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One website:
https://www.google.com/search?q=reggio+environments&oq=reggio+environments&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.8559j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/50620/how-to-ease-students-into-independent-inquiry-projects

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Laurie.Lavins@gmail.com

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Follow the Opal School blog for tons of blog posts about creativity. They highlight creativity across all ages

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As this school year comes to a close, many of you are on the verge of having more flexible schedules - allowing some new viewing time. Readers at this site might not be aware of all the resources being posted on our companion site. In case you've been missing them, here are a few videos ...

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"There is a reason why this idle time is needed—brain science points to the activation of the default mode network part of the brain that shuts down in task mode. This is where creativity/reflection live. How to Give Your Children Enough Time to Be Bored"

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"Moooooooom! We're bored!!! What can we do?"

Go outside? Nah. What about building me a space travel vehicle with LEGOs? That doesn't sound fun. Build a fort? We've done that.

Seriously?????? I be this sounds familiar! Sometimes it makes me want to hide in the closet with a bottle of Pinot.

How do you put an end to it? And, for pity's sake, WHY are they bored? This one trick will fix it!

I clearly remember what my mom said to me: "If you're bored, I can find something for you to do." And my mother's "something" never involved a trip to the candy shop.

Lists of Things to Do With Bored Children Make Me Twitch

I see the lists of things to do with bored children and, I'll be honest. They sort of make my skin crawl. They are everywhere.

These lists convince moms that we must drop everything, trip over the dog to search for a list of boredom busters, and immediately provide suitable entertainment for our bored children. These lists convince moms that if we don't find the most scintillating boredom buster game, craft, or activity out there that we have failed as mothers. These lists teach women that we are responsible for another human being's boredom. I used to do all of that.

But now I've learned that this can actually deprive my children of skills that I desperately want them to learn. It deprives them of skills they are entitled to learn.

[bctt tweet="Providing nonstop entertainment deprives children of skills they NEED to learn. #boredchildren" username="@SpoilMy"]

Children Learn Life Skills When They Overcome Boredom

Don't get me wrong - I love playing with the boys. We have great times together. I am, by any measure, an involved mother.

But if I dropped everything every time I had bored children, let's face it, who would cook their meals and wash their clothes? And when they grow up, they would be left without the skills to fill their lives with activities that they are passionate about. I want them to know that alone need not mean lonely. I want them to feel comfortable with themselves and to know themselves. I want them to know that it is desirable to spend time with themselves.

It's my job to provide them with the skills to fill their lives with activities they are passionate about.

I just love Dr. Laura Markham and her brilliant advice at Aha! Parenting. In her post, Why Boredom is Good for Your Child, she confirms the need to sometimes just let 'em be bored! You read that right - let 'em be bored! It's terrifying, right?

Will your house still be standing when it's all said and done?

Will you have a new mural on your walls?

Will the dog have any fur left? Will the cat be tied to a scooter?

Sometimes children simply incorrectly identify "I want some time with you" as "I'm bored." So to make sure that my house WILL still be standing, I spend just a few minutes of uninterrupted time with whoever is bored. I try to connect and help brainstorm activities that he can start and use as a springboard to create his own activities. A quick connection with you may be all it takes for them to figure out what to do on their own.

Resolving Boredom Gives Rise To Imagination

If that's a no-go, I turn to advice such as this from Nancy H. Blakely:

"Preempt the time spent on television and organized activities and have them spend it instead on claiming their imaginations. For in the end, that is all we have. If a thing cannot be imagined first - a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS- it cannot be. Life is bound by what we can envision. I cannot plant imagination into my children. I can, however, provide an environment where their creativity is not just another mess to clean up but welcome evidence of grappling successfully with boredom. It is possible for boredom to deliver us to our best selves, the ones that long for risk and illumination and unspeakable beauty. If we sit still long enough, we may hear the call behind boredom. With practice, we may have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer."

My favorite lines are: "If we sit still long enough, we may hear the call behind the boredom. With practice, we may have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer. " We may hear the call behind the boredom and learn to rise up and answer. Isn't this great insight for us all?

The boredom our children experience is caused by a cacophony that blocks their ability to hear their own inner stirrings.

This constant cacophony encourages them to turn a deaf ear to their inner voices. If they can't hear their inner voices or imagine things or explore the things that they imagine, where is our future as a society?

What if nobody ever dreamed about a cure for polio? What if nobody dreamed that the Berlin wall could be torn down? The world would surely be a different place without our dreamers. I, for one, love that one of my maternal tasks is to help create adults who can imagine. I take it seriously.

So that's how you stop the cries of "Moooooooom! We're bored!!! What can we do?" Give them the opportunity to handle their boredom and to hear the call behind their boredom. The more of these opportunities children are given, the stronger their skills will become. The stronger their skills become, the less not having scheduled activities bothers them. You will find that they will actually enjoy time to choose and control their own activities!

What is your family's cacophony? Constant soccer games, baseball games, after school clubs, ballet lessons, gymnastics, video games, television, play dates? We all have some of these and, don't get me wrong, that's great. Variety is the spice of life.

But when do we get swallowed whole? When have we structured so much of our time that we fail to leave unstructured time for our children to create dreams and to discover their passions?

So, here's your free pass mama - take it easy sometimes. You don't always have to jump if you have a bored child. Let your kids be bored. It's good for 'em! You are a good mother and not a failure. In fact, you are taking care of yourself AND providing your child with their opportunity to "have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer."

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How to Give Your Children Enough Time to Be Bored

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'Moooooooom! We're bored!!! What can we do?' Go outside? Nah. What about building me a space travel vehicle with LEGOs? That doesn't sound fun. Build a fort? We've done that. Seriously?????? I be this sounds familiar! Sometimes it makes me want to hide in the closet with a bottle of Pinot.

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Other people to follow On Twitter that promote creativity in their posts 

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Other people to follow On Twitter that promote creativity in their posts 

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-Ted Fujimoto (Ed reformer)
-Cathie Matthews (one of our skype call ins :) )
-Tosca Killoran
-Alfie Kohn (Ed Reformer)
-Amy Fast, Ed.D
-Innovative Global Ed
-John Burns
-Erin Madonna (SIS)
-Jade Gardner (CIS, Hong Kong)

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101qs.com    < Digital Provocations

youcubed.org   < open ended tasks, Jo Boaler promotes youcubed a lot

wouldyourathermath.com

Google: Low Cieling, High Floor math tasks

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Math People To follow (especially on Twitter)

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Math People To follow (especially on Twitter)

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-Jo Boaler , Stanford professor
-Dan Meyer
-Dan Finkel
-Mignon Wreckert (works for Innovative Global Ed, if you ever see a workshop with her presenting- TAKE IT! )
-Tracy Johnston Zager - Author of "Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had"
-Christopher Danielson (author of How Many and Which One Doesn't Belong)

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Making Time for Creativity

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PYP students as leaders of learning
Returning as a teacher to the elementary homeroom this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to fully explore the latest themes in PYP education.

The notion of learner agency(1), that students can and should be the drivers of their learning(2), was something that seemed familiar, but in practice would provide me with a year of growth and challenge.

As an early years educator I hold an image of the child(3) that views students as capable, competent and intrinsically-driven inquirers. Encouraged by the PYP's focus on learner agency and action, and eager to apply my philosophy in my new classroom, I was raring to get the school year underway.

Genius hour: My "Brilliant First Flop"(4)

I opened the year by communicating that 'kids are the boss' in our learning environment. Our initial class meetings delved into what being the boss would mean in practice.

The conversations went well and at this stage I was feeling rather pleased. The class agreed that starting a genius hour(5) would be a terrific application of our co-constructed essential agreements.

We were all excited, but our enthusiasm quickly began to wane. Students would arrive at school with burning questions on the tip of their tongues, or a passion for a project that they were desperate to work on. And yet, these flashes of inspiration rarely coincided with our scheduled genius hour.

Of course, we would commit to return to these individual projects either later in the day or week, but it was clear to see that our genius hour had become a non-starter. It seemed like just another part of the schedule that the teacher valued and the students "did". Some students were keen, others benignly obliging, but the thrill was gone(6).
Transdisciplinary learning and the tyranny of the schedule
As I reflected about the lack of spontaneity, and the unresponsiveness of our genius hour sessions, my attention turned to my weekly schedule.

In my previous school's authorization report, an area for attention related to expanding faculty awareness of the transdisciplinary nature of the PYP. I still recall reading the IB's report and cringing in uncomfortable self-recognition.

Yes, I had been guilty of displaying on my whiteboard a daily schedule which I dutifully updated for the students. You might know the type. It was splendidly laminated, enhanced with magnetic backs and had colors corresponding to different subject areas: mathematics, English, unit of inquiry. I thought it was helpful and certainly students have the right to know what to expect from their day.

Yet, by dividing the day into fragmented blocks of time, I was not just reducing learner agency, but also expressing to my students that their learning was unconnected. By boxing curriculum, I was boxing student thinking and their understanding of the world.

I now firmly believe that if you really want to position your students as the owners of their learning, then focusing on who owns the schedule? has to become a priority. Schedules are a balance of many factors and an interplay of the many priorities within schools. Whether school schedules are flexible or rigid depends upon the pedagogical approach taken by teachers and administrators(7).

The classroom schedule had positioned us as disciplinary learners.

I responded by seeking simplicity and flattening the schedule. We established that there would be times when adults would guide or lead learning and times when students would take on this role for themselves and their peers. It was that simple. This was what 'being the boss' would really mean for our class. Educators and students can step in and out of the lead role within a culture of learning.

As the educator, I remained accountable for ensuring we made connections to all the outcomes required by the curriculum and reporting process. At the same time I increased my expectations that my students would also be accountable for approaching their learning as reflective, balanced and enthusiastic students(8).

During our (now student named) Personal Project Learning Time, students could select from a range of learning activities, keeping a balance of their individual learning targets in mind. During any single session, students can work on a variety of tasks, covering all areas of the curriculum. At times, students would add their own learning activities to the menu. This suggests we had started to transition from a learner-centered to a learner-driven model(9). See below several practical tips for implementation.

My next step would be to engage with other adults and classes in the learning community(10) as I have discovered that working in isolation installs a glass ceiling above our heads.

At last, after a year of experimentation and a gradual release of control, the class community is basking in the glow of a more holistic, student-directed learning environment.

As the lead learner in the room, it is highly inspiring to say the least.

-

References:

(1) Students take the lead, via SharingPYP blog
(2)Personalization vs. Differentiation vs. Individualization Chart V3.
(3)Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins by Loris Malaguzzi
(4) Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
(5) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
(6)The Thrill Is Gone by B.B. King
(7)The Case for Time, by Nathaniel Atherton
(8)Six Ways the Teacher's Role is Changing, by John Darcy
(9)The Personalized Learning Look Fors by Kettle Moraine School District
(10)Young Students Benefit from Self-Directed Learning Days by Western Academy of Beijing

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Dylan Meikle is an elementary counselor at United Nations International School Hanoi and is an experienced homeroom teacher in the PYP. He is a member of the IBEN and an Apple Distinguished Educator. Dylan is passionate about learning environments and contributes to a blog on the subject at www.makespace4learning.com. He welcomes feedback, collaboration and further discussion via Twitter @dylan_meikle.

