Educating for Creativity

Robert Kelly

• Publisher: Brush Education
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781550594133
• eBook ISBN: 9781550594294
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Bringing creativity into mainstream educational practice has become a mantra among educators. But what does creative practice in education really look like? Take a journey around the globe with educator and artist Robert Kelly to witness innovative creative practice in action, with examples from early childhood to post-secondary levels.

Through stories and real-life examples, discover the techniques of global leaders in creativity and design thinking, including India's Riverside School, Denmark's Kaospilots, and San Francisco's Brightworks. Educating for Creativity provides a theoretical framework for creative practice and creative development alongside a practical exploration of how to make creativity in education work from pioneers in the field.

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Educating for Creativity

Robert Kelly

Introduction

ON A COOL, DAMP DECEMBER MORNING in San Francisco, I found myself on the shore of Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park with a class of six- and seven-year-olds from the Brightworks private school. We were about to launch their boats.

Back at the school, before we left earlier that morning, Gever Tulley, one of the school’s cofounders, suggested that I accompany this group to help launch the boats they had designed and built. The first thing that came to mind when he ran this suggestion by me was that they were going to launch model boats. I quickly realized that the boats to be launched were built and designed by the students, and they were going to actually paddle these boats in Stow Lake using the paddles they also built and designed. Off to one side inside Brightworks was a makeshift water tank that resembled a kiddie pool where the six- and seven-year-olds had tested the boats for seaworthiness while sitting in their boats with their paddles.

The launch of these cardboard, plastic, and wooden boats at Stow Lake was an exciting moment. The whole experience raised so many questions. Which hull designs are most seaworthy? Which is better: a single-bladed paddle or a double-bladed paddle? How do I move forward? How do I turn? What design changes do I have to make to improve my boat?

What had brought me to Brightworks in San Francisco was a desire to research creative practice in education as it is carried out in different educational settings around the world. I wanted to examine how educators bring creativity into educational practice in diverse ways and in diverse contexts. On this cool, damp, San Francisco morning, as I surveyed these boats designed by six- and seven-year-olds, I noticed that some had taken on water and were listing to one side while others were waterlogged and coming apart. Others worked quite well. There was more design work and experimentation to do. I knew I was in a good place, one of many around the world in which one could explore the practice of creativity in education.

This book, Educating for Creativity: A Global Conversation, begins with an exploration of the meaning and vocabulary of creativity in educational practice encompassing creativity theory and an examination of the fabric of creative development. This is followed by contributions from educators around the world—from early childhood to the postsecondary level—speaking about the teaching, learning, and design of creativity in educational practice from their perspectives in the midst of practice.

The Need for Creativity in Educational Practice

The words in this volume of Adam Royalty from the K–12 Lab in the d.school at Stanford University frame the conversation on the need for creativity in mainstream educational practice.

I’m struck by the fact that we don’t trust people in our society to come up with something new until they’re nineteen, twenty-two, and twenty-five years old. Almost all of what students are doing is working on problems that have been solved before. I understand that there’s a lot of value to that, but why do we not trust our children to come up with original problem-solving solutions? Just the fact that one shows an element of trust in this area engages students. It is baffling to me what lack of faith we have in people until they’ve lived a fifth of their life; it seems strange.

We are in major period of transition from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (Pink 2005). Educational practice in the Information Age has been characterized by a focus on the accumulation of data and an over-emphasis on reductive, analytical thinking. The emerging Conceptual Age is driven by creativity with idea generation and experimentation as the main drivers. Charles Leadbeater (2008) further adds that we are entering a time that has great potentials for mass creativity. He describes new generations as being defined by what they share in the way of ideas and creative practice, not by what they own, as information is readily accessible in our virtual and digital worlds. Collaborative creativity is emerging as an essential practice for the complexities faced by future generations.

Traditional mainstream education immersed in the Information Age has been very consumption intense. Educational practice in this broad context values and facilitates the consumption and retention of information accompanied by the assessment regimens that measure success in doing this. This resonates with the broader economic cultures immersed in market-economy practices that engage heavily in the production, marketing and consumption of goods and services on a massive scale. Economic success is often measured by vertical summative comparisons: gross national product, gross domestic product, profit margins, employment rates, and trade surpluses. Education systems are very much part of this economic fabric embodying many of these characteristics and perceived by many as existing solely to serve a successful and growing economy in any way, shape, or form. We learn to consume very well—consumer goods and services, information, everything. Alane Starko (2010) contends that to be successful we will need more than the knowledge that is measured by traditional assessment practice. She further explains that a disposition characterized by flexible thinking, imagination, and creative practice is necessary to solve problems unimaginable today.

Adam Royalty refers to students as spending most of their time working on problems that have already been solved. The implication here is that despite our best intentions, most of a student’s day is spent restating or retelling information in a context where the outcome is already known and then measuring their success in doing this.

We learn this system very quickly and at a very young age. What does the teacher want? What will be on the test or exam? How does he or she mark? We learn to perform for outcomes that are known. This is a disposition that does not value risk taking or experimentation, two things that are essential for creative development and creative practice. This disposition is quite disabling when it comes to the growth of creative practice in education. J. K. Rowling (2008) in her address to a Harvard graduating class discussed the importance of failure and imagination. She stated, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

Give Them What They Want

I learned at a very early age to give the teacher what he or she wanted. This followed me well into my early days as an educator.

In my very first month as a junior-high Social Studies and Art teacher I was told by my principal that the school district superintendent was coming into my classroom to assess my teaching. This can be a very intimidating experience for any fresh new teacher. To prepare for this I went into the staffroom and asked my more experienced colleagues what the superintendent would be looking for—in other words what was going to be on the test. They were unanimous in saying that he really valued class participation. He wanted to see all of the students engaged while I was teaching.

