ABSTRACT
How do we respond in the classroom, to at least some of the challenges raised by problematising creativity? It could be argued that many, if not all, of the problems posed by creativity arise from a universalised perspective, which implies that creativity is uniform across time and space, and that it is also unquestionably A Good Thing. We might, then, be led to question, as this book has done, whether creativity is indeed ‘A Good Thing’ to foster in the classroom. And yet, in a sense the question is an unhelpful one. For it is perhaps undeniable that generative thinking is a core human attribute. Human beings seem, too, to manifest creativity even in the most unlikely and oppressive circumstances; we only have to look at the history of war, civil disruption or famine, for example, to see many examples of creativity on the part of those who suffer, and also in many instances on the part of those responsible for suffering. If creativity is a human attribute, then we could expect our harnessing,
nurturing and exploration of it to form an appropriate part of what we do in schools. However, the book has raised many questions that may be addressed through paying attention to how we go about promoting creativity in the classroom. The framework offered in this chapter explores the role of creative
partners, models of artistic and creative engagement, and the role of critical
scrutiny in the classroom in the context of the active ethical and social environment into which new ideas are born, and also in the context of creativity as core to being human. It is this latter notion that we begin with.
Early studies treated creativity as if it were an individual attribute (Guilford 1950; Torrance 1987, 1988; Plucker and Renzulli 1999), although recent work has situated it in systems. Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1994, 1999) suggests that creativity is only deemed to be so by recognition of a field of experts. Simonton’s (1984, 1988, 1999) historiometric work examines creative individuals in their historical context, Sternberg and Lubart (1995b) propose an economic metaphor of creativity as investment, and there are others (e.g. Williams and Yang (1999)). Situating creativity as emerging from systems implies that it has something to do with ‘being in relationship’. But how might we understand creativity in a more holistic, connected
and perhaps even constructive sense of relationship? We see such a model in the work of the inspirational physicist David Bohm (Nichol 1998, 2003), who suggested that the ‘general mess’ (Nichol 1998: 18) in society is a consequence of so few of us being able to grasp a holistic position on our place in the social and physical world and in individual and collective consciousness. Thus, we create partial ‘order’, which comes into conflict or tension with other partial ‘orders’. For Bohm, true creative acts come from recognising difference and
similarity: ‘one first becomes aware . . . of a new set of relevant differences, and one begins to feel out or otherwise note a new set of similarities, which do not come merely from past knowledge, either in the same field or in a different field’ (Nichol: 1998: 16). But this also comes from a place which involves connection with other individual and collective thought; if it does so, he suggests, ‘This leads to a new order, which then gives rise to a hierarchy of new orders, that constitutes a set of new kinds of structure. The whole process tends to form harmonious and unified totalities, felt to be beautiful, as well as capable of moving those who understand them in a profoundly stirring way’ (Nichol: 1998: 16). Although here he is referring to what might be called ‘big c creativity’,
shifts in conceptualising the world and the interrogation of similarities and differences are processes he advocates in developing any level of creative thought. His contention is that small steps that are undertaken without reference to other frameworks have the effect of stagnating our capacity to truly be creative, and destroy the harmony and totality of true creativity. The process of creative engagement, he acknowledges, is confusing and can be painful, but cannot be undertaken through formulae and techniques. He suggests ‘Certain kinds of things can be achieved by techniques and formulae, but originality and creativity are not among these. The act of
seeing this deeply (and not merely verbally or intellectually) is also the act in which originality and creativity can be born’ (Nichol: 1998: 26). Bohm, however, argues not only that interrogation, or ‘dialogue’ as he
calls it, is essential to a new creative order. Bohm and Peat (1989) also propose that generativity, or the development of new ideas, at an explicit level (the ‘explicate order’), is born of a latent ‘implicate order’, which is in turn informed by a super-implicate, or second-level implicate, order. Wider societal consciousness can be understood in these terms also according to Bohm, so that the overt activities, individuals and artefacts are the explicate order of social consciousness. At the first-level implicate order is ‘the pool of knowledge it has accumulated for millenia’ (Nichol 2003: 289), and beneath this, at the second-level implicate order, are ‘the values and meanings that inform the pool of knowledge with specificity and order, giving rise to dispositions, intentions and actions that unfold into the explicate social order’ (Nichol 2003: 289). The significance of Bohm’s model is the need for collective and intersubjective thinking to really produce coherence in generative thought. As Nichol (2003: 290) puts it, ‘[Bohm] came to feel that the efforts of scattered individuals would have only marginal effect on the generative social order, and that any enduring impact would require a collective approach, which carries the potential for exponential change’. It could be argued that the dilemmas and tensions outlined in this
book may be seen as an illustration of Bohm’s ‘general mess’, which results from inadequately connected thinking. Bohm’s framework suggests that critical engagement with ideas is essential to developing coherence. In other words, being in relationship, in dialogue, with others about our ideas and our inventions and the ways that we live our lives is core to a more balanced approach to the development of our world. Bohm’s work is very theoretical on one level, but we find similar
suggestions within classroom studies. It has been argued (Sawyer 2004), as discussed in Chapter 10, that conversation situated in a discipline is necessary to the development of creativity in the classroom. Sawyer uses the notion of ‘disciplined improvisation’, borrowing from theatre studies, to emphasise the balance of structure and freedom in the construction of understanding, the collaborative nature of enquiry in a classroom community and the role of peer co-participation. As Sawyer notes, a particular challenge for the teacher is how to find the balance between the planned curriculum structure and knowledge goals: ‘In disciplined improvisation, teachers locally improvise within an overall global structure’ (Sawyer 2004: 16). On one level, it is difficult to see what might be new in what Sawyer is proposing, for, as he himself notes, ‘Teaching has always involved the creative appropriation of curricula within the situated practice of a given classroom’ (Sawyer 2004: 17). But he goes beyond this to emphasise the role of improvisation in fostering creativity in particular, suggesting that recognising teaching as disciplined improvisation means
