APPLICATION PAPER
HOW TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY
Kalyakorn Naksompop ID 52139425
The report submitted in partial fulfillment of the course CI 6130 Seminar in Contemporary Issues in Curriculum and Instruction Presented to Dr. Andrew M. Goodman, Semester 2 / 2009
APPLICATION PAPER
HOW TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY
Kalyakorn Naksompop ID 52139425
The report submitted in partial fulfillment of the course CI 6130 Seminar in Contemporary Issues in Curriculum and Instruction Presented to Dr. Andrew M. Goodman, Semester 2 / 2009
CONTENTS
COVER ………………………………………….....…………………….… WHY IS CREATIVITY IMPORTANT? ……………………...
page 1 3
……………….. ENCOURAGEMENT OF CREATIVITY ………………...…...………..
5
………
5
Creativity Killers
5
Affective Factors
7
Cognitive Factors
9
Environmental Factors
10
Creativity Boosters
CLASSROOM PRACTICE
13
…………………………………………………... CONCLUSION …………………………………………………..
15
………….. REFERENCE ………………………………………………………………..
17
HOW TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS’ C REATIVITY Kalyakorn Naksompop Faculty of Education, Assumption University
WHY IS CREATIVITY IMPORTANT? The subject of creativity has been widely discussed among educators, especially in the past few decades. Numerous numbers of research on such topic had been conducted. This is perhaps because educators around the world have come to realize that “creativity is not just about art”, as expressed by Sir Ken Robinson (2006), a famous creativity specialist, but it is about the education and a person as a whole. Many authors are successful because they have abilities to offer “something new” to their readers, as same as movie directors to their audience. Computer engineers always need to create most “innovative” designs or technology to compete with their opponents. Medical scientists have to find “new ways” to fight with incurable diseases to help people. Without creativity, how do these people come about new ideas? This is simply why creativity, as Hon Chris Smith said, should not be treated as something “added on” to education but should be treated as an intrinsic matter in all areas (NACCE, 1999). In fact, a previous report by the new charity Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) supported this idea and added that promoting creativity in school also helps boosting intelligence (Baker, 2009).
Ironically, even with such recognition, school system that is used commonly today tends to be “a thinly disguised conspiracy to quash creativity” (Morris, 2006) as it suppresses students to seek for alternative ideas by focusing heavily on “what is” rather than “what can be”. Such education restrains human’s inborn abilities to be imaginative and innovative (Robinson, 2006) since it aims to produce skillful workers rather than intellectual individuals. That is probably because the system was established to fit the society and its economic structure of Western countries in 19th century (Robinson, 2009). For some reasons, educators are however still stuck with this system until today – 200 years later – even when it is obviously no longer suitable. “The system of schooling as we know it, with its grading, testing, standardized curriculum, and control over students’ use of time, reflects the mechanistic worldview of the age now beginning to decline,” said Ron Miller, a famous holistic activist, in one of his articles (2007). The future now heads towards a different direction; therefore, the education needs to be changed. Hence:
“Our aim must be to create a nation where the creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first century – where we compete on brains, not brawn.”
Tony Blair (NACCE, 1999)
Knowing this fact, rather it seems very difficult for the entire school system to change as it may take another 200 years. Thus, the simplest way to implement these changes – the stop of suppression and the start of emphasis on students’ creativity – is to begin in classrooms with teachers’ instruction. This is because teachers are the smaller body in the system, yet the way they teach has significant impact on their students. Meaning, they can act quicker and easier than administration or government bodies while their actions are far more effective than any written policies. Therefore, it is extremely crucial for teachers to know why creativity is important and how to encourage it.
ENCOURAGEMENT OF CREATIVITY In previous section, the paper has discussed about the importance of creativity and how it has not been accentuated enough in education today. Hence, the paper would offer different ways to emphasize creative minds in classrooms. Nonetheless, before knowing what encourages creativity, it is also very crucial to first learn about what kills creativity. For knowing “what not to do” helps to scoping down ideas of “what to do”.
