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Welcome to my Padlet for our Focus Group! You may add comments directly below the posts & articles. I want to know what YOU think about creativity in our workplace!
Thank you!
Alissa

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Took RISKS

Encouraged CHANGE

Accepted FAILURE

Opened our MINDS and our HEARTS

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This article is part of a series focusing on the learning continuum, brought to you with support from The Wallace Foundation.

By Sandra A. Trach
Communicator
December 2016, Volume 40, Issue 4

Principals serve as lead culture builders who design school communities through effective forms of teacher leadership. By maintaining a laser-like focus on teaching and learning, the principal communicates these top priorities of the school.

Successful principals manage systems, structures and time with precision and synchronicity so they can carry out their commitment to supporting teaching and learning. But how can principals accomplish this in an endless and unforgiving stream of competing demands?

The Wallace Foundation's key tenets of effective principal leadership include cultivating leadership in others. Successful principals put their staff first by engaging in a shared leadership model and distributing leadership opportunities as a usual course of business, thereby promoting trust, open communication, transparency and collaboration, which in turn elevates their learning community through teacher leadership. There are practical ways of achieving this goal, but it takes disciplined principal leadership with a relentless focus on teaching and learning. Consider these examples:

1. Accelerant of professional learning. The principal must regularly watch for growth opportunities. For example, the principal may have observed a lesson where data informed personalized instruction. The principal should provide immediate positive feedback to the teacher, note that this practice would benefit all teachers, ask the teacher to share knowledge and experience at a staff meeting, and in turn encourage other teachers to visit this classroom. Effective principals must serve as agents of positive change in formal ways, such as asking teachers to present ideas and information to one another, and informal instances such as classroom walkthroughs and hallway conversations. The staff will see that the principal spots effective practices and cultivates professional growth by creating shared professional learning opportunities.

2. Raising the level of rigor. The principal must hold a high bar of expectation for students and staff alike. This takes the form of asking questions that start with phrases such as, "I wonder..." or "Tell me more about..." When the principal models deep thinking in a learning mode, rather than a supervisory mode, it promotes an environment of mutual curiosity and reflection. Teachers benefit from seeing their principal as the lead learner-one who drives inquiry and thoughtful interest in teaching and learning. While strong classroom lessons include clear teaching objectives and effective forms of instruction and assessment, there is no replacement for a level playing field where the principal and teacher reflect together in the very moment of a student's learning. This is an authentic way to hoist rigor in all classrooms-through observation, inquiry and shared reflection as norms and actions in the learning environment.

3. Teachers as professional leaders and learners. Often the most useful teaching and learning strategies can be found inside the school. The principal should be a conduit to connecting teachers by creating simple and effective ways of supporting one another. For example, the principal might create an informal peer observation system or spark a lesson study model. School leaders must seek and spotlight evidence-based practices, and then create authentic and trusting ways for staff to share. If the principal attempts to lead solely through supervision and directives, teachers will hesitate to engage and share openly about their practice. Instead, the principal should create structures for leading and learning, such as professional learning communities, leadership teams, data teams, teacher-led professional learning and peer observation opportunities, to support all staff in any stage of their professional growth and development.

4. Extending and receiving help. The principal is responsible for creating a learning atmosphere where the culture helps itself to reflect, extend mutual support and solve problems. Principals need to have an open-door policy and be available for informal conversations. Being immersed in the classroom culture and life of the school as a daily learning routine is the first step toward trust building and transparency with staff. One important strategy is appreciation. Principals can never thank their teachers too much. If a school leader wants staff to extend support to one another, it begins with the principal modeling and demonstrating an appreciation and sincere understanding of the joys and challenges of teaching and learning.

5. A strengths-based perspective. The principal should be the champion of every student, staff and parent. This can only happen if the principal sees the gifts and potential in each person and each moment. An effective and respected principal capably turns adversity into advocacy, challenge into change and struggle into strength. How a principal starts the day, greets students and staff, sends messages to the community, supports the school in all endeavors, and ends the day- matters. Engaging students, staff and parents through strengths will reinforce: we are a team, we learn together, we learn to high standards, we are leaders and learners, we all benefit from help, and we are stronger together. This is the definition of principal as culture builder, and the key to success is teacher leadership.