recognising the teacher as a creative professional rather than as a technician, and that being able to teach through disciplined improvisation requires both content knowledge and also the capacity to facilitate group improvisation effectively. Other implications of the perspectives proposed by Bohm and by
Sawyer lead us to need a better understanding of creativity as a dialogic or collaborative process. Some recent work is taking place in this area (John-Steiner 2000; Sawyer 2004; Wegerif 2004), and our understandings of how this translates into the classroom are still imperfect. However, Sawyer suggests that we could learn more as teachers from actors, using role play, verbal spontaneity, and staying ‘in the moment’ by building on previous comments through the ‘yes-and’ rule (i.e. not trying to write the whole play but being comfortable to be able to predict just one or two plot-turns ahead). The balance of remaining in touch with the goals that one has for a group of learners and enabling real conversation is clearly challenging, but it does illustrate the creativity inherent in teaching as an art. A different sort of approach to establishing dialogue and relationship
with ideas and with others in a classroom community is described by Eckstein (2004), drawing on neuro-linguistic programming. Eckstein proposes that through using the tool of ‘reframing’ it is possible to encourage learners (and indeed for peers to encourage one another) to see a problem or a situation from a fresh perspective in order to generate possible strategies for engaging with it. As he puts it, ‘Reframing changes the original meaning of an event or situation, placing it in a new context in which an equally plausible explanation is possible’ (Eckstein 2004: 39). It involves, quite literally, bringing a new set of assumptions to an existing situation, to facilitate generative thinking. One aspect of seeing creativity as emerging through dialogue is the
notion of ‘being in relationship’. In one study (Craft 1997) of educators in the south-east of England, this was a theme seen as essential to genuinely fostering pupil engagement and generativity. ‘Relationship’ was seen as dynamic interaction, including that between learner and teacher, learner and learner, and also between teacher or pupil and themselves. It also included the relationship between the learner and the discipline itself. Creativity was construed as dialogic and not as unitary. It was seen as emerging from a constructivist framework of learning and teaching. Disciplinary dialogue or conversation encompasses the domain in
which understanding and creativity are being developed, as research by Bae (2004) illustrates. Her study of the teaching of art in early childhood education in North America suggested that children’s creativity in art is mediated and enhanced through peer and adult mediation. She found that the length and depth of children’s engagement was much greater when children engaged in conversations related to their art work, particularly with adults. This finding is also borne out by the work of Brice-Heath and
Wolf (2004), who explored children’s creativity through art mediated by a professional artist working in partnership with a school in South East England. In each case the adult helps to guide children to new understandings, new connections and new possibilities, but in such a way that the learner constructs their own ideas drawn from and inspired by the discipline in question. And it is the learner’s active engagement in making sense and making connections which is so important. This is demonstrated in a study of the ‘pretend play’ of children aged three to six by Gmitrova and Gmitrov (2003: 242) in the Slovak Republic, where children’s creativity was far greater when adult interaction was not ‘frontal direction’ but rather involved ‘gently facilitat[ing] playing groups, activate[ing] passive children, and allow[ing] a free-flow in the playing process’. They note that the environment was richly resourced to both provoke and support play. It was significant that ‘children were free to undertake extended exploration and problem solving, often in small groups, where cooperation and disputation mingled pleasurably’ (ibid.) and that although the teacher’s role was unobtrusive, it nevertheless meant playing alongside children and engaging actively with their emergent ideas. The establishment of a community of engagement is perhaps also implicit
in perspectives on nurturing creativity which seek to take account of ‘how ideas land’. The work of the Project Zero team at Harvard University around the notion of understanding as performance, discussed earlier in the book, offers a model whereby the creative needs of individuals are balanced against the collective needs of a group, and whereby understandings are negotiated and further developed collectively where nourishment, stimulation and support for the individual is set in the wider context of others. Applied to creativity, this classroom strategy might involve having pupils represent their ideas using certain domains of expression (for example, visual art or algebra) in order to share them as a ‘performance of understanding’ (Blythe 1999). Seeing how ideas how ideas ‘land’ and entering into a negotiation and exploration of meaning would be integral to the performance, and so the audience would be invited to offer evaluative feedback which, too, might be in the same or different form to the original performance. Feedback would not be one-way; it would be important for the creator to be able to negotiate meaning and possible implications with evaluators. Through this interactive feedback, an intersubjective community of enquiry and of practice would emerge, which would aim to express and deepen disciplinary understanding and to strengthen creative engagement. This strategy for fostering ethical creativity is adapted from the Project Zero Teaching for Understanding framework, in which precise understanding goals are taught through generative topics and assessed and developed through performances of understanding (Blythe et al. 1998; Perkins 1999). The suggestion is that generative, thoughtful creativity in the classroom,
then, takes account of the frameworks that it challenges and emerges
through conversation or interaction and the consideration of potential impacts that new ideas may have. Ritchart (2002) describes the creative disposition as involving open-mindedness and curiosity. He claims that by harnessing these and other thinking dispositions in the classroom we enable learners to apply their understandings and to generate their own ideas. Of course, the underlying model of engagement needs careful thought: How far is our aim to ‘battle the ideas out’, as in the Western model described in Chapter 7, or to ‘achieve concensus’, as in the Eastern model described in that same chapter? Thus, although we may not necessarily generate ideas in the school
classroom that are domain shifting, such interaction provides a framework which both nurtures creativity and also does so in a framework that acknowledges the possible effects of creativity.
