Cultivating Creativity for educators

8/15/2019 Cultivating Creativity for educators

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CULTIVATING

CREAT IV ITY27 INTERVIEWS FROM

INNOVATIVE EDUCATORS


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02INTRODUCTION

12PART 1

WHAT IS CREATIVITY

22PART 2

WHY THE CURRENT

STRUCTURE DOES

NOT WORK

32PART 3

INTERVIEWS WITH NEMINDS IN EDUCATIO


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INTRODUCTION

In the middle of grocery shopping with his ve-year-old son last November, Alec Couros made astartling discovery about creativity.

As he and his son approached the fruit section,his son asked, “Do bananas grow with tips upor with tips down?” Since there aren’t a lot ofbanana plants in Regina, Seskatchewan, Courosdidn’t actually know o-hand. But, being the con-nected father that he is, he pulled out his iPhone,Googled it, and in less than 30 seconds, the twoof them were looking at photos of banana plantsand no longer had to wonder.

No longer had to wonder.

“I did that entirely wrong,” Couros, professor ofeducational technology and media at the Uni-

versity of Regina, writes in a blog post about theexperience. “At the very least, I could have askedmy boy, ‘Well, which do you think, son?’ perhapsfollowed by ‘So, why do you think that?’ But Ididn’t. And because I didn’t, I messed up a greatlearning opportunity.”

“Instead of providing my boy with an extendedopportunity to be curious, to imagine deeply andto think creatively, I reinforced one of the worsthabits of our generation. I demonstrated to my

boy that you can solve a problem withouting. And I won’t do that again.”

As the natural progression of the brain whave it, when we are presented with a quwe spend time mulling over potential ansto that question before arriving at an anstoday’s digitally advanced society, howeveare presented with an answer—the answright away, if we want it. What’s more, thiof instantaneous knowledge eliminates thof being wrong.

In the eld intelligence, there is a phenomnon called the Flynn eect: Each generatiscores increase about 10 points, indicatinenriched environments are making kids sBut in the neighboring eld of creativity, a

verse trend has been observed in recent yscores are dropping.

In 2010 Kyung Hee Kim of the College of Wand Mary discovered, after analyzing alm300,000 scores of American children and that creativity had been steadily rising, jusIQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativityhave consistently inched downward. “It’s vclear, and the decrease is very signicant,says. It is the scores of younger children i


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them agree that schools could do more to pro-vide a climate that fosters creativity.

So could society, argues teaching mentor andcreativity consultant Jerey Davis. “Schools don’texist inside a cultural vacuum,” he says. “Youcould assign blame to schools for being test-hap-py and measuring everything, thus stiing cre-ativity, but the reason sc hools measure every-thing is because our culture is obsessed withmeasuring!”

You could also argue that the “crisis” lies in thefact that greater human creativity is required intoday’s society in order to compete in the job

market. “Need a job? Invent it,” writes New YorkTimes columnist Thomas Friedman. The high-wage, middle-skill job is being replaced by thehigh-wage, high-skill job, and unless you have theadaptability and ingenuity to keep up with therapidly shifting landscape, you’ll be left behind.Another possibility is that we have created a realcrisis by believing in a false one. After Kim cameout with her study and Newsweek publishedtheir disruptive article entitled “The CreativityCrisis” in 2010, we fell headlong into politicalchaos, pointing ngers and distorting the scale ofthe issue.

In times of crisis, it often helps to see whetherother nations are experiencing the same issuesand, if so, what they are doing about them. Curi-ously, there is very little evidence of a worldwidecreativity crisis, even in countries with educationsystems similar to that of the United States,where “teaching to the test” appears to be thebiggest deterrent.

In April 2012, ADOBE released a report on theglobal state of creativity, which showed a declinein all ve participating countries—the US, the UK,Germany, France, and Japan. 50% of respondentsbelieved there is a decline in original creationin their nation, and 60% said that their currenteducation system is stiing creativity. But theseresults are suspect, since ADOBE draws its protlargely from helping clients be more creative.Richard Florida came out with the Global Cre-ativity Index in 2011 which placed Sweden atthe top and the United States in second. In his

ica—from kindergarten through sixth grade—forwhom the decline is “most serious.”

According to Kim’s analyses, which employedthe famous Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking,scores at all grade levels began to decline in theUnited States somewhere between 1984 and1990, and have continued to do so ever since.The drops in scores are highly signicant sta-tistically and in some cases very large. In Kim’swords, the data indicate that “children havebecome less emotionally expressive, less ener-getic, less talkative and verbally expressive, lesshumorous, less imaginative, less unconventional,less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less

apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, lesssynthesizing, and less likely to see things from adierent angle.”

According to Kim’s research, all aspects of cre-ativity have declined, but the biggest decline is inthe measure called Creative Elaboration, whichassesses the ability to take a particular idea andexpand on it in an interesting and novel way.Between 1984 and 2008, the average Elabora-tion score on the TTCT, for every age group fromkindergarten through 12th grade, fell by morethan 1 standard deviation. Stated dierently, thismeans that more than 85% of children in 2008scored lower on this measure than did the aver-age child in 1984.

There are several reasons to doubt Kim’s study,the most apparent of which is that it assumescreativity can be measured at all. On top of that,many experts say the Torrance Tests are out-dated and even irrelevant given recent advance-ments in the elds of neuroscience and psychol-

ogy. More than a few educators simply haven’tnoticed the trend at all in the twenty-ve-plusyears they’ve been teaching.

But what about the most famous TED Talk of alltime, Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity? Issaying schools kill creativity really that dierentfrom saying creativity is declining in students?Isn’t one just the cause of the other? While themajority of creativity experts and education s pe-cialists we interview at the end of this book denythe existence of a creativity crisis, per se, most of

“What if quizzes

measured kids’ abilityto question, notanswer?”

Jen Medbery, Fast Company


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PART 1

WHAT ISCREATIVITY?


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In the late 1960s, the psychologist J.P. Guilforddrew a distinction between two forms of think-ing: convergent and divergent. With its frequentuse of standardized tests, education today tendsto lean heavily toward convergent thinking,which emphasizes the importance of arriving at asingle correct answer. Divergent thinking, howev-er, requires coming up with alternative theoriesand ideas, sometimes many of them, to producea useful solution.

Guilford claims that divergent thinking is re-quired during all stages of the creative process.

However, some degree of convergent thinking(which leads to a single solution) is also required,particularly during the elaboration phase of thecreative process, when it is essential to discrim-inate and choose between alternatives (conver-gent) while at the same time generating newideas (divergent).

Essentially, Guilford is equating thinking cre-atively with thinking “outside the box,” a con-cept with which we are all familiar. Rosa AuroraChavez-Eakle of the Maryland State Departmentof Education Council for the Gifted and Talentedgoes into more detail in this passage from a 2010paper published by the Johns Hopkins School ofEducation:

“During the past decade, I developed the asso-ciation integration-elaboration-communicationphenomenological model of creativity (Chávez,1999, Chávez, 2004). This model was developedfrom phenomenological observations and deepphenomenological interviews with poets, scien-

tists, writers, music composers, social research-ers, and plastic artists. The rst stage of the cre-ative process, the association-integration stageinvolves the association of previously unrelatedelements of inner and outer experiences, form-ing new associations among what is perceivedthrough the senses, thoughts, memories, ideas,and emotions.

“The second stage, the elaboration, involves allthe subsequent conscious and voluntary work

that is required to transform the associatdeveloped in the previous stage into tangworks. The nal stage, communication, insharing the work with others, a process thbe challenging and requires special couraSharing the creative outcome with othersunleashes new creative processes in otheviduals, making creativity ‘contagious.’”

Note that Chavez says she interviewed noartists but “scientists” and “social researchstill identifying a singular denition of theative process. This nding is in keeping w

current notion that creativity should not oassociated with ne artists and performewith doctors, engineers, historians, technand anyone else whose job requires—or eallows— them to think outside the box.

But wouldn’t you call doctors and engineenovative, not creative? What is the diereTrue, creativity and innovation are often cated, and rightfully so--each contains eleof the other. The consensus appears to bwhile creativity may never manifest itself measurable way, innovation always leadsquantiable end product or result.

In April, Business Insider released a piecetled, “There’s a Critical Dierence Betweenativity and Innovation.” The author writesmain dierence between creativity and intion is the focus.

Creativity is about unleashing

potential of the mind to concnew ideas.

Those concepts could manifest themselveany number of ways, but most often, t heycome something we can see, hear, smell, or taste. However, creative ideas can alsothought experiments within one person’s

Creativity is subjective, making it hard to msure, as our creative friends assert.

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?