Sandra A. Trach is Special Assistant to the Superintendent, Lexington Public Schools, Lexington, Massachusetts.
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Copyright © 2016. National Association of Elementary School Principals. No part of the articles in NAESP magazines, newsletters, or website may be reproduced in any medium without the permission of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. For more information, view NAESP's reprint policy.

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Build School Culture through Teacher Leadership | NAESP

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This article is part of a series focusing on the learning continuum, brought to you with support from The Wallace Foundation. By Sandra A. Trach Communicator December 2016, Volume 40, Issue 4 Principals serve as lead culture builders who design school communities through effective forms of teacher leadership.

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Novel & Different and the

Freedom to Express Talent & Vision

(Bilton, 2007, p. 3)

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Creative classrooms don’t just look different, they FEEL different

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Creative classrooms don’t just look different, they FEEL different

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1. Increase the frequency of accidents that could turn out to be fortunate

2. Increase awareness of the accidents that do occur

3. Increase the company's domain of sagacity to turn more accidents into fortunate ones

(Robinson & Stern, 1997, p. 190)

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School leaders need to foster a culture that supports creativity in the classroom

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School leaders need to foster a culture that supports creativity in the classroom

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Few terms in education are as ill-defined as . A 2010 report on the study of creativity and innovation in education within European Union (EU) member countries (Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010), found that while educators touted creativity as a transversal and cross-curricular skill, they struggled to implement new practices, assessments, and technologies to support its development. The authors determined that five factors impacted the potential for educators to help students develop creativity:

1. A clear definition of creativity, as applied to curriculum, does not exist.

2. The institutionalization of grades and an exam-based culture prevents forms of assessment that would encourage creativity.

3. Teacher education and professional learning programs rarely provide an adequate foundation for the development of classroom practices that foster student creativity.

4. Digital technologies could serve as an enabler of creativity, but many teachers feel that they neither possess the sufficient capacity nor access to take advantage of these tools.

5. School leaders need to foster a culture that supports creativity in the classroom.

Discussions about the need for student creativity have dominated education conversations since at least the turn of the century. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists creativity as one of the critical skills that students should develop alongside critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Educational thought leader, Michael Fullan, promotes creativity as a critical global competency. The 2016 Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum listed creativity as the third most important skill to possess by 2020; and their 2018 report, Towards a Reskilling Revolution, argues that success in the future requires "nothing less than a societal mindset shift for people to become creative, curious, agile lifelong learners, comfortable with continuous change" (p. 18).

From this documentation, it appears as though consensus around the need for creativity may exist. However, education as a sector has not yet defined what it might look like in practice -- despite an influx of technologies and devices that purportedly foster creativity. While digital tools may offer a means for expressing creativity, and do present opportunities to design a more creative culture, creativity needs to be viewed as a system of change involving cognition, neuroscience, and culture (Cachia et al., 2010).

In their EU report, Cachia et al. (2010) define creativity from a cognitive perspective, describing it as the process of balancing originality and value as well as the skill to make new connections and generate new ideas. On the other hand, according to the field of neuroscience, creativity results from combining convergent and divergent thinking (Gregory, Hardiman, Yarmolinskaya, Rinne, & Limb, 2013). Unfortunately, schools have valued and assessed the former rather than the latter. Within a traditional system, students seek out and produce a single "right" answer. Creativity, however, results from divergent thinking -- taking the domain of knowledge acquired through convergent thinking and then applying it in diverse ways. This formula for creativity, though, brings us back to the challenge of encouraging schools to develop creative culture. To inspire, or "unleash" creativity (Kraft, 2005), requires a social environment that encourages risk taking, time, autonomy, and developmental feedback (Hennessey & Amibile, 2010).

