Creativity at school_EN

Educating in the age of innovation

Creativity at school

When logic comes to a dead end, creativity comes to the rescue

Creativity within everyone's reach

Edward De Bono tells how Simon Batchelor, who was in charge of a mission in Cambodia to help the Khmer people fetch water, had failed in his attempts to get them involved in the project, when he decided to try something different and taught them the Six Thinking Hats method. The Khmer were so enthusiastic about the creative technique that they told Batchelor that learning to think was far more important than getting water. The Cambodians were right: those who learn to think are able not only to develop effective strategies to provide water to their people but also to make the progress of their people a reality under any circumstance, thanks to the potential of their thinking.

Ana Moreno Salvo Director of Impuls Educació

I remember in my university days in the Computer Science faculty, some professors enjoyed testing their students’ creativity, and they would give us exams that contained a single problem. It seems simple, right? Well, it wasn’t because the problem always had a ‘trick’, as we used to call it, and it could not be solved with our customary logical thinking; to find the way to solve it - which was always simple - a large dose of creativity was needed. I didn't understand it then and I thought I was being taken for a ride. Now I think it was a good way to encourage us to think differently and open our minds to the world of possibilities that a more creative way of thinking offers. We all admired everyone who had found the solution. Interestingly, they were not the most studious but those who had a natural tendency to be creative in their approaches. The rest of us were left with the hope of learning by trial and error.

The latest PISA test, which assesses the thinking of adolescents from almost all over the world, includes creative thinking. As Natalie Foster, developer of the test, says, ‘Creative thinking is important to help us adapt to a world that is constantly and rapidly changing, and to contribute to its development’. In the opinion of Tony Wagner, an education expert who has led the ‘Leadership for Change’ research group at Harvard University, innovation is what drives today's economy.

The school of the twenty-first century must prepare our children and youths to live in a world where it is harder and harder to survive without a large dose of creativity. As the discoverer of lateral thinking, Edward De Bono, said, ‘My aspiration is for there to be a few more young people in the world who can say: "I am a thinker," and I would be even more satisfied if they went further and said: "I am a thinker and I like to think”.’ Diàlegs shares this genius of thought’s intentions and hopes that this issue will serve to inspire new ideas to improve the way we teach thinking in both schools and the family.

While we were putting the finishing touches to this issue of Diàlegs we received the sad news of the death of Robert Swartz, whom we hold in high esteem and to whom we would like to dedicate this issue on creativity, where his last interview appears posthumously.

I hope you like it,

Manager

Ana Moreno

Publications

Jordi Viladrosa

Original Design

Guillem Batchellí

Design and Communication

Maria Font

Illustrations

Maria Yuling Martorell

Translation

Incyta Multilanguage

project

© Samuel Bregolin Design for Change

The only possible revolution in education stems from creativity

Design for Change brings design and creativity into the classroom

by Apurva San Juan Alonso & Miguel Luengo Pierrard

We have always been told that creativity, more specifically imagination,1 is a characteristic of children, artists or creators of large companies. But... have we really been told what creativity is?

In fact, one of the first premises to keep in mind is that creativity and imagination are not the same thing. Although the differences will be discussed in more detail throughout the article, there is one nuance that changes everything.

A BIT OF HISTORY ABOUT CREATIVITY

If we go back 200 years to the first industrial revolution, we find a historical juncture of great changes where new tools and ways of thinking were emerging. One of the great global breakthroughs was the invention and development of the steam engine. This concept revolutionised the previously known way of working. We moved away from the world of craftsmanship and manual labour to a faster and more efficient assembly-line manufacturing process.

People who were engaged in manual labour and handicrafts went to work in specialised factories. This required the implementation of a modern education system, in which the new generations were taught how to perform these tasks.

So what were the skills that this educational system sought to enhance? Those needed to efficiently perform tasks in a factory: memorisation, repetition, obedience, discipline and even competition among peers, in case they needed to vie for a promotion in the future. From our current perspective, it might sound like a kind of ‘education for robots’.

However, perhaps surprisingly, there are few differences between this educational system and the one we have known up to now: memorising facts, repeating them on a test, trying to be the best in class so as not to fail... and obeying. It seems that we are still being prepared to work in a factory like those of the first Industrial Revolution, although a study conducted by BBVA 2 determined that

only 36% of the jobs in Spain in 2018 fit this type. On the other hand, there has long been a machine, the computer, which is much better at performing these type of rote, repetitive tasks, leading to the automation of work.

Therefore, broadly speaking, the education system in recent years facilitates the development of skills that are needed in jobs that are doomed to disappear. Let's go back in time one last time: What skill did the creator of the steam engine, James Watt, use to develop his invention? Beyond the obvious ones, such as mathematics, there is an essential one: creativity.

IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY

According to the official Spanish dictionary, imagination is the ‘ability to form new ideas and new projects’ and creativity is the ‘capacity to create’. Thus, creativity needs imagination to dream; imagination needs creativity to make those dreams come true. Imagination is inherent to human beings, but creativity has to be worked on.

Most of the progress that has been made so far has been achieved without the educational system training students in creativity. What if this skill had been encouraged in the past? What would today look like?

WE STILL HAVE TIME

According to IEBS Business School, one of the ten ‘soft’ skills that are the most in demand by companies in 2021 is creativity.3 At Design for Change (DFC) Spain, we have been working since 2011 with the conviction that children and young people are autonomous beings capable of taking action to change their environment. The DFC Methodology they use to achieve this allows them to develop creativity to provide solutions that they themselves implement. In addition, they strengthen their commitment to the environment, because from the outset they choose which problems they want to address. This characteristic makes the DFC Methodology an ideal complement for education professionals who already use other active methodologies such as Service-Learning or Project-Based Learning. With the implementation of the DFC Methodology based on ‘Design Thinking’ and entrepreneurship, which is simple, agile and effective, 100% practical and easily adaptable to different pedagogical models in both formal and nonformal education, children and young people are given the opportunity to design solutions to specific challenges.

Creativity needs imagination to dream and imagination needs creativity to make dreams come true

In addition, the DFC Methodology is recognised by the Complutense University of Madrid as a tool that facilitates the empowerment of children and youth. There is also scientific evidence of its benefits thanks to studies from universities such as Harvard and Stanford. 4

REVOLUTIONISING THE CLASSROOM WITH I CAN

Applying the DFC Methodology turns a place where children are educated into a meaningful learning space. Building this safe environment where young people are responsible for their own ideas and the way to carry them out is based on several premises:

1. We can all be creative. Not only children but also the teachers and educators who guide and mentor them must be aware of their (infinite) possibilities when creating. What ingredients are needed?

- An attitude: optimism, which is absolutely necessary to change the world.

- A method based on ‘Design Thinking’ : a succession of divergences, convergences and syntheses that avoids moving to the final solution too quickly. In this way, we go through the phases - of the DFC Methodology - that let

our ideas take flight.

- Simple techniques such as ‘crazy ideas’: use those ideas that are initially impossible but will not be judged, because they are valued as a starting point to help our imagination. Thus, they can be used as a trigger to achieve feasible ideas.

- Elements such as prototypes, whose rationale is ‘get it wrong quickly and cheaply’. If we start from mistakes to learn, the fear of creativity and value judgments fades away.

2. The job of education professionals is to ‘facilitate’ This means listening, identifying what the students or group of young people need and offering them tools and suggestions. Sometimes facilitating also means doing nothing, just observing and being amazed at what they are capable of doing if given the right techniques and space. It consists of ‘really

The DFC Methodology gives children and young people the opportunity to design solutions to specific challenges

© Samuel Bregolin Design for Change

seeing’ the students in front of us; not the image of a passive student who in the future will be able to do something but right now only listens.

3. The importance of the process. If we focus on the result - which we take for granted has to ‘turn out well’- we strip the students of freedom with the belief that adults have more experience and, therefore, know better what to do. Thus, creativity is reduced to copying. However, this premise does not mean that the result does not matter, 5 but rather that the adult guide has to learn how to determine when his or her involvements adds and when it subtracts.

4. Ethics as a key factor. In the Imagine Phase of the DFC Methodology, where creativity stands out as the main skill, it is important to be aware of the effect of the ideas we are putting forward.

By experiencing the DFC methodological process, the young people begin to discover their own potential and how it is magnified in a group. They discover that they have the real ability to change the world, their world. This helps develop the ‘I CAN Mindset’: a way of thinking that allows them to rise to challenges flexibly in any field, that invites them to be active agents of change and that happens ‘Not by chance, by design’. At Design for Change Spain, we know that we are responsible for making change happen, for educating students to learn competencies to develop the skills that the job market is already demanding.

We need a change, a revolution in the way we teach. We need to stop creating memorisation machines and start teaching young people to foster creativity to change their world within the framework of the 2030 Agenda, furthering the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),6 choosing where they want to act, choosing where and how they can contribute (fight) in the education revolution.

We at Design for Change Spain invite you to join the revolution, to be bold and to dare to make creativity a fundamental part of your daily life. We encourage you to try the DFC Methodology 7 with your children, with your nieces and nephews, with your students. We encourage you to give them the opportunity to use their imagination and equip them with the tools to be creative. In our organisation, we have been putting creativity at

the service of young people for more than ten years, not only to prepare them for the future, but also so that they can provide solutions and change the rules of the game today. Because they are not the future, they are the present. And we have to listen to them. The most necessary revolution is the revolution in education, because it is the only basis for change, where everything begins. Let's be the education revolution we want to see in the world!

Apurva San Juan is the general director of Design for Change Spain. Trained in leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Mondragon. At the age of 22, she has been CEO of Design for Change Spain since 2022 and co-founder of a cooperative that develops products to make reading easier for people with poor vision.

Miguel Luengo Pierrard is the president of Design for Change Spain. A ‘dream awakener’ who loves working with people. He has a degree in Industrial Engineering from ETSII Madrid and worked for 13 years as a consultant in an international company, until he found his true passion with Design for Change in 2011.

Notes

1 According to the theory of Guzmán López, author of several books on the subject, girls and boys are actually imaginative, which does not mean that they are creative.

2 https://www.bbvaresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Cuanvulnerable-es-el-empleo-en-Espana-a-la-revolucion-digital.pdf

3 https://www.iebschool.com/saladeprensa/2021/02/04/las-10-soft-skills-masdemandadas-por-las-empresas-en-2021/

4 https://dfcspain.org/

5 The DFC Philosophy is born with the objective of fostering the will, commitment and HumanE™ values based on the 5 ‘E's’: Empathy, Ethics, Excellence, Elevation and Evolution. We encourage this third ‘E’, ‘Excellence’, as a result of the process and the repetition of the process to master the technique, which involves focusing more and more attention on the result in a natural way. More information: https://dfcspain.org/nuestro-metodo/ 6 Design for Change is recognised by the United Nations as an organisation that promotes the SDGs. Each DFC project works on one or more SDGs.

7 To use the DFC Methodology, you can download the Project Facilitation Guide at this link https://dfcspain.org/guia-para-facilitar-proyectos-dfc/

We need to start teaching young people how to foster creativity to change their world within the framework of the 2030 Agenda

The most necessary revolution is the revolution in education, because it is the only basis for change, where everything begins

© Samuel Bregolin Design for Change

panorama

Schools must prepare for innovation

Tony Wagner is a senior fellow at the Learning Policy Institute in the United States. He participates in international conferences as an educational communicator and is a successful author in the field of educational innovation. He has been a school teacher, school principal and university professor. He holds a PhD in Education and was the founder and co-director of the Leadership for Change group at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, as well as an expert advisor at Harvard University's Innovation Lab. His books include educational ‘bestsellers’ such as "The Global Achievement Gap" (2008), "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World" (2012) and "Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing our Kids for the Innovation Era" (2016).

by Ana Moreno Salvo

INTERVIEW WITH TONY WAGNER

You have dedicated your entire life to improving education. In you book, "The Global Achievement Gap", you argue that the current education system has become obsolete and does not need to be reformed but reinvented. Could you tell us what you mean by that?

When I became aware of the concern of employers and others about young people’s lack of skills, I wanted to try to understand what skills were important in different work environments, and for citizenship. I began interviewing a wide variety of executives, from Apple to Unilever, along with the military, civic leaders and university educators. And I realised that even students graduating from our best schools lack the skills that these people were telling me were critical. The global achievement gap is the gap between what our best schools teach and assess and what students need in order to work, learn and be citizens.

What are the ‘survival skills’ for the twenty-first century that you identified 12 years ago? Are they still valid today?

The seven survival skills emerged from the interviews. I heard the same kinds of things in all of them: the ability to ask good questions, the critical thinking needed to be able to ask them, the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to take initiative, etc. Some were intended to educate a large number of people with a few basic skills. Others were supposedly for young people going to university who are supposed to have some sort of higher knowledge. But the problem is that none of these skills are taught to children at

either the most basic or advanced levels. The fact that assessment takes place with multiple-choice, computer-scored questions means that the skills that matter the most are not assessed. You can't assess critical thinking or creativity or imagination or initiative or good character, for example. It simply does not prepare all students for twenty-first-century work, learning and citizenship.

Just last year, an article was published in the journal of the World Economic Forum on these seven ‘survival skills’, their relevance and importance. Would you do anything differently now if you were to write it again? I didn't talk much about character qualities at the time, because I assumed they were nothing new. For thousands of years, we have been teaching the importance of certain character qualities, whether through philosophical, religious or ethical systems; the importance of empathy, of thinking carefully about

It is necessary to teach the skills of an active, informed citizenry that is prepared for lifelong learning

Achievement gap: difference between what is taught at school and what students need

the consequences of our actions on other people, and so on. If I had to rewrite the book, I would certainly talk about character education or civics education, because it is becoming increasingly clear to me that some children are growing up without any moral grounding, and more and more young people are not going to any church or synagogue. So I think schools have to talk about those universal ethical principles that are common to all major religions and philosophical systems, to expect children to behave at a higher level and to teach them to solve conflicts peacefully. You can call them life skills if you want, but they are the things I would write more about.

Could you tell us how to educate for innovation, why it is so important and what we need to change in schools to do it effectively?

After writing the book, I continued to talk to leaders in many different

settings and realised that there has been a swift evolution in what has been called a knowledge economy. Peter Drucker coined the term in 1969, more than 50 years ago. The idea of the knowledge economy is that you have a competitive edge if you know more than the person next to you. And the more you know, the greater your competitive edge. Knowledge has become a commodity. However, the world simply doesn't care anymore how much our children know, because Google knows everything. What matters to the world is what our children can do with what they know. And that's a profound change, because we actually don't know how to do it. Well, we know how to do it, but we are not teaching the skills of creativity or creative problem-solving, just to cite two of them.