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PYP students as leaders of learning Returning as a teacher to the elementary homeroom this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to fully explore the latest themes in PYP education. The notion of learner agency(1), that students can and should be the drivers of their learning(2), was something that seemed familiar, but in practice would provide me with a year of growth and challenge.

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Killing Creativity- Why Kids Draw pictures of Monsters and Adults don't

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Killing Creativity- Why Kids Draw pictures of Monsters and Adults don't

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The Monster Engine is one of the best ideas I've come across. It's a book, demonstration, lecture and gallery exhibition created by Dave Devries. The premise is simple: children draw pictures of monsters and Devries paints them realistically. According to the website, the idea was born in 1998 when Devries took an interest in his niece's doodles. As a comic addict, Devires wondered if he could use color, texture and shading to bring his niece's drawings to life.

But Devries had a larger goal: he wanted to always see things as a child. Why? In many ways, children flourish where adults fail. Children are more creative and are natural inventors. Their worldview is incomplete and demands discovery. They prosper because they embrace their ignorance instead of ignoring it. And they are willing to explore, investigate and put their ideas to the test because they are willing to fail. Unlike adults, they don't care how other people perceive or evaluate their ideas, and they're unconcerned with the impossible or what doesn't work.

Growing up, to be sure, has its benefits. As we age, our intellect sharpens and willpower strengthens. We come to control our thoughts and desires. We identify goals and hone our skills. But growing up comes at a cost: we lose our naiveté that facilitates creativity and idea generation. A study conducted between 1959 and 1964 involving 350 children found that around 4th grade our tendency to daydream and wonder declines sharply. In other words, Picasso was right: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

Age doesn't necessarily squander our creative juices, but when we make the leap from elementary school to middle school our worldview becomes more realistic and cynical. The question is: what did Jobs and Spielberg do differently? How do we maintain our naiveté?

A study conducted several years ago by Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson of North Dakota State University gives us a simple remedy. The psychologists divided a large group of undergraduates into two groups. The first group was given the following prompt:
You are 7 years old. School is canceled, and you have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?
The second group was given the same prompt minus the first sentence. This means they didn't imagine themselves as seven years old - they remained in their adult mindset.

Next, the psychologists asked their subjects to take ten minutes to write a response. Afterwards the subjects were given various tests of creativity, such as inventing alternative uses for an old tire, or completing incomplete sketches. (As well as other tasks from the Torrance test of creativity.) Zabelina and Robinson found that, "individuals [in] the mindset condition involving childlike thinking...exhibited higher levels of creative originally than did those in the control condition." This effect was especially pronounced with subjects who identify themselves as introverts.

What happens to our innate creativity when we age? Zabelina and Robinson discuss a few reasons. The first is that regions of the frontal cortex - a part of the brain responsible for rule-based behavior - are not fully developed until our teenage years. This means that when we are young our thoughts are free-flowing and without inhibitions. Curiosity, not logic and reason, guides our intellectual musings. The second is that current educational practices discourage creativity.

As famed speaker Ken Robinson said: "the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized."

No matter the reasons, the authors stress, adults can still tap into their more imaginative younger selves. And this brings me back to The Monster Engine and Dave Devries.

Devries' drawings capture the lesson from this enlightening research well. When it comes to being creative and coming up with new and fresh ideas, children are experts. But in order to harness and hone our creative juices the cognitive tool set of an adult is vital. The children's drawings, after all, couldn't have come to life without Devries. The important part is that Devries maintained his naïveté by staying true to the original work. He didn't change the drawing, he enhanced it.
What's the Significance?
This approach is behind the success of countless intellectuals and inventors thoroughout history, including Picasso. It is the reason Einstein stressed that imagination is more important than knowledge and, striking a very similar cord to Zabelina and Robinson's research, suggested that "to stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition."

Again, it's often beneficial to approach life with an adult mindset - you probably don't want to get too creative with your taxes - but when it comes to using your imagination, thinking of oneself as a child facilitates more original thinking.

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Killing Creativity: Why Kids Draw Pictures of Monsters & Adults Don't

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A study conducted between 1959 and 1964 involving 350 children found that around 4th grade our tendency to daydream and wonder declines sharply. In other words, Picasso was right: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

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Make creativity a part of your teaching toolbox.

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This module gives an overview of the use of creativity in a classroom context and supplies teachers with strategies to use creativity every day to enhance academic outcomes.

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By Robert Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams

What makes a person creative? Why are some people more creative and others less so? We often think that the creative people are the ones who have some rare and unattainable ability, but it is not so. Creative people are ones who make a decision: They decide to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas. In this article, we first describe this idea of creativity as a decision, which is formalized as an investment theory of creativity. Then we describe 24 tips you can use in your teaching in order to foster creativity in your students and in yourself.

The Investment Theory of Creativity

Buying Low and Selling High

The investment theory of creativity (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995) asserts that creative thinkers are like good investors: They buy low and sell high. Whereas investors do so in the world of finance, creative people do so in the world of ideas. Creative people generate ideas that are like undervalued stocks (stocks with a low price-to-earnings ratio), and both the stocks and the ideas generally are rejected by the public. When creative ideas are proposed, they often are viewed as bizarre, useless, and even foolish, and summarily are rejected. The person proposing them often is regarded with suspicion and perhaps even with disdain and derision.

Creative ideas are both novel and valuable. Why, then, are they rejected? Because the creative innovator stands up to vested interests and defies the crowd. The crowd does not maliciously or willfully reject creative notions; rather it does not realize, and often does not want to realize, that the proposed idea represents a valid and superior way of thinking. The crowd generally perceives opposition to the status quo as annoying, offensive, and reason enough to ignore innovative ideas.

Evidence abounds that creative ideas are rejected (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Initial reviews of major works of literature and art are often negative. Toni Morrison's Tar Baby received negative reviews when it was first published, as did Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The first exhibition in Munich of the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch, opened and closed the same day because of the strong negative response from the critics. Some of the greatest scientific papers are rejected not just by one, but also by several journals before being published. John Garcia, a distinguished biopsychologist, was summarily denounced when he first proposed that a form of learning called classical conditioning could be produced in a single trial of learning (Garcia & Koelling, 1966).

From the investment view, then, the creative person buys low by presenting a unique idea and then attempting to convince other people of its value. After convincing others that the idea is valuable, which increases the perceived value of the investment, the creative person sells high by leaving the idea to others and then moving on to another idea. Although people typically want others to love their ideas, immediate universal applause for an idea usually indicates that it is not particularly creative.

You can foster creativity by buying low and selling high in the world of ideas-defy the crowd. Creativity is as much a decision about and an attitude toward life as it is a matter of ability. We routinely witness creativity in young children, but it is hard to find in older children and adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity. We begin to suppress children's natural creativity when we expect them to color within the lines in their coloring books.

Balancing Analytic, Synthetic, and Practical Abilities

Creative work requires applying and balancing three abilities that can all be developed (Sternberg 1985; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995; Sternberg & Williams, 1996).

Synthetic ability is what we typically think of as creativity. It is the ability to generate novel and interesting ideas. Often the person we call creative is a particularly good synthetic thinker who makes connections between things that other people do not recognize spontaneously.

Analytic ability is typically considered to be critical thinking ability. A person with this skill analyzes and evaluates ideas. Everyone, even the most creative person you know, has better and worse ideas. Without well-developed analytic ability, the creative thinker is as likely to pursue bad ideas as to pursue good ones. The creative individual uses analytic ability to work out the implications of a creative idea and to test it.

Practical ability is the ability to translate theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. An implication of the investment theory of creativity is that good ideas do not sell themselves. The creative person uses practical ability to convince other people that an idea is worthy. For example, every organization has a set of ideas that dictate how things, or at least some things, should be cloned. To propose a new procedure you must sell it by convincing others that it is better than the old one. Practical ability is also used to recognize ideas that have a potential audience.

Creativity requires a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical abilities. The person who is only synthetic may come up with innovative ideas, but cannot recognize or sell them. The person who is only analytic may be an excellent critic of other people's ideas, but is not likely to generate creative ideas. The person who is only practical may be an excellent salesperson, but is as likely to sell ideas or products of little or no value as to sell genuinely creative ideas.

Encourage and develop creativity by teaching students to find a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical thinking. A creative attitude is at least as important as are creative thinking skills (Schank 1988). The majority of teachers want to encourage creativity in their students, but they are not sure how to do so. Those teachers and you can use the 15 strategies presented below to develop creativity in yourselves, your students, and others around you. Although we present the strategies in terms of teachers and students, these strategies apply equally to administrators working with teachers, parents working with children, or people trying to develop their own creativity.

Twenty-Four Tips for Developing Creativity
1. Model Creativity
The most powerful way to develop creativity in your students is to be a role model. Children develop creativity not when you tell them to, but when you show them.

The teachers most of you probably remember from your school days are not those who crammed the most content into their lectures. The teachers you remember are those whose thoughts and actions served as your role model. Most likely they balanced teaching content with teaching you how to think with and about that content.

Occasionally, we'll teach a workshop on developing creativity and someone will ask exactly how to develop creativity. Bad start. You cannot be a role model for creativity unless you think and teach creatively yourself. So think carefully about your values, goals, and ideas about creativity and show them in your actions.
2. Build Self-Efficacy
The main limitation on what students can do is what they think they can do. All students have the capacity to be creators and to experience the joy associated with making something new, but first we must give them a strong base for creativity. Sometimes teachers and parents unintentionally limit what students can do by sending messages that express or imply limits on students' potential accomplishments. Instead, help students believe in their own ability to be creative.
3. Question Assumptions
We all have assumptions. Often we do not know we have these assumptions because they are widely shared. Creative people question those assumptions and eventually lead others to do the same. When Copernicus suggested that the Earth revolves around the sun, the suggestion was viewed as preposterous because everyone could see that the sun revolves around the Earth. Galileo's ideas, including the relative rates of' falling objects, caused him to be banned as a heretic.

Sometimes it is not until many years later that the crowd realizes the limitations or errors of their assumptions and the value of the creative person's thoughts. The impetus of those who question assumptions allows for cultural, technological, and other forms of advancement.

Teachers can be role models for questioning assumptions. You can show students that what they assume they know, they do not really know.

Of course, students shouldn't question every assumption. There are times to question and then to try to reshape the environment and there are times to adapt to it. Some creative people question so many things so often that others stop taking them seriously. Everyone has to learn which assumptions are worth questioning and which battles are worth fighting. Sometimes it's better to leave the inconsequential assumptions alone so that you have an audience when you find something worth the effort.

Make questioning a part of the daily classroom exchange. It is more important for students to learn what questions to ask-and how to ask them-than to learn the answers. Help your students evaluate their questions by discouraging the idea that you ask questions and they simply answer them. Avoid perpetuating the belief that your role is to teach students the facts. Instead, help the students understand that what matters is their ability to use facts. Help your students learn how to formulate good questions and how to answer questions.

