Creativity in the Classroom

Schools of Curious Delight

Alane Jordan Starko

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000479232
• Edición: 7
• Categoría: Didattica
• Categoría: Didattica inclusiva

Now in its seventh edition, Creativity in the Classroom helps teachers link creativity research and theory to the everyday activities of classroom teaching. Ideal reading for any course dealing wholly or partially with creativity and teaching, this foundational textbook covers definitions, research, and theory in the first half, and reflects on classroom practices in the second. Thoroughly revised and updated, the seventh edition features new research on neuroscience and creativity in specific disciplines; new sections on social-emotional learning, teaching engineering, and leadership; and an entire new chapter on building creativity at the school or district level.

Part I

Understanding Creativity

1

Creativity and Classrooms

DOI: 10.4324/9781003105640-2

Vincent van Gogh began painting in 1880. His adaptations of the impressionist style were considered strange and eccentric, and his personal life was complicated by illness and poverty. He sold only one painting before his death in 1890.

In 2003 Mark Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s website and downloaded student ID photos into a website designed to compare student photos as “hot or not.” The website lasted just a few days. Four months later he launched a new social networking website called “Thefacebook.” The rest is history.

In a quiet space under an ancient tree, the storyteller recounts a familiar tale. The audience listens carefully to each nuance, appreciating both the well-known story line and the new turns of language and elaboration that make the characters come to life.

Harvard student David Sengeh, originally from Sierra Leone, was part of a group challenged to use biology to light the London Olympics in 2012. Three members of the team were from Africa and thought, “Why light London when we can light Africa, where hundreds of millions are off the electric grid?” The resulting project used buckets of dirt and water to power LED lights and led to a $200,000 prize from the World Bank’s Lighting Africa competition.

(Wagner, 2012)

In first grade, Michelle was given an outline of a giant shark’s mouth on a worksheet that asked, “What will our fishy friend eat next?” She dutifully colored several fish and boats, and then wrote the following explanation: “Once there was a shark named Peppy. One day he ate three fish, one jellyfish, and two boats. Before he ate the jellyfish, he made a peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich.”

At 19, Juan was homeless and a senior in high school. One cold evening he thought that a warm space inside the school would be a more appealing sleeping place than any he could see. Getting into the building was no problem, but once he was inside a motion detector would make him immediately detectable to the guard on the floor below. Juan entered a storage room and carefully dislodged a pile of baseball bats. In the ensuing commotion, he located a comfortable sleeping place. The guard attributed the motion detector’s outburst to the falling bats, and Juan slept until morning.

Who is creative? What does creativity look like? Where does it come from? What role do our classrooms play in the development—or limiting—of creativity? The word “creativity” suggests many powerful associations. In some contexts it seems almost beyond the scope of mere mortals—few of us can imagine treading in the footsteps of Einstein or Curie, Picasso or O’Keeffe, Mozart or Charlie Parker. Their accomplishments are stunning in originality and power, not just contributing to their disciplines but transforming them.

However, many of us have created a new dish from ingredients in the refrigerator, jury-rigged a muffler to last to the next service station, or written a poem or song for the enjoyment of a loved one. What about Michelle and her peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich or Juan and his decoy bats? Were they creative? Can there be creativity in recounting a familiar story? Are we all creative? And what does any of this have to do with education?

The word “creative” is used frequently in schools. Virtually all of us, as teachers or students, have had experiences with creative writing. Websites abound with collections of “creative activities” or books on “creative teaching” of various subjects. Such sources frequently provide interesting and enjoyable classroom experiences without tackling the fundamental questions: What is creativity? Where does it originate? What experiences or circumstances allow individuals to become more creative? Although collections of activities can be useful, without information on these more basic issues, it is difficult for any teacher to make good decisions on classroom practices that might encourage or discourage creativity in students.

This book examines the basic questions, theories, and research about creativity with an eye to classroom practice. It brings together basic principles underlying creativity, learning, and motivation to form a “Creativity in the Classroom” model that allows teachers to establish a classroom supportive of all three. Although the investigation of a phenomenon as complex and elusive as creativity will, of necessity, raise more questions than it answers, it provides a place to begin. I hope that thoughtful teachers who raise these questions will go far beyond the strategies suggested in this book to experiment, try new ideas, and observe what happens. Only through such efforts can we expand the body of knowledge on the development of creativity, its impact in classrooms, and its manifestations in young people.