When I started to see that we really had an innovation economy, I needed to understand what innovation was. And I discovered that there are actually two very different

types of innovation: one is about bringing new possibilities to life. Take the iPhone, for example. That's the kind of high tech that people talk about a lot. But there is another type of innovation that is perhaps less glamorous but just as important as these technical advances, if not more so. And it is the ability to solve local and global problems creatively, whether in government, for-profit or non-profit organisations, developing countries or in developed countries. All of these things really create spheres of opportunity for young people who are properly prepared to make meaningful contributions and earn a very good living. So the upshot is that there are more and

What matters to the world is what our children can do with what they know, and that's a change

more employers who don't care whether or not a young person goes to college. When Google started, they said, okay, let's find the smartest people in the world. How are we going to do it? We’ll choose those with the highest test scores and the best grades, and we will interview them with intelligent questions. They did it for years, over the long term. A decade ago, Laszlo Boch, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, Inc. tried to analyse whether this strategy was appropriate. And he realised that what they had been doing to select, hire or promote people was worthless. He saw that the skills you need to succeed in a competitive academic environment, that is, a university, are totally different from the skills you need to succeed in the innovation economy. So what is Google doing right now? Google is using structured interviews, where it asks questions such as: tell me about a situation

where you tried to solve a complex problem, tell me about a time when you worked with a team to solve a problem, tell me about a time when you failed. A growing number of companies are moving in the same direction.

In the age of innovation, knowledge is necessary but not enough. And in fact, due to the changing nature of knowledge, it is quite often better if you acquire the knowledge you need to solve a problem at that particular moment. That is, if you are working on a problem, you have to try to understand it, and that's when you

acquire that knowledge, rather than acquiring it in advance just in case. The age of innovation demands a radically different preparation for young people to thrive and succeed, and not just in the workplace. The skills needed for work today are those needed for active, informed citizenship and lifelong learning. Competencies are converging for the first time in human history. All too often, we only talk about job skills, but when we look around at the world today, we very clearly see the problem entailed by not thinking enough about how we are preparing young people for citizenship, for civic life.

Could you describe what a young innovator should be like and give us some examples?

In my book "Creating Innovators", I made in-depth profiles of eight young people, an equal number of women and men. Some were

Job skills are the same skills needed for active, informed citizenship and lifelong learning

first-generation immigrants, while others had families that had been here for many generations. One of the young people I interviewed was the project manager of the first iPhone and had dropped out of college. Others were innovators in the arts, and yet others were innovators as social entrepreneurs trying to solve social problems. They were curious about the world around them. They asked very good questions, were thoughtful, had the ability to take initiative and, perhaps most importantly, had the ability to bounce back from what seemed like failure. In schools, on the other hand, the more mistakes you make, the lower your grade. Mistakes are penalised. Whereas in the world of innovation, if you make a smart mistake, you are rewarded because you will learn from it. All of these young people I interviewed had that ability. They were willing to take the initiative, and when something

didn't work, they learned from it and kept moving forward. Another thing I would add is that they were very intrinsically motivated. They really wanted to stand out in the world, to make their mark on it in the sense that Steve Jobs put it. And when I went back to try to understand what their parents and teachers had done to create these kinds of character traits, I came to the conclusion that one pattern that both teachers and parents had encouraged was play. The goal is to explore new interests in the hope that a young person will discover a passion, because that's the real

driver of innovation. They evolve, but they all do so with a deeper meaning, a purpose. Play, passion and purpose were common elements in the way these young people had been educated by their parents and teachers, which had made a difference in their lives.

What would you say to teachers who want to start educating students for innovation? do you think they need special training to do so?

I think universities do a very good job preparing teachers almost everywhere, but there are notable differences. Teachers teach the way they have been taught. So if you sit in a master class for most teacher training programmes and are graded in a conventional way, that's all you know and can do, because you haven't learned anything different. Today we have many tests or standardised tests of knowledge and

Playfulness, passion and purpose are elements that make a difference in young innovators

skills which tell us absolutely nothing about work, citizenship or readiness for learning. This is another reason why educators and business leaders need to work together, because together they can help policymakers understand that very different types of assessment are needed. Teaching for the test, especially if they are poorly written, is a downward spiral for education everywhere. The first step is to clarify which results matter. It's not about test scores, or getting into the most prestigious universities. Let's ask ourselves, what is our education R&D budget? I advocate creating funds, either at the school level or by regions, so that teams of teachers can apply for money to develop new curricula or new forms of assessment, visit other schools or learn good practices.

Currently, what we find in schools is what I call ‘random acts of excellence’. These are individual teachers who go off in a corner and maybe do really good things, but they hide them because it doesn't pay for them to share it, or they don't have the time to. We need to reward educators who take initiative, who are willing to experiment and accommodate mistakes.

When you create those conditions for innovation in schools, based on teams and constant learning, you see rapid improvement, real change. Instead of being a culture of rewards and punishments, a culture of compliance, a culture of passivity, it becomes a culture of innovation, so that the school is the incubator of the skills that are needed in the world at large. That's part of the reason I talk about

‘reimagining schools’ or reinventing schools rather than reforming them, because the traditional scheduled egg-box structure where kids change classrooms every 45 minutes and teachers don't have time to innovate, create or collaborate makes for schools that will always be stuck in the past.

In the United States and Great Britain, teachers spend about 1,200 hours a year in front of students. They collaborate, learn, develop assessments and grade together to find out how students are doing, rather than relying on computerscored tests. And at the core, it's about thinking differently about what makes a good educator and what conditions are needed to support high-quality learning for both educators and children.

Finally, in another of your successful books, "Most Likely to Succeed", you lay out the keys to creating an education system that meets the needs of the twentyfirst century. Could you give us some key points and why you consider them so important? We need to see that no matter what classes students take, they are progressing toward developing real skills: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creative problem-solving, developing a capacity for civic life. In fact, I am working on a new book with colleagues on a mastery-based approach to learning, because I believe it is also the solution to the traditional achievement gap between underserved and middle- or uppermiddle-class youth. Disadvantaged youth start two to three years behind in school, especially if they have not received early childhood education, but they are expected to catch up and be in the same place 12 years later. We need to understand that each young person needs his or her own individual educational plan and needs to be

treated as a unique individual, and that progress should be measured in terms of increasing competence or mastery. Every student should have a digital portfolio that follows them through school. All students should have a time to present and defend their work on a regular basis, with performance standards as indicators of proficiency. Students' work is simply incomplete until they meet that standard. Some may need more time, and others may need a little more help. But all students can meet that standard, and some can far exceed it.

I would end with one last easy thing that every educator reading this article can put into practice tomorrow: have every child keep a question journal, a curiosity journal, in which they periodically write down a question they find interesting, or an interest they want to explore or a concern they have about the world. An interest, a concern, a question: write them down in a sentence and then periodically sit down with that child. Parents and teachers can ask the child to circle the question, interest or concern and then give the child time and space to pursue that interest or try to answer that question or explore that concern. What we are trying to do with this type of exercise is to keep curiosity alive. So curiosity is at the core of what I think we need to cultivate and develop with our young people. Not just because of the things that happen in front of them, but because of the world around them.

Student progress should be measured in terms of increasing competence or mastery

Curiosity is at the core of what I believe we need to cultivate and develop in our young people

in depth

From theory to practice: A discussion on creativity and the curriculum

by Leonie McIlvenny

The importance of creativity as an essential twenty-first century skill has gained momentum since the European Parliament and Council identified it as a ‘key competence for lifelong learning’.1 As indicated in the report on ‘transversal competencies in education policy and practice’, 2 it has been introduced in the curriculum documents of many countries, such as in Scotland 3 and Australia.4 Creativity also features prominently in several global initiatives, such as the Partnership for Twenty-First Century Skills,5 which identifies ‘creativity’ as one of its 4Cs; the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), which identifies ‘creativity and innovation’ as one of the six domains of its NETS-S (US National Standards in Technology) for students; 6 and the 2021 Delphi Expert Report on ‘critical thinking and creativity’, which puts the spotlight on the importance of creativity in an educational environment. 7 To consolidate the importance of creativity development, the OECD programs for international student assessment (PISA)

‘2021 Creating Thinking Framework, 2022 Creating Thinking Assessment’,8 and the 2012 ‘Creative Problem Solving Assessment Framework’ highlight the growing

importance being given to creativity in education systems internationally.

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

Definitions of creativity abound. Ken Robinson 9 defines it as ‘imaginative processes with original and valuable results’. The OECD Strategic Advisory Group 10 states that it is ‘the process by which we generate new ideas that require specific knowledge, skills and attitudes’.

Regardless of the definition, some common themes around creativity are as follows:

– It is a complex and dynamic process.

– It involves generating original ideas.

– It is often triggered by the need to find a solution to something.

– It is an interaction between nature and nurture, in which innate dispositions are nurtured through structured opportunities to engage in creative activities.

– It can occur either spontaneously (unconsciously) or strategically (consciously).

‘We all have the potential creativity to contribute, individually or collectively, to the survival, advancement and wellbeing of our society of human beings’ Lederach (2005)

THE CREATIVITY QUADRANT

Much of the thinking on creativity derives from the work of Craft,11 who suggested two contrasting ways of viewing creativity: one as an individual or collective phenomenon, and the other as domain-specific versus domain-free. Craft also describes creativity as ‘little c’ or ‘big C’, depending on the context and purpose of the creative exercise or activity. ‘Little c’ creativity could be considered more spontaneous, individual efforts compared to the ‘big C’, which combines creative thinking with key disciplines such as science and the humanities for a more conscious and reflective process. 12 The Creativity Quadrant attempts to merge these ideas graphically.

BARRIERS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY IN SCHOOLS

Even with the growing body of literature promoting creativity as an essential twenty-first-century skill, there are still significant barriers to its implementation within the school curriculum. The UNESCO report on ‘transversal competencies in educational policies and practices’13 identifies three key areas that hinder their implementation. The challenge of a definition, which stems from the difficulty in determining what creativity is and what it looks like in an educational setting. In other words, how do we turn an abstract concept into assessable behaviours? Operational challenges, which focus on its place in the curriculum and on the mechanisms put in place to assess it. In an education

system that continues to separate subjects, the responsibility for developing the ‘soft’ skill of creativity has traditionally been relegated to the creative arts. As the imperative to develop a collective creative disposition gains momentum, there is a shift toward a more strategic, expansive view of the role of creativity across a broader range of disciplines (‘big C’). This trend also highlights the need to shift the responsibility for teaching these skills from a single learning area to a more multidisciplinary approach, which requires the revitalisation and transformation of traditional curricular frameworks, pedagogies and assessment practices. Systemic challenges include aspects such as an overloaded curriculum, pressure to achieve academic success and a teacher-centred approach to learning.

TEACHERS ARE THE KEY

Improving teachers' beliefs and attitudes about the value of creativity and developing their competence and confidence to carry out creative activities in a pedagogical way is essential to ensure that creativity becomes ubiquitous in the learning process. Gonski 14 suggests that teaching and assessing creativity, particularly in an integrated fashion, is a very complex task that requires teachers to have a solid understanding of how to integrate it into their teaching. Teachers need to understand the circumstances that foster it, how they can effectively guide students to be more creative in their thinking and how creative thinking can be recognised.

Creativity Quadrant (Craft, 2008)

This transformation process requires extensive professional development and systemic support, as well as a reassessment of what education systems really value.

APPLICATION OF A CREATIVE THINKING CURRICULUM

There are many approaches that can be taken to ensure that creativity is strategically placed in the curriculum. Here are four approaches: 1) The individual teacher championing the teaching of thinking skills in their own classroom; 2) Agreed-upon frameworks and tools that are used school-wide to create a common (but not necessarily scripted or assessed) language; 3) The use of an explicit programme ‘outside’ the subject-based curriculum; or 4) A school-wide approach where skills are strategically embedded in the curriculum, written into programmes and formally assessed (an example of this model is the general critical and creative thinking skills in the Australian curriculum 15).

FRAMEWORKS AND THINKING MODELS

Regardless of the approach taken, there is no dearth of

frameworks or ‘thinking tools’ that can be used. The P21 Framework16 describes creativity in three domains:

– Thinking creatively, using thinking tools and strategies to create new and valuable ideas.

– Working creatively with others to develop, apply and communicate new ideas to others.

– Implementing the innovation to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur.

Other approaches explore thinking habits. Some models of this approach are: The Five Dimensions of Creativity Model 17 (be inquisitive, be imaginative, persevere, collaborate and be disciplined); Arthur Costa’s Habits of Mind,18 four of which relate to creativity (Create, imagine and innovate; Question and problem pose;

Teaching creativity is a highly complex task that requires a grasp of how to integrate it

Think interdependently; and Think flexibly); Bloom’s Taxonomy,19 which provides a hierarchy of six levels of thinking skills, the highest being Create; Tony Ryan's Keys to Thinking,20 which promote creative thinking through different creative keys (Challenge, Inventions, Improve, Brainstorm, and Question); and finally, De Bono's ‘Green Thinking Hat’,21 which addresses creativity.

One could argue that these models are an artificial representation of a very complex and dynamic process, but for educators who are new to or struggling with this complex process, they provide a bridge between the abstract and the operational, allowing creativity to be seen and applied in the classroom.

ASSESSING CREATIVITY

Conducting international assessments that seek to assess and, perhaps more importantly, understand the place of creativity in the curriculum adds status and visibility

to this skill to ensure that it is integrated into curricular documents in a strategic, transparent way. The OECD22 suggests the following potential advantages of assessing creativity in schools:

– Creative thinking is taken seriously as an important part of formal school curricula.

– Emphasis is placed on developing curricula and teaching activities that foster creativity.

– Teachers are supported in developing their capacity to be creative and facilitate creative practices in their teaching-learning programmes.

– The status of creativity as an essential life skill is growing.

Creativity assessment in schools enhances curricula and syllabi and adds status and visibility

Although we still have a long way to go to put fair and valid educational assessment practices around creativity into practice, progress continues to be made.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

Whatever steps a teacher, school or system takes to make creativity more important, it first must be defined and its purpose specified. Educators have to reconcile conflicting agendas that see an institutional imperative to collect evidence of a child's learning efforts with the idea that the very act of formalising and quantifying the creative process can clip the creator’s wings and the potentiality of what he or she might create and become if left free. Is the full potential of that creativity really being captured? Or only what is determined by the limited (controlled) parameters of the learning task? Is one more important than the other, and if so, what should the objective be? The challenge, perhaps, is to do both: to help illuminate, or bring to light, the creative spark in every child and to pave alternative ways for this creativity to unfold, not only to help students become self-actualised but also to enable them to be valuable contributors to a much greater collective challenge: to make our world a better place.

‘You can't just give someone a creativity injection. You have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage people and get the best out of them.’

