The Really Useful Creativity Book

Dominic Wyse, Pam Dowson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135201548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

What is creativity and how do we teach it?

The Really Useful Creativity Book provides approaches and ideas that will enable children to develop their creativity. Written for the primary school teacher, student or trainee teacher, the book shows you how creativity can flourish in your classroom.

With examples of practice included throughout, the issues covered include:

• everyday creativity – ideas to get started on straight away
• planning – with ideas for cross-curricular planning, and many other ways to plan for creativity
• creativity and the environment – starting with the classroom and school, then going further afield
• creative Partnerships – working with other people to stimulate children's creativity
• the drama of creativity – showing how teachers can adopt the mantle of the expert
• thinking about creativity – thinking skills for your children, and ways of thinking for you.

This lively, stimulating book will help busy teachers working with the National Curriculum to develop children's creativity.

1 Defining creativity

When you think about the word ‘creativity’, what thoughts does it spark? Perhaps famous creative people such as Picasso, Einstein or Mozart. Maybe you see creativity as particularly related to the work of composers, writers and artists. You may feel that creativity is something that only some talented people have, or that it is something that we all have. Maybe you see an important role for creativity in areas like business, innovation and enterprise. Even in the first few sentences of this book, we have covered a wide range of concepts that arguably are part of what creativity is. However, for a book that is all about creativity, if possible we need to establish a definition. Here’s the one from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): ‘Creative power or faculty; ability to create’. This definition begs the question, how do we define creative? When ‘creative’ is used as an adjective, the first definition from the OED is ‘Having the quality of creating, given to creating; of or pertaining to creation; originative’, which naturally is closely linked to the definition for ‘creativity’. When ‘creative’ is used as a noun, one of the definitions states that a ‘creative’ is a person whose job involves creative work. Another noun definition refers rather technically to creative material produced for advertising campaigns – for example, ‘the creative was designed by agency Saatchi and Saatchi’. ‘Creative’ in this context refers to the materials used.

The ‘ability to create’, which is part of the definition of creativity, is a seemingly straightforward and attractive idea for our purposes. Anybody can create something, therefore everybody can be creative: creativity is a human ability. But what is this ability like and how is it demonstrated? To answer these questions, we need to move away from dictionary definitions to more extended scholarly work on the subject.

Creativity research

A significant amount of influential research on creativity has come from the United States. The modern age of creativity research in America began with Guilford’s presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1950. Guilford began by making a close link between abilities and creative people, something he also described as a series of character traits. He described the neglect of the study of creativity as ‘appalling’ (1987, p. 34). Guilford noted the importance of creative talent to industry, science, engineering and government. A key feature of his presentation was that creativity can be expected, ‘however feeble, of almost all individuals’ (ibid., p. 36). Research through the 1970s and 1980s was largely concerned with more detailed attempts to define and, ultimately, measure creativity. The Torrance tests of creativity were one of the best-known examples of such measurement. Feldman and Benjamin (2006) locate this work in the tradition of psychometric assessment and point out that the frequently cited ideas of ‘technological inventiveness’ and ‘ideational fluency’ emerged from this strand of research.

One definition that has proved to be influential was established by Vernon (1989, p. 94): ‘Creativity means a person’s capacity to produce new or original ideas, insights, restructurings, inventions, or artistic objects, which are accepted by experts as being of scientific, aesthetic, social, or technological value.’ The idea that creativity requires originality is important. However, originality does not exist in a vacuum; it is inspired by the field of thought that has gone before it, and that surrounds it in its present. A key question for people as they judge something is the extent to which it is original or not: this of course can be subject to much disagreement. As with Guilford, Vernon’s view reflects a belief that creativity resides with the ‘person’. However, the idea that creativity has to be ‘accepted’ by others points to later ideas about the significance of the societal context for creativity.

One of the most influential figures in the creativity research world is Mihály Csikszentmihályi. Csikszentmihályi’s early work (1990) focused on personality, motivation and the discovery of new problems. His research with several hundred artists sought to understand why some produced work that would be judged to be creative, while others did not. As far as personality was concerned, it was found that more creative students had the following features: they were sensitive; they were open to experiences and impulses; they were self-sufficient and not particularly interested in social norms or acceptance. But the trait that most consistently distinguished these artists from others was ‘a cold and aloof disposition’ (ibid., p. 192). Even at this stage, Csikszentmihályi recognised that the fact that these were artists, and not scientists or another group of people, was significant and that these findings probably would not generalise to other groups.

Like other researchers, Csikszentmihályi and his team failed to find any relationship between traditional measures of intelligence and criteria for creative accomplishment. Csikszentmihályi realised that for many creative individuals, the formulation of a problem is more important than its solution. Thus, he set out to investigate the ‘discovery orientation’ of artists. When presented with visually interesting objects and drawing materials, a group of students were encouraged to do what they wanted, and finish when they had produced a drawing that they liked. The variables used to measure the students’ discovery orientation included the number of objects that they touched: the higher the number, the more likely it was that the problem was being approached from a discovery orientation. Another variable was the number of changes the person introduced into the drawing process. Established artists and teachers rated drawings produced by students who had used discovery orientation much more highly in terms of originality than other students who had used a more predictable problem-solving approach. In terms of artistic career success, some seven years later the correlation was still significant.

