Abstract
This paper examines the role of addition and repetition in generating what counts as valuable educational knowledge and ideas in divergent tasks. It is argued that the nature of valuable knowledge required for divergent tasks is different from that of convergent tasks. Although justification and truth are important features of valuable knowledge required in convergent tasks, these are not sufficient for divergent tasks. Instead, novelty, originality and creativity are important features of knowledge in such tasks. The paper attempts to define 'originality' and examines how 'original' or 'new significant' ideas might be generated. The data used in the paper is the group discussion data of Malaysian and British students on British undergraduate courses. The analysis suggests that repeating and adding similar ideas have a role in constructing 'original' or 'new significant' ideas and knowledge. Ideas that are repeated and added can combine and accumulate into something significant.
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