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approach me with a sad face at the end of thesemester, telling me how disappointed she wasbecause, in fact, what we had accomplished wasnot uncreative at all; by not being ‘creative,’ she produced the most creative body of writing inher life. By taking an opposite approach to cre-ativity — the most trite, overused, and ill-denedconcept in a writer’s training — she had emergedrenewed and rejuvenated, on re and in loveagain with writing.”

This concept may be too dicult for younger stu-dents to grasp, but it is an extremely useful re-denition of creativity in t oday’s information-sat-urated world, and an idea that Thomas Friedman

was getting at in his New York Times piece, “TheProfessor’s Big Stage”: Due to the sheer volumeof text on the Internet, and the ease with whichwe are granted access to i nformation, it no lon-ger matters what we know but what we can dowith what we know.

According to Goldsmith, the denition of cre-ativity is shifting, so that it no longer aligns withnotions of “original genius” and inventiveness. Avast amount of material is here before us; whywaste our creative energy adding to i t whenwe can use that energy t o manipulate what wealready have?

Still, one could argue that thisidea is, itself, original.

Regardless of how you choose to dene creativ-ity, experts tend to agree that it’s attainable foreveryone. Researchers say that no one is bornwith a special capacity for creativity; it’s an innateform of potential found in all human beings. Thatisn’t to say that everyone grows up in an environ-ment that values or nurtures creativity—becauseit will remain in the form of untapped potential ifno one bothers to tap it— but it will ow freely ifpermitted.

Innovation, on the other hand, is completelymeasurable. Innovation is about introducingchange into relatively stable systems. It’s alsoconcerned with the work required to make anidea viable. By identifying an unrecognized andunmet need, an organization can use innova-tion to apply its creative resources to design anappropriate solution and reap a return on itsinvestment.

Organizations often chase creativity, but whatthey really need to pursue is innovation. Theo-dore Levitt puts it best: “What is often lacking isnot creativity in the idea-creating sense but inno-vation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting

ideas to work.”

By this denition, we can gather that innovationrequires creativity to be eective, and creativityrequires innovation to be eected.

Some may argue that it doesn’t matter whichterm you use; creativity and innovation are partand parcel of the same idea: originality.But is this even true?

Kenneth Goldsmith, the rst-ever poet laure-ate of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,thinks not. For the past several years, Goldsmithhas been teaching a class at UPenn called Uncre-ative Writing, which inverts the paradigm of tra-ditional “creative writing” courses. His studentsare penalized for any semblance of originalityand “creativity,” and rewarded for plagiarism,repurposing, sampling, and outright stealing.But as counterproductive and blasphemous asthis may sound, it turns out to be a gateway tosomething unusual yet inevitable, that certain

slot machine quality of creativity:

“The secret: the suppression of self-expressionis impossible. Even when we do something asseemingly ‘uncreative’ as retyping a few pages,we express ourselves in a variety of ways. Theact of choosing and reframing tells us as muchabout ourselves as our story about our mother’scancer operation. It’s just that we’ve never beentaught to value such choices. After a semesterof forcibly suppressing a student’s ‘creativity’ bymaking them plagiarize and transcribe, she will

“What is oftenlacking is notcreativity in theidea-creating sensebut innovation in theaction-producingsense, i.e. puttingideas to work.”

Theodore Levitt


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would, ideally, be through brain scans. In neu-roscience, logical thinking has traditionally beenrelated to right cerebral hemisphere activation,whereas the kind of thinking that takes placein dreams has been related to left hemisphereactivation (Martindale et al., 1984).

During creativity, both kinds of thinking takeplace at the same time (Arieti, 1976).

When evaluating dierences in brain cerebralblood ow (CBF) between highly creative i n-dividuals during the performance of activitiesfrom the Torrance Tests, individuals with highcreative performance showed greater CBF ac-tivity in both right and left brain hemispheres atthe same time (Chávez-Eakle, Gra-Guerrero,García-Reyna, Vaugier, & Cruz-Fuentes, 2007). Inthis research, areas that showed greater activ a-tion were right precentral gyrus, right culmen,left and right middle frontal gyrus, right frontalrectal gyrus, left frontal orbital gyrus, and left in-ferior gyrus (BA 6, 10, 11, 47, 20). These areas areinvolved in cognition, emotion, working memory,novelty response, imagery, multimodal process-ing and pleasure (Chávez-Eakle et. al, 2007).

At the Centers for Research on Creativity (CRoC)in Los Angeles, James Catterall and Anne Bam-ford are developing a test called the Next Gen-eration Creativity Survey, which uses traditionalself-report scales along with ratings of originalstudent work on the basis of creative skills andmotivations. “By assessing individual creativethinking and motivation,” the CRoC websitereads, “the NGCS measure goes beyond currentmodels that rely only on counting curricular andafterschool oerings. Current creativity indexdesigns provide a limited indication of creativityin the curriculum and are not useful for assess-ing creativity learning among students.”

The test is being piloted in eight art, science,and social problem-solving programs across theUnited States—for example, through The Wood-

“Current creativityindex designs provia limited indicationcreativity in thecurriculum and arenot useful forassessing creativitylearning amongstudents.”

NGCS

rguably the most famous organized assessmentf human creativity is the Torrance Tests of Cre-ive Thinking (TTCT), created by E.P. Torrance1990. The tests remain the most widely usedstrument to measure creative potential, andave proven reliable in multicultural settings.

he TTCT provide a creativity index (CI) andores for the following dimensions: exibility,

uency, originality, elaboration, resistance to

remature closure, and abstractness of titles.dditional points are added to the nal score formotional expressiveness, story-telling articu-teness, movement or action, expressiveness ofles, synthesis of incomplete gures, unusualsualization, internal visualization, extending orreaking boundaries, humor, richness of imag-y, colorfulness of imagery, and fantasy (Tor-nce & Safter, 1999). The TTCT have s hown highliability and high predictive validity for futurereer image, and for academic and style-livingeative achievements in 22 and 30-year fol-w-up studies (Torrance, 1988, Torrance, 1990,

orrance, 1993).

addition, the TTCT have been us ed in morean 2,000 research projects and translated into

0 languages (Bronson & Merryman, 2010). Aormal distribution of the creativity index in theeneral population has been reported usingese tests, nding no signicant dierences

etween males and females (Torrance, 1990;orrance & Safter, 1999).

ke intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-min-e series of discrete tasks, administered by a

sychologist—measures for concrete behaviorsnd patterns of thought, usually in school-agedhildren.

ut the shocking thing about Torrance’s cre-ivity index, wrote Po Bronson and Ashleyerryman their 2010 Newsweek piece, is howcredibly well they predicted those kids’ creative

ccomplishments as adults.

“Those who came up with more good i deas onTorrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs,inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors,diplomats, and software developers,” Bronsonand Merryman reported. “Jonathan Plucker ofIndiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’sdata. The correlation to lifetime creative acc om-plishment was more than three times strongerfor childhood creativity than childhood IQ.”Another prototype tool for assessing pupils’

creativity in school, outlined by the Chronicleof Higher Education, maps the dispositions ofcreative habits of minds along 5 dimensions:inquisitive; persistent; imaginative; collaborative;disciplined (each dimension including 3 sub-dis-positions). The ndings of two eld trials inEnglish schools show that the “formative assess-ment tool” led teachers to be more precise andcondent in developing their pupils’ creativity,and learners to be better able to understandwhat creativity entails and to record evidence oftheir progress.

The common thread, no matterthe discipline, is that studentsmust produce an original work,be evaluated by their peers, andrevise their work based on thatfeedback.

Creative tasks are, by their nature, ambiguous,

with no clear right or wrong answer, they say.Such tasks require taking intellectual risks, trying,evaluating, and discarding ideas, and makingconnections. To check whether these mentalprocesses are actually happening, students ata private school in Kentucky, for example, mustcomplete writing assignments for each project;faculty and administrators collect samples ofnished works and use rubrics to assess them.

An even more direct way of measuring creativity

HOW DO YOU MEASURE

CREATIVITY?


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“Creativity research shows that you get thresults when you teach creativity within thtext of a specic discipline (rather than teone “general creativity” course),” Sawyer s“This means that if you want creative phythen your physics department classes neeto be changed; if you want creative compscientists, then the computer science currulum needs to be changed. If you just addthree-credit creativity course, but then stuget the same old memorize-and-regurgitacurriculum in their STEM classes, the creacourse won’t be able to overcome the uncSTEM teaching.” Creativity assessment, heshould be tailored to each subject.

Creativity consultant Jerey Davis, taking dle-of-the-road approach, says, “It would able to measure conditions that allow creideation and insight to occur,” noting thathelp teachers to better design their classe

He proposes a series of “creastrength assessments” for teenand young adults which wouldform them of the ways in whichare strong creatively.