Csikszentmihályi’s early work through a person-centred approach led ultimately to the view that this was not the full picture. Instead, he proposed that the usual question ‘what is creativity?’ may have to be replaced by ‘where is creativity?’ (1990, p. 200). His well-known ‘systems perspective’ (p. 205) sees creativity as the result of interaction between three subsystems: the person, the field and the domain. The domain is a system that has a set of rules. This might be a subject, such as mathematics, or a religion, a game or a sport. For example, western classical music is a ‘domain’ that requires the composition of sound and silence to create pieces of music for the benefit of performers and audiences. The ‘field’ is part of the social system which has the power to influence the structure of the domain. Music competitions such as the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and Workshop are part of the way in which the field of classical music has influence. Entry to music colleges and the scholarships that they provide are also part of the influence of the field. The most important function of the field is to maintain the domain as it is, but the field will also act as a gatekeeper to allow changes to the domain to take place. The role of the person is to provide variations in the domain which will be judged by the field. Variations of this kind represent creativity.

Teresa Amabile has also made a very significant contribution to the creativity research field. Because of her dissatisfaction with standardised creativity tests, she used tests or activities in which participants did things such as make paper collages or write haiku. These were then judged for creativity and other dimensions by experts, such as studio artists and practising poets. Amabile calls this ‘consensual assessment’ (1990, p. 65): ‘A product or response is creative to the extent that appropriate observers independently agree it is creative. Appropriate observers are those familiar with the domain in which the product was created or the response articulated’ (ibid., p. 65). The conceptual definition of creativity that she used was as follows: ‘A product or response will be judged as creative to the extent that (a) it is both a novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable response to the task at hand, and (b) the task is heuristic rather than algorithmic’ (p. 66). Amabile makes the point that although creativity is often very difficult for judges to define, they can recognise it when they see it. They also have considerable agreement about their judgements, particularly as regards products, though less so for creativity in persons or processes. She also correctly argued, in our view, that creativity is a continuous rather than a discontinuous quality which begins with everyday creativity at one end and ends with Einstein, Mozart and Picasso at the other end. The differences are not the presence of creativity per se but the abilities, cognitive styles, motivational levels and circumstances of the different people concerned.

The move away from defining creativity as a fixed entity to one that is dependent on people’s judgements has relevance to the context of school classrooms. If it is possible to teach creativity, then teachers are going to play an important role. Teachers are experts in their subjects, which they have studied at degree level and beyond, and they also have significant knowledge about child development, which gives them appropriate knowledge with which to judge children’s creativity, something that is akin to Craft’s (2000) ‘little c’ creativity.

The definition of creativity that we adopt for this book is a slightly modified version of Vernon’s (1989):

Creativity – a person’s capacity to produce new or original ideas, insights, restructurings, inventions, or artistic objects, which are accepted by suitably qualified people as being of scientific, aesthetic, social, or technological value.

If a child is to be judged as creative, then they have to demonstrate the ability to create. This means that they will demonstrate original thinking, which will often, but not always, result in tangible products. A consensual judgement has to be made as to whether creativity has taken place. In the case of schools, this judgement will normally be made by class teachers.

There are a number of other terms that are common in education and are closely related to creativity:

Creative teaching – this is teaching that demonstrates original thinking and actions. Creative teaching may enhance children’s creativity but may not. Teaching that is receptive to pupils’ creativity is probably more likely to enhance children’s creativity than creative teaching per se.

Teaching for creativity – this is the kind of teaching that features in courses such as creative writing. Students are helped by teachers to be more creative in arts subjects such as music composition, art, design, etc. There is perhaps evidence here that creativity can be taught, or at the very least facilitated.

Creative learning is a term that has become important in England over the last few years, and one that we address in the rest of this chapter.

Creative learning

In 1999, a report commissioned by government, called All our futures: Creativity, culture and education (NACCCE Report) (NACCCE, 1999), argued that a national strategy for creative and cultural education was essential to unlock the potential of every young person (we shall address the extent to which the national strategies have achieved this in Chapter 8, ‘Creativity in the primary curriculum’). One of the most positive developments following the NACCCE report was the national Creative Partnerships initiative. In our view, much of the practice that emerged from the Creative Partnerships initiative was excellent; indeed, some of the examples in the remaining chapters in the book have been inspired by Creative Partnerships activities and ideas. This chapter, though, continues with its aim to explore definitions and understandings.

In the early days of Creative Partnerships, creative learning was the term that dominated its work. Its use can still be seen in the research section of the Creative Partnerships website:

Creative Partnerships comprises a complex programme of creative learning opportunities intended to develop and mainstream creative teaching and learning, and result in changes across the school, the curriculum and the wider community.

Creative Partnerships programmes are designed to challenge and develop learning practice by:

• exploring creative risk-taking and innovation
• exploring what education for the 21st century might be
• evidencing and disseminating methodologies for creative learning
• developing the capacity of the cultural and creative sectors to work effectively in schools.