Professor Mitch Resnick from the MIT Media Lab argues that everything we need to know about fostering creativity can be learned from studying kindergarten. Historically, students in kindergarten spend their time iterating through a cycle of imagining, creating, playing, and sharing (Resnick, 2007). Through this cycle, they are encouraged to imagine new concepts, create a physical manifestation, play with their ideas, share their learning with their peers, and then begin again. As young children spiral through this process, they develop as creative thinkers and problem solvers (Resnick, 2007).

Today, apps, devices, and the internet have created unlimited possibilities for imagining, creating, playing, and sharing. If creativity is viewed as a system of change, and not something that should be confined to a single course or project, then we might start to envision an entirely new model for school.
References:
Cachia, R., Ferrari, A., Ala-Mutka, K., & Punie, Y. (2010). Creative learning and innovative teaching: Final report on the study of creativity and innovation in education in the EU member states. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. doi:10.2791/52913

Gregory, E., Hardiman, M., Yarmolinskaya, J., Rinne, L., & Limb, C. (2013). Building creative thinking in the classroom: From research to practice. International Journal of Educational Research, 62, 43-50. doi:0.1016/j.ijer.2013.06.003

Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. M. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61(1), 569-598. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100416

Kraft, U. (2005). Unleashing creativity. Scientific American Mind, 16(1), 16-23. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24997593

Resnick, M. (2007). All I really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in kindergarten. Presented at the Creativity Cognition conference. doi:10.1145/1254960.125496

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Few terms in education are as ill-defined as . A 2010 report on the study of creativity and innovation in education within European Union (EU) member countries (Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010), found that while educators touted creativity as a transversal and cross-curricular skill, they struggled to implement new practices, assessments, and technologies to support its development.

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"Everyone is creative in some way"

"Creative skills can be learned and enhanced"

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If you search the Internet for "Creative Problem Solving," you'll find evidence of many variations, all of which may be traced back to the work that was started by Alex Osborn in the 1940s, developed with Sid Parnes in the 1950s, and nurtured at SUNY Buffalo State and the Creative Education Foundation.

The diversity of approaches to the creative problem solving process that have developed since is a testimony to the power of the idea. While many models exist, the Creative Education Foundation focuses on an evolution of the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving process called the CPS Learner's Model.

Based on the Osborn-Parnes process, the CPS Model uses plain language and recent research. The basic structure is comprised of four stages with a total of six explicit process steps. Each step uses divergent and convergent thinking.

Stage

Step

Purpose

CLARIFY
Explore the Vision

Identify the goal, wish, or challenge.

Gather Data

Describe and generate data to enable a clear understanding of the challenge.

Formulate Challenges

Sharpen awareness of the challenge and create challenge questions that invite solutions.

IDEATE
Explore Ideas

Generate ideas that answer the challenge questions.

DEVELOP
Formulate Solutions

To move from ideas to solutions. Evaluate, strengthen, and select solutions for best "fit."

IMPLEMENT
Formulate a Plan

Explore acceptance and identify resources and actions that will support implementation of the selected solution(s).

Learner's Model based on work of G.J. Puccio, M. Mance, M.C. Murdock, B. Miller, J. Vehar, R. Firestien, S. Thurber, & D. Nielsen (2011)

Core Principles of Creative Problem Solving

CPS begins with two assumptions:

Everyone is creative in some way.

Creative skills can be learned and enhanced.

The core principles are:

Divergent and Convergent Thinking Must be Balanced - Keys to creativity are learning ways to identify and balance expanding and contracting thinking (done separately), and knowing when to practice them.

Ask Problems as Questions - Solutions are more readily invited and developed when challenges and problems are restated as open-ended questions with multiple possibilities. Such questions generate lots of rich information, while closed-ended questions tend to elicit confirmation or denial. Statements tend to generate limited or no response at all.

Defer or Suspend Judgment - As Osborn learned in his early work on brainstorming, the instantaneous judgment in response to an idea shuts down idea generation. There is an appropriate and necessary time to apply judgement when converging.

Focus on "Yes, and" rather than "No, but" - When generating information and ideas, language matters. "Yes, and" allows continuation and expansion, which is necessary in certain stages of CPS. The use of the word "but" - preceded by "yes" or "no" - closes down conversation, negating everything that has come before it.

