Creativity and Education in China

Paradox and Possibilities for an Era of Accountability

Carol A. Mullen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138954557
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317353348
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Published with Kappa Delta Pi, Creativity and Education in China takes readers on a journey through research-supported ideas and practical examples of creative and innovative schooling within a changing regime. Analyzing the consequences of exam-centric accountability on the creative and critical capacities of Chinese students, author Carol A. Mullen's dynamic portrait of a country serves as both a cautionary tale and an inspiring example to emulate. Examining creative endeavors and breakthroughs within a competitive, globalized educational landscape, the chapters are organized around environmental and global issues impacting education, expressions of creativity within pre-K–12 schools in China, and creative innovation in higher education learning environments. Presenting captivating cases from the field, the book offers novel approaches to fostering creativity as a natural, integrated part of high-stakes education systems in Eastern and Western cultures alike.

Part I
Environment

1
Creativity Frames and Aesthetic Study in Chinese Environments

We’ve entered a new era. Call it the age of imagination, ideation, conceptualization, creativity—take your pick. Creativity, mental flexibility, and collaboration have displaced one-dimensional intelligence.

(Hunter, 2013, p. 6)

Does China, at the forefront of enforced test-centric schooling in the world, display any creativity in teaching and learning? Is it even plausible that creativity in education could be thriving in a communist regime?

Creativity Defined

Creativity, a strength that comes from within, involves making or building something. The power of imagination allows us to see in unconventional ways and find different ways to solve problems. Creative people make ordinary, unrelated things extraordinary; by conveying what they see, they have moved their disciplines, professions, and even societies in a new direction (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009; Li & Gerstl-Pepin, 2014).

Creativity is more dimensional than just making something, seeing differently, and solving problems, for it also includes innovating and inventing, question posing and meaning-making, and change and transformation.

A snapshot of the creative person is someone who approaches problems flexibly and manages decision-making that is not already structured (Li & Gerstl-Pepin, 2014). Although problem-solving is important, “question posing” is more so, Eisner (2001/2004, p. 301) contended, so the creative person who pursues amorphous problems is asking open-ended questions.

Whether creativity involves innovating or inventing something new and having an impact is debatable. On the one hand, creativity, innovation, and invention are frequently interchanged, due to their similarities: “Creativity implies some measure of invention” (Schwab, 1969/2004, p. 107). On the other hand, it’s believed that these can and should be differentiated: “Creativity is the capability or act of conceiving something original or unusual,” whereas “innovation is the implementation of something new” (Hunter, 2013, p. 9, italics added). This is different still from invention, which is “the creation of something that has never been made before” (Hunter, 2013, p. 9, italics added).

At its simplest, then, creativity refers to producing something new and valuable (Mumford, 2003). It involves a “mysterious process” by which people “come up with new ideas and new things,” thereby “bring[ing] into existence something genuinely new that is valued enough to be added to the culture” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, pp. 6, 25).

China wants this—to become a creative culture that is discovery oriented and inventive. An inspiration for “the China dream” (Mingfu, 2015) is America’s creativity and proven capacity for discovery in scientific and economic sectors. So China’s leaders have vowed to pursue creativity, having realized that breakthroughs do not occur by a populace of risk-averse test-takers (Zha, 2013; Zhao, 2014).

The Creativity Paradox as a Creative Frame

Eisner (2001/2004) reasoned that students who learn by discovery—through seeking and solving problems—are being encouraged to wonder, which is what U.S. schools need to foster. Wonder fuels creativity—curious students generate questions of their own. When they partake in activities that introduce them to inquiry as an intellectual habit, they are being cultivated to have multiple perspectives on an idea or issue. We can think of this as a creative disposition.

Eisner (2001/2004) articulated a beginning creative vision that has transformative potential in education, the current context of which is high-stakes, test-beleaguered schools in the United States and China. What are the possibilities for a creative education in school systems mired by accountability?