It’s Time for Creativity

A few years ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to visit schools in China and speak to Chinese educators. Everywhere I went, teachers and administrators asked me the same questions: How can we help our students to be more flexible thinkers? How can we help them be better at creative and imaginative thinking? I was struck by the contrast between the conversations we had there and the ones I most often heard in schools in the United States. For years, conversations in US schools focused largely on improving standardized test scores. In China, where test scores—at least for the schools I was visiting—were already high, they recognized those scores as an insufficient goal. They were interested in learning more about the kind of education that has fueled the United States’ traditional strengths in innovation and creativity.

Of course, conversations about the need for creativity are not unique to China. As global crises pile one atop the other, there is much talk about the need for new ways of thinking. Yet there continues to be ambivalence regarding the role of both critical and creative thinking in education. In many venues, pundits advocate infusing more creative thinking into students’ experiences—as long as it doesn’t depress test scores. In 2010, Dr. Kyung-Hee Kim’s research was the subject of Newsweek’s widely publicized “Creativity Crisis” feature (Bronson & Merryman, 2010), sparking conversations about creativity across the United States. Yet, in a follow-up study in 2017, Kim (2017) found the depressing downward trend continued. Students in the US consistently scored lower on creativity measures than those in previous decades, with the biggest decline seen in younger children. Not much seems to have changed.

Focusing on test scores first or, as it sometimes seems, exclusively is a short-sighted goal. As Zhao (2012) so forcefully points out, time is a limited resource. Every choice we make about the allocation of our time and energy limits another choice we could make. For centuries, the path to advancement in Chinese society has been through scores on various tests. As a result, they have had what Zhao calls a “laser focus” on the types of activities that raise test scores. Not surprisingly, they are very good at taking tests. However, the kind of test-taking focus that has created those scores has come at the expense of students’ ability to question, problem solve, and innovate. The Chinese recognize that this is a serious problem and are working diligently to learn about the kinds of education that have supported the United States’ traditional strength in innovation. Meanwhile, the United States has run toward the cliff of total test focus at breakneck speed, tossing aside nonmandated curriculum as we go. It is a giant step backward. And we are not alone.

One of Zhao’s most compelling points comes from a study in which he looked at the relationship between math scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the annual Global Entrepreneurship Survey (GEM), which tracks various aspects of entrepreneurship across 50 countries. He found a significant negative correlation between the two; that is, countries with the highest PISA scores scored lower on measures of entrepreneurship than countries with more modest scores. Of course this does not mean that high test scores cause a less innovative economy, but it does suggest that the practices that produce exceptionally high test scores may not support innovative thinking.

Meanwhile, writers considering the business world are clear that innovation and entrepreneur-ship are precisely what the United States needs to remain competitive in a global economy. The themes across such writings are consistent: (a) If the United States (or any highly developed nation) is to succeed in a global economy, it will require increased entrepreneurial, flexible, and imaginative thinking, and (b) success in those areas will only be possible if our education system supports the type of thinking required—entrepreneurial, flexible, and imaginative. The contrast between what the economy will require and the demands made of many schools in the early 21st century is dramatic.

Sir Ken Robinson spoke often about two great crises in our world. The first was climate change. The second he described as a cultural crisis impacting our human resources: the climate of fear and risk aversion in our educational system, spurred by overemphasis on single standardized measures (2001, 2005, 2015). In 2005 he wrote:

The educational reforms really needed now are actually being held back by the attitudes to education that many policy makers learned when they went to school—20, 30, or 40 years ago. Many seem to believe the way to the future is simply to do better what we did in the past. The truth is we need to do something completely different for today’s students.

(p. 2)

More than 15 years later, this is more true than ever. In 2020, as the global pandemic swept the world, it became obvious that education as we had known is not enough. For years I have written that we must prepare students to learn on their own, solve problems, and respond to situations unlike any their parents or teachers dream of. Then, seemingly overnight, those situations emerged. Educators and families across the globe had to find new ways to teach and support students. While the long-term impact of those changes remains unclear, the universal need for flexible and innovative thinking is obvious. From the breweries that found ways to utilize their machinery to make hand sanitizer, to the kindergarten teachers inventing new ways to play together at a distance, everyone has needed creativity. While many are still concerned about testing, others have taken these moments to ask other questions. What helps students become independent? What supports resilience in tough times? How might our interactions with students prepare them to be leaders and problem solvers in an unpredictable world? What have we learned about education as the world seemed to shift beneath us?