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The CPS Process - Creative Education Foundation

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If you search the Internet for "Creative Problem Solving," you'll find evidence of many variations, all of which may be traced back to the work that was started by Alex Osborn in the 1940s, developed with Sid Parnes in the 1950s, and nurtured at SUNY Buffalo State and the Creative Education Foundation.

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Young people in Finland came fifth among the OECD countries that participated in the PISA 2015 assessment on collaborative problem solving. This suggests that Finnish youth have basic skills and knowledge to cope in the world of work that highlights growingly multi-, inter- and transprofessional collaboration. Besides collaboration, imagination, creativity and critical thinking are also increasingly in demand in the world of work.

In the following, I draw from ideas on the standard definition of creativity, divergent thinking, collaborative learning and constitutional rights to propose three steps for schools to teach creative thinking.
Creativity as Divergent Thinking and More
A standard definition of creativity claims that for an idea, an artefact or a performance to count as creative, it need to be original and appropriate for a particular context (Runco & Jaeger 2012) be it astrophysics or contemporary choreography. An expanded view on this standard bipartite definition adds 'non-obviousness' as a third element (Simonton 2012).

Already in 1950, the American psychologist Joy Paul Guilford saw that creative acts are instances of learning. That is because they include probing of ideas that are not yet known to us. We learn as we explore ideas. Guildford (1950; 1968) proposed that creativity entails "divergent production" (divergent thinking), which means addressing problems with multiple solutions in contrast to convergent thinking or an attempt to solve a problem with a single, right answer. Divergent thinking is related to playfulness that includes freedom, spontaneous acts, and enjoyment (Liberman 1965).

Yet, creativity is not the same as divergent thinking (Runco & Acar 2012). Besides generating novel ideas, creativity also includes the evaluation of such ideas to spot their appropriateness within a particular domain (Runco & Acar 2012; Sternberg 2006). In addition, critical reflection and practical planning are needed to vision how the creative idea is materialised be it a theatre production or a solution to collect plastic waste from the world's oceans.

While deep expertise in distinct disciplines is needed, any complex task from devising a theatre production to solving wicked problems such as global warming requires teamwork. To contribute towards the solving of intricate problems, trans-professional co-reflection and co-creation are needed to come up with surprising and systemic solutions. Critical discussions, which are an important part of collaborative learning processes, enhance creativity (Adams Ellis 2016).

In the light of these fragmented ideas on creativity, divergent thinking and collaboration, how should learning and teaching look like at schools to enhance students' creative thinking?
Creativity, Collaboration and Critical Reflection
Creativity and criticalness need to be understood as approaches to life that are part of the child's intellectual composition, which needs practice and challenges to be of any use. Theme- and phenomenon-based learning together with collaborative learning and arts-based learning provide holistic possibilities to practice both creativity and critical thinking - and they should be practiced hand in hand.

Thus, children and young people need collaborative learning environments that are open to the probing of ideas. Such probing helps them enhance the permeability of their cognitive structures. It also encourages divergent thinking and intertextual playfulness, which both help tease out original and non-obvious ideas. It also provides opportunities for critical co-reflection to evaluate the appropriateness of such ideas for particular contexts or topics that are being studied.

At schools, learning in and through the arts should be encouraged to nurture the creative potential of children. While there are good reasons to study different art forms for their own sake, it is equally important to bring the arts in dialogue with other subjects and use artistic inquiry processes as a means to explore and reflect upon significant life issues. Having said that, it is worthy to keep in mind that creative minds can produce novel ideas and beauty but they can also generate hideous destruction from nuclear bombs to gas chambers. Therefore, it is crucial that creativity is taught hand in hand with ethics if we want creative minds to do us, our fellow animals or the future of this planet any good.
Embracing Uncertainty, Mistakes and Incompleteness
Creating something new means that you are on an uncertain and wobbly ground approaching something that is not yet known. It takes curiosity, courage and patience to be creative. In creativity, just like in critical thinking, one is never ready. You can always probe further, learn more and refine ideas. Reaching the final completion is always deferred, and as a person you humbly accept that you are always incomplete.