Paradoxically, the “China dream” in the era of Xi Jinping’s presidency of the People’s Republic of China is to reinvent itself as a culture of creativity though economic, social, and military reform and Internet control (Wasserstrom, 2013). China’s perception of America as a world leader in these areas has produced a deep yearning to compete (Li & Gerstl-Pepin, 2014; Zhao, 2014). Given that wealth, power, and development are motivations for becoming a creative culture in China, according to Wasserstrom (2013), where does this leave educational renewal, freedom, and expression as cultural goals of creativity?

In many countries spanning the West and East, “everyday innovation” (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009) in education systems and market economies has been constrained (Zhao, 2014). Staats (2011) traced how China’s historical and cultural forces have had a “strong counter-productive influence on the development of creativity” (p. 47). Creative resources have been depleted and challenges compounded for developing creative, entrepreneurial citizens, Staats (2011) claimed, despite uneven attempts for creative transformation through education policy (Draper, 2012).

High-stakes testing cultures dominate schooling, with “a narrow means/ends orientation” (Eisner, 2001/2004, p. 300). Creative visions of schooling value dispositions of “risk-taking, exploration, uncertainty, and speculation” and “curiosity and interest in engaging and challenging ideas” (Eisner, 2001/2004, p. 300; see also Apple, 2014). Perhaps surprisingly, adaptive communist regimes like China’s are not only capable of measurable economic recovery (Wasserstrom, 2013), but also of incorporating democratic components to effect change (Dimitrov, 2013).

Just as schools are invented and reinvented, so are political systems and societies. Free democracies and communist societies alike are human constructions of the social and political world. Consider Apple’s (2014) evocative delineation of “thick” (healthy and generative) and “thin” (damaged and atrophied) democracies. Test-centric, market-driven education systems, dubbed “testocracies” (Hagopian, 2014), severely thin the democratic capacities of societies and schools. Ironically, despite having different political structures, histories, and education systems, both China and the United States are arguably testocracies in which democracy is being strained.

To the contrary, resilient communist regimes like China can thicken. They exhibit the capacity for reinvention, such as by adopting some democratic aspects of governance even though a prime motivation is reportedly to appease citizens (Dimitrov, 2013).

The creativity–accountability dilemma is a storyline of paradoxes and possibilities for China, just as it is for America. I approach this study as a complex narrative and “story” my data (e.g., Clandinin, 2007). Attempting to share meanings in an evocative but also accessible story-like manner within the school and university cases, I am hoping for resonance with my readers.

Creativity Frames From Psychology Synthesized

Figure 1.1 is my creative synthesis of cognitive frames of creativity from psychology. It serves as a guide for orienting readers to the pre-K–12 and postsecondary schooling cases featured in this book. My model arose from the literature on creativity frameworks that I reviewed to prepare for explorations of creative education in China.

Before arriving at this fusion, I selected two creativity models that could be applicable in various schooling contexts. I combined the frames to produce a creative synthesis from an educational perspective on creativity grounded in qualitative inquiry.

Figure 1.1 A synthesis of psychology models of creativity for education

Key areas of education that characterize dimensions of my study are qualitative inquiry, field work, international education, pre-K–12 schools, postsecondary schools, arts and asthetics, and policy and politics.

Folded into this education study are two validated psychology frameworks: Kaufman and Beghetto’s (2009) 4-C Creativity Model and Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) systems model, which I’ve named the Creativity Interaction Model. In the descriptions of the models, the creators do not reference education as a discipline or as an area of research or in international contexts. However, believing these frames to have relevance in education and in international study of learning environments, I translated them conceptually and practically into a global education context.

Based on what I learned about creativity from my stay in China, I found it useful to emphasize Kaufman and Beghetto’s frame, so it receives more attention than Csikszentmihalyi’s, which is used as a counterpoint in particular cases.

These creativity frames represent an interplay of elements in the larger work (this book). As Figure 1.1 shows, from my viewpoint the two frames intersect and thereby fit together, not in perfect harmony but more as complementary perspectives on creativity.

