Creativity in Language Teaching

Perspectives from Research and Practice

Rodney H. Jones, Jack C. Richards, Rodney H. Jones, Jack C. Richards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317550464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Current, comprehensive, and authoritative, this text gives language teachers and researchers, both a set of conceptual tools with which to think and talk about creativity in language teaching and a wealth of practical advice about principles and practices that can be applied to making their lessons more creative. Providing an overview of the nature of creativity and its role in second language education, it brings together twenty prominent language teachers and researchers with expertise in different aspects of creativity and teaching contexts to present a range of theories on both creative processes and how these processes lead to creative practices in language teaching.

Unique in the field, the book takes a broader and more critical look at the notion of creativity in language learning, exploring its linguistic, cognitive, sociocultural and pedagogic dimensions. Structured in four sections— theoretical perspectives, creativity in the classroom, creativity in the curriculum, and creativity in teacher development—each chapter is supplemented by Questions for Discussion and Suggestions for Further Research. Its accessible style makes the book relevant as both a course text and a resource for practicing teachers.

Section I
Theoretical Perspectives

1

Creativity and Language Teaching

Rodney H.Jones and Jack C.Richards

Introduction

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the notion of “creativity” in nearly all walks of life. Governments, corporations, and schools are increasingly focused on how they can help people become more creative and innovative, and, in the popular media, creativity is often portrayed as the key to personal fulfillment, economic advancement, and the solution to many of the most vexing problems of the 21st century. It is especially in the realm of education that the value of creativity is most vigorously touted, with administrators and policy makers calling for more creative schools with more creative teachers that can produce more creative students who can contribute to more creative societies.

Language teachers, of course, have not been immune from this “epidemic of creativity.” In 2009, for example, the European Commission on Languages announced “The Year of Creativity,” proclaiming that “Creativity is central to language learning and hence language teaching” (European Commission on Languages, 2009), and research showing links between creativity and levels of attainment in second-language learning seem to confirm this statement (Dörnyei, 2005; see also Richards & Cotterall, this volume). At the same time, however, it seems to be increasingly difficult to foster creative language teaching in many teaching environments in which curricula and materials are more and more standardized, high-stakes language tests are more and more consequential, and teachers are more and more pressured to meet externally imposed performance benchmarks (Richards, 2013).

Although many language teachers consider themselves creative, and many administrators promote the idea of creativity in their schools, there is very little understanding of what actually constitutes creativity in foreign-language teaching, if and why it is actually beneficial to language learning, and how it can be identified, evaluated, and successfully integrated into the curriculum.

Most discussions of creativity in language teaching in the past focused primarily on the use of “creative texts” (i.e., literature, poetry, songs) for language teaching (see, for example, Maley & Duff, 1989), or on the introduction of games and other ludic activities into the classroom (see, for example, Palmer & Rogers, 1983). More recently, it has become clear that being a creative teacher of language is much more complicated than just singing songs and playing games. There was also the assumption in the past that creativity mostly had to do with the affective dimension of language learning; that the main purpose of creative teaching was to motivate and interest students (Chastain, 1975). More recent research, however, has focused more on the cognitive and sociocultural dimensions of creativity in language teaching and learning (Ehrman & Oxford, 1995; van Lier, 2000), and the role of creativity in everyday conversation (see, for example, Carter, 2004). Changes in the way people learn (such as rapid advances in digital pedagogical technologies and the disruption of traditional practices of schooling) make it even more important for teachers to develop creative approaches to teaching.

This book brings together the ideas of 20 prominent language teachers and researchers about the role of creativity in language teaching. Contributors address the issue of creativity in a variety of teaching contexts from a variety of theoretical perspectives, dealing with such topics as creative classroom practices, multilingual creativity, creativity and technology, the characteristics of creative teachers, and creative teacher training. The purpose of this book is to provide language teachers and researchers, especially those at the beginning of their careers, with both a set of conceptual tools with which to think and talk about creativity in language teaching and a wealth of practical advice about principles and practices that can be applied to making their lessons more creative. It is by no means intended as the last word in creativity in language teaching. Far from it. Rather, its main purpose is to facilitate more discussion and encourage more research on this important topic. To this end, each chapter is supplemented by a list of discussion questions and suggestions for further research.