Sir Ken

Robinson

Leonie McIlvenny is a professor at Curtin University specialising in information literacy and digital technology. She is the author of "Teaching 21st Century Skills in a STEM Makerspace", a contributor to the Delphi Report on critical thinking and creativity and judge of the 2021 ‘QS Reimagine Education Awards’.

References

1 European Commission (2018). ‘Proposal for a Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning’. Brussels, 17.1.2018 SWD(2018) 14 final

2 UNESCO (2015), ‘Asia-Pacific Education Research Institutes Network (ERI-Net) regional study on: transversal competencies in education policy and practice (Phase I): regional synthesis report’. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000231907

3 Education Scotland. (2013). ‘Creativity across learning 3–18’. Edinburgh: Education Scotland. http:// www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/Creativity3to18_tcm4814361.pdf

4 Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2009). ‘Melbourne declaration on educational goals’. Melbourne, Australia. http://www. curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_ declaration_on_the_educational_goals_for_young_australians.pdf

5 Battelle for Kids. (2019). ‘Framework for 21st Century Learning’. https://static.battelleforkids.org/documents/p21/P21_Framework_Brief.pdf

6 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2000) ‘ISTE Standards: Students’. https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-students

7 Impuls Educació. (2021). ‘Delphi Expert Report: Critical thinking and creativity. Two key lessons for the knowledge society in the age of innovation’. Impuls Educació. Barcelona.

8 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD]. (2019). ‘PISA 2021 Creating Thinking Framework’. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/ PISA-2021-creative-thinking-framework.pdf

9 Robinson, K (2001). "Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative". P. 118. Capstone Publishing.

10 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] (2017). ‘PISA 2021 Creative Thinking Strategic Advisory Group Report’. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, https://one.oecd.org/document/EDU/PISA/GB(2017)19/en/pdf

11 Craft, A. (2008). ‘Approaches to assessing creativity in fostering personalisation’. Paper prepared for discussion at DCSF Seminar, October 3, Wallacespace, London, UK.

12 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD]. (2019). ‘PISA 2021 Creating Thinking Framework’. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/ PISA-2021-creative-thinking-framework.pdf

13 UNESCO (2015), ‘Asia-Pacific Education Research Institutes Network (ERI-Net) regional study on: transversal competencies in education policy and practice (Phase I): regional synthesis report’. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000231907

14 Gonski, D et al. (2018), ‘Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools’, March 2018, Commonwealth of Australia.

15 Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (2018) ‘Australian Curriculum General Capabilities’. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu. au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/

16 Battelle for Kids. (2019). ‘Framework for 21st Century Learning’. https://static.battelleforkids.org/documents/p21/P21_Framework_Brief.pdf

17 Lucas, B. and E. Spencer (2017). ‘Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing Learners Who Generate Ideas and Can Think Critically’, Crown House Publishing, https:// bookshop.canterbury.ac.uk/Teaching-Creative-Thinking-Developing-learners-whogenerate-ideas-and-can-think-critically_9781785832369

18 Costa, AL & Kallick, B 2000–2001b, ‘Habits of Mind’, Search Models Unlimited, Highlands Ranch, Colorado. http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind. com/

19 Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). ‘Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals’. Vol. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company.

20 Ryan, T. (n.d) Thinker’s Keys. https://www.thinkerskeys.com

21 Kivunja, C. (2015) ‘Using De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats Model to Teach Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills Essential for Success in the 21st Century Economy’. "Creative Education", 6, 380-391. doi: 10.4236/ce.2015.63037.

22 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] (2020). ‘PISA 2022 Creative Thinking’. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/innovation/creative-thinking/

In order for creativity to become more important, it first must be defined and its purpose specified

creative thinking spotlight

INTERVIEW WITH NATALIE FOSTER

Thinking outside the box

p. 28

ROSABEL RODRÍGUEZ

Creativity, intelligence and high ability

p. 34

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT SWARTZ

Creativity and critical thinking in the classroom

p. 40

Natalie Foster has worked with Mario Piacentini to develop the framework for assessing creative thinking for PISA 2022. She joined the OECD in November 2017 to work on research and development of the PISA innovative domain assessments. She holds a BA in French and Spanish from the University of Nottingham and completed her MA in European Studies (Politics, Policy and Society) at the University of Bath, Charles University (Prague) and Sciences Po (Paris).

Thinking outside the box

PISA assesses students' creative thinking in 2022

by Ana Moreno Salvo

Every year, PISA evaluates some of what are known as the innovation competencies. Why creative thinking now? What impact does creativity have on a person's daily life in the twentyfirst century?

PISA's innovative competencies assessment aims to measure important learning beyond the ‘traditional’ ones in each PISA cycle: reading, mathematics and science. It seeks to offer a more complete perspective of the participating students’ ‘preparation for life’. PISA already ventured into this area in 2012 with the assessment of creative problem-solving. That time, the main focus was on the success of the problem-solving process. The question was: Are the students able

to solve the problem? The creative aspect depended on how students explored the context of the problem. This time, the focus is on the students' ability to generate creative ideas.

For many years, the international community has considered creativity and creative thinking some of the most important skills for young people to develop in the twenty-first century. The innovation assessment for each PISA cycle is determined through a collaborative consultation process involving OECD countries and economies. The decision to

assess creative thinking in PISA reflects this international interest.

In our daily lives, we all think creatively in some situations, whether it is solving a traffic problem, preparing a meal or sketching a drawing, but we are not aware that they involve creative thinking. More generally, creative thinking is important to help us adapt to a world that is constantly and rapidly changing and to contribute to its development. Organisations and societies are increasingly dependent on innovation and knowledge creation to address emerging and

Creative thinking can have a positive effect on students' interest, academic performance and social-emotional development

INTERVIEW WITH NATALIE FOSTER

complex challenges, especially since the digital era allows access to existing knowledge within seconds. In the case of students, research has shown that creative thinking can have a positive impact on their academic interest and performance, their identity and their socioemotional development.

On what vision or conceptual framework on creative thinking is the PISA assessment based? What data do you expect to obtain? What will be done with that data?

As in all PISA assessments, the OECD convenes a group of experts to define the construct and guide the drafting of the assessment framework. In our case, it is based on a very rich existing literature on creativity. The PISA framework identifies and focuses on creative thinking factors that are adaptable and relevant to education systems.

The PISA assessment consists of

two parts: a test and a questionnaire. The data we expect to collect from the test are similar to those of the other PISA domains, that is, information on the degree to which students are able to produce creative ideas. The test unit is placed in a different domain context; we are interested in whether students' creative abilities in certain domains (e.g., creative expression in writing or visual design) are different from those in problem-solving domains. For each country, we aim to produce an overall score that summarises student performance in this realm. In the questionnaire, we ask students about a number of topics that primarily help us interpret their test performance data, including general information about their background and more specific questions related to their attitudes and beliefs about creativity or the types of

activities they engage in inside and outside of school.

It must not be easy to assess creativity. What aspects are you trying to assess? Why these and not others? What type of questions or activities do the tests contain?

Assessing creativity as a broad construct is challenging. Creativity is defined in part by a given social context. Therefore, we focus on the cognitive processes associated with the performance of the creative task. This is more appropriate in the context of PISA, which assesses 15-year-olds from all over the world, as it is an individual ability that can be developed through practice and does not take into account the social value of the final result.

PISA defines creative thinking as ‘the capacity to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge, and impactful expressions of imagination’. The definition describes

Context is important. The tasks are in the areas of: writing, visual design, social and scientific problem-solving

all the cognitive processes involved in creative thinking (generating, evaluating and improving ideas) and the different manifestations that 15-year-olds can perform and produce.

In each section of the test, students are presented with a brief scenario or stimulus and asked to do one of three things: think of an original idea, think of many different ideas for the same given situation or improve on a given idea in an original way. The tasks are in four different domains: writing, visual design, social problem-solving and scientific problem-solving. For example, in the course of the test, a student may be asked to write an idea for a short story with two characters, design several logos for an event, improve a given solution to a community problem and propose two hypotheses that can explain a scientific problem. It should be noted that students are not scored on how ‘correct’ or practically feasible their ideas are but on whether they are able to come up with qualitatively different or original ideas.

What do you consider to be the keys to developing creativity at school? How should it be integrated into the curriculum?

First, I think it is important to overcome the perception that devoting time or effort to developing creative thinking is detrimental to learning important content or developing other skills. They are in no way mutually exclusive; in fact, they can be complementary. If you have to think creatively about something in particular, why not focus on relevant and meaningful content? In fact, research has also shown that creative thinking promotes learning by presenting information in an engaging and personally meaningful way, even within the context of formal learning objectives. Learning in more creative, exploratory

and inquiry-based ways can also increase students' motivation and interest in learning, especially for those who struggle with rote learning and other teacher-centred school methods.

As a general principle, creative thinking can be developed through the application of more learner-centred pedagogies (such as problem- or project-based learning), in which students have the opportunity to engage in more open-ended, iterative and personally meaningful activities, while teachers act as facilitators of the process. Of course, this type of pedagogy can be more difficult for teachers. Another key factor in developing creativity in schools is to train teachers to be able to apply these pedagogies. This relates to cultivating attitudes about developing creative thinking in teachers, which is important and achievable. It also has to do with relieving some of the

Another key factor in developing creativity in schools is to train teachers to be able to apply these pedagogies

pressure on teachers that might go against the development of creative thinking. They include pressure to cover all the curriculum content, a lack of autonomy or excessive pressure on students to perform on standardised tests that focus primarily on recall of facts. Schools and school systems therefore have an important role to play in combating this pressure and could consider implementing policies and practices aimed at increasing the opportunities and benefits for students to practice creative thinking and decreasing the costs associated with it.

There is a lot of talk that creative thinking must also be cooperative to go far. Why is that? How should we work at school to develop creative thinking in all students? Both the rationale for why the development of creative thinking in general is important and the body of literature focused on ‘knowledge creation’ as a particular type of creative thinking highlight that innovation is often a collaborative effort which is needed to find solutions to complex, global problems and advance our collective knowledge and understanding. That's why we also focus part of the PISA assessment on evaluating and improving others’ ideas, on the fact that creative thinking is not just about having a brilliant idea but about being able to draw inspiration from existing ideas and move them forward in new and original ways to achieve something better collectively.

The learner-centred pedagogy I mentioned earlier --project-based and problem-based learning-- lends itself well to collaborative work. Integrating knowledge creation

intentionally into classroom life encourages students to contribute new ideas to their peers and the community and to work to continually improve them. This can happen by encouraging ‘wonder questions’, in which students are encouraged to try to express their curiosity, ask questions about the world and share their ideas about different phenomena that their peers can take advantage of.

What can teachers do to find out the degree to which their students have developed this competency?

I think one of the keys is to provide meaningful opportunities for them to participate and demonstrate their competency, such as by asking them to participate in open-ended tasks for which there is no one correct answer. Without that, it will always be very difficult if not impossible for teachers to get a sense of students' creative thinking abilities.

It is important to clarify the fact that although we assess creativity in PISA, this does not necessarily mean that we are advocating that schools or countries should assess creative thinking similarly. In our framework, we emphasise that creative thinking is a skill that can be used in all disciplines and that what characterises the competency of creative thinking is students’ ability to generate original ideas and think of many different possibilities.

Related to this, another aspect to keep in mind is that, for twentyfirst-century skills like creative

thinking, the process is as important as the end result. Even if a student ultimately develops an idea that is not the most original, has he or she engaged in an idea generation process in which he or she has considered multiple ideas and evaluated those ideas for relevance, appropriateness and quality? Do students consider multiple possibilities? Do they follow the most obvious problem-solving path or do they attempt to question their own or others’ ideas? And once they have a solution, do they consider whether and how it can be improved?

Finally, how can the community and the family be involved in creativity education?

The PISA framework recognises several individual factors that can influence creative thinking, including students' attitudes and beliefs about creativity. One of the ways that family and society can help foster creative thinking is by cultivating positive attitudes about the value of creativity and supporting the idea that it is a competency that can be developed through intentional practice.

For example, play is something that children do every day, and it’s a great opportunity to exercise and develop creative thinking. Rather than thinking of play as an activity that detracts from learning, it can actually be a highly motivating, autonomous and interactive process that facilitates the development of a range of skills related to creative thinking, such as improvisation, risk-taking, imagination, cognitive flexibility and perspectivetaking. And the great thing about creative play is that it can be easily replicated in diverse cultures, different age groups and abilities and high - and low-resource settings.

Creative thinking: is inspiration from existing ideas, moving them forward in an original way and achieving something better collectively

Play facilitates the development of skills related to creative thinking, such as improvisation and cognitive flexibility

Creativity, intelligence and high ability

Some people stand out for their creative talent, whether or not they have a high intellectual ability

by Rosabel Rodríguez Rodríguez

The relationship between creativity, intelligence and high intellectual ability (HIA), and more specifically with giftedness, has always been a complex issue to address. Many authors have suggested that high intelligence is a necessary but insufficient component to activate creativity, and the reality is that many people with a high intellectual capacity are not creative. So what is creativity and how can we foster it?

THE EVOLUTION OF A CONCEPT: CREATIVITY

Views about creativity have evolved over several decades of research and the application of creative thinking strategies. Although it is still often claimed that there is no universally agreed upon definition of creativity, the reality is that there is now a fairly consistent conception. 1

For more than six decades2 most creativity researchers have consistently focused on two key concepts: 3

1. Creativity must represent something different, new or innovative.

2. Creativity must also be appropriate to the task at hand. It must be useful and relevant.

Both "’new’ and ‘appropriate’ are absolutely necessary. Having an original, novel or different idea is not enough to be creative, because creativity is described as a multiplicative all-or-nothing game: 4

Creativity = Originality x Appropriateness

Thus, if originality or appropriateness is zero, then we will get a zero in creativity.

The traditional approach to creativity can be characterized as the four P's approach, that is, the study of the person, the process, the product and the productive conditions. In addition, there are a number

of confluence theories of creativity, such as Robert Sternberg y Todd Lubart’s investment theory5 and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems theory 6 In them, a person's general intelligence (g) is a necessary but not sufficient component for Creativity (C) to manifest itself. In other words, a person with high intellectual ability is not necessarily creative. Here, Creativity (‘Big C’) is understood as domain-specific, and a creative product is one that causes significant change within that specialised domain of knowledge, as opposed to the idea of everyday creativity (‘little c’), which is used to describe activities such as improvising a recipe. 7

Psychometric approaches, such as those used to measure intelligence, have also been used to measure creativity. This involves quantifying the notion of creativity with the help of paper-and-pencil tasks. One example is the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking developed by E. Paul Torrance,8 which are frequently used to identify students with High Intellectual Ability (HIA).