At school, such incompleteness needs to be embraced as a source of inspiration for growth rather than seeing it as a problem and a reason to give a student a "bad" mark. Children need to learn early on that developing as creative and critical thinkers is a life-long process toward self-improvement. Failing from time to time is part of such process. Part of accepting one's incompleteness includes accepting one's mistakes and failures. From mistakes, we can learn a lot about how things work - and also about ourselves.

At school, children should learn self-compassion and embrace their imperfections. Worrying about making mistakes and hiding one's incompleteness is incredibly tiring and takes one's focus from more important matters. Therefore, learning metacognitive skills such as self-reflection is all important, and mistakes and imperfections need to be embraced at school as opportunities for learning.

In Finland, the basic right to education and culture is granted in the Constitution. In addition, the Constitution includes a prohibition of discrimination. Therefore, also educational policy in Finland highlights equity. The constitutional premise of the educational policy aims to ensure that everyone has a right to participate in learning, strengthen one's cultural and social capital, develop their creative and critical skills and strive towards wellbeing and good life.
Rest and Recuperation
In Time Magazine, Kevin McSpadden wrote that we now have a shorter attention span than a "notoriously ill-focused goldfish" due to "affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain" (McSpadden 14.5.2015). In addition, research suggests that children experience information overload (Akin 1998). In today's world such overload - especially the combination of omnipresence and fragmentation of information-makes it difficult to understand issues and effectively make decisions (Yang, Chen and Hong 2003). Researchers David Bawden and Lyn Robinson note that information overload "is usually associated with a loss of control over the situation, and sometimes with feelings of being overwhelmed. In the extreme, it can lead to damage to health" (2009, 183). Idleness and rest are necessary for a mind to work creatively and critically (Hakala 2013; 2002). No-one is creative or even productive 8 hours without breaks, rest and some variation. Students need time for recuperation.
Three Steps that Schools Can Do
Thus, what steps should schools take to turn them into environments that enhance creativity and critical thinking?

First of all, future schools should provide learning environments that are open to the probing of ideas in ways that enhance the permeability of the learners' cognitive structures, encourage divergent thinking, intertextual playfulness, and critical co-reflection to help tease out multiple ideas that are original and non-obvious and appropriate for particular contexts or topics that are studied.

Learning in and through the arts needs to be integrated in the school day and cost-free after school activities. This includes the opening of the school's boundaries to society and establishing multi-professional collaboration and partnerships between the school and community. This could include new funding partnership models that combine municipal funding, pool-funding from foundations, and private funding.

This can be done, indeed as researchers in a recently published ArtsEqual policy brief have suggested, by turning schools into large cultural centres, where schools and professionals from arts and cultural institutions collaborate to provide high-quality, diverse arts and cultural education that is equally available to all. When done appropriately, this will enhance the cultural capital of children and young people including their skills in creativity and critical thinking and their capability to strive towards wellbeing.

Secondly, we need to get rid of stigmatizing mistakes, failure and difference at school and steer children away from building fake facades to hide their incompleteness or their inability to meet hegemonic standards. This calls for sensitivity and attention not only to gaps of opportunities but also to social mechanisms that hinder trouble-free participation. Mistakes, failure, incompleteness and difference need to be embraced at school as opportunities for self-reflection, learning, growth and richness.

To ensure that schools operate as fair and trouble-free environments where everyone can participate in learning on equal terms, schools must take seriously the intersectionality of identities of students. Schools must identify and remove mechanisms of inequality, structural discrimination, injustice and bullying that hinder learning, cultural participation, creativity, self-expression and criticalness due to either ignorance on diversity of identities or blatant bigotry-be it homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia or ableism. Such change needs to start from every teacher's self-reflection on their personal prejudices.