We all tend to make a pedagogical mistake by emphasizing the answering and not the asking of questions. The good student is perceived as the one who rapidly furnishes the right answers. The expert in a field thus becomes the extension of the expert student-the one who knows and can recite a lot of information. As John Dewey (1933) recognized, how we think is often more important than what we think. We need to teach students how to ask the right questions (good, thought-provoking, and interesting ones) and lessen the emphasis on rote learning.
4. How to Define and Redefine Problems
Promote creative performance by encouraging your students to define and redefine problems and projects. Encourage creative thinking by having students choose their own topics for papers or presentations, choose their own ways of solving problems, and sometimes choose again if they discover that their selection was a mistake. Allow your students to pick their own topics, subject to your approval, on at least one paper each term. Approval ensures that the topic is relevant to the lesson and has a chance of leading to a successful project.

A successful project (1) is appropriate to the course's goals, (2) illustrates a student's mastery of at least some of what has been taught, and (3) can earn a good grade. If a topic is so far from the goals that you will feel compelled to lower the grade, ask the student to choose another topic.

You cannot always offer students choices, but giving choices is the only way for them to learn how to choose. A real choice is not deciding between drawing a cat or a dog, nor is it picking one state in the USA to present at a project fair. Give your students latitude in making choices to help them to develop taste and good judgment, both of which are essential elements of creativity.

Sometimes we all make mistakes in choosing a project or in the way we select to accomplish it. Just remember that an important part of creativity is the analytic part, learning to recognize a mistake. Give your students that chance and the opportunity to redefine their choices.
5. Encourage Idea Generation
Once the problem is defined or redefined, it is time for students to generate ideas and solutions. The environment for generating ideas must be relatively free of criticism. The students may acknowledge that some ideas are better or worse, but you must not be harsh or critical. Aim to identify and encourage any creative aspects of the ideas presented and suggest new approaches to any ideas that are simply uncreative. Praise your students for generating many ideas, regardless of whether some are silly or unrelated, while encouraging them to identify and develop their best ideas into high-quality projects.

Your students can use project planning in and out of school and in the future. Questions about marriage, family, and careers are best answered after thoroughly considering many ideas. Teaching students the value of generating numerous ideas enhances their creative-thinking ability and benefits them now and in the future.
6. Cross-Fertilize Ideas
Stimulate creativity by helping students to think across subjects and disciplines. The traditional school environment often has separate classrooms and classmates for different subjects and seems to influence students into thinking that learning occurs in discrete boxes-the math box, the social studies box, and the science box. But creative ideas and insights often result from integrating material across subject areas, not from memorizing and reciting material.

Teaching students to cross-fertilize draws on their skills, interests, and abilities, regardless of the subject. For example, if your students are having trouble understanding math, you might ask them to draft test questions related to their special interests-ask the baseball fan to devise geometry problems based on the game. The context may spur creative ideas because the student finds the topic (baseball) enjoyable and it may counteract some of the anxiety caused by geometry. Cross-fertilization motivates students who aren't interested in subjects taught in the abstract.

One way to enact cross-fertilization in the classroom is to ask students to identify their best and worst academic areas. Then ask them to come up with project ideas in their weak area based on ideas borrowed from one of the strongest areas. Explain to them, for example, that they can apply their interest in science to social studies by analyzing the scientific aspects of trends in national politics.
7. Allow Time for Creative Thinking
Ours is a society in a hurry. We eat fast food, we rush from one place to another, and we value quickness. Indeed, one way to say someone is smart is to say that the person is quick (Sternberg, 1985), a clear indication of our emphasis on time. Just take a look at the format of our standardized tests. Lots of multiple-choice problems are squeezed into a brief time slot.

Most creative insights, however, do not happen in a rush (Gruber, 1986). We need time to understand a problem and to toss it around. If we are asked to think creatively, we need time to do it well. If you stuff questions into your tests or give your students more homework than they can complete, then you are not allowing them time to think creatively.
8. Instruct and Assess Creatively
If you give only multiple-choice tests, students quickly learn the type of thinking that you value, no matter what you say. If you want to encourage creativity, you need to include at least some opportunities for creative thought in assignments and tests. Ask questions that require factual recall, analytic thinking, and creative thinking. For example, students might be asked to learn about a law, analyze the law, and then think about how the law might be improved.
9. Reward Creative Ideas and Products
It is not enough to talk about the value of creativity. Students are used to authority figures who say one thing and do another. They are exquisitely sensitive to what teachers value when it comes to the bottom line, namely, the grade or evaluation. If you do not put your money where your mouth is, they will go with the money-that is, the grade.

Reward creative efforts. For example, assign a project and remind students that you are looking for them to demonstrate their knowledge, analytical and writing skills, and creativity. Let them know that creativity does not depend on your agreement with what they write, only that they express ideas that represent a synthesis between existing ideas and their own thoughts. You need to care only that the ideas are creative from the students' perspectives, not necessarily creative with regard to the state of the art. Students may generate an idea that someone else has already had.

Some teachers complain that they cannot grade creative responses with as much objectivity as they can apply to multiple-choice or short-answer responses. They are correct in that there is some sacrifice of objectivity. However, research shows that evaluators are remarkably consistent in their assessments of' creativity (Amabile, 1983; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). If the goal of assessment is to instruct students, then it is better to ask for creative work and evaluate it with somewhat less objectivity than to evaluate students exclusively on uncreative work. Let your students know that there is no completely objective way to evaluate creativity.
10. Encourage Sensible Risks
Creative people take risks and defy the crowd by buying low and selling high. Defying the crowd means risking the crowd's wrath. But there are sensible-and less sensible-reasons to defy the crowd. Creative people take sensible risks and produce ideas that others ultimately admire and respect as trend setting. In taking these risks, creative people sometimes make mistakes, fail, and fall flat on their faces.

We emphasize sensible risk-taking because we are not talking about risking life and limb. To help students learn to take sensible risks, encourage them to take some intellectual risks with courses, activities, and teachers-to develop a sense of how to assess risks.

Nearly every major discovery or invention entailed some risk. When a movie theater was the only place to see a movie, someone created the idea of the home video industry: Skeptics wondered if anyone would want to see videos on a small screen. Another initially risky idea was the home computer: Would anyone have enough use for a home computer to justify the cost? These ideas were once risks that are now ingrained in our society.

Given the learning opportunities that derive from taking risks and the achievement that learning makes possible, why are so few children willing to take risks in school? The reason is that perfect test scores and papers receive praise; failure may mean extra work. Failure to attain a certain academic standard is perceived as a lack of ability and motivation rather than as reflecting a desire to grow. Teachers advocate playing it safe when they give assignments without choices and allow only particular answers to questions.
11. Tolerate Ambiguity
People like things to be in black and white. We like to think that a country is good or bad (ally or enemy) or that a given idea in education works or doesn't work. The problem is that there are a lot of grays in creative work. Artists working on new paintings and writers working on new books often report feeling scattered and unsure in their thoughts. They need to figure out whether they are even on the right track.

A creative idea tends to come in bits and pieces and develops over time. But the period in which the idea is developing tends to be uncomfortable. Without time or the ability to tolerate ambiguity, you may jump to a less than optimal solution.

Tolerating ambiguity is uncomfortable. When a student has almost the right topic for a paper or almost the right science project, it's tempting to accept the near miss. To help students become creative, encourage them to accept and extend the period in which their ideas do not quite converge. Ultimately, they may come up with better ideas.
12. Allow Mistakes
Buying low and selling high carries a risk. Many ideas are unpopular simply because they are not good. People often think a certain way because that way works better than other ways. But once in a while a great thinker comes along - a Freud, a Piaget, a Chomsky, or an Einstein - and shows us a new way to think. These thinkers made contributions because they allowed themselves and their collaborators to take risks and make mistakes.

Many of Freud's and Piaget's ideas are wrong. Freud confused Victorian issues regarding sexuality with universal conflicts and Piaget misjudged the ages at which children could perform certain cognitive feats. Their ideas were great not because they lasted forever, but because they became the basis for other ideas. Freud's and Piaget's mistakes allowed others to profit from the ideas and go beyond the earlier ideas.

Schools are often unforgiving of mistakes. Errors on schoolwork are often marked with a large and pronounced X. When children respond to questions with incorrect answers, some teachers pounce on the students for not having read or understood the material and other students snicker. When children go outside the lines in the coloring book, or use a different color, they are corrected. In hundreds of ways and in thousands of instances over the course of a school career, children learn that it is not all right to make mistakes. The result is that they become afraid to risk the independent and the sometimes-flawed thinking that leads to creativity.

When your students make mistakes, ask them to analyze and discuss these mistakes. Often, mistakes or weak ideas contain the germ of correct answers or good ideas. In Japan, teachers spend entire class periods asking children to analyze the mistakes in their mathematical thinking. For the teacher who wants to make a difference, exploring mistakes can be a learning and growing opportunity.
13. Identify and Surmount Obstacles
Creative thinkers almost inevitably encounter resistance. The question is whether the creative thinker has the fortitude to persevere. We understand why so many young and promising creative thinkers disappear. Sooner or later, they decide that being creative is not worth the resistance and punishment. The truly creative thinkers pay the short-term price because they recognize that they can make a difference.

Describe obstacles that you, friends, and famous people have faced while trying to be creative; otherwise your students may think that obstacles confront only them. Include stories about people who weren't supportive, bad grades for unwelcome ideas, and cool receptions to your ideas. To help your students deal with obstacles, remind them of the many creative people whose ideas were initially shunned and help them develop an inner sense of awe of the creative act. You can suggest that they reduce their concern over what others think, but it is tough for students to lessen their dependence on their peers.

When a student attempts to surmount an obstacle, praise the effort, whether or not the student is entirely successful. Point out aspects of the student's attack that were successful and why, and then suggest other ways to confront similar obstacles. You can also tactfully critique counterproductive approaches by describing a better approach, as long as you praise the attempt. Ask the class to brainstorm about ways to confront a given obstacle to get them thinking about the many strategies we can use to confront problems. Consider the student who has always been too nervous to act in school plays or to sing a solo. Spend a half-hour asking students to generate strategies for dealing with performance anxiety and to chronicle personal examples that show how nervousness can be disabling. List ideas on the board and ask the class to critique them. Encourage students to try a couple of the strategies and praise them for any attempts at overcoming performance anxiety. The emphasis on tackling obstacles should help students focus on solving problems instead of being limited by them.
14. Teach Self-Responsibility
Part of teaching students to be creative is teaching them to take responsibility for both success and failure. Teaching students how to take responsibility means teaching students to (1) understand their creative process, (2) criticize themselves, and (3) take pride in their best creative work. Unfortunately, many teachers and parents look for-or allow students to look for-an outside enemy responsible for failures.