What Is Creativity?

When we were inviting contributors for this book, most of them replied to the invitation with the same question: “Yes, but what do you mean by creativity? Is there some definition or theory of creativity that you want me to follow?” Our response was always to hand the question back to them, to ask, “What does creativity mean to you? How do you define it?” We did this not just because it seemed to be in keeping with the spirit of creativity that motivated this project in the first place but also because of our awareness that creativity is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, and constraining our discussion to just one aspect or theory of creativity seemed counterproductive. As Nelson reminds us in her chapter, “in the transcultural arenas of language education, there are likely to be multiple and sometimes conflicting conceptions of creativity and its value to teaching and learning.” It is therefore important, we felt, that teachers and researchers reading this book be given the opportunity to engage with a multiplicity of voices and perspectives. Our main objective was to find out how these experienced practitioners whom we had invited to write chapters had, in the contexts of their own classrooms and research sites, come to understand the notion of creativity. Consequently, you will not find in this volume a “unified theory of creativity.” Rather, you will find a range of definitions and perspectives informed by literature from multiple disciplines (including anthropology, psychology, sociology, linguistics, literature, and literacy studies) and by the rich experiences of these authors.

While all of the contributors in this book introduce a slightly different take on creativity, there are a few principles about creativity in language teaching that nearly all of them share. First, in all of the chapters, there is a strong conviction that creativity is not an “optional” component in language teaching, something that we “tack onto” our lessons just to make them more interesting, or a kind of “luxury” reserved for the “talented” and “artistic” among us. Instead, creativity is seen as central to successful teaching and learning. Just as Carter (2004, p. 13) argues that “linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people,” so the authors in this volume argue that, in the words of Richards and Cotterall, “All teaching involves acts of creativity.” Creativity is not just ubiquitous; it is also purposeful. Real creativity is not merely decorative—it brings about valuable and concrete outcomes that are linked to the pedagogical knowledge and plans of teachers and the goals of learners (Richards & Cotterall, this volume).

The second principle that unites these chapters is the insistence that discussions of creativity in language teaching go beyond traditional notions of “creative language.” Heavily influenced by literary studies, most early conceptions of creativity in language teaching focused on getting students to read and produce “creative texts,” by which was usually meant “literary” or “poetic” texts, and, in the teaching of spoken language, it took the form of drama activities in which learners were encouraged to imagine themselves in various improbable situations and come up with clever things to say. Although the contributors to this book don’t disparage these methods, most of them take a much wider view of creativity, seeing it not just as a matter of producing clever or “poetic” language but also, and more importantly, of using language in creative ways to solve problems, to establish or maintain relationships, and to get people to act, think or feel in certain ways. As Gee (this volume) argues, the real test of linguistic creativity is whether or not we are able to use language to “pull off” situated meanings and discourses and to portray ourselves as certain kinds of people.

This more discourse-focused view of linguistic creativity (Jones, 2010) permeates most of the chapters in this book, from Chappell’s work on inquiry dialogues to Choi’s focus on multilingual/multimodal texts to Hafner’s examination of creative techniques for teaching scientific and legal genres. Very few of these chapters, in fact, involve examples of what are traditionally considered “creative texts.” The idea is not just that nonliterary texts are also creative but that creativity resides not just in the product (the language that is produced by learners) but in the processes teachers and learners go through to bring about the conditions in which language can be produced and in the people involved in language teaching and learning (including not just teachers and learners but also administrators, policy makers, parents, and employers), their experiences, dispositions, and relationships with one another (Ellis, this volume; Densky, this volume).