Instead of a black-or-white, have-it-or-donassessment model, Davis’s model would hstudents identify their innate potential anage their strengths to create individually acollaboration with others. The assessmenmeasure things like problem solving abilitpersonal intelligence, and communication

In addition, “the report would mirror backdents one or two ‘dormant’ qualities,” Davemphasizing the distinction between dormand absent, “along with suggestions for bing or compensating for them.”

Though the debate over measuring creatibeen raging for several decades, the datato catch up. What educators and researchcan be sure of is that creativity is valuablelevel, from any individual, for any purpose

n Floor ballet school in Santa Ana, CA; the Losngeles Teen Classic Poetry Slam; the Chicagorts Partnerships in Education; and the Littleock, Arkansas public schools. The 2013 survey isll in progress, but the results of a preliminaryquiry at the Inner-City Arts Creativity Labora-ry in Los Angeles from 2012 is available on the

RoC website.

or a great overview of dierent ways of mea-ring creativity at the national, regional, anddividual level, see The European Commission’seasuring Creativity: the book, which considerswide range of human traits as they relate toeativity, including condence, independence,

nsitivity, intelligence, entrepreneurship, nan-al success, introversion/extroversion, prob-m-solving skills, imagination, initiative, inquisi-veness, awareness of others, and much more.owever, there is a school of researchers andducators who believe that creativity can’t, inct, be measured in a st andardized fashion. Itsuch a mutable, abstract quality—capable of

hifting and being manifested dierently from i n-vidual to individual— that some argue measur-g it would be counterproductive, even harmful.

he alternative is to recognize, foster, and re-ard creativity when we see it.

think you can see creativity inction,” says retired high schoolnglish teacher Dawn Hogue.

When a student presents an idea or a point ofew so uncommon or new that it turns heads,at’s evidence of creative thinking. I imagineere is no accurate rubric or measurement tool

r creativity. Plus, what’s creative and what’s notsomewhat subjective, so I would hate for it to

e too entrenched in standard assessment. I’veen rubrics that refer to things like ‘uses cre-ive approach’ or ‘shows divergent thinking,’ but

m not sure those markers are meaningful.”

reativity expert Keith Sawyer agrees, rejecting aeneral quotient like the Torrance Test Creativeuotient. The most appropriate way to teachnd assess creativity, he says, is in specic domains.


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The full article may be read here, but here are afew highlights:

Creative organisations are more protable:First, creative companies harness the creativitywithin the organization to improve or invent newproducts, processes and services. As indicatedin the Ernst & Young 2010 Connecting Innovationto Prot report:“We assume that 50% of our revenue in 5 years’time must come from sources that do not existtoday. That is why we innovate.”

In the same Ernst & Young report it was foundthat highly successful companies realise that:

“the ability to manage, organise, cultivate andnurture creative thinking is directly linked togrowth and achievement.”Further, the report highlighted that “Innova-tion ‘for the sake of it’ is often essential, but thespeed at which a fast-growth company movesforward will depend on its ability to connect cre-ativity to prot.”

In a recent study of 190 agile companies, Bottani(2010) found that their exibility and speed ofreaction were strongly dependent on creativi-ty. Similar results have been found in a studyof agile companies by BTM where agile rmswere prepared to innovate and experiment withcreative approaches to emerging technologies,work practices, product or service concepts andcustomer segments or product markets.

Similarly, within the research frameworks thathave examined the characteristics of High Per-forming companies, creativity features strongly.The Accenture Institute of Hig h Performance

(2003-2010) found that High Performing organi-sations created powerful strategies, encourageddeep insight, originality and the engagementof creativity across all employees. Lastl y, thesecompanies invested disproportionally in recruit-ing and developing people.”

And, with regard to 7) Successful economies andsocieties will need to be creative:

“From an organisational perspective we can see

why we must demand creativity from indteams and the rm. However, according 2010 Winning Ingredients report from StaChartered... successful economies will neutilise cash, commodities and creativity. Treport concluded that:

“Creativity may be the most powerful of aresources to be rich in. With vast numberpeople entering the workforce, huge imprments in productivity, and continued globtion, the rewards for innovation and creatwill become even greater.”

Given that for much of the western world

have exhausted our supplies of cash and modities, creativity may be all we have lefIf we agree more or less on the denitioncreativity as the ability to think “divergent“outside the box,” to challenge assumptiopropose alternative solutions, then the trof education systems around the globe bin essence, teaching students to be dierAnd in saying be dierent, I mean thinkinently, doing things dierently, expressingdierently, and appreciating dierences (happens to be the foundation of respect)is a time and place for sameness, to be suit is not in an academic environment.

Every good idea is a dierent idea. Even ifone’s success story involves copying otheexample, the social media platform Pheedis basically a repurposing of Twitter and Fbook— that act in itself requires divergening. This is the sort of thing Kenneth Goldwas getting at: It takes a certain fearlessnsee the potential for dierence in someth

appears to be mundane. It may be the ultchallenge creativity has to oer, and the nber-one skill educators should foster in thstudents.

In the same study mentioned above, 91%respondents believed there is more to suschool than focusing on course material.Again, it’s not what you know but what yodo with what you know.

hen we talk about the importance of creativ-y in education, we no longer need to make aualitative argument for personal enhancementr the de-automatization of society; the proof isthe numbers.

recent IBM poll of 1,500 American CEOs iden-ed creativity as the No. 1 “leadership compe-ncy” of the future. A study of over 1,000 col-ge-educated professionals showed that 71% of

spondents think creativity should be taught asclass, like math and science, and 85% believeat creative thinking is critical for problem-solv-g in their careers. As early as the 1990s, cur-culum developers in England, Germany, Japan,e Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, and thenited States deliberately highlighted creativi-as a prerequisite for functioning in modern

ociety. More recently, Richard Florida’s Globalreativity Index survey (2011) found a trend of84 between a nation’s “creativity” and its GDPer capita.

here is a positive correlation between the cre-ivity of a nation’s workforce and that nation’s

conomic prosperity, and there has been for ahile. Let’s not kid ourselves here.

ut the correlation between economic prosperitynd creativity in education— now, that is a littleurkier. Finland is currently ranked number-oneFlorida’s Index, but does this mean that Finn-

h schools foster creativity more than otherhools do, or that Finnish people are simplyore innovative? Are Finnish students encour-

ged to think creatively, or are a few creativeinds running the whole show (read: Nokia)?

any case, what matters is that every studentceives the opportunity to tap into his or her

wn creative potential. Naturally, the greaterumber of creative citizens a country has, theetter. And schools can help this cause.

addition to economic prosperity, experts have

cited adaptability as one of creativity’s manyboons. Today’s students can’t possibly anticipatethe information and skills they will need yearsdown the road, especially as our technologicallandscape continues to evolve at such a rapidrate. However, as Sir Ken Robinson has pointedout, if they have the tools to be creative and toinnovate, they will have a much better chance ofsucceeding no matter how the world changes.Supporters of traditional, passive learning styles

tend to pit creativity against standardized testingand rote memorization as if the two can’t coexistin a single l earning environment. However, cre-ativity has been shown to enhance memorizationthrough associative mental devices such as theMethod of Loci, a mnemonic tool whereby itemsare paired mentally with physical locations in asort of “memory palace.”

You could go on and on arguingfor the value of creativity on apersonal level, but what else—ona societal, national, global level—makes creativity so important?

Mark Batey, Ph.D., wrote an illuminating piecefor Psychology Today on the subject. He lists sev-en themes and research studies that convincedhim that creativity is the number-one skill for the21st century:

1. Creativity and innovation are the number-onestrategic priorities for organizations the worldover;

2. Creativity is part of our day jobs;3. Organizational protability rests on individual

creativity;4. Creative teams perform better and are more

ecient;5. Creative organizations are more protable;6. Creative leadership is fundamental; and7. Successful economies and societies will need

to be creative.

HE IMPORTANCE OF

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PART 2

WHY THECURRENTSTRUCTUREDOES NOTWORK


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“The inclusion of creativity into educational policydocuments is evidence of the fact that the focuson creativity is not merely a matter of paying ‘lipservice’ to the concept,” says Robina Shaheen,part of the faculty at Open Universities Educationand Language Studies Department (UK), “butrather that action is being taken.”