It sounds trite to say that you should teach students to take responsibility for themselves, but sometimes there is a gap between what we know and how we translate thought into action. In practice, people differ widely in the extent to which they take responsibility for the causes and consequences of their actions. Creative people need to take responsibility for themselves and for their ideas.
15. Promote Self-Regulation
You cannot help each student during each creative process. Your students must take control of the process. After forming initial creative products and awakening the joy of creating in your students, teach them strategies for self-regulation, Self-directed creating is how most of us work throughout our lives-and especially in our lives outside of school. Here are some things students can do to promote their self-regulation: 1. List multiple ideas for an assignment, 2. Assess ideas for creativity and pursue one, 3. Defend your choice, 4. Develop plans for completing the assignment, including how and where to find information, and how and when you will finish the project, 5. Keep a daily log of progress, roadblocks, and how you surmounted problems, 6. Participate in daily class discussions regarding progress on the report and physical distractions (e.g., being hungry or tired), 7. Discuss teacher feedback on finished projects, and 8. Assess a classmate's project and review and discuss peer evaluations.
16. Delay Gratification
Part of being creative means being able to work on a project or task for a long time without immediate or interim rewards. Students must learn rewards are not always immediate and that there are benefits to delaying gratification.

Many people believe that they should reward children immediately for good performance, and that children should expect rewards. This style of teaching and parenting emphasizes the here and now and often comes at the expense of what is best in the long term.

An important lesson in life-and one that is intimately related to developing the discipline to do creative work-is to learn to wait for rewards. The greatest rewards are often those that are delayed. Give your students examples of delayed gratification in your life and in the lives of creative individuals and help them apply these examples to their lives.

Hard work often does not bring immediate rewards. Children do not immediately become expert baseball players, dancers, musicians, or sculptors. And the reward of becoming an expert seems far away. Children often succumb to the temptations of the moment-watching television or playing video games. The people who make the most of their abilities are those who wait for a reward and recognize that few serious challenges are met in a moment. Ninth-grade students may not see the benefits of hard work, but the advantages of a solid academic performance will he obvious when those students apply to college.

The short-term focus of most school assignments does little to teach children the value of delaying gratification. Projects are clearly superior in meeting this goal, but it is difficult to assign home projects if you are not confident of parental involvement and support. By working on a task for many weeks or months, a student learns the value of making incremental efforts for long-term gains.
17. Encourage Creative Collaboration
Creative performance often is viewed as a solitary occupation-we picture the writer sitting alone with her writing pad, the artist painting feverishly at 4 a.m., or the musician playing for his cats into the wee hours. In reality, people often work in groups. Collaboration can spur creativity. Encourage your students to collaborate with creative people because we all learn by example. Students benefit from seeing the techniques, strategies, and approaches that others use in the creative process. Also, students absorb the enthusiasm and joy many creative people exude as they go about the business of making something new.

Finding practical ways to encourage creative performance in groups of students is essential because you cannot work with students one-on-one all of the time. Because life often involves working with others, it is worthwhile to give students the chance to work collaboratively and to make the process of collaboration more creative.
18. Imagine Other Viewpoints
An essential aspect of working with other people and getting the most out of collaborative creative activity is to imagine ourselves in other people's shoes. We broaden our perspective by learning to see the world from a different point of view, and that experience enhances our creative thinking and contributions. Encourage your students to see the importance of understanding, respecting, and responding to other people's points of view. Many bright and potentially creative children never achieve success because they do not develop practical intelligence (Sternberg 1985, 1997; Sternberg et al., in press). They may do well in school and on tests, but they never learn how to get along with others or to see things and themselves as others see them.
19. Recognize Person-Environmental Fit
What is judged as creative is an interaction between a person and the environment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Gardner, 1993; Sternberg, in press; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). The very same product that is rewarded as creative in one time or place may be scorned in another.

In The Dead Poets' Society, a teacher whom the audience might well judge to be creative is viewed as incompetent by the school's administration. Similar experiences occur many times a day in many settings. There is no absolute standard for what constitutes creative work. The same product or idea may be valued or devalued in different environments. The lesson is that we need to find a setting in which our creative talents and unique contributions are rewarded or we need to modify our environment.

By building a constant appreciation of the importance of person-environment fit, you prepare your students for choosing environments that are conducive to their creative success. Encourage your students to examine environments to help them learn to select and match environments with their skills.
20. Find Excitement
To unleash your students' best creative performances, you must help them find what excites them. Remember that it may not be what really excites you. People who truly excel in a pursuit, whether vocational or avocational, almost always genuinely love what they do. Certainly the most creative people are intrinsically motivated in their work (Amabile, 1996). Less creative people often pick a career for the money or prestige and are bored or loathe their career. These people do not do work that makes a difference in their field.

Helping students find what they really love to do is often hard and frustrating work. Yet, sharing the frustration with them now is better than leaving them later to face it alone. To help students uncover their true interests, ask them to demonstrate a special talent or ability for the class. Explain that it does not matter what they do (within reason), only that they love the activity.
21. Seek Stimulating Environments
Help your students develop the ability to choose environments that stimulate their creativity. Although you try to present a stimulating classroom environment every day, your students spend many hours outside of school, eventually graduate, and either stagnate or grow in their creative development. Adults who continue to grow creatively visit and immerse themselves in environments that foster creativity.

To encourage students to develop skills in selecting environments that enhance creativity, choose some environments for the class to explore and help your students connect the environments with the experiences, creative growth, and accomplishment. Show students that creativity is easier with environmental stimulation.

Plan a field trip to a nearby museum, historical building, town hall, or other location with interesting displays and ask your students to generate and examine creative ideas for reports. Read excerpts from a book about a creative pioneer in the discipline being studied or the fieldtrip destination you have targeted-a great paleontologist if the focus is on dinosaurs, or a great astronaut if the focus is on space travel. Get students involved in role-playing.

You cannot reach into every nook of students' lives, nor can you directly control their creative development in the years to come. But give them a lifelong gift by teaching them how to choose creative environments that help ideas flow. Knowing how to choose a creative environment is one of the best long-term strategies for developing creativity.
22. Play to Strengths
Show students how to play to their strengths. Describe your strengths to your students and ask them to declare their strengths. As a group, brainstorm about how best to capitalize on these strengths. Let your students know that they facilitate creative performance by merging talent and preparation with opportunity. By helping students identify the exact nature of their talents, you create opportunities for them to express and use their talents.

Any teacher can help students play to their strengths. All you need is flexibility in assignments and a willingness to help reluctant students determine the nature of their interests and strengths.
23. Grow Creatively
Once we have a major creative idea, it is easy to spend the rest of our career following up on it. It is frightening to contemplate that the next idea may not be as good as the last one, or that success may disappear with the next idea. The result is that we can become complacent and stop being creative.

Sometimes, as experts, we become complacent and stop growing. Teachers and administrators are susceptible to becoming victims of our own expertise-to becoming entrenched in ways of thinking that worked in the past, but not necessarily in the future (Frensch & Sternberg, 1989). Being creative means stepping outside the boxes that we-and others-have created for ourselves.
24. Proselytize for Creativity
Once you have mastered a few of these techniques to develop creativity and made them part of your daily teaching routine, spread the word. The virtues of teaching your students in order to develop their creativity and your own multiply from reinforcement. Make the difference by telling your colleagues, associates, administrators, principal, school board members, and everyone else how important it is to develop creativity in students.

Use examples of creative student work, particularly from students who are not gifted in traditional academic abilities, to demonstrate the difference it makes to teach for creativity. Describe how every student can be reached with patience and a few techniques for developing creativity. Tell your colleagues that student projects are more interesting once students have experienced explicit creativity training. Richer, funnier, wilder, and generally far more interesting assignments, book reports, and projects make our lives less boring. It is, in fact, a good example of enlightened self-interest for teachers to give students creativity training, because creative students are more motivated and more involved with their schoolwork, and their work becomes more interesting.

If you spread the word about the importance of teaching for creativity in schools, homes, and communities, this approach to teaching will become more common and benefit teachers and students everywhere. Small changes in the way questions are asked, assignments are worded, and tests are crafted can make big differences in the lives of students. We hope that we have provided ideas you can use immediately to start teaching for creativity.

References

Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Amabile, T .M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath.

Frensch, P.A., & Sternberg, R. J. (1989). Expertise and intelligent thinking: When is it worse to know better? In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Advances in the psychology of human intelligence. Vol. 5. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Garcia, J., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). The relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science, 4, 123-124.

Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds. New York: Basic Books.

Gruber, H. E. (1986). The self-construction of the extraordinary. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schank, R. C. (1988). The Creative Attitude: Learning to Ask and Answer the Right Questions. New York: Macmillan.

Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A Triarchic theory of human intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Successful intelligence. New York: Plume.

Sternberg, R. J. (in press). A propulsion model of types of creative contributions. Review of General Psychology.

Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: Free Press.

Sternberg, R. J., & Williams, W. M. (1996). How to develop student creativity. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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By Robert Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams What makes a person creative? Why are some people more creative and others less so? We often think that the creative people are the ones who have some rare and unattainable ability, but it is not so.

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How to develop student creativity - Sternberg

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How to develop student creativity - Sternberg

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by Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.

-Stephen Leacock

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it. What another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.

-Andre Gide

Too many people think they are being creative when they are just being different.

-anonymous

"Alice is brilliant, but she doesn't have a drop of creative talent."

"Barbara is wonderfully creative, but she does poorly on standardized tests."

"Carlos always has interesting approaches to problems, but he just doesn't fit into the traditional school environment."

How many times have we, as teachers, administrators, researchers, or parents, heard remarks like these? And how many times have we concluded that abilities are etched in stone, inexplicable, and unchangeable? You can learn and teach creative thinking by using the 25 strategies that we describe in this book. Use these strategies to develop creativity in yourself, in your students, and in your colleagues and staff members. Our strategies are based on the investment theory, a psychological theory of creativity, but any one strategy is consistent with many other theories. Read about other views of creativity to see how different views lead to similar recommendations for developing creativity (Amabile 1983, Boden 1992, Gardner 1993, Ghiselin 1985, Gruber 1981, John-Steiner 1987, Rubenson and Runco 1992, Simonton 1988, Sternberg 1988a).

Buying Low and Selling High

The investment theory of creativity (Sternberg and Lubart 1995) asserts that creative thinkers are like good investors: They buy low and sell high. Whereas investors do so in the world of finance, creative people do so in the world of ideas. Creative people generate ideas that are like undervalued stocks (stocks with a low price-to-earning ratio), and both are generally rejected by the public. When creative ideas are proposed, they are often viewed as bizarre, useless, and even foolish, and are summarily rejected, and the person proposing them regarded with suspicion and perhaps even disdain and derision.

Creative ideas are both novel and valuable. Why, then, are they rejected? Because the creative innovator stands up to vested interests and defies the crowd and its interests. The crowd does not maliciously or willfully reject creative notions; rather it does not realize, and often does not want to realize, that the proposed idea represents a valid and superior way of thinking. The crowd generally perceives opposition to the status quo as annoying, offensive, and reason enough to ignore innovative ideas.

