PME 811: Blog Entry 9 - Yes, but how?
Yes, but how?
I asked my husband the other day what he remembers about the creative projects and prompts he had in school. He couldn't think of anything other than making shortbread for an English class while studying Macbeth "because it was the only Scottish food I could think of." I'm guessing that most teachers would cringe at every part of that sentence (except the cookies - he makes great cookies!) Is that really the best we can do to stimulate student creativity? The problem is - I asked him because I also came up short of any truly creative experiences in my own education.
I think every educator (and every parent, and every student) would readily agree that creativity is a necessary part of any education. It's inherently valuable - creativity is a release for, and exploration of, emotional tension and growth. It's incredibly useful - workplaces specifically and society globally need innovators to power the future and effect meaningful change. Governments fund it, research backs it, bureaucracy plans for it. We can all agree that creativity is something we want to foster, teach, and make room for.
Yes!
... but how?
In the article 'Limits to Creativity in Education' cited below, Craft describes his view of the state of creativity in schools in 2003. He talks about the efforts and methods of various disciplines to program for creativity, and he discusses the self-limiting nature of innovation and change in several fields and societal levels. But what really caught my attention was the very first line of the abstract: "Since the end of the 1990s, creativity has become a growing area of interest once more within education and wider society." Right there, in the opening statement, the author is drawing attention to the reality that a desire for creativity in education is a recurring theme... maybe even a fad.
This desire for creative minds is not new. Why, then, has so little actually been achieved (by our most-modern standards) in education to build explicit creative skills and to make room for creative pursuits? How is it that two adults discussing their combined 26 years of public school education in provinces on opposite sides of the country cannot remember anything more creative than shortbread?
Yu-Sien Lin, writing from the Research Centre for Curriculum and Instruction in Taiwan authored a paper in 2011 proposing that a conceptual framework was necessary in order to foster the much-desired creativity education. He proposes that this framework be composed of three components as seen in figure 2 of his article:
... and I have to say that I do not feel well-framed. This diagram (and his explanation of the framework) does not help me to build concrete strategies into my program. There are countless articles in a similar vein widely available through any number of education-focused publications that preach the benefits of creativity in the classroom without offering solutions for implementation. It seems to fall to individual, on-the-ground teachers to brainstorm and network to find and use real, doable exercises for their students.
So - what are yours? How do you bring creativity and its associated skills into your classroom? Do you remember creative work from your own education? What stuck with you?
Sources:
Craft, A. (2003). The limits to creativity in education: dilemmas for the educator. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51: 113–127. doi:10.1111/1467-8527.t01-1-00229
Lin, Y. S. (2011). Fostering creativity through education–a conceptual framework of creative pedagogy. Creative education, 2(03), 149.