CREATIVITY KILLERS There are several elements that can be considered as killing factors to creative minds. These factors, though associating with one another, can be classified into three main categories: affective factors, cognitive factors, and environmental factors. Basing on Bloom’s definition in his theory of learning domains, affective factors in this report are concerned with student’s emotional or psychological reasons for not being able to develop creativity while cognitive factors effect more on a person’s intellects. The third, environmental factors, as they are called, refer to environment as other conditions that effect students’ learning in classroom.
Affective Factors In 2008, Marvin Bartel, an emeritus art professor at Goshen College, Indiana, wrote a small article using information from his own experiences, called Ten Classroom Creativity Killers (2008). Though many of his opinions were based on random
observation, the article offered interesting ideas that are supported by acknowledged theories and researches. His paper emphasized how teacher’s inability to recognize student’s original ideas can be a huge smash on creativity. By not appreciating student’s originality, teacher automatically supports the concept of borrowing other’s ideas. This action discourages student to practice innovative mind. Creativity is then killed. In addition to that of Bartel’s idea, based on Bob McKim’s researches, Tim Brown, CEO of the "innovation and design" firm IDEO, suggested that the biggest obstacle for a person to be creative is fear – mainly the fear of others’ opinions (2008). People fear to be wrong. Because of this fear, they tend to not have courage to jump out of the box if it should raise others’ criticisms. The irony is that small children are not very familiar with this fear. They tend to listen more to their own voices and do what they want to do because they are not afraid of being wrong (Robinson & Aronica, 2009). This is probably why we always see younger children with more innovative or imaginative thoughts. Yet, as they get older, this fear somehow grows larger as their ability to listen to others greatly develops. If what Bartel and Brown said is true, is it possible to conclude that creative mind significantly links with unconscious mind? Perhaps, it is. An article about psychology (Goleman & Kaufman, 1992, 2007) supports this idea by stating that creative thoughts often come out from unexpected places in unexpected times. Let’s say that looking closely at information mentioned above, it is likely to make an assumption that creativity is what that greatly associates with affective domain at deep level. When we say a student’s original thought is not recognized, it can also be easily interpreted that the originality of an individual is also not recognized. For example, if a girl speaks out her own original idea, which is not necessary what teacher wants or
expects to hear, and gets turned down, she would probably think her original idea is not good enough. She would also probably feel that being who she is as a person, who came up with that idea, is not being cherished. In the end, if the girl gets turned down enough times, the girl would likely to keep the ideas to herself because she fears to share them and be rejected again. What would be worse is when the girl becomes afraid to even think at all. This can simply marks the death of her creative mind. In 1999, a very significant report was published for the Secretaries of State of England by National Advisory on Creative and Cultural Education or NACCE, called All Our Future: Creativity, Culture, and Education. The report proposed that creativity and culture should be highly promoted in school in all subjects. “Creativity is possible in all areas of human activity, including the arts, sciences, at work at play and in all other areas of daily life” (NACCE, 1999). The report also suggested that there is a strong connection between creativity and self-esteem. This connection explains how inability to recognize original ideas and fear has effect on each other. Using the same example, when the girl’s ideas get rejected, she would likely think that “her” ideas are not good enough. This directly lowers her self-esteem. The lower her self-esteem gets, the more fear she has in expressing her thoughts, and the less she’s willing to use her innovative mind. As the result, the creative thinking becomes less and less important to her since no one recognizes it, making her feel that it’s unnecessary or useless. Then, she practices less and less of her creative mind until it finally shuts down. With this being said, it is also likely to count low or lack of self-esteem as one of the creativity killers.