In fact, action has been in progress as early as

1999, when O’Donnell and Micklethwaite re-viewed the curriculum documents of 16 devel-oped countries (American, European, and EastAsian), identifying the place of arts and creativityin education. They found that creativity wasincluded at various educational levels, at leastfrom early years through primary education formost countries, and beyond, up to higher educa-tion, for some:

In Canada “creative thinking” is outlined as oneof the common essential learning(s) (p.8). InKentucky, USA, one of the learning goals is toenable students to “use creative thinking skillsto develop or invent novel, constructive ideas orproducts” (p.57). In Korea, the National Curric-ulum denes an educated person as “healthy,independent, creative and moral” (p.33). In Swe-den the Government’s National DevelopmentPlan for Pre-School, School and Adult Education(1997) stated that education should provide “theconditions for developing creative skills” (p.52).In France schools in lower secondary are expect-

ed to develop in children the “taste for creation.”(p.14). In Germany, the emphasis of primaryeducation is placed on developing “children’screative abilities” (p.20). In Netherlands one ofthe principles on which primary education isbased is “creative development” (O’Donnell &Micklethwaite 1999, p.38). In Florida (USA) oneof the goals of restructuring the schools was toprovide students opportunities “to learn and ap-ply strategies for creative…thinking” (Trenger,1996). The second educational goal for youngpeople in Australia is to “become successful

learners, condent and creative individuaactive and informed citizens” (ACARA, 200

Japan the school curriculum has includedvelopment of creativity since the Second WWar, outlining the development of creativthe most important objective of educatio21st century (O’Donnell, 1999). In Singapoaim of new initiatives, launched by the Miof Education, was to foster “enquiring min

ability to think critically and creatively” (O’nell, 19990)—created in response to leadindustrialists and entrepreneurs indicatinsta in Singapore were more “conforming“independent” and “not curious enough” (2006).

But at the 2013 ADOBE Education LeaderForum, the ndings of a study entitled “StCreativity in Education in Asia Pacic” rewidespread shortcoming in creativity eduThe study surveyed 1,014 educators (teacadministrators, heads of institutions) reping 13 Asia Pacic countries with an aim tthe state of creativity across the region’s ecational landscape. Even considering ADObusiness interests, the results are striking

> 43% of the surveyed educators feel theeducation system is either outdated ortive. > The lack of resources, tools, and t raininidentied as the biggest barriers.

> 62% felt they should be creative regardthe subjects they teach.> When asked about the ecacy of the c

education system in developing a new tor of innovators, educators rated it a mon a scale of 1 to 10. > In India 69% said t hey are hampered byeducation system that is not geared towcreativity; 45% cited a lack of resource tport their eorts. > The surveyed educators, on average, sp45% of their time last year fostering cre

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tentions, why are we facing such great obstacleswhen it comes to creativity education?One obstacle that has received considerableattention lately is teacher training. The NationalCouncil on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) came out witha report earlier in 2013 exposing the shamefulstate of teacher preparation programs in theUnited States. The report has been criticized bythe education community for various researchmethodology aws, but Stanford professor ofeducation Linda Darling-Hammond said theNCTQ accurately focused on the most importantaspects of teacher education — candidate selec-tion, preparation for teaching reading and math,and student teaching. The report ranked only

four out of 1,130 programs as being worthy oftheir highest rating, concluding that poor qualityteacher education programs are to blame fornew, underperforming teachers and students.

The report’s aws aside, educators and special-ists tend to agree that most of these programsdo not adequately prepare teachers to designand sustain a creative learning environment.In a 2009 survey conducted by the EuropeanCommission, an average of 40% of teachers i nEurope declared to have received training increativity. But the gures varied widely betweencountries: Slovakia (66%), Estonia (65%), andRomania (62%) all reported to have receivedtraining, in contrast with France (14%), Lithuania(25%), Hungary (27%), the United Kingdom (28%),and Spain (33%), who received little.

Teaching may be a creativeprofession, but that doesn’t meanthat all teachers are creative.

Herein lies the trouble: in a world where oppor-tunities for creativity are slipping between ourngers, we turn immediately to examining theclassrooms when we should be examining some-thing else—the teachers themselves.

Creativity specialist and professor Anne Bam-ford insists that insucient emphasis is given tocreativity in teacher education. “We must providecreative professional development and training

skills in the classrooms while they wanted tospend 58% of their time for it.

“Timetable structures such as seven 45-minuteperiods from 8:30am to 3:30pm and up to sevendierent areas of unrelated content per day aswell as rules like no access to smartphones inclass heighten the disconnect between studentsand teachers,” says Tim Kitchen, director oflearning technologies at Strathcona Baptist GirlsGrammar School in Australia.

Educators in the United States would likely agreethat their own current model restricts theirability to address creativity in the classroom,

especially since the Common Core StandardsInitiative was passed in 2010. With so muchstandardization of assessment, mechanizationof policy, and conformity of learning, it’s no smallwonder that education has been labeled a “crisis”in America. Math teacher and Stanford Universi-ty fellow Dan Meyer describes today’s curriculumas “paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids ofa skill more important than solving problems:formulating them.”

China’s universities are highly ranked worldwide,but many Chinese students perceive their ownschools and colleges to be focused on rote learn-ing and not receptive to creativity and criticalthinking. One international business studentchose to attend an English language university,run by Britain’s Nottingham University, specif-ically to acquire the “critical thinking” that heruncle says is lacking in Chinese graduates. Arecent study of engineering students at threetop Chinese institutes and Stanford Universityfound that 22 percent of Stanford grads planned

to start or join a startup, while 52 percent of topChinese graduates plan to join the government.

But according to Shaheen, creativity has beenan important component of Chinese educationsince 2001. Hong Kong’s education policy in-cludes creativity as a “higher order thinking skill,”and there are educational reforms being carriedout in preschool, primary, and secondary institu-tions throughout the country in which the devel-opment of creativity is being given “top priority.”So what is the problem? If we all have good in-

With so muchstandardization ofassessment,mechanization ofpolicy, andconformity of learning,it’s no small wonderthat education hasbeen labeled a“crisis” in America.


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assess themselves and their peers by answeringquestions such as, “I am able to brainstorm mul-tiple ways to reach a solution” (critical thinking)or, “I am able to connect ideas in an interestingand creative manner to create a unique idea”(creative thinking). Singapore is even consideringdoing away with the PISA—the national entranceexamination that all students take at the end ofprimary school.

Individual schools, districts, andgovernments across the world areredesigning policy and curricula

to meet the demand for a morecreative student population.

Starting with the class entering in the fall of 2013,students at Stanford University will be requiredto complete two courses in aesthetic and inter-pretive inquiry, two courses in social inquiry,two courses in scientic analysis, one course informal reasoning, one course in quantitative rea-soning, one course in engaging dierence, onecourse in moral and ethical reasoning, and onecourse in creative expression.

For years, the U.S. government has promotedso-called STEM education–science, technology,engineering and math. President Obama calledfor more STEM education in his recent State ofthe Union address. But at a recent conference,education advocates urged policymakers to ac-knowledge the importance of arts and design inSTEM education, leading to a dierent acronym:STEAM, with an “A” for “arts.”

Various statistics presented at the event, basedon a survey of 1,000 college-educated workingprofessionals, supported this amendment to theprogram: 1) 71% said creative thinking shouldbe taught as a course, like math and science. 2)82% wish they had more exposure to creativethinking as students. 3) 91% said there is more tosuccess in school than focusing on course ma-terial. 4) 85% said creative thinking is critical forproblem solving in their career. 5) 78% wish theyhad more creative ability.

But at a recentconference,education advoca

urged policymakersto acknowledge theimportance of artsand design in STEMeducation, leadinga different acronymSTEAM, with an “A” “arts.”

r all teachers and school leaders,” she says.ill, even the best-prepared teachers face chal-nges when it comes to implementing creativitythe classroom.

oo many teachers and administrators areeighed down by the yoke of political inuence,”ys retired high school English teacher Dawn

ogue. “It takes educational anarchy to pushut of the box these days, and it may simply beasier to do what one is told. I have known manyachers who are afraid to try something new.

ome feel their jobs are at risk. Others just thinkying something dierent will be too much worknd they feel overworked as it is.”

s Sir Ken Robinson said in a recent article forhe Guardian, “For creativity to ourish, schoolsave to feel free to innovate without the con-ant fear of being penalised for not keeping withe programme.”

vailable resources can also dictate what anducator teaches and how. Not every school canord the latest technology or an art k it for everyudent. But this is where creativity can cometo play the most.

P English instructor Shekema Silveri teaches atTitle I high school in Georgia called Mount Zion.nce Mount Zion can’t aord the latest technol-gy, Silveri is forced to nd creative ways to keeper students engaged. While some classroomson’t allow cell phones, Silveri encourages herudents to use them in order to look up deni-ons of words with apps like dictionary.com andonduct research for their assignments. She alsoelieves her students write more when they’re

lowed to blog and use Twitter. In 2011, Silverias one of 11 educators in the state to achieve a00% student passing rate on all of her standard-ed tests despite Mount Zion’s lack of resources.veri is not alone in her eorts. Countless

ducators across the globe are implementingeativity into their classrooms and inspiring stu-

ents every day despite various challenges. Andow, due to society-wide awareness of creativ-y’s growing importance, schools and govern-ents are beginning to catch on as well.