Evidence abounds that creative ideas are rejected (Sternberg and Lubart 1995). Initial reviews of major works of literature and art are often negative. Toni Morrison's Tar Baby received negative reviews when it was first published, as did Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The first exhibition in Munich of the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch, opened and closed the same day because of the strong negative response from the critics. Some of the greatest scientific papers are rejected by not one but several journals before being published. John Garcia, a distinguished biopsychologist, was summarily denounced when he first proposed that classical conditioning could be produced in a single trial of learning (Garcia and Koelling 1966).

From the investment view, then, the creative person buys low by presenting a unique idea and attempts to convince other people of its value. After convincing others that the idea is worthy, which increases the perceived value of the investment, the creative person sells high by leaving the idea to others and moving to another idea. Although people typically want others to love their ideas, immediate universal applause for an idea usually indicates that it is not particularly creative.

Foster creativity by buying low and selling high in the world of ideas-defy the crowd. Creativity is as much an attitude toward life as a matter of ability. We routinely witness creativity in young children, but it is hard to find in older children and adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity. We begin to suppress children's natural creativity when we expect them to color within the lines in their coloring books.

Balancing Analytic, Synthetic, and Practical Abilities

Creative work requires applying and balancing three abilities that can all be developed (Sternberg 1985, 1988b; Sternberg and Lubart 1995).

Synthetic ability is what we typically think of as creativity. It is the ability to generate novel and interesting ideas. Often the person we call creative is a particularly good synthetic thinker who makes connections between things that other people don't recognize spontaneously.

Analytic ability is typically considered to be critical thinking ability. A person with this skill analyzes and evaluates ideas. Everyone, even the most creative person you know, has better and worse ideas. Without well-developed analytic ability, the creative thinker is as likely to pursue bad ideas as to pursue good ones. The creative individual uses analytic ability to work out the implications of a creative idea and to test it.

Practical ability is the ability to translate theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. An implication of the investment theory of creativity is that good ideas do not sell themselves. The creative person uses practical ability to convince other people that an idea is worthy. For example, every organization has a set of ideas that dictate how things, or at least some things, should be done. To propose a new procedure you must sell it by convincing others that it is better than the old one. Practical ability is also used to recognize ideas that have a potential audience.

* * *

Creativity requires a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical abilities. The person who is only synthetic may come up with innovative ideas, but cannot recognize or sell them. The person who is only analytic may be an excellent critic of other people's ideas, but is not likely to generate creative ideas. The person who is only practical may be an excellent salesperson, but is as likely to sell ideas or products of little or no value as to sell genuinely creative ideas.

Encourage and develop creativity by teaching students to find a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical thinking. A creative attitude is at least as important as creative-thinking skills (Schank 1988)-just ask a teacher for a self-description. I've never heard a teacher self-described as a suppressor of creativity. The majority of teachers want to encourage creativity in their students, but they are not sure how to do so. Those teachers and you can use the 25 strategies presented in this book to develop creativity in yourselves, your students, and others around you.

Using just a few of our 25 strategies based on the investment theory of creativity (Sternberg and Lubart 1995) can produce results in yourself as well as in others. Although we present the strategies in terms of teachers and students, they apply equally to administrators working with teachers, parents working with children, or people trying to develop their own creativity. The strategies are easy to use and are outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. 25 Ways to Develop Creativity

1. Modeling Creativity

2. Building Self-Efficacy

3. Questioning Assumptions

4. Defining and Redefining Problems

5. Encouraging Idea Generation

6. Cross-Fertilizing Ideas

7. Allowing Time for Creative Thinking

8. Instructing and Assessing Creativity

9. Rewarding Creative Ideas and Products

10. Encouraging Sensible Risks

11. Tolerating Ambiguity

12. Allowing Mistakes

13. Identifying and Surmounting Obstacles

14. Teaching Self-Responsibility

15. Promoting Self-Regulation

16. Delaying Gratification

17. Using Profiles of Creative People

18. Encouraging Creative Collaboration

19. Imagining Other Viewpoints

20. Recognizing Environmental Fit

21. Finding Excitement

22. Seeking Stimulating Environments

23. Playing to Strengths

24. Growing Creatively

25. Proselytizing for Creativity

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by Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. -Stephen Leacock The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. -Ralph Waldo Emerson What another would have done as well as you, do not do it.

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Emerging Good Practice in Promoting Creativity

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Emerging Good practice in Promoting Creativity.pdf

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Killing Creativity

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We have choices in how we raise and teach our children - to kill creativity or foster it. ©Leslie Owen Wilson

"If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society." Jean Piaget

"The most powerful way to develop creativity in your students is to be a role model. Children develop creativity not when you tell them to, but when you show them." Robert J. Sternberg in How to develop student creativity (Also See Sternberg's article Teach Creativity not Memorization)

How we discourage creativity in children - Leslie's comments:

It is perhaps ironic that within our culture we insist that we place such value on creativity and then blatantly try to steal it away from children. In the contexts of our school and home environments there are often so many rules that they smoother budding creative spirits. As a culture we need to finally decide what we really want for our children and then carefully design and monitor experiences which provide those things we value. Here Hennessy and Amabile (1992) identify what they call the common "creativity killers." It is important to note that all of these "killers" are commonplace in both our schools and homes.

Surveillance - Hovering over kids, making them feel that they're constantly being watched while they are working, . . . under constant observation, the risk-taking, creative urge goes underground and hides . . .

Evaluation - When we constantly make kids worry about how they are doing, they ignore satisfaction with their accomplishments. . . .

Rewards - The excessive use of prizes . . . deprives a child of the intrinsic pleasure of creative activity.

Competition - Putting kids in a win-lose situation, where only one person can come out on top, . . . negates the process children progress at their own rates.

Over-control - Constantly telling kid how to do things, . . . often leaves children feeling like their originality is a mistake and any exploration a waste of time.

Restricting choice - Telling children which activities they should engage in instead of letting them follow where their curiosity and passion lead . . . again restricts active exploration and experimentation that might lead to creative discovery and production.

Pressure - Establishing grandiose expectations for a child's performance . . . often ends up instilling aversion for a subject or activity. . . .Unreasonably high expectations often pressure children to perform and conform within strictly prescribed guidelines, and, again, deter experimentation, exploration, and innovation. Grandiose expectations are often beyond children's developmental capabilities.

Summarized from: Goleman, Kaufman and Ray (1992) The creative spirit, 61-62

"If intrinsic motivation is one key to a child's creativity, the crucial element in cultivating it is time: open-ended time for the child to savor and explore a particular activity or material to make it her own. Perhaps one of the greatest crimes adults commit against a child's creativity is robbing the child of such time." Goleman, Kaufman and Ray (1992) The creative spirit, 63

Think about it:

Children's lives, just like those of adults, should be compartmentalized. And yes, children need to be taught to regulate their behavior according to the situation and resulting social needs. But there should be some sense of balance between the times when children have time for creative exploration, experimentation, and innovation, and the times where choices are restricted, where direct instruction is given, and where children are required to obey rules and conform to social norms. Unfortunately, what really happens is that there is usually a lack of balance and life becomes an all or nothing proposition. As a result, many children go through childhood learning only about competition, rules, control, and conformity, and little about the joy of exploration, innovation, and discovery as these elements pertain to acts of creation.

One of the things that research reveals (Piirto) on the upbringing of highly creative individuals, is that these people usually came from homes that had only a few, important, sacred rules. The few rules that did exist usually had to do with how people were treated.

After reading the list of "creativity killers" above, please examine your own practices as either a teacher or a parent and see how many "killers" are regularly part of your teaching or parenting. Then see if you can alter your practices so that your children or students have opportunities to develop their senses of creativity more fully. In other words, try to limit or eradicate your own array of " creativity killers.".

There are many potent stories about trying to regulate and contain creativity in children. Here are a few to explore:

Harry Chapin's poignant song

Children's author Tomie de Paola's book

Helen E. Buckley's classic poem The Little Boy appears on many sites.It is about a little boy genuinely excited to go to school. However what he finds there is conformity and that he is to sit and wait until the teacher tells him what to do. Depressingly, in the end he can no longer think or create for himself, but he is very good at sitting and waiting to be told what to do. See if you can find this allegory. It is a potent lesson about the power of teachers. Here is one link to the story - the Little Boy

All of these examples speak of similar tales telling about how teachers, concerned more with obedience and conformity, steal children's creative spirits.

In a very crowded world, civility and appropriate social behavior are important skills in a society that values interpersonal, collaborative, and cooperative skills. But as caring adults and role models we need to find a balance between perpetuating the need for obedience and social order, and helping maintain school and home atmospheres that foster times for creative activities and imaginative play. Creative exploration often has no definitive end product or final destination - sometimes it is about the journey and what is learned along the way. And please remember daydreaming is not wasting time! Often it is the brain looking for an escape from boredom, or the "little gray cells " of the human brain looking for solutions. (I even wrote a poem about its importance - The Swirls.)

On the importance of persistence and reflection in fostering creativity

We are part of a hyperturbulent, fast-paced, disposable culture - break-down furniture, break-up marriages, cross-country migrations, sound bites, video clips, fast food, eat-and-run types of living. The breakneck speed of these interactions leads to an incessant, pervasive need for instant gratification. In this state our cultural milieu does not readily lend itself to either fostering reflective analysis, or to the natural development of tenacity in our children. And yet we know from numerous investigations into the lives of creative individuals that reflective action is necessary for the incubation periods so crucial to true creative production. We also know that persistence and tenacity are essential elements that distinguish highly creative people from people who just have good or unusual ideas.

In order to be recognized, the processes which form creative thoughts and behaviors demand that unique ideas find inviting homes. Ideas must seek development, production, and refinement before they reach fruition and manifestation. They have to be incubated and developed properly for others to see their beauty or their worth. This process takes time and energy and tenacity as creators become consumed with the tasks of taking ideas and making them visible, audible, doable, or usable.

Therefore, if we say that we value creativity and its many processes and products, we must ultimately be willing to teach the art of reflective behavior and foster persistence in our young. However, developing these attributes in children takes the gift of time, and our children must be given that gift if they are ever to become truly creative.

Children need time to discover, to explore, to experiment, to learn from mistakes, to adjust and realign their ideas. They also need allocated time to play with ideas, to make corrections, time to dream, and to wonder "what if?" These are lifetime skills far beyond the measurement of common academic standards, and well into and beyond our tomorrows.

We must decide if creativity is really important to the maintenance and continuum of our culture. If our answer is "yes" then we must be willing to allocate the time necessary for the true development of creative spirits in our young people. And we must be sure to teach our children the art of reflective and persistent behavior and to allocate enough time for those attributes to grow and flourish. (*Read more on the importance of persistence to creativity.)

Amabile, T.M., & Hennessey, B.A. (1992). The motivation for creativity in children. In T. Pittman & A. Boggiano (Eds.), Achievement and motivation: A social developmental perspective (pp. 54-74). New York: Cambridge University Press

Hennessey, Beth A., and T. M. Amabile. (1987) Creativity and Learning. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1987.

Goleman D., Kaufman P., and Ray M. (1992) The creative spirit. New York: Penguin.