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CREATIVITY, INTELLIGENCE AND HIGH ABILITY

As creativity and intelligence became better known, the inherent relationship between the two concepts became clear, but it was not so easy to elucidate what it was: Is intelligence part of creativity? Or is creativity part of intelligence?

Different theories offer different answers. For example, threshold theory suggests that intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity; 9

Creativity must represent something new or innovative and must be useful, relevant and appropriate to the task at hand

certification theory focuses on the environmental factors that enable people to show creativity and intelligence; 10 while the interference hypothesis suggests that very high levels of intelligence can interfere with creativity.11 All these proposals are supported by very high quality work, so it is easy to read them and end up thinking: how is this possible?

Currently, the most widely accepted perspective suggests that although there is a certain positive relationship between intelligence and creativity, this relationship is minimal and is therefore understood that intelligence and creativity are two independent though complementary factors.

At this point, we can also ask ourselves: Is there a direct relationship between creativity and high ability? And if so, what type of relationship is it? In view of the above, it is probably easy to anticipate that there is no simple or consensual answer.

On the one hand, we can find authors such as E. Paul

Torrance,12 who was a staunch defender of the idea that giftedness cannot be understood without creativity. For him, high intelligence is not enough for a person to be gifted; however, his position is not widely shared. In fact, generally speaking, high IQ is more often sought after than high creativity. Thus, for example, in countries such as the United States, where there is a long tradition of studying HIA, each state has its own definition (mostly variations of Maryland's 1972 definition). 13 In 2012, a study by McClain and Pfeiffer14 revealed that only 27 states included creativity in the definition of HIA.

On the other hand, Renzulli's proposal 15 is probably one of the most widely accepted today. According to this author, there are two types of giftedness: high-achieving (academic or ‘school’) giftedness and creative-productive giftedness. The former is more analytical in nature, while the creative-productive type emphasises generation and production.

The reality is that the most creative students may be perceived as ‘weird’ in schools, rather than smart.

Creativity exists as a talent, that is, as an outstanding aptitude in some people, and that it is part of high ability.

We currently understand that intelligence and creativity are two independent though complementary factors

Predictability is often valued in classrooms, and these children defy the monotony by doing unexpected things. This way of acting may increase their popularity among other students,16 but not their attractiveness to teachers.

So what do we really know about the relationship between these concepts? Although there are still many issues to be resolved, progress has gradually been made and certain consensuses have been reached. In general we can agree that:

1. For there to be creativity there must be a certain intellectual capacity, although this is not a guarantee that they will grow together progressively.

2. Similarly, it seems clear that having high intelligence does not guarantee high creativity, nor vice-versa.

3. We also know that creativity exists as a talent, that is, as an outstanding aptitude in some people, and that it is part of high ability. Creative talent does not depend exclusively on a high IQ but also on other social and personality factors that facilitate creative production.

4. Finally, it has been proven that in any situation, the convergence of intelligence and creativity produces a synergistic effect where both benefit each other.

Therefore, creativity must always be present when we talk about high ability, both during assessment, as an indispensable element of it, and in classroom programmes, where it should occupy a prominent place in the curriculum.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY

Pedagogical practice is very important in enhancing creative potential or its achievement in childhood. In fact, schools should provide an environment that specifically values creative thinking, recognises it in students, and promotes it through teacher behaviours in the classroom.

Given our understanding of the phenomenon, what can teachers and schools do to promote students' creative abilities?

Schools should provide an environment that specifically values creative thinking and recognises it in students

It has been proven that the convergence of intelligence and creativity has a positive effect on both

There are six goals we can focus on to promote these behaviours:17

1. Develop intellectual risk-taking through the expression and appreciation of differences and the choice of activities of interest.

2. Develop high-level convergent and divergent skills through the use of educational models that require and promote these skills.

3. Encourage deep learning in those who have an interest and aptitude in a given domain so they can develop quality knowledge in it.

4. Develop strong communication skills in written and oral contexts, providing feedback on the effectiveness of the work.

5. Develop personal motivation and passion.

6. Encourage creative habits of mind through reading and perspective-taking and introducing novelty.

Teachers are often informed and aware of these principles, but applying them can be difficult. 18 Therefore, teachers and professors must be educated to understand creative development and the ways creativity can be fostered or inhibited by school practices.

The suggested goals should be systematically applied to each learning area to maximise student engagement and learning, and applied to current ideas and problems in the world that are encountered in real life.

Rosabel Rodríguez Rodríguez holds a PhD in Educational Psychology (UIB) and is a psychologist and university professor in the field of Developmental Psychology and Education (UIB). She specialises in the field of high intellectual ability (giftedness and talent), creativity and teacher training.

References

1 Cropley, D. H. (2015). ‘Enseñar a los ingenieros a pensar de forma creativa’. In: R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.). "The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Teaching Thinking" (pp. 402–410). Routledge.

2 Guilford, J. P. (1950). ‘Creativity’. "American Psychologist", 5, 444–454

3 Stein, M. (1953). ‘Creativity and culture’. "Journal of Psychology", 36, 311–322.

4 Simonton, D. K. (2012). Criterios de la Oficina de Patentes de EE.UU.: ‘Una definición cuantitativa de creatividad de tres criterios y sus implicaciones’. "Creativity Research Journal", 24, 97–106.

5 Sternberg, R., & Lubart, T.I. (1995). ‘Desafiando a la multitud: Cultivar la creatividad en una cultura de la conformidad’. Free Press.

6 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). ‘La creatividad: El flujo y la psicología del descubrimiento y la invención’. HarperCollins.

7 Richards, R. (2007). ‘Creatividad cotidiana y nuevas visiones de la naturaleza humana’. American Psychological Association.

8 Torrance, E.P. (1976). ‘Pruebas de pensamiento creativo’. Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée.

9 Barron, F. (1963). ‘Creatividad y salud psicológica’. D. Van Nostrand Company.

10 Hayes, J. R. (1989). ‘Procesos cognitivos en la creatividad’. In: J. A. Glover, R. R. Ronning, & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Handbook of Creativity. Plenum Press.

11 Sternberg, R. J. (1996). ‘La inteligencia del éxito: Cómo la inteligencia práctica y la creativa determinan el éxito en la vida’. Simon & Schuster.

12 Grantham, T. (2013). ‘Creatividad y equidad: El legado de E. Paul Torrance como defensor de los varones negros superdotados’. "The Urban Review", 45, 518–538.

13 Marland, S. (1972). ‘Educación de los superdotados y con talento’ (Informe al Congreso de los Estados Unidos por el Comisionado de Educación de los Estados Unidos). U.S. Government Printing Office.

14 McClain, M. C., & Pfeiffer, S. (2012). ‘La identificación de los alumnos superdotados en los Estados Unidos en la actualidad: Una mirada a las definiciones, políticas y prácticas estatales’. "Journal of Applied School Psychology", 28, 59–88.

15 Renzulli, J. S. (1978). ‘¿En qué consiste la superdotación? Reexaminando la definición’. Phi Delta Kappan, 60, 180–184.

16 Kaufman, J. C. (2009). "Creativity 101". Springer.

17 VanTassel-Baska, J. (2004). ‘La creatividad como factor elusivo de la superdotación’. https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-blog/creativity-as-an-elusive-factor-ingiftedness/

18 Sak, U. (2004). ‘Creatividad, superdotación y enseñanza de los superdotados de la creatividad en el aula’. Roeper Review, 26(4), 216-222.

Teachers need to understand creative development and the ways it can be fostered or inhibited in school practices

Creativity and critical thinking in the classroom

by Ana Moreno Salvo

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT SWARTZ

Some time ago, David Perkins and you wrote some ideas about the need to teach ‘good thinking’. What, to you, is a good thinker? David and I met at Harvard when I was a graduate student. We were both very sensitive to the fact that most people don't think well. They make quick decisions, snap judgments and mistakes. For example, in an ad for breakfast cereal, it says ‘this is a delicious cereal’ or ‘it is as beneficial to eat a spoonful of this cereal as it is to

eat an apple’ next to a picture of an apple that looks delicious. The message is designed to make me decide that it is a good idea to buy this cereal. Now research has been done that shows that if you eat a certain type of cereal every day, after 20 years there is a chance that you will develop cancer. What David and I realised is that most people make decisions this way. They think good things, but don't ask themselves, are there any disadvantages? We realised that this was true of most types of thinking and decided that it

would be a good idea to help them develop the habit of asking not only if there is any good, but also if there is any negative consequence, that is, to learn how to think better. It was about figuring out how to teach students so that they learn early in their schooling how to really think more carefully when making decisions, when solving problems, when thinking about how something works and so on.

Could you give us a definition of creative thinking? How does it relate to critical thinking, if at all? Thinking creatively is one of the different types of thinking that we need to learn to do well in different circumstances. It implies having new, original, creative and different ideas.

Many people do not think well, because they don't ask about disadvantages. They make quick decisions, snap judgments and mistakes

‘Productive creativity’ arises when we apply critical thinking to creative thinking

Robert Swartz(†1936- †2022), held a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University, was a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the creator, along with Sandra Parks, of the Thinking-Based Learning (TBL) methodology, which replaces teaching based on memory with teaching based on active thinking. He founded and directed the Center for Teaching Thinking (CTT), dedicated to promoting this methodology in the United States, Spain and countries around the world. For the past 30 years, he worked with teachers, schools and universities internationally on projects in teacher development, curriculum reorganisation and education through the infusion of critical and creative thinking into the teaching of content.

The mere fact that you come up with these creative ideas is the practice of creativity. Critical thinking, on the other hand, consists of trying to think about ideas and asking ourselves if they are right, if what we are saying is true or true. In creative thinking, we try to come up with something new, original and interesting, and in critical thinking we ask ourselves, are these creative ideas good ideas?

I like to work on creative thinking in what I call ‘productive creativity’, which is coming up with new and original ideas that work, that move our lives forward. And that means applying critical thinking to the creative thinking we have practised. For example, you have a problem that no one has been able to solve, or it’s a new problem that has just

arisen and needs to be solved, so you have to use creative thinking to try to come up with some original ways to solve that situation. Critical thinking then has to be applied to determine whether the proposed solutions will work.

I think it is important to emphasise the idea of ‘productive creativity’ when we are trying to come up with new ways of doing something. We have tried every possible way we know of and it doesn't seem to work. So we try to exercise creativity, but we want to make sure that the creative ideas we come up with are productive.

He is one of the world's leading experts in the teaching of thinking, and his books are very popular in schools. His dedication to teacher training on five continents has given him a privileged knowledge and experience on how thinking is taught in schools. What do you think are the keys to teaching thinking?

When I started in the United States, in Massachusetts, I was a faculty member at a university, and that limited me. I wanted to go to schools all over the world, work with their

Thinking creatively implies having new, original, creative and different ideas. These creative ideas is the practice of creativity

teachers, and show them everything I had discovered and what I had learned from other teachers to make it all work. I aimed to help them put this into practice in their classrooms, to help teachers learn how to teach children to be better thinkers. So I got permission from my university and started traveling and turned the schools into what I

call ‘Thinking Schools’. I created the ‘Center for Teaching Thinking’ and a certificate to certify that these schools taught not only content but also how to think. Eighty to 90% of the teachers in these schools teach all their content through thinking. We have developed a technique, TBL (Thinking-Based Learning), for teachers and their students to learn

how to do this, and it really works. The approach starts with thinking about what real learning is. I then ask them to pass the challenge on to the students and ask them: How are you going to learn this? What questions do you need to know how to answer to think about it well and come to an acceptable conclusion? Teachers work together and find the technique of learning to think that will allow them to transform learning into thinking to learn. They should not provide the thinking strategy to the students, but instead they should challenge them to find the

Productive creativity means applying critical thinking to the creative thinking, coming up with original ideas that work

questions they need to answer in order to think about the problem at hand. They should make them aware that they are thinking right, that the answer will come and in the end the thought will be good. They do not memorise a textbook but think conscientiously to get good answers. For example, the TV in your house or your car breaks down, and you ask yourself the question: Why did it stop working? This is a good question, and students are interested in it and try to figure it out. To do so, they have to develop a plan. This can be done with a lot of content;

it involves challenging students to figure out the cause of an event, to be careful and to think about the possible reasons why the TV has stopped working. Let's explore each of them. In this way, students develop what I call a thinking map. This is a set of questions or procedures that they believe they should follow, things to find out in order to decide why something

happened. There are other types of thinking such as problem-solving, decision-making and predicting consequences. Students realise that they themselves can learn content and explain it using the thinking maps they create. Thus, they learn to be guided in their thinking and to do it carefully and well, so that the conclusion they reach or the decision they make is something

Thinking maps: They challenge students to find out the reason for an event and learning to think

they can feel not only proud of but they know is right.

Do we need creative thinking in other thinking skills?

We don't need creative thinking for all types of thinking, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it is extremely important. In fact, the main successes we humans have had in advancing lifestyles in the development of our large cities has been through creativity: not knowing how to do something and then learning to think creatively, coming up with new ideas, figuring out if the creative ideas are going to work and putting them into practice. We live the lives we lead now thanks to our ability not only to generate interesting creative ideas that may or may not work but also to promote ‘productive creative’ ideas that we later discover will work. And that is humanity.

To me, the question is: What can we do in our classrooms to help students develop ‘productive creativity’ and be able to do it and want to do it, to be motivated to do it well?

The way you explain it seems easy, but it is probably not so easy.

Naturally, these changes do not happen overnight. There is a safety valve, a set of processes that are often called metacognition, that is, the ability to think about your thinking, about how I have thought, to decide what questions I should ask. Teaching good thinking involves asking students to develop their plan, then implement it, see what happened, while thinking about it step-by-step and asking themselves if it worked. If it hasn’t, a new

question must be asked: How could we do it differently? The teacher has to help students to learn on their own, to do it well. This is how they learn how to learn. After doing it a couple of times with the curricular content, the teacher may disappear. The students realise that they can do it by themselves, and they repeat it until they don't need to practise anymore. This gives rise to the skill or ability to take decisions effectively or think ‘creatively-productively’ or any other type of thinking. They learn it at school, and then after practising it, it becomes an automatic way of thinking.

Could you briefly describe what a good lesson to develop creative thinking would look like?