Which brings us to the third principle of creativity in language teaching all the chapters in this book share, the fact that it cannot be accomplished alone. Creativity is, by its nature, social and collaborative. As Fisher (2004, p. 17) comments, “Success in any grand project needs help from others, means making alliances, means benefiting from the distributed intelligence of others—developing the ‘info-structure’—interconnectivity through learning conversations with others.” Most of the chapters in this book take a broadly sociocultural view of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), a view that, in the words of Sawyer (2006, p. 4), sees creativity as a matter “not just of individual inspiration but also social factors like collaboration, networks of support, education, and cultural background.” The collaborative nature of creativity can be seen on the micro level of dialogue in which, as both Jones and Chappell (this volume) point out, what we are able to say depends on what others have said before us and determines what they can say after us, a fact that allows us to work together to create conversations, relationships, and, ultimately, societies. It can be seen on the level of the classroom when, as Richards and Cotterall observe, teachers listen to their learners and learners take responsibility for and control of their learning. It can be seen in institutions that support creative teachers and give them the opportunity to develop (Cremin, Barnes, & Scoffham, 2009), as well as the “affinity groups” in which learners mutually develop “shared passions” (Gee, this volume). It can be seen in the wider domains and disciplinary communities in which language teachers participate and which provide what Graves (this volume) calls the “conceptual spaces” that define the possibilities for creative action. And it can be seen in the rich fabric of our cultures, which provide the raw materials from which we create our social lives (see Densky, this volume). As Nelson (this volume; citing Philip, 2013, p. 365), argues, language teachers cannot be expected to develop creative teaching skills in isolation; they depend on support from a “system of interactions” involving institutional leaders, peers, colleagues, and other experts.

There are, of course, plenty of ways that other people (institutions, communities, and cultures) can constrain our creativity as well, but even such constraints can sometimes foster the conditions for creative resistance, as Ollerhead and Burns (this volume) point out in their discussion of the ways teachers devise and implement innovation in the face of policies and institutions that act to limit creativity. “Creativity,” as Jones (2010, p. 477) puts it, “is to a large extent a matter of finding our way around constraints or limitations placed on us by the discourses within which we operate.”

Related to this notion of collaborative creativity is the realization that all creativity somehow builds upon work done in the past. Creativity does not necessarily require that we reinvent the wheel. Creative language use and creative language teaching are often a matter of refashioning, recontextualizing, and building upon the words and ideas of others (Pennycook, 2007). This realization can be a great relief to teachers and learners intimidated by the “cult of originality” that permeates much of the discourse on creativity.

Finally, nearly all the chapters in this book either directly or indirectly embrace the idea that creativity is somehow transformative, that, while much of creativity involves the appropriation and recombination of existing ideas, and some creativity involves thinking of new ideas within the boundaries of a domain’s traditional conceptual boundaries, the real power of creativity is its potential to fundamentally transform what we are doing when we are teaching language. These transformations can occur in different ways and on different levels, from the small but consequential ways learners creatively transform their identities as they learn a new language to the creative acts that teachers engage in day after day of transforming “the subject matter of instruction into forms that are pedagogically powerful” (Richards & Cotterall, this volume) to the ways teachers share stories of their experiences, “interrupting … habitual ways of teaching” and transforming past events into “possible futures” (Conle, 2000; see also Jones, 2011), and finally to the ways entire disciplinary domains can be transformed when teachers, learners, administrators, and policy makers are willing to work together to take risks (Cremin, Barnes, & Scoffham, 2009).

The most important transformation creativity can bring about is a transformation in agency, resulting in increased self-efficacy and empowerment on the part of teachers and learners. As Freire (1970, p. 65, quoted in Ollerhead and Burns, this volume) proclaims, “critical pedagogy is based on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.”

The Structure of this Book

The book is divided into four sections: (1) Theoretical Perspectives, (2) Creativity in the Classroom, (3) Creativity in the Curriculum, and (4) Creativity in Teacher Development. The chapters are arranged to provide the reader with a coherent pathway from theory to practice, though it is not necessary to read the chapters in this sequence, and indeed, many of the chapters do not strictly abide by the neat topical divisions of the sections. Most of the chapters in the theory section, for example, illustrate their points with examples from classroom practice, and all the chapters on classroom practice have strong theoretical underpinnings. The division between the classroom and the curriculum is also blurry, with some of the chapters like Coffey and Leung’s chapter on teachers’ perspectives of creativity, Chik’s chapter on creativity and technology, and Hafner’s chapter on creativity in discipline-specific English teaching m...