Third, to counterbalance information overload and its negative side-effects not only on the quality of creativity and criticalness but also on children's health and wellbeing, school days should not be overly fragmented. Rather, they should be constructed around a few themes that are studied over the day. This is also the ethos of the new curriculum in Finland. In addition, students need moments of rest during the school day. Relaxation, meditation, mindfulness and active drifting - preferably in the nature-provide new energy, refresh students' focus and also allow time for unexpected associations and improbable connections to emerge. Indeed, a recent study at Stanford University suggests that reduced activity in executive-control regions of the brain contributes towards better creative outcomes (Saggar et al. 2015).

This article is an elaborated version of the statement that I had prepared for the panel in the international seminar The Benefits and Opportunities of Extended Education organised by Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture at the National Museum, Helsinki, 13.3.2018.
Professor Kai Lehikoinen leads Uniarts Helsinki's CERADA Center for Educational Research and Academic Development in the Arts. He is also Vice-Director of ArtsEqual Research Initiative and Team Leader for the research group Arts, Welfare, Health & Care. References
Adams Ellis, V. 2016. "Introducing the Creative Learning Principles: Instructional Tasks Used to Promote Rhizomatic Learning Through Creativity." The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. 89 (4-5), 125-134, doi: 10.1080/00098655.2016.1170448.

Akin, L. 1998. "Information Overload and Children: A Survey of Texas Elementary School Students." School Library Media Research 1, 1-15.

Bawden, D. and Robinson, L. 2009. "The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies." Journal of Information Science 35 (180), 180-191.

Guilford, J. P. 1950. "Creativity." American Psychologist, 5, 444-454.

Guilford, J. P. 1968. Creativity, intelligence and their educational implications. San Diego, CA: EDITS/Knapp.

Hakala, J. 2002. Luova prosessi tieteessä. Tampere: Gaudeamus.

Hakala, J. 2013. Luova laiskuus. Helsinki: Gummerus.

Lieberman, J. N. 1965. "Playfulness and Divergent Thinking: An Investigation of their Relationship at the Kindergarten Level." The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development 107 (2), 219-224, doi: 10.1080/00221325.1965.10533661.

McSpadden, K. "You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish." Time. 14.5.2015. http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/

Non-discrimination Act 1325/2014. Translation from Finnish. http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2014/en20141325.pdf

Runco, M. and S. Acar 2012. "Divergent Thinking as an Indicator of Creative Potential." Creativity Research Journal 24 (1), 66-75.

Runco, M. & G. J. Jaeger 2012. "The Standard Definition of Creativity." Creativity Research Journal 24 (1), 92-96

Saggar, M., E. Quintin, E. Kienitz, N. T. Bott, S. Zhaochun, H. Wei-Chen, C. Yin-hsuan, L. Ning, R. F. Dougherty, A. Royalty, G. Hawthrone, A. L. Reiss. 2015. "Pictionary-based fMRI paradigm to study the neural correlates of spontaneous improvisation and figural creativity." Scientific Reports 5, 10894; doi: 10.1038/srep10894.

Simonton, D. K. 2012. "Taking the U.S. Patent Office Criteria Seriously: A Quantitative Three-Criterion Creativity Definition and Its Implications." Creativity Research Journal 24 (2-3), 97-106, doi: 10.1080/10400419.2012.676974

Sternberg, R. J. 2006. "The Nature of Creativity." Creativity Research Journal 18 (1), 87-98, doi: 10.1207/s15326934crj1801_10

Yang C. C., H. Chen and K. Hong. 2003. "Visualization of large category map for Internet browsing." Decision Support Systems 35 (1), 89-102.

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Learning Creativity at Schools: A Vision for the Future

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Young people in Finland came fifth among the OECD countries that participated in the PISA 2015 assessment on collaborative problem solving. This suggests that Finnish youth have basic skills and knowledge to cope in the world of work that highlights growingly multi-, inter- and transprofessional collaboration.

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1. Don't be afraid to love something and pursue it

2. Use your strengths

3. Free yourself from others

4. Find a mentor

(Tanner & Reisman, 2014, p. 18)

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Building relationships-->Trust

Empowering Teachers & Students-->Respect

Stakeholders-->Community

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Focus less on the reproduction of information & more on critical thinking and problem solving

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Focus less on the reproduction of information & more on critical thinking and problem solving

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Although educators claim to value creativity, they don't always prioritize it.