All students need to be creative thinkers; if they want to be practical, if they want to help change the world, they need to learn to develop productively creative ideas that solve problems or situations. I will briefly explain an experience that took place at a school: the teacher 1 came up with the idea of having the students imagine a person who is dedicated to helping other people with problems, like a person lost in the desert, or one who has broken their leg. He told them, ‘You have to come up with creative ideas that will save the lives of these people using what you have learned in school’. A student said that someone is climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland and has broken his leg. But he has a small box in his pocket

with a green button on it, presses it, and it sends a signal to base camp where a drone begins to buzz and soar. It is a contraption with the necessary medical supplies for this type of situation that flies to a point from which the box emits the signal. The injured man presses two more buttons and the packages at the bottom rotate. One of them opens, and a set of supplies for someone with a broken leg head toward this person. There are bandages, splints, folded crutches that you can use to put under your shoulders and go down the mountain and to save him. The students in the class told him, I don't think it's going to work, we've studied about Switzerland, about the mountains and the Alps, and we've learned that it's very windy on a mountain like the Matterhorn. The fact is that they tried to do it, they tried to fly the drone, all the students in the group were convinced that it was going to work, because using their laptops they figured out the wind currents. And I thought, these guys are learning not to make snap judgments, because even if it sounds right, they need to figure it out in reality. I thought it was a wonderful example of the use of TBL, an example for all of us.

1 Pablo Carrión, Lope de Vega International School

Teaching good thinking involves: developing and implementing the plan, and seeing what happened and whether it worked

The great successes we have had in the advancement of lifestyles have been due to creativity

the report

Tinkering Studio is in San Francisco's museum of science, art and human perception, Exploratorium. It is a workshop for playful invention, research and collaboration. It is an immersive, active, creative space where museum visitors are invited to explore an exhibition driven by curiosity, and where they can engage in investigations of scientific phenomena representing their ideas and aesthetics.

Sebastian Martin has been R&D Lead at Tinkering Studio since 2005. He studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, which led him to explore earthquakes in the Chilean Andes and the boreal forests of Ontario through satellite images. His travels and studies made him understand the magnificent creative and playful possibilities of the natural sciences.

by Ana Moreno Salvo

Tinkering Studio

You often say that Tinkering takes you back to your childhood, when you experimented with your toys. Could you explain what Tinkering Studio is and what it can contribute to the education of children and young people?

It's true, working in the Tinkering Studio often takes me back to my childhood days. Growing up in a family of toymakers in southern Germany, I remember spending time in my grandfather's workshop and enjoying inventing toys, taking things apart or playing with his tools. Tinkering is very different from the learning we often experience in schools, in that you don't rely on a teacher or other source of information but instead learn from direct experience with tools, materials and natural phenomena.

We often call it ‘thinking with your hands’. It is a process in which you discover things as you go along. You learn to work without instructions. You feel comfortable not knowing everything. You learn to overcome moments of frustration, and more importantly, you learn to follow your

own ideas and to change and adapt them according to the information you get from the materials and the physical world around you.

Ultimately, this changes the way we see ourselves as learners in the world and allows us to take charge of our own learning. This mindset empowers children and adults to take charge of their learning. They do not have to rely solely on what they have learned in school but are capable and competent human beings who can always expand their knowledge and skills through this process we call Tinkering.

How did Tinkering come about? Could you tell us about its start and some of the projects you are most proud of?

This work began with a project called

‘Play Invent Explorer’ in 2005 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. It was a network of educators working in science centres, and the goal was to explore materials at the intersection of science, art and technology. Tinkering workshops and activities always combine scientific and artistic processes. Process is a very important word in the practice of Tinkering because what we learn is the outcome of this kind of activity, so we care about the process of doing things more than the product.

I remember one of the first explorations we did with a small group of educators in which we experimented with light and shadow and created interesting shadow sculptures by placing small flashlights on moving platforms and arranging materials such as plastics and coloured gels to create interesting shadow patterns. During those workshops, we learned a lot about light and shadow and sparked so much interest in learning more that we realised this would be a great way to engage children. Museum visitors also learn about the subject because

A workshop-studio where people learn to investigate, invent and collaborate while playing

It is a process in which you discover things as you go along and work without instructions

we invite them to experiment with the materials driven by their own curiosity and desire to create something artistic rather than asking them to solve a problem or recreate an experiment.

So at the time I thought it would be a great idea to create a space in the Exploratorium where children could work in this relatively unstructured way without having a clear concept of the learning outcome beyond developing their ideas and following through on them. And this turned out to be the beginning of a whole new approach to practical education, which we now call the Tinkering approach.

Something I am very proud of are the first small experiments with our museum visitors. In the first studio play space installed more than a decade ago, we created an area for children to play with marbles and build marble machines. I learned that the environment, or the space that is created, makes a huge difference in the type of interactions that occur in the space. In this first

study, we were careful to create an environment where the children felt at home and comfortable. They could play and sit on the floor. They were trusted, for example, to use scissors. In this environment, a lot of creativity emerged. Instead of spending two minutes, as in other science centre sites where we worked, groups of children spent an hour or more. And instead of just recreating an experiment, they built a marble run that we could not have imagined ourselves. And they proudly presented the complex contraption they had created. That's how we realised that the approach was right.

After that first experiment, we created a Tinkering Studio where visitors could make cardboard

costumes and build a big city with this material to spotlight how creative you can be with a simple resource like this. I developed a way of playing with stop-motion animation, creating installations where it was easy to use a camera and take snapshots and then build a stop-motion animation.

We organised events that we called ‘open make events’, where we invited other people and educators to share the activities they came up with. We realised that we had discovered a way of learning that really put the learner in the driver's seat and created remarkable engagement. At one point we asked ourselves: What are they really learning? And out of that came the development of the framework we call the ‘Learning Dimensions’ of Tinkering, which I'm really proud of.

After more than 15 years of experience, do you think you have met your expectations? What new projects do you have in mind?

After doing this work for over 15 years, I have yet to meet my expectations. And that's for the simple reason

The space that is created makes a huge difference in the type of interactions that occur there

© Exploratorium San Francisco

that when I started it with the team, we were not at all certain where this would go, and we were amazed at how it expanded and proved to be a rich and deep approach to learning. The practice of Tinkering is growing and expanding around the world. I am fortunate to be involved in constructivist learning at a time when this approach resonates so much around the world. And that’s probably because right now the traditional school systems are not able to prepare children for the complex world in which we live.

Many new and future ideas will come from educators, not necessarily from Tinkering Studio. I am sure there will be new ideas and discoveries from teachers coming from the networks we work with.

We will continue to explore how to engage younger learners with the natural world and scientific phenomena and what the role of facilitators should be when dealing with young children. I am also very interested in the role of educators and

caregivers or parents in Tinkering.

During the guidance and teaching assistance in the Tinkering process, it would be great if instead of being subject-matter experts and asking children to complete tasks, teachers would become experts in the practice of inspiring children, supporting children in their goals, noting and documenting the learning that is occurring, and then creating moments for the children to reflect on their own learning.

One of its goals is to develop the students' creative capacity through exploration, perception and the construction of their own scientific prototypes. To what extent do you

think Tinkering helps students to be more creative and to trust in the potential of this ability that is so important today?

Creativity does not occur in a vacuum. Curiosity and inspiration are important ingredients for a creative process. The tinkering creates situations in which, for example, a beautiful reflection off a crystal glass makes us curious to know exactly how that light moves or reflects. It can arouse curiosity and engagement. When a student discovers this and develops ideas for projects she wants to do, then it's up to us to take her ideas seriously and encourage her to try something she hasn't tried before. When children go beyond the limits of their knowledge, that is when creativity can emerge.

What can a student do in a Tinkering studio?

A Tinkering studio can take many forms and changes every time you visit. You will usually find inspiring materials and examples centred around what we call an exploration

Teachers should become experts in the practice of inspiring and supporting children

La Vall school Bellaterra

space. It could be about wind and air, or the exploration of mechanisms and movements. A student could develop his or her own idea and interest around any of these topics.

They could also start by simply playing with some of the objects and materials they find. If they are attracted to something, they might decide to start a project: create their own mechanism to tell a story, such as making a small automaton that can be operated. Then they could make little figures move and tell a story. And that story could be about a topic that interests the student, such as soccer, or it could include a pet they have at home.

In a Tinkering studio, you can create a project with personal meaning around a theme that is related to natural phenomena.

Do you have experience or have you thought about how tinkering could support formal education? What could a teacher or school in Spain do if they wanted to introduce Tinkering in their classrooms?

There are places all over the world where you can do some of these things. And these places can be your grandfather's workshop, as in my case when I was a child. It could be in an artist's studio, or in an informal learning space such as science centres like CosmoCaixa, but it could certainly be at school, too.

Schools around the world are developing the Tinkering approach. And one fantastic example is the work being done by the ‘Artencurs’1 group in La Farga or La Vall schools, for example. Reggio Emilia in Italy is our long-time partner and an inspiration for our approach. I believe there are many aspects of Tinkering that are applicable when working with younger children, and it is being done very successfully in formal school settings. For a teacher in Spain who wants to get started, Bea Rey, from the Catalan school La Vall, has good examples for

taking the first step. We find some Tinkering activities, such as "Marble Machines" or "Scribbling Machines", to be a good starting point. For this reason, we have developed online materials that can help to organise an activity with this methodology.

In general, there are three aspects that are important to think about: the materials themselves, finding rich and inspiring materials that are simultaneously familiar and attractive; the environment, creating a space that is not a traditional classroom but a place where children and students can sit around the table and collaborate, where they are surrounded by interesting materials and inspiring examples; and how we, as educators, contribute to this play. Our role as educators in creating a good Tinkering activity is to support, inspire, show interest in students' ideas, create moments of shared understanding and create moments of reflection.

And at home, what can parents do to encourage their children's curiosity for science and their ability to bring their ideas to fruition with their own hands? We often hear from enthusiastic parents and children who have created a Tinkering experience at home. For example, some made their own "Marble Machine" after visiting the Tinkering studio, or started making stop-motion animations after trying them out at the Tinkering studio. When the COVID-19 pandemic caught us by surprise, we decided to focus on families and children at home and think about how we could support them to create Tinkering experiences in their own homes. We realised that many phenomena, such as light and shadow or the balance of objects, could be explored by Tinkering with materials you already have at home. Parents can provide time, inspiration and suggestions for their children to engage with scientific phenomena in a playful way at home. A good example of this would be to

accept Tinkering Studio's invitation to set up a chain-reaction machine in your home using materials you find around the house, such as kitchen items or toys or dominoes, and placing them in a chain so that when one item falls, it triggers an amazing chain reaction machine. Doing this type of activity at home can be more exciting than doing it in a public space, because children can use the objects they like and are interested in.

It is a good way to experience scientific phenomena such as gravity, the mechanisms of movement and logic in a playful way. The Tinkering Studio website offers some suggestions, called ‘Tinkering at Home’, for parents or caregivers who wish to get started in Tinkering with simple materials in their own home. As always, Tinkering at home is a social activity and should be done as a group, which means that the adults in the family should also be involved. This can be a great opportunity to create a co-learning situation with the children. Finally, whether you are a caregiver, parent or teacher, we at the Tinkering Studio are always interested in receiving feedback from the community and highly value children's ideas and creations. You can send a photo or a short note to the Tinkering Studio through the ‘Tinkering at Home’ website or on the Tinkering Studio social media.

Note

1

Artencurs is an educational platform in continuous development based on the conviction of art’s potential as an educational and change tool.

Educators should to inspire, show interest in students' ideas and create moments of shared understanding

© Exploratorium San Francisco

Thinking with your hands

Tinkering at school boosts curiosity, creativity and the ability to learn

by Ana Moreno Salvo

INTERVIEW WITH BEATRIZ REY PEÑA

Beatriz is an art teacher at La Vall school in Bellaterra. She has been applying Tinkering in her classroom art studio for more than 5 years and collaborates with the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and is a member of the educational platform Artencurs.

You are a pioneer in implementing Tinkering in the classroom. How did you learn about Tinkering Studio and how did you come up with the idea of incorporating it into your teaching, in that it a science project and you an art teacher?

My first contact with Tinkering Studio was in person. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to spend an extended stay in San Francisco with my husband and children. For some time, we had been co-creating as a family with my children, which was a small laboratory of ideas. The visit to the Exploratorium was ‘love at first sight’, a springboard to see the potential of what we were doing. The place, the exhibition, everything

attracted us from the first moment and we went back several times. I left there with the clear idea that I wanted that in my school. I loved the fact that even though it was a science museum, the artistic gaze was all over the museum. There were works and reflections resulting from manual activities merged with the scientific exhibition in all the spaces. This is natural in an art museum, since art speaks of the world, of people and of people's relationship with the world, just as science does. Offering a gaze that takes the leap

from art to science and vice-versa opens many ways of approaching reality.

In schools, it is necessary to make room for curiosity and for open, flexible and transversal ways of bringing the student closer to the world in an appealing and exciting way. Tinkering, or ‘fiddling with the hands’, opens up a wide range of possibilities.

Tinkering at school helps to bring multiple intelligences to the fore. Working with the hands is also a type of thinking that has an unconscious

They are hands that aren’t working just for the sake of it but are constantly imagining, projecting, evaluating, revising, retesting

and an intuitive component, which leads to reflection. With the hands you constantly test: What if this were thinner? And when I make it thinner, I ask myself: Does it work better now? They are hands that aren’t working just for the sake of it but are constantly imagining, projecting, evaluating, revising, retesting. The more I get involved, the more conscientious the ‘fiddling’ becomes.

What do you think it brings to your students?

I believe it is a way of learning through experience that helps them to come up with their own strategies. The first thing you notice is that the students feel very capable and involved, which is a gateway to intense, connected, deep work. The

Tinkering proposals are presented as ‘on floor, high ceilings, wide walls’. They are gateway that is accessible to everyone, where curiosity engages them and motivates very flexible learning that has no limits. Keeping curiosity piqued is key, and Tinkering clearly encourages this.

Perhaps an example will help to clarify this. Recently, the third-grade students were engaged in activities about balance. While experimenting with objects in equilibrium, we saw works by artists such as Daniel Firman with his balancing elephants, and they

opened the way to very interesting conversations. The students played, drew and reflected, and everything was shared with the group.

This activity provided a field in which to investigate, where they all joined, and each of them gradually took it to their own terrain. When asked: Where do you see the relationship between balance and your life, they responded: ‘My mother gives me balance. I am very messy and she helps me’, or ‘my stuffed animal gives me balance when I am sad’, or ‘balance is... like sweets: if

It is a gateway accessible to everyone, where curiosity engages them and motivates very flexible learning that has no limits

La Vall school Bellaterra

you eat some, other days you have to eat other things’. The connections that each makes with other aspects of their lives, food, emotions and family provide an artistic look where metaphorical meaning and physical phenomena merge. All of this materialised in balanced paper structures.

In subsequent sessions, balance appeared everywhere, in the hallway, in objects, in the city, in art, in engineering and in our own bodies! They are discovering something that they actually carry inside them, and it gives them a wonderful feeling: I can discover the world all by myself! And they do it by manipulating, observing, reflecting, trying different things,

How did you integrate Tinkering into your classrooms? What are your main objectives and how do you work on them in class?

