
Eastern Illinois University
Superintendents are “problem solvers” for a variety of areas
such as budgeting, building maintenance, transportation,
collective bargaining, technology, curriculum, student learning
and citizens’ complaints. They are also expected to furnish
board members and others with insights on issues such as
student assessment, school shootings and teacher shortages
to name only a few.
I’d like to introduce you to a different approach to
problem solving—elastic thinking. I believe it can provide
superintendents with new ideas and insights for problem
solving and a variety of additional perspectives on important
issues. Here’s how it works:
Elastic thinking characteristics
• Moving beyond our conventional mindsets through
flexible thinking
to reframe questions we ask to generate
new ideas to solve problems and gain additional insights
on issues.
• Abandoning ingrained assumptions we possess about
a problem and opening ourselves to new associations
and relationships between ideas and new paradigms for
framing the problem.
• Concentrating on generating new ideas and perspectives
for a problem by utilizing our imagination and “free
thinking” as much—or more—than traditional linear
analytical thinking based on existing frames of reference.
• Demonstrating a willingness to experiment, innovate
and try different approaches to problem solving.
• Looking beyond the
existing conditions
,
circumstances and order of things to explore
new ideas to solve problems and gain additional
perspectives on issues (Mlodinow, 2018a; Kirkus
Review, 2018).
Bottom-up insteadof top-down thinking
In comparison to traditional linear reasoning as part
of
analytical thinking
, which is represented as a step-
by-step “top-down” progression in the brain of logical
relationships between factors to solve a problem, elastic
thinking is a “bottom-up” process. Bottom-up means
that one clears the mind of preconceived notions for
a problem which allows the brain to utilize emotions
and feelings for ideas that are different from the linear
top-down approach frequently utilized. The bottom-up
approach used by elastic thinking prompts new insightful
associations, patterns and relationships between
concepts and ideas that prompt alternative solutions for
problems and different perspectives on issues. Elastic
thinking can also cause a
sideways expansion
of the
mental parameters and boundaries of the mind that
restrict the perspectives of a superintendent to solve
problems and gain new perspectives on issues (Rifkind,
2018, p. 4).
continued...