Reducing students’ fears and inhibitions aroundart while also getting them to think in new waysis part of what Marty Henton, a senior lecturer inthe School of Art and Visual Studies, aims for inher course, “Pathways to Creativity Through theVisual Arts.”

In class, she often invokes a sense of childlikewonder as she explains the next assignment.“Even though I show you the path to walk on,”she says, “I want you to jump into the grass andplay.”

Pairs of students sitting at computers select adigital image from the Internet and manipu-late it in Photoshop at least 30 times, exploringdierent ways to make it unrecognizable. Inother words, they develop their divergent-think-ing skills. They then practice their convergentthinking skills by distilling their batch of 30 to asequence of 10 images, which are supposed tostart from the most-unrecognizable image andnish with the original.

Meanwhile, at the University of Kentucky, RyanHargrove, assistant professor of landscape archi-tecture, describes a simple exercise to his stu-dents based on similarities. Start with a simplequestion, he says: How are an apple and orangesimilar? One might begin with the obvious: Bothare fruits, have peels and s eeds, and are foundat the grocery store. But keep going and theassociations start to become more unusual andpersonal. Perhaps you recall the time that anapple peel got stuck between your teeth, or themorning when you drank orange juice and theacid hit the blister on your tongue and made youyelp in pain.

Of the millions of possible associations, manypeople’s will be similar, Mr. Hargrove says. “Thekey to creative problem solving is making con-nections that are unique.”

At the Haig Girls’ School in Singapore, students

WHAT’S BEING DONE

ACROSS THE GLOBE


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towards greater creativity comes from Sinpore.

Last year, Minister for EducatHeng Swee Keat told the BBCthat Singapore is moving awafrom high test results and towasomething that cultivates creaty—what they term as “holisticcation.”

“It’s less about content knowledge,” he sa

more about how to process information.”He describes this challenge to innovate, wwill prepare today’s students for the demof the next 20 years, as being able to “disctruths from untruths, connect seemingly parate dots, and create knowledge even acontext changes.”

This means that students will be spendingtime outside the classroom, learning aboenvironment around them, and that schobe under more pressure to come up withative ways to teach the syllabus.

Singapore’s teacher preparation programhuge part of its educational success. Highteachers in Singapore are not an accidentrather the result of ‘”deliberate policy actisaid a report from the OECD.

Like many other countries, Singapore onca shortage of good teachers, due in part tlack of prestige and respect for the profes

said National Institute of Education directSing Kong. This changed after concerted ewere made from the mid-1990s to raise tage, providing training and better workingditions for teachers, he told a global roundiscussion in March.

“But it does take time to really evolve the teaching force,” he said.

Singapore enhances its strong initial prepand induction programs with a sophistica

he survey demonstrated that these profession-s maintain STEM studies are in fact “creativebjects,” with 59% saying that of math and 69%ying that of science. (Innovation specialistsould say that every one of the four STEM em-hases in fact demands creative thinking to fullyxcel.) Those same survey subjects, however,ad 65% saying drama is creative, and 76% forusic and 79% for art.

hat is telling in those percentages is that thoseolled recognized that STEM subjects invite cre-ive thinking, but also that art programs encour-

ge it even more. So i f we want more creative

inking among STEM students, why hope it willnly come from their STEM teachers? Why notsume the exposure to creative processes theyceive in their A (for art) classes will assist themtheir STEM classes? Hence, the interdisciplin-y power of STEAM—identifying and tappingto the creativity of each subject in terms of thehers.

he European Commission is doing some no-ble things to promote creativity, launching a

outh in Action Program and a Culture Programdevelop and sustain a creative workforce andencourage partnerships between culture and

eative sectors and youth organizations andouth workers.

any schools are now oering degrees in cre-ivity. To name just a few, ESCP Europe oers

n MBA in Marketing and Creativity; Bualo Stateniversity oers a Master of Science degree inreative Studies, a graduate certicate programcreativity and change leadership, and under-

aduate minors in creative studies and lead-ship; the University of Massachusetts Bostoners an online, on-campus, or blended MA inritical and Creative Thinking; Limkokwing Uni-ersity of Creative Technology in Malaysia oersrograms not only in the arts but also an MBA inultimedia Management; and the University of

wazulu-Natal, School of Applied Human Scienc-, oers degrees in Media and Society, Socialork, Criminology, and Communications.

erhaps the best example of deliberate action


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According to Torrance himself, the purposeof creative teaching is to create a “responsibleenvironment” through high teacher enthusiasm,appreciation of individual dierences, and so on.

During his time, he outlined the following waysof teaching children to think creatively based on142 dierent studies:

1. Training programs emphasizing the Os-borne-Parnes Creative Problem Solving proce-

dures or modication of it.2. Other disciplined approaches such as training

in general semantics, creative research, andthe like.

3. Complex programs involving packages of ma-terials, such as the Purdue Creativity Program;Covington, Crutcheld, and Davies’ ProductiveThinking Program; and the Myers and Tor-rance and Torrance idea books.

4. The creative arts as vehicles for teaching andpracticing creative thinking.

5. Media and reading programs designed toteach and give practice in creative thinking.

6. Curricular and administrative arrangementsdesigned to create favorable conditions forlearning and practicing creative thinking.

7. Teacher-classroom variables, indirect and di-rect control, classroom climate, and the like.

8. Motivation, reward, competition, and the like.9. Testing conditions designed to facilitate a high-

er level of creative functioning or more validand reliable test performance.

The most popular methods Torrance witnessedwere complex programs involving packages ofmaterials, the manipulation of teacher-class-room variables, and the use of modicationsof the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solvingtraining program.

Torrance’s contemporaries, Feldhusen andTrenger (1980) and Davis (1991), also believedestablishing a “creative climate” was importantto stimulate creative thinking. Feldhusen and

IMPLEMENTING

CREATIVITY IN STUDENTS

Teaching demands new type of classro

relationshipmanagement tocapture anecdotalnotes and evidenceof student growth.

rmance management system that articulatese knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected at

ach stage of a teacher’s career and, based onreful evaluation and intensive supports, pro-

des a series of career tracks that teachers canursue. This allows teachers to become mentorachers, curriculum specialists, or principals,ereby developing talent in every component ofe education system.

addition, beginning teachers in Singaporeceive two years of coaching from expert s e-or teachers who are trained by the Nationalstitute of Education as mentors and are givenleased time to help beginners learn their craft.

n Singapore,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, anducation specialist at Stanford University, “onef the things that is very impressive there is thengoing professional learning and developmentf the career.”

he story is similar in Melbourne and Toronto,he says, where education leaders believe thatetting the right people into teaching, coupledith ongoing teacher training, is essential to im-roving student performance.

Melbourne, the Victoria Department of Ed-cation and Early Childhood Development hasunched a variety of partnerships with universi-es to transform pre-service preparation, focus-g on longer-term clinical preparation around a

et of Common Standards set out by the Victoriastitute of Teaching. “They’re really deepeninge preparation of teachers for the diverse l earn-

rs that they have in Melbourne and in Victorias a state,” Darling-Hammond adds.

Toronto, Darling-Hammond points to the verytensive work being done around the inductionf beginning teachers. In addition to supportinge mentorship benets put forward by Ontario

s a province, the city of Toronto is providingaining for beginning teachers for four years, in-uding demonstration teaching, mentoring, anddditional coursework geared toward custom-ed instruction. These initiatives have resulted in99% retention rate of beginning teachers.

What all three cities have in common is that they“take the systemic approach,” Darling-Hammondsays. “They try to look at everything from recruit-ment through development, and so on.”

There are creativity workshops around the worlddesigned to enhance educators’ understandingand potential for creativity. The Creativity Work-shop, for example, is an organization based inNew York City that has been holding workshopsfor teachers around the world since 199 3. Tohelp instructors access and develop their cre-ativity, the workshop leaders have developeda progression of exercises and techniques thatexplore sense perceptions, free-form writing

and drawing, associative thinking, mapmaking,constructive daydreaming, memory, collage, andphotography.

From the workshop’s webpage: “The Creativi-ty Workshop is dedicated to helping teachers,K12 through University, develop and nurturetheir creativity and that of their students. TheCreativity Workshop has developed a series ofsimple and eective exercises aimed at keepingthe creative juices owing both in the classroomand personally. The Creativity Workshop oersprofessional development courses for teachersfrom all over the world. This unique experiencecombines learning, global travel, CEUs, and asso-ciation with peers from all over the world.”

But creativity workshops like these should notexist solely outside of teacher preparation pro-grams; they should exist within them as well.Teaching demands a new type of cl assroomrelationship management to capture anecdotalnotes and evidence of student growth.