Integrating Tinkering into our school has been a process of fusion. The same thing is happening in other Studio and Atelier classrooms of the Institució Familiar d'Educació , where we have been working for years to build creative classrooms where the classroom design and the students’ relationship with it is paramount. The students find a classroom designed by spaces, with different artistic languages, where the materials are at their disposal and encourage them to get down to work.

One benefit we are seeing in the students is that integrating the Tinkering proposals opens the range of possibilities with which they can express themselves and breaks the cliché, which unfortunately still persists, of ‘art is not for me because I can't draw’. Another interesting aspect of Tinkering is that it always works collaboratively. Working, reflecting and sharing go hand in

hand, and in this way, students are involved in the search for a solution that is really valid and can be shared, which increases their interest and commitment.

One goal is to help them discover for themselves that they have no limits. It is an opportunity to discover what you are capable of, your interests, your way of doing and solving, why you decide one thing or another. On the other hand, it is demanding; it requires commitment. Why do you choose a colour? Why do you do it that way? Do you like it that way not because your teacher or classmate likes it but because you like it? Students gradually see that they have to like it and reflect on it. Mot working with a model really helps them to be honest and really get involved. You need to find your own solutions, be creative, keep improving and be able to explain what you do and why you do it.

The role of the teacher is very important, and the work before and after the session is also very important. To do this, we have to learn how to document, listen to the students, mentor them respectfully and ask appropriate questions that help them to recognise what they are doing and to take a step further. The teacher should be open to working alongside the students, not in front of or above them. We have to zoom in and out as needed.

An example of how we work on an art-tinkering project in the classroom would be:

We start with a phenomenon such as magnetism, equilibrium, light or shadow. We research related

Tinkering proposals and look for the materials to carry them out by transforming some space in the classroom. At the same time, we investigate artists for whom this phenomenon is important and discover through their work why it is important to them and what their point of view is. Without further explanation, the students begin to experiment. Based on Tinkering's proposal, they discover while playing, generating a shared reflection on and understanding of the phenomenon.

It's nice to see how each student notices something different and interacts differently. Some test and test without stopping, some observe

what others are doing, some get frustrated, some are constantly discovering challenges. Some need to constantly show you what they have learned, some prepare it to share it as a gift. Some get blocked and ask permission for every little action.

As a teacher you learn a lot just by observing these different ways of doing things, and when working with a new group, your expectations about the possibilities of the proposal multiply.

In a second round, we go back to the artist's gaze. Beyond the references we have seen, the students become artists and initiate a personal relationship that merges the scientific and artistic parts. We go from the scientific what does it mean, how does it work, where have you seen it, how can I build it, to the artistic what is it to you, what does it mean to you, what aspect

Art is the process of making something one's own, subjectivising something in the world, such as the colour green, and then sharing it

La Farga school

Sant Cugat del Vallès

of society does it connect with. In a way, art is the process of making something one's own, subjectivising something in the world, such as the colour green, and then sharing it. Artistic expression is a response to something that comes from the outside-in and from the inside-out in an artistic expression of its own. This is where art complements and gives meaning to this approach to a natural phenomenon or object such as magnetism or equilibrium.

As a teacher who researches, experiments and reflects, what does art bring to science and what does science bring to art?

I think that art in school helps the students to know themselves through what they do. It's a way to communicate without words. Thinking by drawing, thinking by building, thinking by moving and interacting helps to bring to the surface aspects that are often hidden in other realities at school. Science helps learners to relate to the world. Its laws, collective knowledge, research. The binomial art + science brings students closer to the world by helping them to build critical thinking where what they learn is related to the meaning it has for them and its contribution to society.

What is your collaboration with Tinkering Studio based on?

Tinkering Studio offers a number of guides, examples and workshops which they share openly. There is a clear intention to share and create knowledge together. And they do it with a Tinkering philosophy: without fear of sharing trials, successes and mistakes. Their approach is to make it easy for teachers, so the materials they use are always easy to get your hands on.

In this sharing and learning, we came into direct contact three years ago while preparing a European collaboration where we showed

Tinkering’s contribution to the artistic process. The lockdown was a really tough laboratory: learning collaboratively with your hands while online! When faced with difficulty, opportunity arise, and in part that’s what happened: connections and collaborations appeared with everyone and I personally learned a lot and from many people.

Our collaboration has recently taken shape in two projects: First of all, we have exhibited a cardboard project from Artencurs in ‘The Art of Tinkering’. It’s a fantastic exhibition that has been on display all summer at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where our students’ work was displayed as an example. This work actually started in 2020, and the collaborations around it have been diverse, gradually becoming a project and staying open. Another recent collaboration has been on the prototype of a kit for tinkering with balance (Open kit for tinkering with balance)

Tinkering Studio has projects around natural phenomena from a scientific vantage point. They have one related to balance called ‘Exploring Balance’ with different approaches that vary and expand. In recent months, they have been working on prototypes that allow for autonomous exploration of balance, offering contact between the material and the students and generating individual learning by the simple act of playing and building something with it. The way they develop the prototypes is based on applying their own Tinkering method. They explore materials with an objective, but often without knowing where they will end up.

In the case of ‘Exploring Balance’, Sebastian Martin toured different

European countries, and when he passed through Barcelona he suggested that I and my colleagues from La Farga school participate in this prototype. It seemed like a great opportunity to learn, and we created a makerspace for the occasion and spent a day with Sebastian to make the prototype. It was very interesting, because building the material helps you understand much better what you are doing and what can happen next. I personally found Tinkering to be a very powerful way of learning for both the student and the teacher. We were then able to put the material into practice at CosmoCaixa, first in workshops for families and then with CosmoCaixa trainers to reflect on Tinkering. At CosmoCaixa, they have a space called Creactivity based on the Exploratorium in San Francisco. From here the collaboration continues. This year we will experiment with these prototypes in our art studio classrooms, create documentation, reflect on how to move forward and share our experiences with the Tinkering Studio team and whoever we meet along the way.

What future possibilities do you see for Tinkering at a school like yours? How can we create a symbiosis between the two that produces environments rich in STEM learning and creativity?

Working with the hands while reflecting on what is happening allows the teacher to observe where we start from, what real knowledge the students have. If we ask students what they know about balance, they are able to say something, but when they ‘play’ with balance for a while, they are able to find many connections with their daily life.

The binomial art + science brings students closer to the world by helping them to build critical thinking

The time wasted ‘tinkering’ is not wasted; it is a time of a great deal of reflection, and it ends up boosting the students' learning incredibly. Thus, starting with a Tinkering experiment at the time we are working on previous ideas before any learning, especially in science, brings the students' knowledge to the table and piques their interest.

We do this with the intention of opening the students’ minds, curiosity and interest to learn where they need to learn.

Let me explain it with an example. One of the star activities of the Tinkering Studio is the ‘Marble Machine’, which are marble circuits on the wall, through which a circuit is redesigned using a trial and error strategy so that the marbles can go from one side to the other. During this activity, many things happen that require collaboration, design, evaluation and reflection on what is constantly happening. First, students are invited to explore with the materials, such as the marble, the wooden pieces, the ramps and the springs, and to build a circuit while overcoming problems, controlling the speed of the marble, changing the slope, reducing the speed, analysing the friction.

This activity can be a starting point to work on physics, mathematics and engineering concepts, and it can be related to other subjects, such as talking about the digestive system, as I have seen in examples from other schools, or thehistory of the Industrial Revolution or the parts of a narrative when constructing a story.

In the Art Studio, for example, once they have ‘fiddled’ with all these concepts and internalised them, we encourage them to reflect further and suggest, for example, that they

imagine that the marble is something or someone. At that moment, the circuit takes on another meaning, and we ask them to tell us its story. Usually the students' stories are related to the materials used. It is amazing how they make the circuit their own. One time, 12-year-old students used a piece of bicycle inner tube and had serious difficulty understanding its behaviour and getting the material to do what they expected it to do. In the final story, they had turned the piece of rubber into a ‘teenage elephant’ that was unpredictable and you never knew how it was going to react.

In Tinkering, the projects are open, and although the way in is quick and easy, there is no limit to their depth.

As a teacher, one of the keys to enhancing students' creativity is not to determine the end of the projects but to focus on the students’ process. It is necessary to lay the groundwork but then leave all possibilities open. The less we imagine what might happen, the more creativity is going to be enhanced. In this way, students create their own paths. If you propose an activity in which there are one, two or even three paths, but you know them previously from the beginning to the end, the students will be able to choose among them, but there is a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth path that we miss. There is a lot to lose. If we start without these limitations, the task is more intense, because we have to mentor each student more on their way, to make them understand it, to help them to take decisions, to reflect, to see where they have arrived and to evaluate the whole process, but it is worth it. This is achieved through

good documentation, which may be time-consuming but it guides the process and has a lot of potential. We are the first to benefit, as it helps us to grow and to plan things better. In addition, students learn a lot from each other when they share and explain the path they have chosen, why they have done it and how they have done it. It is a method that triggers exponential learning, which helps each student and the whole group.

At a recent conference in Barcelona, Ryan Jenkins of Wonderful Idea Co told us that, ‘Tinkering is one way to learn. It's not the only way to learn, and it may not be the best way to learn, but I'm convinced that when you learn without Tinkering, you're missing something.’ I believe this is true. The hands must be taken into account when learning and losing the fear of experimenting. Tinkering brings possibilities along the lines of making learning interesting, quick, real and meaningful for the learner. It is worth using it, in school and not only in the art classroom. It can be useful in all subjects and even in the playgrounds: why not? In the particular case of STEAM subjects, Tinkering Studio provides a very interesting connection that especially helps students understand and become interested in these subjects.

It is necessary to lay the groundwork but the less we imagine what might happen, the more creativity is going to be enhanced

La Vall school

Bellaterra

Schools must promote creativity

Promoting the most human aspect of education: divergent thinking, reflection and critical spirit in a collaborative environment

by Coral Regí Rodríguez

The video ‘School Kills Creativity’ by Ken Robinson opened the debate on the role of the school in the educating creativity. This issue has been addressed from different perspectives and different sectors. Let's look at the issue positively: Can the school not only not kill creativity but also enhance it? To focus the question, we would first have to specify what creativity is.

Surely after watching Ken Robinson's video and without further reflection, we would answer: creativity is letting the students' imagination flow, not cutting off their ideas and proposals, not imposing our vision of reality on them. Is that creativity? Is this the creativity we should be educating? Let’s reflect on this point (as reflection is a basic and, as we shall see, very important part of creative processes).

I have worked at the Escola Virolai in Barcelona for 40 years, and since it was founded more than 60 years ago, we have considered the need to educate creativity and in creativity. This was the value that the alumni said was the most unique to Virolai on the school’s fiftieth anniversary.

For us, educating in creativity has been and is a cross-curricular way of educating people with an open, reflective and critical view of reality and the environment, with the ability to consider solutions beyond the norm and above all with a mindset that accepts mistakes as opportunities to learn and move forward in the quest for better solutions.

As expressed by Carme Vituri, the school's first teacher, in the article published in the school's fiftieth anniversary book:

‘The person who has been educated in imagination and creativity has a potential that surpasses everything he or she undertakes, both professionally and personally. We are all creative; we just need to discover where our potential lies.

In the 1960s it was believed that, to be will prepared for the future, creativity and innovation were desirable for both boys and girls. In 2010, we are certain that they are essential to survive and to develop satisfactorily in society, to be and to make those around us happy.’

BUT HERE AND NOW, WHY SHOULD WE EDUCATE CREATIVITY?

In a society in which artificial intelligence and robotics will be and already are crucial, we have to reinforce our human side, what distinguishes us from machines, because what machines can do, they will do better. A robot will always be better at a repetitive task, and artificial intelligence methods will even be able to solve highly complex problems, especially in the processing of large amounts of information, which are beyond human possibilities. But probably their limitation, at least in the medium term, lies in their inability to come up with new questions and new challenges, or to question reality from a critical and creative perspective, a daring one. For this reason, we have to promote the most human part of education: divergent thinking, reflection and critical spirit in a collaborative environment.

Educating in creativity has been and is a crosscurricular way of educating people with an open, reflective and critical view of reality and the environment

EDUCATING CREATIVITY

But let's get to the point: How do we educate creativity? How do we educate creative people?

We often have erroneous or incomplete vision when educating creativity and other cross-curricular values and attitudes. It seems that educating creativity means letting children's spontaneity flow, but it’s not that, or at least not only that. Nor is it a question of educating via the educator's example and cross-curricular education, where there are no specific proposals or defined responsibilities. In this sense, we have to overcome excessively naïve versions of this issue.

As in many other formative processes, educating creativity requires intentionality, strategy and perseverance. It requires moving from the dream to the project, to the plan shared and worked on by all the teachers, starting from a clear conception of what we want to educate.

One fundamental factor is that we have to work with students on their ability to observe the environment and reality, to see beyond using divergent thinking. It is teaching them to see and listen with rigour and effort. A creative and reflective person analyses reality, delves deeper, looks beyond the first impression and weighs opportunities for change and improvement. And this is taught from the earliest stages of infancy and never ends.

And from this point on, the ability to ask good questions, to wonder how to improve, to share as a group, to dig deeper, should be a natural and inherent process in the school's activities. And this requires educating

We have to work with students on their ability to observe the environment and reality, to see beyond using divergent thinking

Virolai school Barcelona

students through the systematic experience of always approaching a challenge or a problem by questioning it and thinking beyond the norm.

THE EDUCATION OF ERROR

But we won’t stop here. The most important part of rising to the challenge, based on the analysis of the reality, is to search for the best solution. This should allow us to work systematically on the education of error. Being afraid of being wrong is something that needs to be educated. Students must learn to reflect on their mistakes, to continue learning, to persevere in coming up with a better solution. Incorporating error as an opportunity is one of the best educational lessons for our students. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to incorporate and integrate it into educational practice. Students have to learn and unlearn throughout their lives, and in this dynamic, in which the most difficult thing is to unlearn, it is essential to reflect on the error and learn from it in order to tackle the problem again. In this sense, educating in creativity also means educating in

self-improvement and perseverance, key values in the process of educational transformation.

In this quest for new solutions, it is very important to incorporate teamwork or cooperative work, where different opinions are contributed based on the uniqueness of the team members. Hence the importance of heterogeneous groups with students with different talents, where everyone builds together based on debate and joint reflection, learning that the best solution is always the one that they have come up with all together. This is also a great learning experience for a key competency: knowing how to collaborate in different work environments.

Students must learn to reflect on their mistakes, to continue learning, to persevere in coming up with a better solution

TOWARDS A TRANSFORMATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL MODEL

Creativity can be worked on through art, the different artistic languages, which are essential to enhance the students’ different talents so they can express their feelings and emotions and communicate better, while attending to others’ feelings. But we also have to work on creative thinking in the different scientific fields, from biology to mathematics, and, of course, in the technological fields, because we have to ensure this transversal, holistic vision of the analysis of reality, especially when proposing new challenges.