Piirto, J. (1992) Understanding those who create, 1st ed. Dayton, Ohio. Ohio Psychology Press.
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Killing or Fostering Creativity in Children - The Second Principle

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We have choices in how we raise and teach our children - to kill creativity or foster it. ©Leslie Owen Wilson "If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society."

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Out of fresh ideas? These inspiring talks offer the kick-in-the-pants you need to unleash your creative spirit.

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Creativity is one of those ineffable skills that's important-especially for jobs of the future-but hard to pin down. We know when we feel creative, and we know what creative work looks like. Measuring and assessing such work in a way that keeps kids inspired is another matter, though, and schools aren't known for being good at it. For years, personalities like Sir Ken Robinson have taken education systems to task for actually testing the creativity out of students.

Author and educator Katie White, who's something of an expert on the creative process, may have a practical solution.

She argues that creativity actually has a very visible side that can be nurtured. "A lot of people think it's very formless, but the case that I'm making is that it's actually very observable, and there's plenty of things that would indicate creativity," she says. That means teachers can both tease it out and measure it-provided they know what to look for.

A former art teacher, White is now an education consultant who criss-crosses the continent giving workshops, coaching teachers in her local Saskatchewan district and writing books. Her newest, " Unlocked: Assessment as the Key to Everyday Creativity in the Classroom," serves as something of a blueprint for schools aiming to spark the creative process in the classroom while staying grounded in a reality that requires them to follow standards and assess students regularly.

White recently spoke with EdSurge about what creativity actually looks like, practical ways teachers can inspire their students and the biggest enemy of the creative process. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
EdSurge: What does a good formative assessment around creativity look like?
White: There are a few. Depending on the context in which kids are engaging in creative processes, there will be the layer of assessment that relates directly to the content. If they're exploring various ways to solve various mathematical problems, for example, you'll have a layer that's pretty specific. Often you'll get those criteria from the standards and the outcomes, and teachers and kids can make sense of that work together. That's sort of the vehicle that's getting them to the creative process.

But then there's the criteria for creativity. In other words, "how does creativity look when it's being lived out?" Well, we want to see kids asking lots and lots of questions. We want to see students who are struggling with ambiguity and are feeling comfortable taking risks. We want to see them recover from mistakes and show engagement and investment in their products and performances. Those will be the same from class to class and experience to experience. But the context that drives creativity will be subject-specific.

Experimentation or risk-taking in a writing class means that students generate an idea they haven't used before, or come up with new perspectives or opinions. In a science class, risk-taking might be making a hypothesis that goes beyond the surface level and thinking about what might happen and then committing to that idea. Or it might be using less-familiar materials. This risk-taking skill looks different depending on the context.
In your book, you talk about "the four stages of creativity." Can you describe what this process looks like?
The stages I talk about are a synthesis of the work of lots of other people. I sort of rename them so they're easier to understand. I talk about introducing kids to creativity through a catalyst or a critical notion: I call that the exploration stage. It's a time when kids are asking questions and invited into learning experiences that create curiosity.

The second stage is elaboration, where students will mess around with their initial questions and their engagement with materials. They will deepen their understanding and their questions might shift a bit.

The third stage is expression, and that's where kids and teachers decide together how to share their thinking with other people. It could be with parents or other students or just sitting beside someone and sharing a solution to a problem. The fourth stage is reflection and response. It's a little different from self-assessment, which happens in all stages. Reflection and response is that really deep longitudinal thinking about creative processes and which strategies worked for kids, which environments made them more creative and how they'd like to apply it to their learning.

Layered over that is the notion of thinking about assessment in new ways. People most often think of the final summative event where we verify learning. But the kind of assessment I talk about most is dialogue with others, or feedback, and then dialogue with self, or self-assessment.

In order for children and adults to move through these stages, we need to invite them into the kinds of assessment processes that allow them to think about what they are trying to achieve, the degree to which they're being successful in that moment and how to plan for future engagement-like what they're going to do next.
Where in those stages might students get tripped up and not able to move on to next stage?
If we let kids free with great materials and good catalysts, I don't know that they get tripped up. You have to provide physical space, emotional space and time for kids to try things and experience either success or failure. In a school environment, we're often marching through a very content-heavy and skill-heavy curricula, which makes teachers feel pressured to move through things as quickly as possible.

You might go through the exploration, where children are invited to generate their own questions, but then they don't get the chance to fully search for answers and experiment and experience the creative process. We rush to the answer too quickly.

Or maybe they have a chance to do some exploration and elaboration, but there isn't enough time for them to express and share their work with meaningful audiences. Often their expression is in the form of handing something in to the teacher.

And then the stage that gets most short-shrifted is reflection and response. Because this is how teachers and kids can connect their creative personality, and who they're becoming as creative individuals. They can connect past tasks to future tasks and future creative endeavors. We rarely have the time to do that reflection. The biggest enemy of creativity is time.
You've written before about using observation as an assessment tool-where the teacher is almost like an Olympic judge. Why do some teachers feel more comfortable than others using observation?
Well, I can only speak from my own perspective. I've taught every grade, K-12. When I was teaching the early years [i.e., young learners], we accepted that, developmentally, children aren't ready yet to commit their thinking in a written form. So we're willing to have children represent their thinking through images or sounds or puppet shows. There's lots of ways kids can express their understanding.

The same is true in highly performance-based environments like physical education and practical and applied arts. We would never ask in a P.E. class for children to sit down and write about every time they're learning a new skill. It's perfectly acceptable for teachers to observe that, and it's very powerful because it's really authentic.

But in some subject areas-science and math and English-language arts-the older kids get, the greater the emphasis on written documentation of understanding. Part of that is justifying a grade. It's easier for me to justify it if I have visual evidence that I can speak to. Another part has to do with confidence: "Did I really just see what I thought I saw?" And finally there's the perfectly legitimate reason, which is that we need students to be able to express thinking in a written form by the time they graduate because our society is very text-heavy.

But the power of observation is really critical to creative development. There are a lot of things that we need to see and hear to know that it's happening. I'm talking about things like engagement or investment, or kids being curious. These are often expressed orally. We need to be able to listen and document. We need to be able to sit back and observe kids trying new ideas on and listen to them confer with others. All of that is really important in a creative environment.

At the very least, in the book I try and make the case for the triangulation of evidence, or the notion that observation and conversation are just as important as student artifacts. Looking at many sources of information would tell us what kids are thinking and feeling about their work.
What are some practical things teachers can do to heighten the way they assess creativity?
Sharing assessment with students is a critical first step. Teachers should be willing to open themselves up to having conversations with kids, about what they're trying to achieve, what their goals are-both short and long term-and about the decisions they're making. This helps kids understand that assessment is a process to help determine where they are right now, where they are headed and the space between those two things.

In my workshops, I invite participants to engage an a creative act and then I ask them to co-construct with me criteria for the product. In other words, what needs to be in the finished product? And then we co-construct another set of criteria around what creativity might look like in this context. What would we see if someone was engaging in creativity?

Having that criteria up-front, we can invite students to consider how successful they are. We can actually do a self-assessment feedback session. Teachers can also create a chart with student names along the left-hand side and the criteria for creativity along the top. And when they're doing observations, they can be formally looking for those things being lived out in the classroom space.
Creativity requires students to make their own choices, but it also requires some structure. Can you talk about the push and pull between free choice and structure?
I've taught art classes in the community since I was 17-years-old, so for a very long time. I feel like I've tried everything under the sun in terms of getting kids to engage in creative processes.

For a number of children, when you place a blank canvas or a blank page in front of them, because there's no criteria or structure to guide their thinking, it almost requires of them a spontaneous creativity. And that's really difficult for people who aren't experienced in terms of their own creative inclinations.

Structure can come in the form of any number of things. Giving kids a question or a series of objects and asking how they might go together provides enough structure to unleash creativity. It's not so daunting when there's a framework. It's easier to think outside the box when there's a box. We need to know what's there so we can figure out whether were pushing beyond it.

In art classes, I've said: "Here's a blank canvas. Create whatever you like, but you need to have two straight lines, three curved lines, a geometric shape and an organic shape." For some reason, those guidelines really help kids move into that creative part. It seems to inspire them more than just giving them a blank canvas.

But the bottom line is that we do have outcomes and standards we need to work toward. I want teachers to understand that we don't have to make a binary choice between creativity and curriculum. We can do both.

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The Greatest Enemy of Creativity in Schools Isn't Testing. It's Time. - EdSurge News

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Creativity is one of those ineffable skills that's important-especially for jobs of the future-but hard to pin down. We know when we feel creative, and we know what creative work looks like. Measuring and assessing such work in a way that keeps kids inspired is another matter, though, and schools aren't known for being good at it.

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Schools, students need more space to foster creativity

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Schools, students need more space to foster creativity

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Children need space - to think, to reflect, to grow creative muscles and to be themselves. Experts - from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to lecturers at the Institute of Education - agree, as do teachers and children themselves.

Many of the entrants in this year's School We'd Like competition yearned to create spaces: gardens to tingle the senses or to grow produce; observatories and ponds to observe nature; even a library in a tepee that would merge inner and outer quiet space.

As primary school winner Great Sankey wrote of its all-purpose arts Splat Shed: "It would be a space for children to express themselves freely, without worrying about making a mess." Teacher Steven Mavromichalis from secondary school winner, Chipping Norton, commented: "All schools need a place to reflect. Pupils do need their quiet time."

The competition gave teachers and children a chance to think about important things: how to sustain our fragile world, how to collaborate with fellow pupils and how to engage with the wider community. More than 330 schools welcomed the chance to share their dreams.

Paul Tombs, outgoing head of education at Zurich Municipal, the risk management and insurance company that developed the competition in association with the Guardian Teacher Network, was a judge in the first School We'd Like competition last year.

"Seeing the good ideas and the creativity coming through was one aspect, but what was really good to see was that students developed other skills as part of it," he said. These included collaboration, debating and standing up and presenting. "They were absolutely fantastic. Very young primary children were not fazed, even when the technology wasn't working and they were in front of a large audience."

Kwaid,17, from special school finalist Pendlebury centre, said: "I enjoyed the day so much. Most of all, I am proud of myself that I actually got up onstage and talked to all those people, because I suffer from horrible anxiety."

So-called "soft skills", such as problem-solving and team-working, encouraged by the competition and exemplified by the submissions, are sought by businesses. But they will also help the next generation tackle the problems of climate change and preservation of the natural world, says Ann Finlayson, chief executive of Sustainability and Environmental Education (Se-ed).

Finlayson adds: "In the current system, more and more young people learn to work on their own - 'let's get through these exams' - but that's not what businesses are looking for. We need to study ways to make society change."

Surveys by the National Union of Students and Higher Education Academy show 85% of first year university students want to gain sustainability competences to: "understand people's relationship to nature"; "analyse, using many subjects"; "act as a responsible citizen locally and globally"; and "plan for the long term as well as the short term."

Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education, London University, thinks the current "obsession with individualised provision" misses one of education's essential purposes. "What schools do above all else is provide an induction into a community," he says.