Teachers must become disciplined and analyticalabout identifying students’ strengths and skillgaps, continuously turning classroom data intoa plan of action, and must also seek a greaterconnection and collaboration between currentresearch and their own teaching. This requirescreativity. We need standards because we needassessment of progress, but it’s up to teachers tobe creative in meeting those standards in waysthat promote creativity in students.


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mine the causes of the problem.4. Seek fresh approaches from people fro

other organizations, functions, levels, adisciplines. Other opinions are always minsightful than you think they will be.

5. Take on a tough and “undoable projectothers have tried and failed at.

6. Break up your work routine when you ablocked. Incorporate dissimilar tasks, aand rest breaks when you come to a roblock.

To improve your creative prociency, ask self the following essential questions on alar basis:

> What original ideas have I come up wit > What patterns do I see emerging in themation I have about a problem? > What is the least likely or oddest answeconsider to solve my problem? > What specic analogies can I apply to ation to broaden my perspective? > Do I employ brainstorming sessions to er connections? > Whom can I enlist to be part of a broadverse, creative think tank?

The strategies presented here only scratcsurface of a huge repository of informatioeducators, business leaders, researchers,specialists—just as the situation we’ve illuthroughout this book can’t help but be ovplied by an attempt at summary.

In the next portion of the book, we preseviews of (NUMBER HERE) education bloggInformED fans on the topic of c reativity

education.

from qualitative judgment. He even goes on tosuggest that if a student comes up with a par-ticularly unfeasible interpretation, the teachershould not judge, but continue to question thestudent until the context for the interpretationbecomes clear, encouraging cultivation of thestudent’s creative skill.

2. Imagine your lecture room as a business(TeachThought). If you were an art director orinnovation manager how would you inspireyour employees? Use those same tactics inyour class or lecture room.

3. Eliminate fear of failure.4. Talk about creativity with your students.5. Edutopia’s “creative time savers” include

having your students rely on each other asresources; pairing your higher achievers withlower achievers; having students read oneanother’s writing to check for completion orsuggest ideas before they come see you; usingthe Leap Frog Tag reading system to collectdata; and having a “math problem of the day”

journal to review skills in which your studentsscored low on assessments.

If you’re worried more about yourown creative capabilities thanthose of your students, there arecountless resources out there tohelp you. Microsoft lists creativityas one of its key EducationCompetencies—one in a set ofcomplete functional andbehavioral qualities that, when

fully realized, can help lead toprofessional success.

Here are some tips from Microsoft (2006), in-tended to be used when interviewing educators,but equally relevant to educators themselves:

1. Generate ideas without initially judging them.2. Ask more questions before attempting to craft

solutions.3. Dene the problem. Ask questions and deter-

More recently, there’s been an explosion ofresources and recommendations on educationblogs, focusing on promoting creativity in theclassroom. These recommendations includetips like recognizing and rewarding creativity,introducing limitations, talking to parents, usingtechnology and blended learning, multilitera-cies approaches, combining creativity with taskappropriateness, promoting creative problemsolving, fostering creative metacognition, estab-lishing expressive freedom, being familiar withthe standards, designing multidisciplinary les-sons when possible, understanding that creativ-ity is important to a student’s future in the jobmarket, etc.

Most of these tips simply reiterate the older nd-ings of Torrance and his colleagues, but here aresome of my favorites, which also happen t o besome of the more creative ones in the bunch:

1. De-emphasize context (The Science of Learn-ing blog). In his book, Lateral Thinking: Creativ-ity Step by Step (1973), Edward de Bono urgeseducators to de-emphasize context in orderto teach students to think freely outside thebox. In one example, de Bono desc ribes howa teacher shows his students a photo of peo-ple dressed in street clothes wading throughwater at a beach. The teacher then asks thestudents to come up with interpretations asto what is going on in the picture. The teach-er has de-emphasized the context; the cruxof the activity is to develop the context usingtheir imaginations. In this situation, de Bonosays that students might respond by sayingthat the picture shows a group of people

caught by the tide, or a group crossing a ood-ed river, or people wading out to a ferry boatwhich cannot come to shore, or people com-ing ashore from a wrecked boat. The fact thatthe photo is actually of a group of people pro-testing at a beach is completely irrelevant. Theauthor stresses that the right answer is notimportant; generating as many interpretationsas possible is. The teacher has created a safe,controlled environment and activity wherestudents are encouraged to think outside thebox and exercise creative habits of mind, free

enger (1980) provided several recommenda-ons for establishing a classroom environmentonducive to creative thinking:

Support and reinforce unusual ideas andresponses of students.Use failure as a positive to help students real-ize errors and meet acceptable standards in asupportive atmosphere.3. Adapt to student interests and ideas in theclassroom whenever possible.4. Allow time for students to think about anddevelop their creative ideas. Not all creativityoccurs immediately and spontaneously.5. Create a climate of mutual respect and

acceptance between students and betweenstudentsand teachers, so that students can share,develop, and learn together and from oneanother as well as independently.6. Be aware of the many facets of creativitybesides arts and crafts: verbal responses,written responses both in prose and poeticstyle, ction and nonction form. Creativityenters all curricular areas and disciplines.7. Encourage divergent learning activities. Bea resource provider and director.8. Listen and laugh with students. A warm,supportive atmosphere provides freedomand security in exploratory thinking.

0. 9. Allow students to have choices and bea part of the decision-making process. Letthem have a

. part in the control of their education andlearning experiences.

2. 10. Let everyone get involved, and demon-strate the value of involvement by supportingstudent ideas and solutions to problems and

projects.

1996, members of the Association for Curricu-m Development came up with a fantastic list of

5 ways to promote creativity in the classroom.he list includes tips like modeling creativity,uilding self-ecacy, questioning assumptions,ncouraging sensible risks, tolerating ambiguity,lowing for mistakes, delaying gratication, nd-g excitement, and playing to strengths.


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PART 3

INTERVIEWSWITH NEWMINDS INEDUCATION


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Andrew Barnum has more than 25 years ofexperience as a designer, educator and artist.Over the course of his extensive career, he hasspecialized in the areas of music, painting andpoetics. He is well known for being passionatelydedicated to social-connection, content creationand his passion for constructive adaptation to 21century conditions.

Looking back at the cultural landscape of Aus-tralia in the 80s and 90s, Andrew remembers atime when the Arts were more one dimensional;when Arts followed a more predictable pattern.

“We’ve now moved from linear learning to workoutcomes, to a much more uncertain, non-linearset of expectations,” explains Andrew. “The keyfor educators and future practitioners is l earn-ing to adapt to, and ourish in, this new context.Learning that you need to be continuously grow-ing your abilities and skills so you can jump-intoroles, projects, collaborations and contributesuccessfully.”

One of this educator’s missions is to developstudents through an expressive and productiveconversation that acknowledges the value of acreative, cultural economy.

He says, that as an artist today, “...part of yourcurrency is constantly challenging and discov-ering the learning that’s required to maintain alivelihood.”

Was this always the case? A generation ago, wasthe Art scene dierent?

“The previous ‘age of print’ had xed pathwaysbased on industry convention and production,”explains Andrew. “In the ‘post-typographic orCreative Age’ that we are now experiencing, weare all re-inventing how we build, consume anddistribute content ‘live.’”

How we deliver a product, be it an artisticuct or not, is one of the major things that shifted, says Andrew. “We are now in a sting, constant ow of media production animmersion that requires a dierent learnapproach that is evolving as we speak. Thof production don’t close at s undown. Thries (us) are perpetually open and responinputs.” Time and content has sped up.

Educators towards the year 2020 have lotconsider. Studies have shown that creativthoughts can often arrive at less predictatimes than logical thoughts. Does adult “ctime” need to be more responsive to momwhen students may get a creative urge?

Should we be able to “downtools” when we get an idea, tseize on it? Andrew thinks thathis does need to be conside“The ‘idea’ moment is a produof our consistent process,” heplains.

“The sparks are squeezed out through t hecess of immersion with the problem at hawith your most trusted colleagues. It’s a sing process that is hard-wired into your bthrough your experience,” Andrew says.

“The hatching of ideas is connected to thity. Ideas come through contact and interaideas are less tested in isolation. The clastoday should be creating a ‘creative circlechallenges and tests ideas. (This should biterative process-space with clear signposwards problem-solving,” the educator say

Often, people who teach highly creative sin creative disciplines nd that these stud

ANDREW BARNUMHead of Faculty, Creative Industry,

Open Colleges


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shifted and changed?

“Creativity has gone through a re-denition inrecent years. In a world where ideas and innova-tion have become a key currency for i ndividualsand organizations, understanding and harness-ing creativity and creative people is a ‘must-have.’We saw the rise and passing of the informationage and the knowledge economy. We are now inthe Creative Age where ideas rule!”

