References

Characterizing Artistically Literate Individuals

How would you characterize an artistically literate student? Literature on art education and art standards in education cited the following as common traits of artistically literate individuals: • use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to communicate their own ideas and respond to the artistic communications of others; • develop creative personal realization in at least one art form in which they continue active involvement as an adult; • cultivate culture, history, and other connections through diverse forms and genres of artwork; • find joy, inspiration, peace, intellectual stimulation, and meaning when they participate in the arts; and • seek artistic experiences and support the arts in their communities.

Issues in Teaching Creativity

In his famous TED talks on creativity and innovation, Sir Ken Robinson (Do schools kill creativity? 2006; How to escape education’s death valley?, 2013) stressed paradigms in the education system that hamper the development of creative capacity among learners. He emphasized that schools stigmatize mistakes. This primarily prevents students from trying and coming up with original ideas. He also reiterated the hierarchy of systems. Firstly, most useful subjects such as Mathematics and languages for work are at the top while arts are at the bottom. Secondly, academic ability has come to dominate our view of intelligence. Curriculum competencies, classroom experiences, and assessment are geared toward the development of academic ability. Students are schooled in order to pass entrance exams in colleges and universities later on. Because of this painful truth, Robinson challenged educators to: educate the well-being of learners and shift from the conventional leanings toward academic ability alone; give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, and to physical education;

facilitate learning and work toward stimulating curiosity among learners;

awaken and develop powers of creativity among learners; and view intelligence as diverse, dynamic, and distinct, contrary to common belief that it should be academic ability-geared.

In “First Literacies: Art, Creativity, Play, Constructive Meaning-Making," McArdle and Wright asserted that educators should make deliberate connections with children’s first literacies of art and play. A recommended new approach to early childhood pedagogy would emphasize children’s embodied experience through drawing. This would include a focus on children's creation, manipulation, and changing of meaning through engaged interaction with art materials (Dourish, 2001), through physical, emotional, and social immersion (Anderson, 2003). The authors proposed four essential components to developing or designing curriculum that cultivates students' artistic and creative literacy. Such approaches actively encourage the creative, constructive thinking involved in meaning making which are fundamental to the development of the systems of reading, writing, and numbering. 1. Imagination and pretense, fantasy and metaphor A creative curriculum will not simply allow, but will actively support, play and playfulness. The teacher will plan for learning and teaching opportunities for children to be, at once, who they are and who they are not, transforming reality, building narratives, and mastering and manipulating signs and symbol systems. 2. Active menu to meaning making In a classroom where children can choose to draw, write, paint, or play in the way that suits their purpose and/or mood, literacy learning and arts learning will inform and support each other. 3. Intentional, holistic teaching A creative curriculum requires a creative teacher, who understands the creative processes, and purposefully supports learners in their experiences. Intentional teaching does not mean drill and rote learning and, indeed, endless rote learning exercises might indicate the very opposite of intentional teaching. What makes for intentional teaching is thoughtfulness and purpose, and this could occur in such activities as reading a story, adding a prop, drawing children’s attention to a spider’s web, and playing with rhythm and rhyme. Even the thoughtful and intentional imposing of constraints can lead to creativity. 4. Co-player, co-artist Educators must be reminded of the importance of understanding children as current citizens, with capacities and capabilities in the here and now. It is vital for teachers to know and appreciate children and what they know by being mindful of the present and making time for conversation, interacting with the children as they draw. Teachers must try to avoid letting the busy management work of their days take precedence and distract them from the ‘being.’

Wrap Up

• Creativity can be defined as the process of having original ideas that have value.

• All children have capacity for innovation and creativity. • Schools should work toward educating the whole-being of the child.

Questions to Ponder

Read the questions and instructions carefully. Write your answers in the space provided. 1. What is your personal definition of creativity?

2. Recall some of the creative classroom activities you had in school. What made them creative?