Community involvement is one of the competition's key criteria, says Tombs: entries are supposed to involve all participants in the life of a school, from parents and governors, to teaching and non-teaching staff, through to children of all ages. This perfectly chimes with Ofsted's framework for school inspection, which expects schools to work in partnership with external agencies and the community to "extend the curriculum and increase the range and quality of learning opportunities for pupils".

Husbands sees such involvement with the wider world as integral to schooling. "We need to prepare children for an unpredictable world, both with the knowledge we give them and the ways in which we ask them to learn."

He believes that subject knowledge is part of that process. "The key life skills that formal education offers to children are reading, writing and maths. The most important social justice tool education has is to teach children to read."

But he and other experts emphasise that being hard-edged about the basics should not be set in opposition to creativity; the two are complementary.

Pat Cochrane, chief executive of CapeUK, which promotes creativity in schools, says it's not enough for teachers themselves to be creative; they need to foster creativity in the children. "You can't generate creativity unless teachers have time to really reflect on what they're doing." To infuse the school day with creativity, leaders and teachers need to take "every opportunity to reflect on how the school day is designed and how children are involved in exploring their own learning".

Special schools are particularly good at this, says Cochrane. "They are constantly reflecting and trying to analyse what impact a particular intervention will have." Tracy Edwards, leader for curriculum and assessment at Swiss Cottage school in Camden - a teaching school and one of the UK's biggest special schools - adds that this reflection should be done in concert with the children. In a school where physical environment has a huge impact on children's access to the curriculum, "we want learners to have a voice and make decisions around how their classroom is organised."

That is just how special schools winner River House school developed their plan to grow food and distribute it through food banks. Teacher Coleman Doyle said: "The lads really want to do this, and it's going to change their image in the community and give them skills for their future."

Claire Custance works on the Royal Horticultural Society's Campaign for School Gardening. "Children gain confidence from being outside and doing something practical and non-competitive," she says, "and working in harmony for the common good, with a sense of responsibility and the chance to change things."

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students need more space to foster creativity | newtimes

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Schools, students need more space to foster creativity

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Children need space - to think, to reflect, to grow creative muscles and to be themselves. Experts - from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to lecturers at the Institute of Education - agree, as do teachers and children themselves.

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Making space in our schools for children to develop their creativity

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Making space in our schools for children to develop their creativity

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Nurturing creativity is a key focus of twenty-first century educat ional and employment discourses here and around the world. However we believe secondary school teachers in Australia are frustrated in their efforts to develop creative and critical thinkers who are ready for employment in the 21 st century.

Crowded curriculums and high-stakes testing make it difficult for our teachers to nurture exper imental dispositions in students that are so necessary for them to join creative and innovative endeavours.

In this blog post w e loo k at what is happening and offer some strategies teachers might use to negotiate the complexities of teaching students to be creative and innovative in classrooms today .
We have good intentions in Australia
We aspire to n urturing creativity and critical thinking in our schools. The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians , which states the goals agreed by all Australian Education Ministers back in 2008, describes successful learners as those who 'are creative ... and are able to solve problems' , a nd confident learners as those who 'are enterprising, show initiative and u se their creative abilities' .

The national Aus tralian Curriculum identifies 'Critical and creative thinking' as on e of seven general capabilities. In this document, the need for students to think creatively is a response 'to the challenges of the twenty-first century' - a context in which young people need 'to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and crea tive thinking purposefully' .

The national Australian Professional Standards for Teachers requires teachers at all levels to demonstrate the use of teaching strategies to develop student's 'knowledge, skills, problem solving and critical and creative thinking.'

The world needs creative thinkers

The focus on developing creative thinkers is not surprising when we look to the burgeoning demands of twenty-first century employers. The World Economic Forum reports that by 2020 creativity will be one of the top three skills employers will look for in potential job applicants . In this report, creativity is second to cognitive flexibility and ahead of logical reasoning and problem sensitivity.

Director of the OECD Education Directorate, , noted that 'educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge to novel situations'. And in a LinkedIn survey of 291 hiring managers in the U.S economist, Guy Berger , reported that creativity is seventh in the list of the top ten m ost in-demand soft skills .

The twenty-first century has seen a distinct shift away from the hard-skills associated with a knowledge economy towards the soft-skills needed for a creative economy. There is a persistent and pervasive educational and social demand to develop twenty-first century students who are creative thinkers.

However, students and teachers often perceive engaging in creative endeavours as risky business.

Barriers to Risk-taking

We believe key barriers to nurturing experimental dispositions in students can be traced to high-stakes testing and the subsequent narrowing of the curriculum.

A survey of the literature sheds light on how high stakes external testing can challenge the ways schools situate learning. Some of these ways are potentially negative and attest to the ongoing impact of tests such as NAPLAN on teachers' pedagogy. Stanford University Education Professor has written extensively on how low-quality testing regimes and test preparation in the USA have led to a narrow curriculum which is increasingly disconnected from the higher-order skills required for success in today's world.

And it is happening here in Australia

There is strong evidence that Australian teachers, often in response to explicit or implied 'advice', likewise change their pedagogy to strategically prepare students for NAPLAN or HSC examinations. Many teachers are highly critical of the English NAPLAN test for example, as it assesses limited components of literacy, emphasises simple answers and includes material not relevant to the students' lives. Despite this, researchers report that pedagogy aimed at NAPLAN success infiltrates everyday influences resource allocation, creates 'data-based' teaching and assessment, and involves significant emotional labour on the part of teachers .

Education Psychologist, David Berliner , also demonstrates, through evidence-based practice, that schools narrow the curriculum by increasing the lesson time of high stakes test content and skills. Data collected from surveys completed by a representative sample of almost 500 school districts in the US showed that 'eighty percent of the school districts increased time in English/ language arts by at least 75 minutes a week ... [and] sixty-three per cent of the districts reported they increased mathematics time by at least 75 minutes a week'.

This time has to come from somewhere in the school day . In the sam e survey, schools reported up to 35% of time previously devoted to subjects such as Social Studies, Physical education, Art and Music had been redirec ted to test preparation . Even recess was not sacrosanct with some schools removing recess from the daily routine and scheduling just on e break of 20 minutes for lunch . School-based decisions such as these favour delivery of content in preparation for external examinations and generate reduced opportunities for students to question or explore new ideas.

Creating space to think, experiment and take creative risks

Australian education researchers Mary Ryan and Georgina Barton suggest teachers create a 'thirdspace' to teach writing 'within the competing and often contradictory spaces of high-stakes testing and the practices and priorities around writing pedagogy in diverse school communities' . It is ' a space to resist, subvert and re-imagine everyday realities ' or ' wriggle room to negotiate government agendas, but at the same time, to attend to what is required for quality writing' .

Ryan and Barton base their ideas on the work of , the French Philosopher who calls the first space the 'perceived' space. In a school, this space refers to daily routines and the design, delivery and practice of syllabus content requirements. The second space is the 'conceiv ed' space, this is the 'ideal', according to those in power, of how a school or classroom should operate. For teachers in Australia this is the space occupied by t he National Professional Standards for teachers, testing, The New South Wales Education Standards Authority's H igher School Certificate e xaminatio n requirements, or similar requirements on other states and territories, government policy and even media reports . The 'thirdspace' is that 'space to resist, subvert and re-imagine everyday realities'

Most teachers across their professional and personal life engage in all three spaces; however, many classrooms only interact in the first two spaces. As research coming out of the US has shown, in a context of high stakes testing (of which the is an example), teachers attend to the perceived space and deliver syllabus content pertinent to an ext ernal examination. They respond to the conceived space by meeting the demands of Professional teaching Standards, HSC examination requirements, reporting of HSC results in the media, and pressure at school level for more Band 6 results .

The attention required by the perceived and conceived (first and second) spaces often leaves no room for the thirdspace. But it is in the thirdspace that valuable critical and creative thinking - so important to twenty-first century schooling and employment - can take place and flourish. We need to actively and deliberately use the thirdspace to nurture students' experimental disposition, to prepare them for life and employment in the twenty-first century.
Strategies for n urturing the experimental disposition of students
Here are some of our key suggestions for developing an experimental disposition in your students and thus nurture creativity in your classroom.

Create your own 'thirdspace' and name it

We were thinking of 'The Bubble' as the title of our thirdspace. Students could enter the thirdspace, hereon referred to as The Bubble , at any appropriate time of the lesson. This space could be a demarcated area of the classroom or a metaphorical space where students explore, experiment and problem solve. We also recommend allocating a set period of time for The Bubble each week. Furthermore, we recommend some guidelines for your Bubble such as, " When you enter The Bubble expect to: experiment with forms and play with ideas; make small gains; make progress with nothing tangible to show! "

Build an expectation that experimenting can be ordinary work

Provide problems not answer s in The Bubble and build an expectation of the 'ordinary'. Creative endeavour involves a lot of plodding; every idea and experiment will not be brilliant, insightful or evocative. But plodding along builds application to the experimental disposition that over time builds bodies of creative, critical works.

Encourage collaboration

Encourage c ollaboration in all problem-solving tasks. Most modern innovations are not the result of the isolated genius discovering a unique solution. As Professor in Educational Innovations at University of North Carolina , , notes, 'most innovative companies are the ones that have successfully tapped in to team collaboration'. Set students collaborative problem-solving activities for The Bubble, and place importance on the process of problem-solving rather than the product. These types of activity prepare well the twenty-first century student for life beyond school.
Recently we presented a keynote address for secondary school teachers at the Art Gallery of NSW about the strategies we suggest for nurturing the creative and e xperimental disposition of students . Linda Morris , arts and books writer for The Sydney Morning Herald attended the address and an article ensued, Flipping teaching on its head . There has been much interest in how we can create space to develop student creative and critical thinking skills . Dr Kim Wilson is a l ecturer in Secondary History Education in the Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University. Her research into historical fiction for child ren and young adult readers identified a prevalent trend for re-visioning and rewriting the past according to modern social and political ideological assumptions. Her current research focusses on strategies to enable and measure growth in history student's Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). She is particularly interested in how technology can be used to facilitate the teaching of evaluative and critical thinking skills.
Kim has over twenty years' experience in secondary school education with more than ten years of that experience in leadership positions. She is an expert practitioner with a strong track record of academic and professional publications that support and extend her teaching method and subject knowledge. Kim's passion and commitment to education was acknowledged in 2005 with a Quality Teacher Award conferred by the NSW Minister for Education and Training and The Australian College of Educators.
Dr Janet Dutton is a Lecturer in Secondary English in the Department of Education Studies at Macquarie University . Janet has a passion for teaching that promotes c reative pedagogy and has worked extensively with primary and secondary teachers in the use of identity texts and drama strategies to develop literacy. Janet has deep experience as a lecturer in teacher education, leader of teacher professional development and as Head Teache r, English in government and non-government schools. She has developed assessment and curriculum at national and state level organisations and was the Chief Examiner, English for the NSW Higher School Certificate, 2011-2016. Janet's research interests include secondary English curriculum, the impact of high stakes testing , and teacher identity formation, motivation and retention .

