Teaching History Creatively

Hilary Cooper, Hilary Cooper

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317363767
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Éducation
• Categoría: Éducation générale

The fully updated second edition of Teaching History Creatively introduces teachers to the wealth of available approaches to historical enquiry, ensuring creative, effective learning. This book clearly sets out the processes of historical enquiry, demonstrating how these are integrally linked with key criteria of creativity and helps readers to employ those features of creativity in the classroom. Underpinned by theory and research, it offers informed and practical support and is illustrated throughout with examples of children's work. Key themes addressed include:

• investigating sources
• using archives in your own research project
• becoming historical agents and history detectives
• drama for exploring events
• myths and legends
• communicating historical understanding creatively.

With brand new chapters from the Stone Ages to the Iron Age, using prehistoric sources; The withdrawal of the Romans and the conquest and settlement of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, in addition to many new case studies, this exciting edition puts an emphasis on accessible, recent research, new evidence and interpretations and encourages the creative dynamism of the study of history. Teaching History Creatively provides vivid and rich examples of the creative use of sources, of approaches to understanding chronology and concepts of time and of strategies to create interpretations. It is an essential purchase for any teacher or educator who wishes to embed creative approaches to teaching history in their classroom.

PART I

THE ESSENTIAL INTEGRATION OF HISTORY AND CREATIVITY

CHAPTER
1
WHY MUST TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HISTORY BE CREATIVE?

Hilary Cooper

There is no history of mankind. There is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

Karl Popper (1945: 229)

In this chapter we shall begin by considering what is understood by the concept of creativity. Then we shall examine the processes of historical enquiry, how they involve all the aspects of creativity that have been identified and why it is essential for young children to engage with historical enquiry at an appropriate level.

WHAT IS ‘CREATIVITY’?

‘Being creative’ is often associated with the arts, for example with dance, music, painting, or with great original thinkers such as Einstein or Tolstoy. However, over the past thirty years there has been a great deal of educational research exploring what is meant by ‘creativity’ and how it can be fostered. There is still no single definition; discourse about creativity is continuously evolving. But there is a consensus about the key components of the concept and agreement that creativity involves generating ideas. These may be ideas new to human history at the ‘high creativity’ end of the creativity continuum or simply ideas new to a person’s previous way of thinking. It is agreed that everyone can, to some extent, be creative. This is what Craft describes as creativity with a little ‘c’ to distinguish it from ‘high creativity’ (Craft et al. 2001: 45–61). It is generally agreed that it is possible to learn to be creative (Craft and Jeffrey 2008), that creativity can apply across the curriculum (QCA 2005) and involves multiple intelligences (Gardner 1999). So what are the key components of creativity?

Identifying areas of enquiry, defining problems, asking questions

First, creative thinking depends on taking time to reflect, being curious, recognising, identifying and accepting problems. This leads to identifying and asking open questions to investigate problems, which may raise new questions (Gardner 1999; Craft 2003). Asking problematic questions requires being open to new information (Langer 1997), the tenacity to pursue questions, and also being prepared to accept possible failure in finding a solution.

Possibility thinking

Responding to such questions requires possibility thinking (Craft 2002). Possibility thinking involves open-mindedness. It is the ability to consider a variety of different possible responses or perspectives in answer to a question, a problem or a situation. This lies at the centre of creative thinking. Possibility thinking includes the ability to hypothesise, to consider alternative possibilities, to ‘suppose’, to ask ‘what if?’ Possibility thinking brings together other aspects of creativity because considering alternative interpretations must have a perceived goal; it is not aimless. Generating creative ideas may lead to creative behaviour and creative action, experimentation and innovation (Levin and Nolan 2004). Langer (1997) calls possibility thinking ‘mindful learning’, which he says is a state of mind. The mindful learner reflects on subject matter while processing the information and sees it from different perspectives, which means the learning is absorbed and can be used in a new context, so that learners are empowered to make the learning their own.

Case study research undertaken by Cremin, Burnard and Craft (2006) focusing on three to seven-year-olds, investigated the ways in which teachers through pedagogical strategies and children’s engagement, promote possibility thinking, which is seen as the core of creative learning. Through interviews with the researchers, as co-researchers and co-learners, teachers reflected on critical incidents and phases involving possibility thinking. Through coding data from various sources a model of pedagogy for possibility thinking emerged. This consisted of three major themes.

Standing back

First, teachers stood back, stopping to observe and listen to the nature of children’s involvement, allowing children time to talk about and weigh up possibilities, learning from each other and following their own interests. This allowed teachers to notice children’s suggestions and behaviours and ask ‘what if’ questions.

Profiling learner agency

Teachers provided multiple opportunities for children to jointly determine and initiate their own activities and so make choices. An example is quoted of seven-year-olds deciding to divide into two groups and set up and compare Florence Nightingale’s and Mary Seacole’s hospitals at Scutari and on the edge of the Black Sea. A dilemma arose when there were insufficient ‘beds’ (tables), which they resolved by the beds acting as doubles and the less seriously wounded having blankets. The teacher provoked children’s thinking by asking questions. How could you move the soldiers from the battlefield to the hospital? Would it help if you made a floor plan? She passed the decisions back to the learners, while remaining interested in their solutions.

Creating time and space

Thinking time and space were prioritised. The children were offered a wide range of learning resources and time was handled flexibly – ‘stretchy time’.

Imagination

Possibility thinking involves the imagination to envisage a variety of possibilities, with the intention of finding solutions. So imagining and being imaginative are essential for creativity (Craft 2002). To imagine something is to create a mental image, picture, sound or feeling in your mind. It is a thought process that establishes a new idea – seeing other possibilities. Imaginative activity is fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are original and of value (NACCCE 1999: 29). It allows learners to conjecture a world different from their own.