Teachers often have biases against creative students, fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

Why the disconnect between educators' official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school?

How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated?

These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. We study the creative process, as well as how ideas evolve over time and across societies. I've written almost 200 scholarly papers and book chapters on creativity, and lectured on it worldwide. My research involves both computational models and studies with human participants. I also write fiction, compose music for the piano and do freestyle dance.

What is creativity?

Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Specifically, creativity involves cognitive processes that transform one's understanding of, or relationship to, the world.

There may be adaptive value to the seemingly mixed messages that teachers send about creativity. Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution. As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.

In biological evolution, the novelty-generating components are genetic mutation and recombination, and the novelty-preserving components include the survival and reproduction of "fit" individuals. In cultural evolution, the novelty-generating component is creativity, and the novelty-preserving components include imitation and other forms of social learning.

It isn't actually necessary for everyone to be creative for the benefits of creativity to be felt by all. We can reap the rewards of the creative person's ideas by copying them, buying from them or simply admiring them. Few of us can build a computer or write a symphony, but they are ours to use and enjoy nevertheless.

Inventor or imitator?

There are also drawbacks to creativity. Sure, creative people solve problems, crack jokes, invent stuff; they make the world pretty and interesting and fun. But generating creative ideas is time-consuming. A creative solution to one problem often generates other problems, or has unexpected negative side effects.

Creativity is correlated with rule bending, law breaking, social unrest, aggression, group conflict and dishonesty. Creative people often direct their nurturing energy towards ideas rather than relationships, and may be viewed as aloof, arrogant, competitive, hostile, independent or unfriendly.

Also, if I'm wrapped up in my own creative reverie, I may fail to notice that someone else has already solved the problem I'm working on. In an agent-based computational model of cultural evolution, in which artificial neural network-based agents invent and imitate ideas, the society's ideas evolve most quickly when there is a good mix of creative "inventors" and conforming "imitators." Too many creative agents and the collective suffers. They are like holes in the fabric of society, fixated on their own (potentially inferior) ideas, rather than propagating proven effective ideas.

Of course, a computational model of this sort is highly artificial. The results of such simulations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, they suggest an adaptive value to the mixed signals teachers send about creativity. A society thrives when some individuals create and others preserve their best ideas.

This also makes sense given how creative people encode and process information. Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations. Some of these associations will be spurious. On the bright side, some may lead to new ideas that are useful or aesthetically pleasing.

So, there's a trade-off to peppering the world with creative minds. They may fail to see the forest for the trees but they may produce the next Mona Lisa.

Innovation might keep us afloat

So will society naturally self-organize into creators and conformers? Should we avoid trying to enhance creativity in the classroom?

The answer is: No! The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before. In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels - to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.

This is particularly important now. In our high-stimulation environment, children spend so much time processing new stimuli that there is less time to "go deep" with the stimuli they've already encountered. There is less time for thinking about ideas and situations from different perspectives, such that their ideas become more interconnected and their mental models of understanding become more integrated.

This "going deep" process has been modeled computationally using a program called Deep Dream, a variation on the machine learning technique "Deep Learning" and used to generate images such as the ones in the figure below.

The images show how an input is subjected to different kinds of processing at different levels, in the same way that our minds gain a deeper understanding of something by looking at it from different perspectives. It is this kind of deep processing and the resulting integrated webs of understanding that make the crucial connections that lead to important advances and innovations.

Cultivating creativity in the classroom

So the obvious next question is: How can creativity be cultivated in the classroom? It turns out there are lots of ways! Here are three key ways in which teachers can begin:

1. Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving.

2. Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, such as by painting murals that depict biological food chains, or acting out plays about historical events, or writing poems about the cosmos. After all, the world doesn't come carved up into different subject areas. Our culture tells us these disciplinary boundaries are real and our thinking becomes trapped in them.

3. Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection. This provides time and space to foster the forging of new connections that is so vital to creativity.

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What creativity really is - and why schools need it

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Although educators claim to value creativity, they don't always prioritize it. Teachers often have biases against creative students, fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.