(Creative Partnerships, 2008, online)

The term ‘creative learning’ no longer appears on the ‘What is Creative Partnerships?’ part of the site, where the term ‘creativity’ is now preferred.

Creative Partnerships is the Government’s flagship creativity programme for schools and young people, managed by Arts Council England and funded by the DCSF [Department for Children, Schools and Families] and DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport]. It aims to develop:

• the creativity of young people, raising their aspirations and achievements
• the skills of teachers and their ability to work with creative practitioners
• schools’ approaches to culture, creativity and partnership working; and
• the skills, capacity and sustainability of the creative industries.

In the early years of Creative Partnerships, Dominic Wyse and David Spendlove were involved in research which we shall describe shortly. One of the early tasks was to examine the definitions that were being used, and in particular ‘creative learning’, which was a term that did not appear to come from the research field of creativity that we have reviewed in this chapter. If we were to carry out research with a focus on creative learning, we wanted to know where the term originated and what it meant. What is more, if Creative Partnerships were to evaluate their work, then a clear definition seemed necessary. Spendlove and Wyse researched what teachers’ and creatives’ perceptions of creative learning were.

The research questions were as follows:

1. How is creative learning defined by policy makers and in the research literature?
2. What are the views of participants in two creative partnerships of the nature of creative learning?
3. What barriers are there to creativity and creative learning?
4. How successful is the research framework in supporting development of research understanding?
5. To what extent are Creative Partnerships informed by research evidence?
6. What recommendations can be made for future policy and planning?

This chapter focuses on questions 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Creative partnership 1

A total of 25 primary and secondary schools were involved in creative partnership 1. All schools worked in partnership with creatives on projects that were designed to enhance pupils’ creative learning. Research support for the schools was initially provided by a team of seven research mentors who had a range of subject and phase specialisms and who all worked in an education department of a university in the region. The research mentors were each allocated four days, for each of the three schools that they worked with, to support the enhancement of the evidence base for the schools’ creative work. Where possible, schools were partnered with research mentors who had subject expertise related to the curriculum areas that were linked with the projects the schools were carrying out.

An introductory conference was organised to begin the process of research training for the teachers involved. The conference covered some aspects of research on creativity and some introductory methodological issues. A research framework was introduced and the team of research mentors began some preliminary planning with their schools.

The research framework identified three phases where summative documentary evidence was required. The first phase involved meetings between the mentors and the schools, and required them to agree a research plan. All schools prepared research plans based on their creative projects. The second-phase meetings involved discussions about progress, and a focus on data that had been collected and how those data might be analysed. The final-phase meetings involved preparations for a poster presentation at an annual conference, which required the schools to identify key findings from the research and more general findings about the practical aspects of the projects. The potential significance of the role of school managers in relation to creative learning resulted in the decision to hold additional interviews with eight school managers from the partnership. These interviews, which were taped and transcribed, included questions about how the headteachers defined creative learning.

Creative partnership 2

A total of 25 primary and secondary schools were involved in creative partnership 2. The authors were commissioned to carry out a substantial evaluation of the work of creative partnership 2. The evaluation methods included focus-group interviews with teachers and creatives from all the teams in the partnership, a focus-group interview with the facilitators, and analysis of documents. The documents included a self-evaluation questionnaire that all partners had to complete which encouraged reflection on the success of their creative projects. All interviews were taped and transcribed.

An introductory conference was organised to extend research training for the teachers (called ‘action researchers’ in creative partnership 2) and research mentors who were involved. The conference covered some aspects of research on creativity and creative learning, and some introductory methodological issues. A pro forma was devised to monitor changing perceptions of creative learning, by action researchers and creatives, to be completed at each of four phases. The research framework was introduced and the team of research mentors, consisting of three university staff and three creative professionals, began some preliminary planning with their schools.

The research framework identified four phases where summative documentary evidence was required. The first phase involved meetings between the mentors and the schools and required them to agree a research plan. All 25 schools prepared research plans based on their creative projects. The second-phase meetings discussed progress and a focus on data that had been collected. The third phase focused on analysis of data, and the final-phase meetings involved preparations for a dissemination event.

Defining creative learning

The teachers’, headteachers’ and creatives’ definitions of creative learning covered a very wide range of concepts. One of the teacher action researchers suggested that creative learning was ‘fun, enjoyable, liberating, relevant, child centred, empowering, encourages development of questioning/problem-solving skills, imaginative ideas valued, learning styles provided for, inclusive, raises self-esteem/motivation/achievement, challenges ideas/beliefs’. This is arguably a powerful list of desirable aspects of teaching and learning, but to what extent is it unique to creative learning as opposed to other types of learning? Some of the participants struggled to offer a definition at all and seemed almost overawed by the potential range of the concept. Others argued from the point of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Defining creativity
• 2. Organising teaching for creativity
• 3. Everyday creativity
• 4. The local environment
• 5. Creative partnerships
• 6. The Mantle of the Expert
• 7. Thinking skills
• 8. Creativity in the primary curriculum
• References