But what is imagination?

Passmore (1980) makes a distinction between imaging (some form of mental representation), imagining (supposing that something is the case, hypothesising or empathising with another’s perspective), and being imaginative (generating a novel outcome). It has been claimed that imagination is superior to the intellect because it makes it possible to form new thoughts, build up new worlds. ‘The objects of imagination are created, not discovered; it is disciplined, not fanciful’ (Kenny 1989: 114). Being imaginative involves going beyond the obvious and seeing more than is initially apparent or interpreting something in a way that is unusual. To proceed imaginatively is to be creative (Elliott 1971). If an enquiry is concerned with people, imagination will include empathy, the capacity to imagine, based on what is known, how someone else may behave, think and feel in a given situation. Scruton (1974) differentiates between imaging and imagining, which are mental acts, and being imaginative, which need not be and may result in a product.

Risk-taking

Considering possible ambiguities through imagination involves the ability to live with uncertainty, to consider surprises rather than expect what may be predictable, to make choices depending on the knowledge available. Possibility thinking involves confidence and a ‘can-do’ approach to learning.

Collaboration?

There has been some analysis of the ways in which discussion and working collaboratively can foster creativity through communication. Sonnenburg (2004) defines a specific kind of communication system from which collaborative creativity emerges. It starts with a problem and, if successful, results in a novel product, for example a theory, drama or work of art. She claims that this model should cover all kinds of collaboration, in all kinds of product creation. Sonnenburg analyses this process. She says that creative collaboration works through developing a shared understanding. Only thoughts that are spoken are important in the collaboration. Questions are important. Communication coordinates the single contributions. This speeds up new ideas. Everyone must contribute, in verbal, face-to-face communication.

Leach (2001) sees creative learning as a social process that can be expressed in team work and communities. Research by Bredo (1994), Lave and Wenger (1991) and Rogoff (1999) also analyses learning as a situated social practice, depending on interaction and communication. They argue that creativity depends on interaction with others and with materials, in social settings. However, Craft (2005) recognises the importance of both individual creativity and collaborative creativity.

Reaching conclusions?

There is a variety of views about whether creativity must lead to an outcome or product. The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999: 29) defined creativity as imaginative activity, fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value. In their view creative ideas must be turned into action towards a goal. However, Elliott (1971: 139) considered that creativity is ‘imagination manifested in any valued pursuit tied to an objective, but the process can be considered creative without necessarily making anything’. The processes are problem-solving and the making of an idea.

Fryer (2004) distinguishes between creative thinking, which generates new thoughts, creative behaviour, in which the first step is suspending judgement, and creative action, which results in experiment and innovation. Craft (2002: 82–3) proposes that being imaginative must involve some kind of outcome; ‘there must be some public indication of some sort to show for it – a book, a decision, a behaviour, a poem’. But she suggests describing the outcome of creativity along a scale. At one end may be outcomes that are within the agent’s head but not yet shared with others, for example, an idea. In the middle might be an outcome that has been expressed to others. At the other end of the scale might be a product that can be scrutinised.

Creativity and knowledge

The National Curriculum (QCA 1999: 11, 22) saw creativity as embedded in cross-curricular ‘thinking skills’ which can operate creatively in any knowledge domain. They are proposed as enabling pupils to ‘generate and extend ideas, suggest hypotheses, apply imagination and look for alternative outcomes’, so shaping one’s identity through choices (p. 44). The National Curriculum for England (DfE 2013) aims to ‘introduce pupils to essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens’ and only to ‘engender appreciation of human creativity and achievement’ (p. 5) rather than to engage children in the creative process. However, it must be remembered that it also states that ‘there is time and space to range beyond the National Curriculum specifications’ and that teachers should develop ‘exciting and stimulating lessons’ around this core knowledge. To do this, teachers of course need to use exciting and stimulating teaching strategies.

This presupposes an understanding of each domain or subject; creativity cannot be seen as knowledge free. Craft (2002) considers that a disposition to be creative must be domain dominated and that, although creativity involves possibility thinking and imagination, there are boundaries to being imaginative. Creativity is still governed by normative rules of what is appropriate.

Ryle (1979) claims that creativity involves ‘knowing how’, understanding the enquiry processes that lie at the heart of a discipline, and ‘knowing that’, knowing about something. However, these usually go together. Creativity is not knowledge free. It presupposes some understanding of a subject. Even a child who is only beginning to master the processes and content of a discipline can nevertheless be creative. Piirto (1992) argues that we would expect different depths of understanding and knowledge, depending on a child’s experience and ability. If we see knowledge as growth we would expect children to ask questions at a level meaningful to them. In a constructivist approach, which has much in common with the concept of creativity, learners’ questions determine the lines of enquiry; they generate their own ideas and draw thoughtful conclusions. They construct and co-construct knowledge. Creativity shapes new knowledge by applying existing knowledge in new contexts. Dewey (1933), Montessori (2007/1949), and Kant (1989) all objected to the undisciplined exercise of fantasy but were in favour of the exercise of imagination within a discipline.

Overview of the concept of creativity

Key aspects of creativity have been identified. Overarching criteria are: recognising problems and asking questions that will help to address them. Doing so requires possibility thinking and imagination. Thinking in this way requires taking risks and accepting uncertainties, which needs the confidence. Creativity may benefit from collaborative enquiries. The process of enquiry may in itself be creative without necessarily reaching a conclusion. Nevertheless, knowl...