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Making space in our schools for children to develop their creativity

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Nurturing creativity is a key focus of twenty-first century educat ional and employment discourses here and around the world. However we believe secondary school teachers in Australia are frustrated in their efforts to develop creative and critical thinkers who are ready for employment in the 21 st century.

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One of the most exciting models of learning is "design thinking." It combines hands on learning (tinkering) with independent problem solving methodologies. This concept is basically the same as the problem solving-based creative process taught in many design disciplines, like architecture, engineering, and game design. The basic steps of design thinking can be characterized as follows:

1. Identify the problem and research to understand the problem better
2. Brainstorm possible strategies and identify solutions
3. Test these solutions (welcoming failure as a learning tool)
4. Apply what you learn to evolve best solutions

When students practice design-thinking projects in the classroom, they not only master the concepts within the project, they exercise their skills of collaborating with teammates, investigating their topic thoroughly, using empathy to generate ideas for solutions, prototyping, and testing. Most importantly, they learn that failure is not a setback. This activity fosters the lifelong skill and mindset that learning new things to help solve problems is part of day-to-day practice and no longer confined to the classroom. Because this quest for knowledge is self-initiated and involves the direct application of learned skills, the retention of information that kids have as a result of this process is significantly higher.

Everyone who cares deeply about education wants to find creative ways to engage the next generation of learners. The thinking about these spaces will continue to evolve and change as we try them out and learn from these experiences.

A challenge for many public and cash-strapped schools is that this hands-on, project-based learning approach needs to be directly supported by the spaces where the learning occurs. Design thinking in education requires open spaces with flexible, moveable pieces that can be used in different ways each day depending on the topic being explored. Schools like Brightworks in San Francisco and the Nueva School in Hillsborough have fashioned their learning spaces and laboratories specifically for this type of culture, but similar results can be achieved without renovating your classroom or school. Here are six ideas that any school can implement.

1. Put wheels on classroom furniture.
Spaces need to be flexible to accommodate a wide variety of student-use scenarios and project-driven set ups. Furniture that can be easily rolled out of the way can go from collaboration lounge to prototype lab with little effort. A variety of casters can be found at IKEA or your local hardware store. Use casters with stems for desks and tables. These have sleeves that can be inserted into the legs. Plate mounted casters can be screwed directly into the base of the furniture. Look for wheels that swivel in all directions so that students can move them easily. Many casters have locks which help to keep them from moving once you've got them in place.

2. Create comfortable and customizable "break-out spaces" with couches or soft chairs where students can work together.
Stanford University's "d.school" (design and engineering school), where the current design thinking trend was jump started, exemplifies the importance of comfortable collaboration spaces. d.school students draw from a mobile "kit of parts" to assemble work environments shaped to their project based activities and then put them all back afterwards. d.school has created a culture of creating the space for the environment you need. Furniture here easily rolls or stacks out of the way to leave an open room after the activity is finished. Working in this space requires presence of mind of how you will interact and how the space should be shaped to accommodate that.

3. Look for spaces on your campus that can be transformed into a student-driven collaboration classroom.
The Australian Science and Mathematics School, a public high school in Adelaide, repurposed a basement storeroom as their innovation "shed." The shed supports 17 students in self-organized learning and tinkering on Thursday mornings and was designed to be a "funky" place teenagers would be comfortable perusing what they are interested in. Sivam Krish directs programs at the shed, but does not teach in the traditional sense. He encourages peer-to-peer learning in the space. The shed is furnished with cheap garage equipment and relatively inexpensive technology. Nothing is fixed: monitors, 3-D printers, computer workstations, and other equipment are mounted on wheeled scaffolding carts so that students can frequently adjust their space to suit their projects.

4. Create a shared design-thinking space for all students to use.
By being inclusive of all students, the program can serve as a compliment to the rest of the curriculum. At Marin Primary and Middle School in Northern California, the kindergarten through 8th grade classroom curriculum links to hands-on projects that kids do in the school's "Projects Lab." The lab is a locus where all the equipment that can facilitate student tinkering and prototyping is concentrated, with some inherent flexibility in its layout to accommodate student creativity.

In San Francisco, Lick-Wilmerding High School's Design and Technology Center takes sharing a step further by bringing together many of the schools communal resources. The center houses teaching workspaces and shops for wood, metal, glass and electronics, as well as a multi-purpose room, computer lab, and two conference rooms. The central, single level, configuration of the spaces allows for a shared work area between disciplines and encourages student interaction and interdisciplinary collaboration.

5. Create a design-thinking space is a design-thinking exercise.
Assign students the task of designing the design-thinking environment. Groups of the students enrolled in the one-semester design-thinking course at Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia came up with blue-sky proposals for redesigning the school library. At the end of the semester, two 11th grade participants, Jack Morrissette and Zane Homsi, used an independent study credit to further consider how design thinking could be expanded at the school. Their study culminated in a more feasible library redesign based on the collective ideas from their classmates-including a proposal to free up space for design-thinking environments by going completely digital. With no more shelves full of hard copy books, there would be room for comfy chairs and moveable white board walls for collaboration spaces, and an innovation lab with 3-D printers, visual design technology and other tools. Their proposal is currently being considered by the school board.

6. Ask for help.
Ask students' families and the community to donate gently used furniture, construction tools, sewing machines, fabric, wood remnants, and other tools and materials they no longer use. Power tools, an integral component of any decent maker-studio space, empower kids with confidence and the independence to prototype and test their ideas. Ask parent volunteers to demonstrate how to use them correctly and with the necessary safety equipment. Ask the PTA or your board to help raise the funds for your program.

You can also ask to visit design thinking programs other schools. The Willows Community School in Culver City, California visited Castilleja High School's Bourn Idea Lab in Palo Alto where parent and resident tinkerer, Diego Fonstad, showed the space and offered insights into how the school integrates the classroom learning and physical aspects of making into one project.

Rethinking learning environments will play an important role in education in the years to come. Are you rehashing old models or covering new ground? Everyone who cares deeply about education wants to find creative ways to engage the next generation of learners. The thinking about these spaces will continue to evolve and change as we try them out and learn from these experiences. This is the design-thinking process for creating the next generation of learning environments.

Let's keep this conversation going. What ideas for bringing design thinking into schools have you tried?
Peter Pfau, FAIA, is the founding Principal of Pfau Long Architecture in San Francisco and a member of the AIA's National Committee on Architecture for Education. Pfau is a modernist who balances conceptual rigor with a love for building.

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How a Moveable Space Can Ignite Creativity in the Classroom

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One of the most exciting models of learning is "design thinking." It combines hands on learning (tinkering) with independent problem solving methodologies. This concept is basically the same as the problem solving-based creative process taught in many design disciplines, like architecture, engineering, and game design.

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Using school space innovatively brings creativity to the curriculum

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Schools that create interesting physical spaces can help foster creativity among their pupils - and the wider community

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Shaking off old timetabling structures will to be one of the most significant challenges our schools face in becoming more creative organisations.

On the one hand, schools are developing incredible curriculum opportunities and learning spaces for students to think and work creatively. Also, on the other hand timetabling of a student's day remains very similar to what it was like 10, 20, even 30 years ago. I am sure you remember the tone of your school bell telling you to stop thinking and move on to your next lesson.

Many of the working norms of timetabling have not changed in line with new thinking about learning and creativity. Constructs such as time have merely lingered as part of the school experience.

The basic grammar of schooling, like the shape of classrooms, has remained remarkably stable over the decades. Little has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms, splinter knowledge into 'subjects' and award grades and 'credits' as evidence of learning. (Hoffstetter 2013)

"Changes in Mass Schooling:'school Form'and 'grammar of Schooling'as Reagents." European Educational Research Journal 12.2 (2013): 166-175.
Hofstetter, Rita, and Bernard Schneuwly.

It would seem that some of those lingering structures might be getting in the way.

I am not proposing students spend their time with open agendas and no structure, lolling around being "creative". We can strike a balance in school timetables between the standard lesson block structure and uninterrupted time to become more deeply immersed in creative learning.

Schools understand the need for their students to be creative, but that might mean only on a Thursday afternoon in a 50 minute period. This flies in the face of what we know about creativity.

In the recent Netflix original documentary, The Defiant Ones, Dr Dre the rap artist, producer and entrepreneur points out:

You never know when you're going to be inspired and what's going to inspire you. You can't put a time limit on creativity.

Unfortunately, I don't have a beach-side recording studio to retreat to, but I can relate to how I get immersed in creative work. I am sure you will also have experienced when ideas come to you at different times. How might we adjust the learning environment to reduce the barriers to this type of immersive creative work?

The blocks to being creative are deeply connected to the time we have available to us. According to James Adams in his acclaimed book Conceptual Blockbusting, we face a range of emotional blocks to the creative process.

These behaviours and habits stultify our creative endeavours, and they are accurate in education as well as business.

A fear to make mistakes, to fail, to risk.

Preference for judging ideas rather than generating them.

No tolerance for ambiguity or chaos.

A lack of challenge - not engaging enough.

Excessive zeal - too much speed, pace and haste.

An inability to relax and to incubate ideas.

As school leaders, we have to overcome these blocks to nurture conditions for children to be actively creative little souls and provide an environment for innovative learning and teaching design.

What might these conditions include? What principles can we use to guide us? I recently re-discovered this lovely essay on creativity by Issac Asimov, in which he offers some thoughts on creating the conditions for others to generate ideas:

Daring cross-connection

Free of responsibility

Thoroughly relaxed

Deep knowledge

Discussing something of interest

Being by nature unconventional

Organising a timetable that functions efficiently and also embraces Asimov's conditions, providing the appropriate time and pace for our students to be genuinely creative is a complicated issue. It will be one of the most significant hurdles for our schools to overcome and is a vital component of contemporary learning design. However, changing the way we organise time might be the key to unlocking the ideal conditions for creativity in schools.

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Time for Creativity in Schools - Tom Barrett's Blog

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Shaking off old timetabling structures will to be one of the most significant challenges our schools face in becoming more creative organisations. On the one hand, schools are developing incredible curriculum opportunities and learning spaces for students to think and work creatively.

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21st Century Learning Spaces & Infrastructure - Sackville Schools 2020

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21st Century Learning Spaces Inspiring Infrastructure

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Learning spaces. Virtual spaces. Physical spaces.

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Learning spaces. Virtual spaces. Physical spaces.

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The Seven Spaces of Technology in School Environments

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NB - Updated version with all content.

Matt Locke originally came up with the concept of the Six Spaces of technology (test.org.uk/​2007/​08/​10/​six-spaces-of-social-media/​). I added a seventh earlier this year, Data Spaces, and have played around with how education could harness these spaces, and the various transgressions between them, for learning.

This short presentation tackles the potential of adjusting our physical school environments to harness technology even better. What happens when we map technological spaces to physical ones?

You can see more of the detail behind these thoughts over on the blog:
edu.blogs.com/​edublogs/​2010/​10/​-cefpi-clicks-bricks-when-digital-learning-and-space-met.html