Many educators lament the fact that all over theworld, standardized testing has become moreand more prominent. There are claims that chil-dren today are more stressed out and more over

scheduled than ever before.

Does this aect our ability to be creative? An-drew thinks that this could be something toconsider.

“Standardized testing of literacy and numeracy isa basic benchmark,” he says. “It should be seenhas a part of measuring a population’s place instandard’s measuring. More complex, qualitativemethods could eective ‘de-stress’ students ifthey know there more than one measure of theirability. A broadened approach should deliver abroader view of ability.”

When asked to name the main creative tools hemakes use of in everyday life, Andrew came upwith an understandably eclectic list.

“Firstly,” he explains, I would say apen or pencil, as I write in apersonal notebook as habit every

day.”“Secondly, my digital camera. I use either aniPhone or a DSLR. Thirdly, I would say my Goo-gle Chrome browser. I use this for email, socialmedia, news sites, blogs, projects, research andshopping.”

Lastly, I use the Adobe Creative Suite. This includes theprograms InDesign, Illustrator Photoshop and all themyriad tools from Creative Cloud.”

learn dierently. Anecdotally, and as highlightedin various studies, some educators say that cre-ative people are more highly strung, reactionaryand sensitive. But is this always the case?

Andrew mentions that he has met and taughtmany sensitive artists and students in his lengthycareer. “The life of the professional ‘creative’ is acomplete vocation,” he says, “not a pastime or aby the hour contract where you step in and outof the process loop.”

He says, “It demands complete immersive in thecoursing ow of projects and outcomes. It needsby denition to remain empathetic, reactionary

and sensitive. You need your radar tuned tothe issues within the problem so you eectivelytransform the problem at hand in to re-denedaction and outcome. That’s really what creativityis about.”

Often when thinking about their students’ cre-ative minds, educators look back to what theywere drawn to as young children. Does Andrewremember himself to have been a creative child?

He says, yes: “My talents seemed to manifestthemselves in visuals and music,” he explains.“And this helps to explain creativity. It’s not apersonality trait. Creativity is all about identify-ing evidence of a person’s passion and ability totackle and express their ideas, whether it be vi-sual, musical, science, fashion etc. Your rst truecollaborators are your parents as they identifywhat you’re naturally ‘drawn to.’ Having parentsthat are open to ‘seeing you as you truly are’ isyour rst step to a creative future.”

How essential then, is it for children to have cre-ative parents in order to thrive? Is it essential tohave parents who understand the importance ofcreative expression?

“You don’t necessarily need ‘creative’ parents,”Andrew explains, “...you just need parents whoare switched on, looking for evidence of thechild’s truest inclinations and conrming themthrough teachers and trusted friends.”

So, how has the creative’s position in the world

“You don’tnecessarily need‘creative’ parents,”Andrew explains, “...

you just need parentswho are switched on,looking for evidenceof the child’s truestinclinations andconrming themthrough teachers andtrusted friends.”

Andrew Barnum


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hen asked to name a major creative inuence,ndrew Barnum mentions Poetics in Song.n art,” he explains, “there are only three pillarsat hold up all the disciplines of the creativets: painting, music and poetry. My inuence men-

oned contains two of them simultaneously.”

o, is creativity under threat?

ome educators are saying that “kids today” areften stumped by a creative task, as they areoking for the “right” answer, which doesn’t ex-t. In Andrew’s opinion, is Generation Z missingut on some of the things that gens Y, X and theoomers got as kids? Andrew does not think that

is is the case.

The current generation gap haseen seriously underestimated,”e says. “This latest generationalivide is like nothing we’ve everxperienced before.”

ids today, are operating in a completely dier-nt context than the previous two generationsd. Their habits and impulses have been shapedy new media communication technologies, theternet’s ‘dark everything’, and the behaviorsat have followed. Gen Y and Gen “i” are run-ng as fast as they can to cope with the changesey’ve been born into as digital natives.”

hey learn ‘live’, there is little or no separationetween learning and living. They are also ‘mo-le-connected’ at all times, managing numerousteractions, transactions, emotions, successes

nd failures with channels of people and plat-rms. Life and learning is more i nterconnectedan previous generations. They are ahead of theainstream curve, impatient, dissatised andstracted by way too much stimulus and theirwn random passions and aections. ‘Missingut’ is a far too sentimental approach to an agehere literally everything has changed through achnologically driven age of creative possibility,”

ndrew says.

“For some, the new generations’ experienceappears like a ‘parallel universe’ that is hopefullydestined to dry up and blow away. It won’t. Theyouth is hell-bent on a subtle re-invention of theworld and its problems through interactivity.Expressions like ‘all good’ and whatever’ are atype of armour to help them remain productiveand engaged within the headwinds of an age ofpersistent change.”


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Anamaria Dutceac Segesten writes for InsideHigher Ed and is currently a research fellow atthe Center for Modern European Studies, Uni-versity of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has expe-rience with both American and European highereducation systems, and reports regularly on thefuture of the university and the use of technol-ogy and social media in teaching social sciencesand the humanities.

We asked Anamaria why she thinks creativity isimportant in education and whether or not shehas noticed it declining amongst her students.“The benets of creativity,” she says, “includeindependent thinking and adaptive prob-lem-solving, and success when meeting newand unexpected challenges. Creativity is also akey prerequisite for academic research: it drivesscholars to asking new questions and ndinginnovative answers. A creative learning environ-ment fosters the freedom of thinking in partic-ipating students (and teachers) and stimulatesthe combination of dierent elements in newand unexpected, interesting and useful ways.”So are learning environments churning out fewerand fewer creative students? According to Ana-maria, it depends on which age group you’retalking about.

“I speak from a European perspective that maydiverge from the US trend, but I cannot say thatI see a decrease in the creativity of my students,”she says. “I observe a constant trend: in their

freshman year students are not creative, andlook for standard ‘correct’ answers to the ques-tions teachers ask. The more time they spendat the university, the more liberated becomestheir imagination. So I would say that there isa constant lack of creativity at the high schoollevel (but not necessarily earlier in pupils’ life),and a constant stimulation of the imagination atthe university level. Students are encouraged tothink outside the box, to criticize existing theo-ries, to nd their own data. This fosters creativity.”

When we asked her what teachers c an doreverse the trend for high school studentsaid, “It may be that schools can nd wayengage students with the matters of studside the ocial classroom ti me,” Anamar“Homework that is not based on memorizor repetition can be a solution. Excursionhands-on learning can be another. In g enlearning by performing a variety of tasks preferred. I always thought that taking stuoutside the classroom has positive eect learning. I have not tried changing the timthe day when they are having lessons, butype of variation may also work.”

Connecting with parents andfamilies of your students is anoimportant strategy.

“A family environment predisposed to enceducation is a great factor in helping childget the most out of school,” says Anamarsame goes for creativity. As sociologists (eBourdieu) have discovered, there is a kindtural capital that is transmitted within famI suppose this is the same for a ‘creativity ital.’ Famous artists more often than not cfrom creative backgrounds. Bach’s father a composer and so was Mozart’s. In our tthink, for example, of Norah Jones, whosewas Ravi Shankar. Having a positive refer

the near family circle can do nothing but fcreativity.”

As Anamaria’s specialties lie in political scwe asked her about the larger picture of imenting creativity education into schoolshow much power really lies in the individuhands.

“There is a lot in the educational system tnot connected to the individual educatorssays. “I think education policy—the goals

ANAMARIA DUTCEACSEGESTENInside Higher Ed


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is formally part of our course syllabi. Teachersmust keep themselves abreast with the latesttechnology developments to prevent technol-ogy-facilitated cheating and to show practicallyhow technology can be used in learning. I ampersonally a technological optimist, who believesthat technology more often than not helps cre-ativity.”

Can creativity be measured? Anamaria believesit can, as the Torrance tests demonstrate. “Butthere is an inherent tension between creativethinking and standardization,” she says. “Creativ-ity can be systematically measured but I do notthink that it can or that it should be standard-

ized. There is a huge variation in other factors(culture, access to education, income, class, etc.)that prevents a proper standard test from beingimplemented and thus from being useful.”

ANNE BAMFORDCenters for Research on Creativity

Professor Anne Bamford has been recognized in-ternationally for her research in arts, education,emerging literacy, and visual communication.She is an expert in the international dimensionof education and through her research has pur-sued issues of innovation, social impact, equity,and diversity. A world scholar for UNESCO, Bam-ford has conducted major national educationalimpact and evaluation studies for the govern-ments of Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium,Iceland, Hong Kong, and Norway. She has re-ceived awards for Best Educational Research,the National Teaching Award in the UK, and was

a runner-up for British Female Innovator of theYear. Currently, she teaches at the University ofthe Arts London and co-manages the Centers forResearch on Creativity (CRoC).