Cognitive Factors
Cognitive factors work closely with affective factors because the way a person thinks about self directly effects how the person feels. Self here refers to both the person’s personality and intellects. When we say “intellects”, it can easily bring us straight back to how teacher teaches in classroom whether it allows students to develop this creative ability or not. Most researches as well as experienced educators agree that teacher kills creativity when the teacher only teaches what but not how and why. With this way of instruction, students are not demonstrated with reasoning of how an object can come about. As a result, students can be limited in their vision, making their thinking ability unable to develop to their bests. Another factor suggested by Fryer, the author of Creative Teaching and Learning (1996), to hinder development of creativity is when a teacher interferes too much with students and not giving them enough space to work on their own. Bartel (2008) supported this and added that it is worse when teacher makes mistake by telling what and showing how to do without giving students opportunity to explore other possibilities by themselves. The very same principal applies when teacher does not allow students to think with using only direct instruction and without using questions, problem solving methods, or letting students have the firsthand experience (Bartel, 2008). Both Fryer and Bartel also agreed that the kind of instruction which only provides one side of the story also fails to encourage creativity. Teacher’s inability to offer another thought or diverse information helps to stop students from thinking with perspectives. As we can probably conclude from this information, cognitive factors that kill creativity significantly associate with how students’ are taught to be limited in the variety of possibilities in thinking. On top of that, many studies also indicated that assessment by standardized tests or examinations is not the way to promote creative mind since “the
accountability criteria that determine success or failure for schools and teachers are overwhelmingly based on formal tests, particularly covering English and maths, not on indicators that reflect pupils' creativity” (Baker, 2009).
Environmental Factors Many of previous studies are very much concerned with classroom environment that may not allow students’ innovative mind to work as effectively as it should. They said that how a classroom is run can determine how students’ creativity is developed. Fryer’s research (1996) indicated that students’ creativity is suppressed when feel constrained and when they are under pressure, either from school, from teacher, or from peers. It is always difficult for anyone to feel at ease under intense circumstances, isn’t? This basically means that students do need space to breathe and that the classroom with negativity does effect negatively on students’ creative minds. In addition, Fryer said there are other environmental factors that also effect students’ development of creativity; hence, “poor physical environment, lack of resources, too much television or video viewing out of school, time constraints, excessive obsession with tidiness on part of school, unnecessary rules” (1996). Looking all the factors that kill creativity, it is likely to conclude that limitation of creativity has a lot to do with limitation of students’ choices to think, to explore, to perform, and to practice as summarized in the table below.
TABLE 1 Factors that suppress creativity in classroom Affective Factors
Cognitive Factors
Environmental Factors
- No recognition of original ideas - Fear - Low/ lack of self-esteem
-
- Constraint - Intensity and pressure
Does not learn how/ why Teacher’s interference Unable to explore possibilities
-
No stimulation of thinking No firsthand experience No diverse information/new thoughts Formal tests
- Negative environment - Poor physical environment - Lack of resources
CREATIVITY BOOSTERS Creativity comes in unexpected times out of unexpected places (Goleman & Kaufman, 1992), yet it does not mean creativity comes out of nowhere for no apparent reason. The report All Our Future proposed that serious creative achievement relies on knowledge, control of materials and command of ideas; therefore, “creative education involves a balance between teaching knowledge and skills, and encouraging innovation” (NACCE, 1999). Hence, this section of the paper is about the factors that help promote creativity, which involve many elements as followed:
1) Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence As mentioned earlier, negative thinking about self hinders development of creativity. The other way around, positive thinking about self positively influences the innovative mind. With this positive feeling about self, a person has confidence – not fear – to share thoughts with peers, stimulating the person’s creative thinking.
2) Recognition of Originality To encourage students’ self-esteem, teacher must recognize students’ original ideas. This is to hint that owning idea is greatly accepted and very well cherished. Feeling good about sharing ideas, students then create positive image of self, build up self-esteem, and creativity finally follows.
3) Positive Environment To motivate and engage students as well as to encourage their esteem, positive feeling towards classroom is crucial (Morris 2006). A previous study mentioned that encouraging students’ creativity needs positive classroom climate (Edwards & Springate, 1995). Creating positive environment requires positive reinforcement and positive relationship between teacher and students. This helps students to feel confident when sharing their ideas. Moreover, good relationship can also light up classroom atmosphere, making students feel less intimidated by teacher’s existence for they can feel freer to speak up and be themselves.
4) Relaxing Environment This is actually one of the most important conditions necessary for creativity to develop. The same study (Edwards & Springate, 1995) indicated that not only the positive environment is needed, encouragement of creative mind also involves time and space. Students need to feel that they can do their best without having to worry about neither time nor grades. That is also about having some space. As mentioned before, creativity links to unconscious mind. It is important that students can have enough room to be playful and let their minds wonder around (Brown, 2008). Moreover, relaxing environment also means that even when students make mistakes, it’s still ok (Edward & Springate, 1995). This way, they can feel safe to explore and experiment until they can find the right solution by themselves.