To expound, Kaufman and Beghetto (2009) placed the person—and the individual’s creative meaning-making and generative daily problem-solving experiences—at the center of the schema of creativity, with external forces (i.e., professions and cultures) as major influencers. As such, the seed of generativity for creative breakthroughs within the professions and across cultures is given due credit as a process that builds from within individuals.

In contrast, for Csikszentmihalyi (1996), the person is de-emphasized, relatively speaking, with shaping forces (i.e., field and domain) that affect the creative capacities of individuals and their potential influence at the center. In this way, all of the synergies that affect an individual’s success are exposed; thus, the creative person is but one of the energetic forces at play within a complex web.

With the eclectic approach I used to story some dynamics of creativity in China, I include some classic curriculum scholarship on arts and aesthetics. In regard to such an approach, Eisner (1991) explained (in the tradition of Schwab, 1969/2004) that when it comes to analyzing practical situations, more than one theory may be necessary for illustrating different interpretations of a situation.

I’ve applied my creative synthesis model to the pedagogical encounters storied in this book, sometimes explicitly, other times subtly. I also graphically depict some of the results from my data analyses informed by these models.

Because this book represents the first pedagogical application of the two frames in an educational context, with Asian populations and with a globally connected American population, a unique contribution is being made to education, qualitative inquiry, and perhaps creativity research as well.

Creativity agendas are not easy to embrace, especially within high-stakes accountability environments and in unfamiliar overseas contexts. How does a foreign visiting scholar go about trying to see and fi nd creativity in hidden worlds and in translation, let alone experiment with creative pedagogical treatments in classrooms? As such, I wanted to find out everything I could about the creativity–accountability dilemma, which I also refer to as the creativity paradox, in China. To this end, my conceptualization and methodology are eclectic, and my study treatment is aesthetic.

Next, I provide more detail about the creativity frames and connect them with the literature in art and aesthetics.

Kaufman and Beghetto’s Creativity Frame

Kaufman and Beghetto’s (2009) 4-C Creativity Model has a kind of directional movement built into it, from thinking about smaller, more personal creativity(i.e., Mini-c = miniature creativity and Little-c = small creativity) to bigger creativity (i.e., Pro-C = professional creativity and Big-C = gigantic creativity) that affects a profession, as in the case of Pro-C, and a culture or the world, as in Big-C.

• Mini-c is novel and personally meaningful experiences.
• Little-c is everyday problem-solving in any sphere of work and life.
• Pro-C is a category belonging to creative professionals (not famous).
• Big-C is creativity of great magnitude reserved for famous works.

(Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007)

Thus, a contribution of this frame is that it allows for specifying types of creativity while attending to Mini-c, in particular, and also Little-c. Value for everyday creative meaning making and problem-solving is at the heart of this model. Central to this vision is the creative individual.

Pushing against the status quo, Kaufman and Beghetto (2009), in describing collective thinking about creativity as biased toward “eminent creativity” (p. 1), provoked such questions as, How will I know when I see creativity that is not about famous works and the exhibitions that display them?

Ironically, within the arc of creativity is the enriching lifeworld of people and places, all potential seeds for later breakthroughs. In other words, some Big-C and Pro-C creative examples can be traced to their Mini-c and Little-c beginnings.

Dewey (1934/1980) and Eisner (1991) argued that human beings must recapture everyday creativity in schooling and life. As the seed that nurtures other types of creativity, our absorption with activity that keeps the senses alive is a process of aesthetic endeavor. My approach to creativity in China was to deliberately attend to this most modest of the creativity levels (i.e., Mini-c and Little-c); otherwise, the tender process of intrapersonal creativity, often quiet and unassuming, is ignored in education and society.

Creativity, then, does not belong exclusively to the greate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Environment
• PART II Expression Cases
• PART III Innovation Cases
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Index