Teaching Creativity and Teaching for Creativity

What is Creativity? The Definition of Creativity: » “The application of knowledge and skills in new ways, to achieve values outcomes” (NCSL) » “Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value,” (NAACE)

Features of Creativity: Using Imagination Pursuing Purposes Being Original Judging Value

Creative Teaching We define creative teaching in two ways: 1. Teaching creatively 2. Teaching for creativity

Tasks in teaching for creativity Encouraging Identifying Fostering

Encouraging Highly creative people in any field are often driven by strong self-belief in their abilities in that field. Having a positive self-image as a creative person can be fundamental to developing creative performance

Identifying Creative achievement is often driven by a person’s love of a particular instrument, for the feel of the material, for the excitement of a style of work that catches the imagination. Identifying young people’s creative abilities include helping them to find their creative strengths.

Fostering Creativity draws from many ordinary abilities and skills rather than one special gift or talent. Thus the development of many common capacities and sensitivities can help to foster creativity.

Recognizing and becoming knowledgeable about the creative process can also help foster creative development; teaching for creativity helps young people in understanding what is involved in being creative and becoming more sensitive in their own creative processes.

Teaching for creativity aims at encouraging 1. autonomy on both sides: a feeling of ownership and control over the ideas that are being offered (Woods 1995:3); 2. authenticity in initiatives and responses, deciding for oneself on the basis of one’s own judgment;

3. openness to new and unusual ideas, and to a variety of methods and approaches; 4. respect for each other and for the ideas that emerge; 5. fulfillment: from each a feeling of anticipation, satisfaction, involvement and enjoyment of the creative relationship.

Trust Above all there has to be a relationship of trust. Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself. The aim is to enable young people to be more effective in handling future problems and objectives; to deepen and broaden awareness of the self as well as the world; and to encourage openness and reflexivity as creative learners.

Self-directed Learning Teaching for creativity encourages a sense of responsibility for learning. It aims at a growing autonomy involving goal-setting and planning, and the capacity for self-monitoring self-assessment and self-management.

Creativity itself is a mode of learning Creativity itself is a mode of learning. It is distinctive in the combination of three features:

A. It involves a thoughtful playfulness – learning through experimental ‘play’. It is serious play conjuring up, exploring and developing possibilities and then critically evaluating and testing them.

B. It involves a special flexibility in which there may be a conscious attempt to challenge the assumptions and preconceptions of the self – an unusual activity in which there is an active effort to unlearn in order to learn afresh.

C. This process is driven by the find, introduce, construct or reconstruct something new. It seeks actively to expand the possibilities of any situation. In this sense the learning of creative thoughts is not neutral; it has a bias towards the innovative.  

Tips for building creative learning

Start simply, build progressively ■ Find easy ways in to creative learning. Start with the classroom environment. Move on to how pupils and staff use speech and questions. Keep it manageable, keep the focus tight. Show and share tangible changes. This will develop confidence to go further. ■ Be a ‘creative advocate’. Create a presentation or materials that you can use both within your school to convince colleagues and out of school. This will help to build a whole-school ethos around creativity. ■ Focus on one area at a time, for example, in developing more creative learning in maths, and use this to raise awareness and encourage staff to think about applications in other subject areas and spaces in the school. ■ Organise an Enquiring Minds-type project where pupils have an opportunity to negotiate the aim of the project and are instrumental in designing how it is carried out (see: www.enquiringminds.org.uk). ■ Set up an ‘inventor’s club’ after school. ■ Transform one small area in the school as a space designed for creativity and imagination. Make sure that the pupils have some ownership of the project.

Critical Thinking and Self Awareness

Scriven and Paul (1996), define critical thinking as "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action."

Through critical thinking and self-awareness, one can understand the relationship between thoughts and emotions. Although it is assumed that they are independent, the truth is that feelings are based on some level of thought, and thoughts generate from some level of feeling.

Highlighting Self-awareness * Perceptions * Assumptions * Prejudices * Values * Breaking Habits * A New Point of View * Evaluation

Pupils need to be thoroughly engaged with their own learning, and provided with plenty of opportunity to practise their skills, talk about their learning experiences, reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and to be actively involved in evaluating their own development.

Whether you decide to mediate the skills, dispositions and attitudes contained within the framework by adopting a stand-alone skills programme, an infusion approach, or by introducing a mixed model, here are seven classroom strategies that will underpin the success of any approach:

Seven Implications for Classroom Teaching 1)  Set open-ended challenges 2) Make thinking important 3) Make thinking explicit 4) Ask ‘rich’ questions 5)  Enable collaborative learning 6)  Promote self-management 7)  Make connections across contexts

Conclusion What it takes to be a creative teacher is what it takes to be a creative artist: You need creativity and ability to express yourself and your emotions. Some teachers have huge amount of knowledge, but they can't express it or create the spark in their students to learn.

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