In 2020, UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education prepared a report outlining priorities for global education in a post-COVID world. The commission started in 2019, but had to make a sudden turn when COVID began to influence the educational landscape. The report makes powerful arguments that the pandemic “shined a harsh light” (p. 3) on existing inequalities, and that the disruptions to education that have occurred must be met with “intelligent collective action” in order to avoid wiping out decades of progress, particularly for female students at risk of not returning to school post-COVID. The report outlines nine ideas for public action worldwide. Three ideas entail basic strengthening and valuing of education. Two ideas focus on the financing of education and commitment to global problem solving. The other four ideas, dealing with practices in schools, emphasize the importance of experiences that prepare students for creative learning and problem solving. These include scientific literacy, free and open source technologies, and physical spaces in which social learning, cooperation, and problem solving can be practiced. Perhaps most important, the fourth idea states,

Promote student, youth, and children’s participation and rights. Intergenerational justice and democratic principles should compel us to prioritize the participation of students and young people broadly in the co-construction of desirable change.

(p. 6)

That is, we need young people to be at the forefront of needed changes in education, particularly those that will make education more equitable. We need both educators and their students to be creative problem solvers. You might remember this report in Chapter 6 when we discuss place-based education.

In 2012, Ambrose and Sternberg tied the need for creativity to national and international issues beyond the economic. In a series of essays written by authors across domains, they argue that dogmatism—the absolute adherence to a prescribed set of beliefs, regardless of circumstances or additional information—is at odds with creative and critical thinking. Sadly, their warning seems frighteningly prescient. When contemplating increasing political divides, questioning of science, and rising authoritarianism across the globe, it seems more creative thinking is definitely in order.

Creativity for Learning

Fortunately, the voices calling for increased attention to creativity are spreading through the education arena. This makes sense, because creativity and learning are inextricably linked. Few critics would argue with the idea that schools should teach students to think critically and understand deeply. Abundant evidence suggests that the strategies that support creativity—solving problems, exploring multiple options, and learning inquiry—also support depth of understanding.

Sadly, all of us have had experiences in which we “learned” something in school without ever understanding it. Think about the tests for which you memorized facts you could not explain or the assignments for which you quoted relevant passages of the textbook without a clue what they meant or why they mattered. You aren’t alone. Gardner (1993b) stated:

The findings of cognitive research over the past 20–30 years are really quite compelling: students do not understand, in the most basic sense of that term. That is, they lack the capacity to take knowledge learned in one setting and apply it appropriately in a different setting. Study after study has found that, by and large, even the best students in the best schools can’t do that.

(p. 4)

Gardner was part of a Harvard research team, Project Zero, aimed at determining the types of curriculum and activities that allow students to build understanding. We’ll talk more about curriculum development in Chapter 6, but for now the important key is: Students develop understanding by applying content in diverse ways and multiple settings, acting flexibly with what they know. When we ask students to use the content in diverse ways—to think and create with what they know—we not only have a glimpse into their level of understanding, but we develop it as well. Creative applications of core content are among teachers’ most powerful tools in building students’ understanding. When we consider some basics of learning theory, it makes sense.

Early theories of learning were often based on a behaviorist perspective. In this tradition, researchers observed, in carefully controlled conditions, the behaviors of various learners in response to certain stimuli. The learner was perceived as a passive receptor of stimuli—as outside forces directed, so the learner learned. The basic processes of learning were considered to be uniform across species. “It does not make much difference what species we study…. The laws of learning are much the same in rats, dogs, pigeons, monkeys, and humans” (Hill, 1977, p. 9). I actually studied from that book, many years ago!

This view of the learner as a passive absorber of stimuli appears to have little in common with the processes or purposes of creativity. However, contemporary learning theory acknowledges human learning to be a more complex constructive process than previously thought. Increasing consensus among researchers suggests that learning is a goal-oriented process (see, for example, Bransford et al., 2000; Illeris, 2018). Activities undertaken in pursuit of a meaningful goal offer more fertile ground for learning than activities undertaken without an obvious cause.

Learning as a constructive process implies that learners build their own knowledge as an engineer builds a new type of computer, not as a sponge absorbs water or a billiard ball bounces off the table. Psychological processes associated with this vision of learning are organizing information, linking new information to prior knowledge, and using metacognitive (thinking-about-thinking) strategies to plan the accomplishment of goals. Neurobiologists are also finding that in-depth thinking and learning requires an emotional connection, some tie to students’ lives and interests. In order to build in-depth understanding, students must be engaged in activities they perceive as interesting and relevant (Bransford et al., 2000; Immordino-Yang, 2016).

For example, Hattie and Donoghue (2016, 2018) describe a model of learning that is framed by skill, will, and thrill. Learning is influenced by the skill (prior knowledge and skills), will (mindset, determination), and thrill (motivation) students bring to the table. Teachers work with those factors to help students move from surface (factual content) knowledge, to deep knowledge in which new facts are integrated with past learning, and finally to transfer, in which learning can be used in a new situation. The experiences that allow learning to progress cre...