5) Freedom, Choice, and Control
To have freedom to choose also means to have to think. This is because when a teacher tells students what to do without letting them choose, the teacher has already taken the opportunity for students to explore in thoughts on their own. This simply means that teacher has taken away the chance for students to practice the thinking. Moreover, to allow creativity to take place, students must be committed to the work (Fryer, 1996). Letting students choose allows them to do what they want to do. This way, students are automatically committed to the work since. Freedom, however, does not mean “whatever” because “creativity is not simply a matter of letting go. Serious creative achievement relies on knowledge, control of materials and command of ideas” (NACCE, 1999). This means that within the freedom, there has to be some ground rules to help students focus (Bartel, 2008).
6) Instructions that Stimulate Thinking Creative mind involves thinking. To practice it, teacher needs to help by using instruction that stimulates this ability, such as questionings, discovery learning, inquiry based learning, or problem solving.
7) Curiosity Curiosity simply makes students want to know and want to learn from within (Morris, 2006). Curiosity also encourages students to use innovative approach in finding new solution to the problem.
8) Expose to Diverse and New Thoughts Diverse information forces students into playing with ideas (Morris, 2006). It makes students unable to stick with same old routines since they have to try alternatives and fresh approaches.
9) Cultural Education Previous study (NCCCE, 2000) stated that creative development directly relates to cultural education. Students should be promoted positively with culture for its diversity, complexity and traditions. School “must enable them to understand and respect different cultural values and traditions and the processes of cultural change and development. The engine of cultural change is the human capacity for creative thought and action” (NACCE, 1999).
10) Creative Teacher There are two definitions to creative teaching (Morris, 2006): 1) teaching for creativity and 2) teaching creatively. However, without creative teaching, how can creativity be emphasized in class? Hence, “teachers cannot develop the creative abilities of their students if their own creative abilities are undiscovered or suppressed” (Morris, 2006).
CLASSROOM PRACTICE The classroom that emphasizes creativity is purely student-centered. Teacher needs to be able to encourage students’ development of creativity that involves affection, cognition, and environment. Thus, teacher is required with a lot of stamina to keep up with each and every student. As mentioned earlier, students need to feel positively towards self so they can love who they are and feel confident to share their ideas. Positive reinforcement is a must,
especially when students show their originality. This is to improve students’ self-esteem as well as to encourage each individual to be innovative. Adding to the positive reinforcement, positive atmosphere must be promoted. First, teacher can help by lighting up the classroom playful activities or playful decorations of classroom. Second, teacher should establish a positive relationship with students. To do so, both need to respect and trust each other. Teacher must be honest and fair and asks students to do the same. Second, democratic authority must be enforced in the class, where everyone is equal and is encouraged to speak and express oneself freely. To be creative, students should not be limited in their imaginations and ideas. Therefore, they have the absolute right to be who they want to be and feel that it is ok. To stimulate thinking skill, new thoughts and ideas should be exposed to broader students’ view, perhaps by using teaching method like inquiry-based-learning that requires teacher to “engage students with content in a way that fosters exploration, discovery, and critical thought” (Lasley, Matczynski, & Rowley, 2002, p. 142). For example, teacher might assign a project which requires students to create their own concepts. It may seem rather difficult at the start for students to develop a concept, but it is a great opportunity for them to learn about themselves, explore their thoughts and use their imagination freely. At the same time, they are encouraged to use thinking ability to analyze and form a work plan that suits their concepts. For them to achieve this goal, teacher must facilitate students by helping them to seek inspirations from within as well as from other sources. Teachers may use questions to inspire students to think and find solution to the problem. With this kind of teaching to promote creativity, a short term assessment or formal tests does not seem appropriate. However, as for the school system, teacher must find a
way to evaluate students’ achievement in class. For this matter, teacher may use authentic assessment that requires “engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively” (Wiggins, 1993). This way, teacher has to evaluate the process of development and the execution of students’ work – not how well they can remember.