After this discovery I thought, this is easy enough to do. I will give him what he wants. It was announced that the superintendent was coming into my morning grade-seven Social Studies class that just happened to be my homeroom class. Before he came in I told my students that I was being inspected and that when I asked a question I wanted everyone to put their hands up: their left hand if they know the answer, their right hand if they didn’t! In came the superintendent. He sat in the corner and pulled out his notebook as I began my Social Studies class. Every one of my questions was greeted by a sea of enthusiastic hands. I moved the class along briskly picking and choosing carefully amongst these eager grade sevens. The superintendent was smiling as he wrote in his notebook. This was good, I was power teaching. My report was a positive one. It said I had great class participation. I sure did.

Accumulating discipline content and understanding is necessary as we need to have solid grounding across individual disciplines and fields to work and grow in these areas. In general education there is intense pressure to perpetuate this learning culture with the demands of curriculum content and ever-increasing discipline density and complexity. However, when these areas are the prime identifying focus of educational practice, there is a problem. What is the sense of accumulating masses of information and discipline content if we are not equipped with a creative disposition to utilize this information to deal with the challenges of everyday life and those that future generations will face? We don’t have to choose between discipline competency or creativity. It is more of a question of balance between two concepts that are not mutually exclusive. They work hand in glove. There is a great need to balance discipline competency and discipline knowing with creative development within educational practice.

Business and industry have long recognized the value of creativity and innovation. A lot of the literature about creativity is targeted at the business community to enhance its capacity for innovation and its potentials to develop cutting-edge products or services that give a competitive edge in the market place, ultimately enhancing profitability. However, there are many other equally important contexts in which to apply creativity in the mainstream of educational practice.

Creative practice enables social and business innovation for sustainable economic practice with a social conscience. In this volume, the KaosPilots in Aarhus, Denmark, describe their engagement in the design and enterprise of fourth-sector businesses that share these attributes. Both Tim Brown (2009) and Warren Berger (2009) speak to the evolution of the design world from a narrow focus on product design to a much broader application of design thinking that can be integrated into all aspects of business and society. Creative practice in education enables the application of design thinking for the benefit of all human beings, their living conditions and the environment that surrounds them. Included in this volume, the Bruce Mau–inspired Institute without Boundaries, Stanford’s d.school, and the global Design for Change initiative for eight- to thirteen-year-olds from the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, are just a few examples of how design thinking can be applied in a diverse range of contexts that span social innovation, community and environmental enhancement, and health and wellness. Creative practice in education also enables the creation of original work across the discipline spectrum in a culture of collaborative creativity. Creative practice in education has become an educational imperative.

What Is Creativity?

When applying creativity to educational practice it is very important that there is a clear and consistent vocabulary to explain the concept of creativity along with its related concepts. The word “creativity” can mean so many different things to different people. Mark Runco (2007) contends that when the word creativity is used it should always be accompanied by a descriptor that contextualizes it. This allows educators and learners to share a co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Preface Robert Kelly
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Educating for Creativity - Robert Kelly
• 2 Creativity in Teacher Education - Robert Kelly
• 3 The Arc, Learning by Making and Learning by Inventing - Gever Tulley, with an introduction by Robert Kelly
• 4 A Change Agency for Creative Minds - Malene Post
• 5 Designing Education A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY ROSENSTOCK - Edited by Robert Kelly and Laurie Alisat
• Plus + Creating the Feeling of Collaboration The Art of Ensembling - Ian Prinsloo Theatre director and creative inquiry facilitator
• 6 Design Thinking for Change - Veena Parankush Das and Niall Walsh
• 7 The Mobius Strip and the Creative Community - Steve Miranda
• 8 Creative Thinking, Creative Doing CULTURE, THINKING, AND LEARNING FOR CREATIVITY - Ted Hamm, Tad Phippen Wente, Karen Robison, Peter Woods, and Molly Zielke
• 9 Rules of the Playground -Brad Burns, Sherryl Clelland, Greg Dowler-Coltman, Tami Dowler-Coltman, Lindsay Ingram, and Kylie Weatherall
• Plus + The Global Influence of Reggio Emilia Inspiration - Deborah Forbes Art and early childhood educator
• 10 A Learning Community that Supports Creativity - Alison Maher, Ellen Hall, and Lisa Stevens
• 11 Design Doing PUTTING THINKING INTO PRACTICE - Luigi Ferrara, Elise Hodson, and Michelle Hotchin
• 12 Innovation through Science and Design - Matthew Wunder (Ed. D.), Carla Levenson, and Sue Beauregard
• 13 Developing Creative Confidence in Educators through Design Thinking - Edited by Robert Kelly
• Plus + The Essential Role of Metaphorical. Thinking in Creative Practice. Ian Prinsloo. Theatre director and creative inquiry facilitator
• 14 - Creativity for a Good Life. Jens Pedersen (with inspiration from Søren Langager, Annemarie Højmark, and Spæt Henriksen)
• 15 Creativity across Diverse Classroom Settings - Jean Hendrickson Executive director of Oklahoma A+ Schools
• 16 Creative Schools Partnership CREATIVE EDUCATION ON A LARGE SCALE - Mike Scott; Marie Garside and Bernadette Furey; Charlotte Krzanicki, Katie Smith, and Iain Erskine edited by Robert Kelly and Laurie Alisat
• 17 More Creativity - Edited by Robert Kelly and Laurie Alisat with contributions from Kristin Simpson and Carlo Ricci
• Afterword - Robert Kelly
• Glossary
• School Websites
• About the Editor