And by working on creativity, we work on selfimprovement and perseverance, but also on agility and the ability to take risks. I like the simile of educating people with flexibility and resilience so they become like riverside trees.

In a school model that prioritises marks, but often also in schools with good formative assessment practices, there is a persistent oversight: values education is not assessed. I am not talking about marks but about formative assessment, assessment that provides information for improvement. This assessment must include both the student's progress and the effectiveness of the processes and actions carried out to educate these values. We cannot forget the premise that what is not assessed is undervalued; we are stripping it of its value. We can tell students how important the values of self-improvement, perseverance or in this case creativity are, but if we do not assess their progress, if we do not give them feedback to improve and advance, we are stripping them of all their formative value. If we cannot find out if the actions we are doing are making students more creative, we will not be able to make decisions on how to improve these processes, and we will not be able to make headway towards an education that makes education in creativity more and better.

As with everything that happens at school, the key factor is the role of educators. We need effective leadership of the management team that prioritises in the process of educational transformation and the education of key values, while also ensuring the teachers’ work so that based on an open, creative position they rethink their criteria, reflect, design and jointly implement

educational models that ensure that they are moving forward in an education that prioritises creativity. The proposals should go beyond uniformity and instead lead to divergent answers, boldness and coherence, reflection on error, and this requires that educators themselves be creative and disruptive, capable of generating learning environments that generate more questions than answers, that encourage observation and experimentation.

We will also need to work coherently with families because creative positions are educated inside and outside the school by observing the field, reading a book, engaging in family dialogue or answering children's questions, spreading enthusiasm for learning because when a child asks ‘Why?’, we can never answer ‘just because’, because it stamps out curiosity.

And this education requires environments, schools, and institutions that are themselves creative, growth-minded, open-minded, that reflexively question what they do with perspective, that make us tackle transformation processes with a positive mindset. We need schools that rise to challenges with open, creative answers, beyond the norm: that instead the complacent ‘we've always done it this way’ counters with a courageous ‘why not?’.

Coral Regí Rodríguez is a biologist and educator by vocation. She is a member of several educational associations and the School Council of Catalonia. She is also a member of Educació Demà of the Bofill Foundation. She has been principal of the Virolai school. She is an expert in leadership, professional assessment and pedagogical and educational quality processes.

We need to find out if what we are doing is making students more creative so that we can improve processes

This education requires environments and schools that are themselves creative and growth-minded

new books library

Creating innovators

Tony Wagner

Scribner, 2014

This book focuses on studying how to create the next generation of innovators. To this end, the author conducted interviews with young people from the socalled ‘network generation’ to understand how they were motivated and what type of teaching and leadership they responded to positively. The book shows how the new generations’ innovations can create value for companies and for themselves. Wagner believes that the essential qualities of an innovator can be instilled, taught and mentored, and consequently, people can become more creative and innovative if right the environment and opportunities are provided.

Pensar para aprender en el aula

Robert Swartz

Ediciones SM, 2019

This book is a set of real lessons in which teachers trained in Thinking-Based Learning (TBL) teach their students to be good thinkers. It recounts the implementation of collaborative thinking, in which ideas are shared and discussed in groups connected by a feeling of empathy and a desire to find the best solution to a problem together. The role of teachers who guide and motivate their learning is key to achieving this. This methodology teaches students to use thinking skills both in the classroom and in any other area of life.

Lateral Thinking

Edward De Bono

Penguin Books, 2016

Lateral thinking is creative thinking with infinite ways of reaching a solution, because it uses the brain in a different way without using logic. This book examines why the current way of thinking is not good enough and what can be done to change it. De Bono argues that while current thinking methods work when applied to specific areas such as science and technology, they actually hinder progress when attempting to address less scientific ones. It is a book with new ideas to demonstrate the power that comes from the ability to think differently.

Teach your Child How to Think

Edward De Bono

Penguin Books, 2009

This book shows that there are many extremely intelligent people who get trapped in their own talent, making them deficient thinkers. De Bono argues that thinking is one more skill that can be taught to children. With this story, the author provides a series of tips to encourage thinking that will profoundly and beneficially influence the child's entire life. It shows how to educate young people to productively develop their talents and skills.

La creatividad. Atrévete a tener buenas ideas

Maria Batet

Edicions Culturals Andana, 2018

We like to have good ideas, and yet there is a widespread belief that the ability to have them is only available to a privileged few. Although the ability to create is inherent, we are trained more for critical thinking than for creative thinking. This book, with its short, direct and thoughtprovoking texts and simple, clear illustrations, presents the essential elements that will make you dare to have more

ImaginAcción

Nacho Ros Kolima, 2019

The ImaginAcción method ingeniously and effectively combines creative thinking, emotional education, art education, imagination, cooperative learning and service-learning. Developed in a didactic and innovative way, this method has been tested in different schools, where it has improved the students’ social and creative behaviours, as well as leading to a major increase in the motivation of both the students and the teachers. The book offers a wide variety of original ideas and teaching resources to apply in the classroom or at home.

The Agile Mind

Estanislao Bachrach Transworld Publishers, 2016

Recent advances in neuroscience have shown that by applying the right techniques, the mind can modify the structure and configuration of the brain. Creativity can be expanded, and therefore, everyone can be creative to succeed and live better. It is just a matter of exercising the brain to learn how to think. This book shows the mechanisms of the process of learning how to develop one's full potential, how to use the senses, expand memory, focus attention, control negative emotions and enjoy positive ones.

Dibujar para aprender

Garbiñe Larralde Graó, 2022

This book, inspired by Visual Thinking, invites the reader to draw to learn and opens up a universe of possibilities yet to be explored. The world is changing, and many students speak the visual language, which is why it should be given greater prominence in the educational system. This book aims to enrich academic knowledge with tasks that facilitate access to knowledge to people who think in other ways, such as people who want to experiment with drawing as a tool to represent ideas.

Visual Thinking, make what's in your mind visible

Garbiñe Larralde Urkijo is an expert in Visual Thinking as a learning tool and a referent for promoters of active, innovative educational methodologies. With a degree in Fine Arts, she has been a teacher and director in a variety of grades. She has a blog, ‘EnReDar y aprender’, and has recently published the book "Dibujar para aprender. Visual Thinking (VT) en Educación".

INTERVIEW WITH GARBIÑE

by Jordi Viladrosa i Clua

LARRALDE URKIJO

We know that you are interested in the confluence of art and visual storytelling. Tell us a little more about your experience in this area. Where does your interest in Visual Thinking in the classroom come from? My interest arises from an accumulation of coincidences that came together at a certain time in my life which brought me closer to this way of organising thinking that I had experienced back in my childhood, but without naming it. I was learning with drawings without really knowing that this was something I could share with others.

In 2015, I attended a TED Talk

where I saw that in the back area of the room there was a person drawing what the speakers were saying. That caught my attention because the theme of the talk was serendipity and chance, and by chance, that reencounter with drawing came at a time when I had just been informed that for the following academic year I had been assigned a very theoretical subject that I had to teach to a group of students in the artistic baccalaureate, and I was looking for ideas.

When I saw that person drawing during the talk, I thought it might be a different way of approaching learning, that the exercise of recording information through drawing was a

path worth exploring. That was the way Visual Thinking came back into my world, this time with a proper name.

For those who are not familiar with it: What is Visual Thinking?

Visual Thinking is a thinking tool, some people call it a methodology, which is very new. It was pretty much in this century when the business world revived a term proposed by the art theorist Rudolf Arnheim in the 1960s and 1970s.

Visual Thinking uses the tools of visual language to organise thought; that is, it sets out to make use of a series of resources that are typical of visual grammar but transferred to the world of thought with the aim of

using images to organise what is going through the head.

Thus, by means of simple drawings and brief texts, ideas, concepts or procedures are organised on a single piece of paper. Personally, I view Visual Thinking as a thinking tool, an instrument that allows me to make what is cluttered in my head visible and thus generate meaning and make it easier to recall information.

Let's talk about your book "Dibujar para aprender". On your blog ‘EnREDar y aprender’, we read that ‘the annual meetings of Aulablog, the collaborations with Asociación Espiral, the project Mujeres líderes en la educación del siglo XXI and all the workshops and congresses in which I have participated in recent years have been the stove on which I have been simmering the pages of this book’. Can you tell us a little bit about this journey?

The journey began, as I mentioned, in 2015 at a conference where I discovered that someone was drawing a paper at the same time it was being delivered. That same year, in June, I was fortunate enough to attend the International Conference on Thinking in Bilbao, the 2015 ICOT. That happened just at the time when I was beginning to think about the issue of visual thinking. At that congress, I was able to see and hear theorists of education and thought as prominent as Robert Swartz, Perkins and the Johnson brothers.

At that time, I was eager to find a way to motivate students who live in a universe that is often parallel to the school, where communication is mostly done through images. Today's

youth hardly use written messages in their communications, and when they do, they use short texts that they incorporate as a ‘meme’ on top of an image.

The challenge we face in education is to bring positions closer together and find common languages with which to reach our students and rebuild the bridge of intergenerational communication. New technologies can help us, and images are a very powerful resource in this. We adults have to make an effort to reach out. That is part of the task of education, and that’s where much of my research lies: Visual storytelling, technologies, Visual Thinking.

You claim that drawing is a tool to represent ideas and that it allows better access to knowledge. How should our education system be improved so that visuals have a more prominent place in it? This issue is quite complicated. At the time when the change in the law began to be discussed, I paid close attention to the debates that arose around the curriculum, and when I heard teachers from other fields claiming that their knowledge must also be included, I understood that the issue is difficult to solve. My conclusion was that although there is a consensus that the curriculum cannot take any more content and is already overloaded, reaching agreements will be impossible if everyone continues to think in their ‘realm’, that is, the realm of images, the realm of thought, the realm of mathematics, each in their own area of interest.

In spite of this, all of us who work in education have a common concern and conviction that what we are doing right now is working poorly. Dividing the work into subjects and working in such an isolated fashion is not working, and this is not just an impression because the data confirm it. So, something has to be done, and in that something, interdisciplinary work or tools such as Visual Thinking,

which joint the visual with the textual, can be a way forward.

Faced with so many emerging methodologies, what would you say to a teacher who thinks he or she doesn't know how to draw to convince him or her that Visual Thinking can be applied to any subject?

In my workshops, I usually ask how many of the participants believe that they do or do not know how to write. Normally, almost everyone raises their hand. My next question is to how many have published books or how many have written a novel or a book of poetry. Very few people raise their hands in response to this question.

The same thing happens with drawing; creating an artwork by means of drawing is not the same as using drawing as a tool for thought. Two strokes, four circles and three lines can help to create a character or represent a factory, a lamp, a book or whatever you need to communicate; you don't need to know how to draw like an artist to do this.

This is the answer: it is not essential to draw like an artist to do Visual Thinking. Drawing is learned by drawing, just like anything else, so it's just a matter of getting over the initial hump and starting to experiment.

Making sure that what you are drawing means what you want to say is not easy. How can you draw a metaphor? You devote a chapter of your book to talk about the benefits of Visual Thinking. We would like you to ‘draw’ for us, this time in words, what these benefits are and why it is important for learning.

Visual Thinking as an instrument to make visible what is cluttered in my head visible

The challenge in education is to bring positions closer together and find common languages

Visual Thinking is not only drawing, but a representation in which text and image go hand in hand. Thus, the text anchors the meaning of the image and the image enriches the meaning of the text. In other words, a dialogue is forged between the two languages, and we cannot do without either of them. Visual Thinking allows us to organise ideas in the space of a sheet of paper through a series of elements that help us to prioritise ideas, generate reading paths and highlight certain parts.

Getting back to your question, metaphors are figures of speech that are actually polysemous, even though we think of them as universal. So take an image like a light bulb: What is it talking about,? An idea, creativity or an electric power company? The image has different meanings, but if

you add a key word or even another drawing to this light bulb, what you will achieve is to set and anchor its meaning in that specific context. Another benefit has to do with what I view as Visual Thinking as a learning tool. Drawing should not be a tool for teaching but an instrument to be used for learning. It is not so much a matter of the teacher attractively drawing an idea or creating a visual map that represents certain concepts for the students to copy. The idea is to give the students activities in which they have to generate their own visual notes. That is where the learning is, because a person who draws has to stop to understand what they are representing; they have to stop and think about what they are doing.

It is true that in Visual Thinking there are some formats that are very striking, but in education the most interesting thing about this tool is that it allows you to study calmly, to think, order, extract ideas, think about how to draw them, that is, ask yourself: What is this? How do I draw this idea? How do I represent this concept? In this game, in this dialogue between image, thought and concepts is where

I believe meaningful learning can be found.

Students are often asked to make outlines and concept maps. How can we make visual maps gain ground in the representation of knowledge? What role does digital technology play in this regard? I like to remember Daniel Penac’s statement: ‘reading does not admit imperatives’, and to tinker with this quote to say that ‘learning does not admit imperatives’. In Visual Thinking you may be given the idea, all the concept maps you want, but if that concept map with that fixed structure does not fit with your cognitive scaffolding, with what you previously know, you won't really be able to retain, understand and assimilate that knowledge So, why don't we

Drawing is learned by drawing, so it's a matter of getting over the hump and starting to experiment

VT allows to organise ideas on paper through a series of elements that help us to prioritise ideas

give each student the freedom to construct knowledge in his or her own way? What would we have to do to make that possible? Teachers themselves should first be trained and discover that drawing is a valid tool for learning, and then allow and even facilitate students’ use of it.

As far as technologies are concerned, I think the important thing is to make the working tools invisible. Visual Thinking is not done with technology; it is done with the head, with thought. So it makes no difference what you use to draw the information you are organising. You can draw the visual maps on a tablet with a digital pen as long as the tool is not distracting and the

focus is on the thought, but you can also draw them on a pad of paper with a pencil and colour them with markers. It is exactly the same. In other words, Visual Thinking is not technology, although it can be done with technological tools.

You state that ‘by incorporating Visual Thinking into the teaching toolkit, teachers are better able to offer new learning opportunities and provide more personalised attention’. Tell us a little more about Visual Thinking as a learning tool. How can technology and Visual Thinking help to better personalise learning? Technology allows us to personalise learning because it enables us to serve students in a different way. When I did research on artists' books at university, I discovered that writing arises from the human need to apprehend words and stories that disappear when the sender is no longer with us when transmitted

orally. Thus, books arose from the need to give language a physical support. That support today is digital, which allows us to grab words, grab images, hold them, save them, store them, encapsulate them; technology is wonderful in that sense.