CONCLUSION Creativity is crucial, especially in the world today that highly commands new thoughts and new inventions. Though it is sad to see how creative education has not been widely recognized even when people understand how significant it is, yet it is possible that teachers start doing something for students – helping them by promoting creativity in classrooms. Such matter is apparently nothing complicated, as many methods suggested in this paper to encourage creative mind are simple and practical. All the teachers need is the ability to communicate and listen as well as the ability to interest, engage and inspire students. They need to expertise in their fields and are able to stimulate curiosity and raise students’ self esteem (Morris, 2006). Moreover, teachers should always look back at themselves to see whether their teaching is effective. Above all, teachers must not fear. Sometimes, teachers fear to try new things as they are afraid of losing control over the class. But when you are afraid and you run your classroom with fear, there’s a possibility that you might pass on this fear to your students. What if one of your students becomes teacher? Then, this fear is passed on
and on until it becomes a loop of “ugly circle” where no one is allowed to be self or be original. Then, creative mind would never been put to use. The most important thing is teachers must not forget that what they’re doing as teacher to encourage students’ creativity is to make students love themselves, feel free of fear, and be inspired. This is because through education, students should not only learn the knowledge from textbooks, but they should also learn that it is ok to be different, embrace their individuality, and be creative.
“The roots of a creative society are in basic education. The sheer volume of facts to be digested by the students of today leaves little time for a deeper interrogation of their moral worth. The result has been a generation of technicians rather than visionaries, each one taking a career rather than an idea seriously. The answer must be reform in our educational methods so that students are encouraged to ask about “know-why” as well as “know-how”. Once the arts are restored to a more central role in educational institutions, there could be a tremendous unleashing of creative energy in other disciplines too.”
Michael D. Higgins (Morris, 2006)
REFERENCES Alter F., Hays, T., & O’Hara, R. (2009). Creative Arts Teaching and Practice: Critical Reflections of Primary School Teachers in Australia. International Journal of Education & the Arts, Vol. 10(9) Baker, M. (2009). Benefits of Creative Classrooms. In BBC News. Retrieved June 9, 2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8064306.stm Bartel, M. (2008). Ten Classroom Creativity Killers. In Teaching Creativity. Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/creativitykillers.html Brown, T. (2008). The Powerful Link Between Creativity and Play. In TED, Ideas Worth Spreading. Retrieved January 19, 2010 from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html Edwards, C. P. and Springgate, K.W. (1995). The Lion Comes out of the Stone: Helping Young Children Achieve Their Creative Potential. Dimensions of Early Childhood, Vol. 23(4), 24-29 Fritz, R. (1989). Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life. New York: Fawcett Books. Fryer, M. (1996). Creative Teaching and Learning. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Goleman, D. and Kaufman, P. (1992, 2007). The Art of Creativity. In Psychology Today. Retrieved August 16, 2009 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199203/the-art-creativity Kurtz, P. (2000). Humanist manifesto 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. Lasley, T.J., Matczynski, J.M., & Rowley, B.R. (2002). Instructional Models: Strategies for Teaching in a Diverse Society. CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Miller, R. (2009). A New Culture Needs a New Education. In Paths of Learning. Retrieved November 23, 2009 from
http://www.pathsoflearning.net/articles_A_New_Culture_Needs_a_New_Educati on.php Morris, W. (2006). Creativity - Its Place in Education. Future Edge Ltd. Retrieved August, 2009 from http://www.ijea.org/index.html Mueller, J. (2009). What is Authentic Assessment? In Authentic Assessment Toolbox. Retrieved February 9, 2010 from http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm National Advisory on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCE, 1999). All Our Future: Creativity, Culture, and Education. London. Robinson, K. Sir (2006). Ken Robinson Says School Kills Creativity. In TED, Ideas Worth Spreading. Retrieved December 14, 2009 from http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html Robinson, K. Sir (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. USA: Viking Penguin (Penguin Group). Robinson, K. Sir and Aronica, L. (2009). Transform Education? Yes, We Must. In The Huffington Post. Retrieved December 14, 2009 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sir-ken-robinson/transform-education-yesw_b_157014.html Wiggins, G. P. (1993). Assessing student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.