We were curious to hear Anne’s thoughts on thecurrent “creativity crisis” and whether innova-tive tendencies are declining in today’s youth, orwhether reporters have simply been spreadingrumours and perpetuating myths.

governments and by other nancers of educa-tional programs— are often a bigger obstaclefor creative thinking, an obstacle than cannot beovercome by individual teachers.

“So rst we need an educational policy focusedon creativity (i.e. less standardized entry exams,less focus on grades, more choice/variety incurricula). At the level of individual educators,creativity is a matter of personal interest and ofavailable resources. It takes time to rethink someclassroom routines, to learn new technologyuses, devise new examination forms, etc. Educa-tors should ask for more resources dedicated totheir own training. And then, nally, they should

not be afraid to experiment. Not all experimentssucceed but all are a source of learning.”

Anamaria acknowledges that rote memorizationhas its place in the classroom, but isn’t the end-all-be-all of a quality education.

“Historically, learning has been a lot about repe-tition. If we go back to Ancient Greece all schoolsinvolved memorization and repetition as the rststep towards knowledge. But to this element ofrepetition we need to add the requirement ofapplication to concrete empirical cases. This iswhere academia and work life meet, and this iswhere creativity plays a major role.”

“Academia should be better at helping studentspractice this applicative understanding while inschool. I think the dierence you present in thissurvey is explained by the dierence in expecta-tions. In school, knowing the theories and havingthe right answers were often considered t hemeasures of educational achievement. In the

work life, the application of theories to concretecases and the demand of problem-solving re-dene achievement. So, for example, academiashould include more problem-solving exercises.”

As for the role technology can play in this game,Anamaria says, “Technology is a tool. It can beused both for and against creativity. Universitiesshould (and most actually do) educate studentsnot only by providing new information but alsoby teaching students how to identify their needfor new information and how to obtain it. This

“At the level ofindividual educators,creativity is a matterof personal interest

and of availableresources. It takes timeto rethink someclassroom routines, tolearn new technologyuses, devise newexamination forms,etc.”

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given encouragement to engage in the arts andtend to be more creative.

“I think it is vital that the arts and creativity forma vital part of compulsory education so that allchildren are exposed to the potential of creativityregardless of the inclinations of their parents.That is why it has to be part of compulsory edu-cation (not only in after school experiences).”Bamford also believes that negative early ex-periences in childhood can stunt creativity—forgood—making it vitally important for early edu-cation teachers to focus on creative learning.

“In my own international research (Bamford

2004, The Wow Factor), around 28% of all experi-ences have a negative impact on a child’s creativ-ity,” she says. “There is a lack of research as towhether a child can ‘recover’ from an experiencethat is negative in terms of the creativity. My per-sonal opinion would suggest that once a child’screative learning is stied, it is quite dicult toreignite it.”

ANYA KAMENETZThe Narrow Bridge

Anya Kamenetz is a Pulitzer-Prize-nominated journalist for Fast Company in New York. Herblog, The Narrow Bridge, is about the future ofeducation. As a reporter, Kamenetz casts a keeneye on the higher education landscape, eldingthe current discourse on policy and practice,student loans, alternative learning paths, tech-nology, and more.

In 2011, Learning, Freedom and the Web and TheEdupunks’ Guide were published as free e-booksby the Mozilla and Gates Foundation respective-ly. Generation Debt (Riverhead, 2006) dealt withyouth economics and politics; DIY U: Edupunks,Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation ofHigher Education, (Chelsea Green, 2010) investi-gated innovations to address the crises in cost,access, and quality in higher education.

Kamenetz was named a 2010 Game Changer inEducation by the Hungton Post, received 2009

“What abouttechnology?Does it make studen

less creative whenthey can nd instananswers to questionwith a quick Googlesearch?”

Anne Bamford

is argued that this is the case and perhaps itay be true,” she says, “but there is little veri-

ble research to show this one way or the other.”er feeling is that if creativity has indeed beenduced, it is due to one or more of the followingctors: 1) Children have less unstructured play

me; 2) Children a less likely to engage in imagi-ative play with natural materials; 3) The schoolurriculum has become more narrow; 4) The artsave been marginalised in many schools; 5) In-ucient emphasis is given to creativity in teach- education; 6) The prevalence of high stakes

xams in schools has increased; or 7) Timetablesnd teaching methods have become more rigidnd limit creativity.

hat about technology? Does it make studentsss creative when they can nd instant answersquestions with a quick Google search?

When we look at what a lot ofoung people do on technology,is very creative,” she says. “Forxample, making movies, mixingusic, sharing poetry. So I think

echnology can be very creative.

My concern, though, is that technology uses at of time and so people are not exploring dif -rent forms of technology. Also, particularly for

oung children, I think they need unstructureday and imaginative play using a range of ‘handsn’ materials.”

hen asked why she thinks creativity is anmportant quality to cultivate in today’s youth,he said, “I think the value of creativity in termsf employability is very underrated. In a s tudyf graduate attributes I conducted in the UK,eativity was the major thing employers lookedr when selecting someone (along with commu-cation and collaboration skills – which can alsoe gained through creative activities, especiallythe arts).”

o how can teachers promote creativity andmaginative play in their own classrooms?

Bamford has a host of ideas:

1. Have a creativity corner in the classroomwhere there are a range of unstructuredmaterials that encourage open ended creativeproblem solving

2. Give questions rather than answers and en-courage the pupils to take a ‘research orientat-ed’ approach to learning.

3. Integrate learning (e.g. try putting science andmusic together or mathematics and art)

4. Have partnerships e.g. include museums, in-dustry artists in the classroom or take childrenfrom the classroom to these places.

5. Encourage risk taking.

6. Have exible times for learning (rigid timeta-bles limit creativity).

7. Provide plenty of chances for pupils to ‘per-form’ their learning in exhibitions, concerts,speeches, games, online and so on.

8. Provide creative professional developmentand training for all teachers and s chool lead-ers.

When asked whether she thinks creativity can bemeasured, she says, “Yes and no. It is possible tomeasure both creative behaviours and creativeoutputs, but the type of ‘testing’ you might useis not very conducive to standardised forms oftesting. For example, creativity is more likely tobe evident in a drama production than in a testpaper.”

Bamford is a strong believer in the eects of astudent’s environment on his or her behaviour.“Creativity does not occur in a vacuum. You needa rich environment and lots of creative peopleworking in proximity to create a creative energy.

“I think all people can be creative if given theright environment and stimulation to encouragecreativity. Creativity is primarily a behaviour, andlike all behaviours it can be enhanced or stiedthrough reinforcement, modelling, and cont-structist sharing.

What about a student’s home environment?“[Students] do not need creative parents, butthere is evidence to suggest that the higher theeducation level of the mother, the more likelythe child is to be taken to interesting places and


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porate these activities into your classroom,” shesays. “Instead of teaching students history froma textbook, have students become historiansand engage them with primary documents. Havethem draw their own conclusions about an eventusing source material.”

She adds, “There are times when the class needsto veer from the syllabus,” she says. “For exam-ple, we lost a teacher to melanoma this year. Mystudents wanted to raise money for Relay for Lifein her memory. They researched various typesof skin cancer, created a website, a public ser-vice announcement, traditional and social mediamarketing campaigns, and networked with local

media outlets. They raised over $1000 in twoweeks. I hadn’t planned to do this, but it wassuch a great learning experience for them.”

When we asked her about the role of technologyin creativity education, Panagos said, “ Technolo-gy is a tool. It allows us to research faster, to col-laborate with ease, and to share our creations. Itreally comes down on to how it’s being used inthe lecture room. Are students using it passivelyor actively? Are they consumers or creators?”Panagos says creativity is something that can befostered, but she’s not sure if it’s something thatcan be measured. “It is something that shouldbe addressed in all classrooms, but it will lookdierent in dierent subject areas,” she says.

Background and home environment are import-ant factors that should be taken into account,but it doesn’t mean that parents have to be mu-sicians or artists. “There’s as much creativity inmechanics or software design. Parents just needto involve their children in real-world discussions

and provide opportunities for them to createand to problem-solve.

“In addition, I feel there’s a certain resourceful-ness and ingenuity that arises out of hardship.It usually comes down more to condence ora lack thereof. The more students have theopportunity to create and problem-solve, themore condence they will have.” Panagos saysshe thinks this is true for all students-- not juststudents with creativity-challenging experiencesduring their childhood.

“There’s as muchcreativity inmechanics orsoftware design.

Parents just need toinvolve their childrein real-worlddiscussions andprovide opportunitfor them to create ato problem-solve.”

Brandy Panagos

f changing the future and cites open content;rtual-reality classrooms; free and open-sourceducation; and vocational, experiential, andelf-directed learning as possible options. Neare end of the book, she provides an index ofsources for stude

Cultivating Creativity for educators

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