But although technology allows us to store information in many different ways, the important thing in education is to mentor each student in his or her learning process and give him or her the option of organising the content in the way that best fits his or her way of understanding reality.

Here's an illustrative anecdote: in one of the workshops I teach, I had a very interesting debate with a group of teachers who were determined that the water cycle could not be represented in any other way than in the form of a circle. I argued to them that depending on the level of knowledge, the cycle can be drawn as a square in which the starting and ending points touch. That is

Drawing should not be a tool for teaching, but a learning instrument for students

what makes it a cycle and not the number of ‘stops’ along the way. The important thing is to allow the children to understand the concept of returning to the point of origin and starting over. The obligation to understand the cycle as a circle may cause some people to fail to grasp the concept. And why not let everyone see it in their own way? Maybe first the student sees it as a square, but maybe later it becomes a pentagon, a hexagon, an octagon, and in the end that person ends up saying, ‘Well, look, it was a circle’.

Because that is learning, after all, while the other thing is teaching. That is, I teach you how you have to

understand this, but if you really want your students to learn, give them permission and mentor them as they build whatever comes to mind.

Finally, we know about your motivation and involvement in the pursuit of educational change and your commitment to women's leadership. Tell us about the projects you are working on right now and which of them you think will have a more prominent role in the future.

I'm still drawing, still thinking and lately I'm testing the potential connection between visual thinking and computational thinking.

In the history of human beings, there has been a slow process of abstraction, starting with images that conveyed the first information, which were gradually transformed into letters, which then became words, terms and concepts. This long and very deep process has been created like fine cuisine, little by little, over

a low flame. A similar process of abstraction takes place at school, but we often force the timing of it and go from image to text too quickly and without keeping those aspects of the image that can be very valuable for learning.

Thus, I believe that in this process, visual thinking can help us to take the leap to computational thinking in a more natural way. And this is what I would like to analyse and discover: whether the visual language can contribute something to enrich and help in children’s learning process, which is ultimately what we are interested in.

Give students the option of organise the content according to their understanding of reality

If you want your students to learn, mentor them as they build whatever comes to mind

legacy

A ‘palace of creativity’ would solve many of the world's problems

Tribute to Edward De Bono

by Ana Moreno Salvo

For many, the term that best defines our times is the ‘age of innovation’, because creativity opens the door to a host of solutions that until recently were hidden and locked away in the depths of mainstream logical thinking. When Edward De Bono wrote the book "The Use of Lateral Thinking" in 1967, he gave the world a new way of looking and thinking that revolutionised human life in all its fields and facets. Many technological innovations, marketing strategies, business models, conflict resolution, companies and universities, and even successful novels, humour and entertainment programmes would never have seen the light of day without the creative techniques that De Bono made available to everyone who was able to see their potential.

In June 2015, Edward De Bono spoke with David Perkins at the International Conference on Thinking (ICOT) held in Bilbao. Given David's question on the blind spots of the twenty-first century, Edward answered, without hesitation, additive thinking, and he told the following anecdote: ‘I was once invited to the United Nations in New York for a meeting with the leaders of all the

countries represented. I tried to get them to generate new ideas in addition to the ones they already had, but it was impossible. They all thought they were there to represent their countries and say what their countries wanted them to say. I believe we need to create a global environment for additive thinking, a "thought palace" where people from different countries can come together freely to think differently and generate creative ideas about global problems. What happens in politics does not happen in the business world; large corporations and companies are very interested in creativity and know that their success depends largely on the quality of their thinking. We also have a similar situation in the world of education; for example, in England there is much more interest in students mastering history than the present world, and this is a problem today.’

Edward De Bono was born in Malta in 1933, in a wellto-do family. He was the second of four children of a Maltese couple educated in England. His parents' educational style was very distant, and he spent most

of his childhood in a boarding school. He only saw his family on holiday, and the four siblings were usually in the care of a governess. Although he never discussed the impact this had on his way of being, his wife thought that these circumstances forged a serious personality and a strong tendency to seek solitude. As a young man he was a child prodigy; at the age of fifteen he entered the university and at twenty-one he was already a medical doctor. At twenty-two he entered Oxford University, where he studied psychology and philosophy. In 1967 he published his most widely distributed book, The Use of Lateral Thinking. At that time, he was already assistant research director in the Department of Medical Research at the University of Cambridge. Over the course of his lifetime, he has been awarded five university degrees and three doctorates. In addition to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, he has been part of research teams at Harvard and London Universities. He is the author of 85 books that have been translated into 46 languages.

Ashok Chouhan, a billionaire and founder of India's prestigious Amity University, tells how he was once traveling from Europe to India when his plane was diverted to Paris. To kill time, he bought a book at the airport that had a very significant impact on his life, "The Use of Lateral Thinking". Since then, he has carried it in his briefcase for more than 30 years. Chouhan is just one example of the countless people for whom de Bono's creative techniques have opened up a world of possibilities that have led them to success. This includes businesspeople, scientists, Nobel laureates, humourists, writers, professional conjurers, architects, etc.

HUMOUR SHOWS HOW THE BRAIN WORKS

In response to the question of where he gets inspiration for his creations, humourist Alvaro Carmona says that humour is a change in the pattern through which things are seen, and while showing hundreds of notebooks full of drawings, he said, ‘I find the best inspiration in them and in the creative techniques of De Bono's lateral thinking’.

Humour comes into play when one realises that there is another perspective that affects the most common way of looking at things. With humour, the mind goes back and forth between the obvious way of looking at things and the unexpected but also plausible way. This alternation is precisely what characterizes humour and lateral thinking. Anyone who has a sense of humour should be able to understand the nature of lateral thinking much better than someone who does not. To De Bono, ‘humour is by far the most significant behaviour of the human brain, because it reveals the nature of the underlying system, that is, a “self-organising” information system based on asymmetric patterns. Reason tells us very little about how the brain works, because any “organisation system” run backwards is a reasoning system. But, humour shows asymmetrical patterns, just like the brain, in that the path from A to B is not the same as the path from B to A.’

In his dialogue with David Perkins in Bilbao, De Bono says that lateral thinking, or creativity of ideas, is based on breaking patterns or getting away from the pattern. For example, he says, a random word creates a new pattern from which to think. It all depends on the logic of the patterns. But it is not enough just to create new patterns for thinking; things must also make sense. De Bono tells how he once met with 300 environmentalists in California who told him how in rivers waste from upstream affects the water downstream. After working with them a bit, he saw that the waste from factories has to be in the downstream waters. At the time it seemed totally impossible, but 15 years later this idea became a criminal law for companies. For De Bono, this, like many other things, could have been thought of 200 years earlier.

‘SEEING WITH THE MIND’

De Bono says that when he was doing research on how human body systems work, he became interested in the

Source: "El libro de los tiburones". Álvaro Carmona

brain. He soon realised that the brain was designed to form stable patterns with which to deal with a stable universe.

To him, ‘that is the excellence of the brain, and we should be very grateful for it; if it were not so, if it were designed to be creative, living would be practically unviable’.

Later he studied the thought processes of historical figures who had made great discoveries for the progress of mankind and realised that most of them had come upon it by chance. They all had one thing in common, unlike standard scientists: an attitude and mind that were open and attentive to possibility. They were able to open their thinking to intuitions and alternatives and then test if they worked.

This is how lateral thinking was born, and De Bono gave it this name spontaneously in an interview he did for the magazine "London Life" while explaining that ‘it is necessary to move laterally to find other approaches and alternatives’. At that moment, he realised that it was the word he needed.

To De Bono, there are two ways of thinking: one through perception and the other through a process. Although he himself states that this is an overstated polarisation, it helps us to understand that the brain works differently from computers, which only process information, while the brain not only processes but also perceives. De Bono uses the word ‘perception’ differently from classical philosophers and describes it as the interaction of sensory data with the neural network of the brain, which he called ‘seeing with the mind’.

In the late 1960s, he created the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) programme of lateral thinking techniques inspired by his research in psychology and his interest in the kind of thinking that computers cannot do. For the first time in human history, we can treat creativity as a mental technique and not just as a matter of talent or inspiration. De Bono believed it was important to teach creative thinking in schools and promoted CoRT in countries on every continent. The programme was and still is taught in thousands

of schools around the world, including the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Chile. But as De Bono himself says, the keenest interest in his techniques was from the business world, so he spent more than 30 years teaching courses in large companies, corporations, government institutions and universities. One time, he was asked to lad some sessions at a Nobel Awards meeting in Seoul.

LATERAL THINKING

To De Bono, lateral thinking has three basic arguments:

1) logical or vertical thinking has limitations as a method for generating new ideas;

2) lateral processes are useful for generating new ideas;

3) the purpose of lateral thinking is to produce new ideas that are simple, sound and effective.

In the early nineteenth century, European leaders were much more concerned when the astute Austrian diplomat, Prince Metternich, did nothing than when he did something. A shift from the obvious way of looking at something to something not so obvious requires a change in perspective. This is not particularly difficult if you have practice in feeling around and finding different ways of looking at a problem or situation. But it is important to be interested in trying and to recognise the effectiveness of a change in perspective.

New ideas tend to occur to those who are able to avoid the rigidity of logical thinking. The following anecdote makes this clear: When cars had no rear lights, they had to back out of a cul-de-sac in reverse, leading to many accidents. One day someone used the rear turn signal to illuminate a road. It's a simple idea, but no one had thought of it before because of the logic of how the lights were designed to be used.

Practical lateral thinking is essential in problems where logical thinking cannot provide an answer

Practical lateral thinking is essential in problems where vertical or logical thinking has been unable to provide an answer.

A problem is a situation that demands a response that is not obvious. Sometimes a situation is a problem because it is viewed in a certain way. And vice-versa: sometimes it takes a good dose of lateral thinking to see problems that have gone unnoticed.

Edward De Bono said, ‘I have held academic positions at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard Universities, where the amount of time devoted to the importance of possibility is nil’. Our culture and habits push us to seek certainty, but we should pay equal attention to possibility. Stomach ulcers were a serious medical problem that were hard to solve; many people investigated this disorder. A young physician, Barry Marshall, suggested it might be an infection, but he was laughed at. No one took that possibility seriously. Years later, it turned out that he was right, and instead of spending 20 years taking antacids and losing part of his stomach, he spent a week taking antibiotics. Possibility is very important; it is the key to creativity.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOGIC AND CREATIVITY

When faced with a problem, lateral thinking tries to test different solutions one after the other. Once one is chosen, it is followed with all the rigor of logical thinking. Then another one is chosen, and so on. The search for alternative ways of seeing things is not natural; it is necessary to act intentionally, although with time and practice, it requires less effort. A useful technique is to deliberately invert the situation. For example, instead of assuming that the Sun moves around the Earth, one can assume that the Earth moves around the Sun. Other techniques are transferring relationships from one situation to another one that is easier to handle, deliberately shifting the focus of attention from the problem to something else.

Marconi, the inventor of the radio, was daring enough to think of transmitting a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. The experts told him it was crazy, because the curvature of the Earth would cause the signal to be lost in space, and they were right. But they did not know, like Marconi, of the existence of an electrically charged layer in the upper atmosphere,

which bounced the wireless wave back. Marconi came to a conclusion he would never have reached if he had allowed himself to be swayed by the rigidity of logic. Lateral thinking involves getting down in the dirt and searching until you find a natural path. Logic must ensure that it is irrefutable once it has been found.

CHANCE AND PLAY IN CREATIVITY

Many good ideas start with a fortuitous combination of factors. For example, X-rays emerged when Roentgen forgot to remove a fluorescent screen from a table where he was experimenting with a cathode ray tube, and photography emerged when Daguerre noticed the image left by a spoon on an iodised metal surface. The role of chance in generating new ideas is that it provides an opportunity to look for something that would not otherwise be found. It is an attempt to stimulate the coincidental occurrence of phenomena that would not otherwise be sought.

Playing means experimenting with chance. James Clerk Maxwell, one of the most eminent mathematicians, played constantly. He was aware of the value play. He learned to draw ellipses by playing with threads and pins, which led him to explain the laws of light reflection when he was just a child. During play, ideas arise spontaneously and give rise to other ideas.

Pasteur worked in many fields, and in each of them there seemed to be fortuitous elements that favoured him. He himself recognised that the mental predisposition to develop the contribution of chance is what matters. He was able to notice things he wasn't looking for, coincidences, things that others didn't notice because they let the opportunity slip by.

With practice, when it comes to seeing things differently, the ability to find context for any type of information increases. As lateral thinking improves, information gotten by chance becomes increasingly useful.

There are many lateral thinking techniques that use chance, such as when two different things are combined to provide new value. The effectiveness of the combination is evaluated by whether it can add value and improve (business, project, environment, school activity, etc.). It can be done with two random words. The accent is on the combination of the two words, not on taking one and applying it to the other.

FROM ARGUMENTATION TO THE SIX HATS

Another of Edward De Bono's great accomplishments is the creation of the famous Six Thinking Hats Technique for exploring problems and solving them as a team. To De Bono, ‘we have always thought of traditional argumentation as the best way to resolve problematic discussions, but in reality it is an exercise in logic and ego’. There are other more effective ways of doing this, such as exploring a situation or a topic from different types of thinking to broaden the view. The Six Thinking Hats Technique forces us to adopt different points of view, to break with the pattern. When it was applied in some courts in New York, unanimous decisions were reached very quickly. The famous finance company J. P. Morgan in the same city managed to hold only one-tenth the number of meetings that it used to thanks to this technique. This technique is universally used in countless fields, from education to business, politics, medicine, etc.

FAREWELL

The change De Bono proposed is not to replace logical thinking with lateral thinking but rather to free the domain of logic by defining the creative alternative and showing us how to do it.

To De Bono, today we have the technology to do almost anything. Now we need to apply it to things that add value to our lives. His contribution sought to be more fundamental and liberating than telling us what our values should or should not be. It shows us how to seek and broaden our perception of alternatives, how to think, instead of telling us what to think, because we are going to need it, now that the right/wrong paradigm has disappeared.

In this context, according to De Bono, ‘what will change human behaviour are changes in thinking, not changes in values’.

Bibliography

"Breaking out of the Box: The Biography of Edward de Bono" by Piers Dudgeon "La práctica del pensamiento lateral". Edward De Bono. Biblioteca Planeta "Creatividad". Edward De Bono. Biblioteca Planeta "Seis sombreros para pensar". Edward De Bono. Biblioteca Planeta

Pasteur recognised that the mental predisposition to develop the contribution of chance is what matters

Dear Edward,

Thank you for your genius and your dedication to human progress. For believing in the potential of creativity and devoting your whole life to teaching the world, to thinking better in order to make it possible. We all owe you a lot, and we will always remember you, because as you said yourself: ‘A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen’.

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