“Developing Creativity in Every Learner” Library Media Connection, October, 2012
Doug Johnson
Creativity has been getting a lot of attention lately. Popular authors Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind, Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class, and Sir Ken Robinson in The Element all stress that creative ability is essential for both economic and personal fulfillment. The most recent revision of Benjamin Bloom’s popular taxonomy of educational objectives places creativity at the top of the cognitive domain. Every “21st Century Skill” list I’ve seen includes creativity as one of those necessary abilities tomorrow’s most productive workers will need - ISTE’s NET-S and AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner among them.
Yet schools aren’t doing a very good job of developing creativity in students. One report (Bronson, 2010) indicates that creativity scores had been steadily rising, as had IQ scores until 1990. But since then, creativity scores have consistently fallen. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is most serious.”
While we in education are tasked with producing creative graduates, this responsibility may be something to which we are simply paying lip service. We like to think we encourage creativity in students — but only to a safe limit. Too much creativity makes us a little nervous, and the less creative student is often the less challenging student - and may not perform as well on tests.. (See “Why Robots Make the Best Students” side bar.) As a result, creativity gets short shrift, despite its growing importance to the student and worker.
I have some concerns about creativity as the term is commonly viewed in schools, teaching, and technology use. How might we as librarians personally develop, encourage, and measure creativity when working with students? Let’s expose some myths of creativity to see if we can find some answers.
Myth 1. Creative work does not belong in basic subjects like math, science, social studies, English or “core” skill sets like information and technology literacy. Educators too often pigeon-hole creativity into arts classes - fine arts, music, theater, and dance. Of course creativity is an important part of these disciplines.
Yet I value creative problem-solvers as much as I appreciate those folks who are creative in a more artistic sense. Perhaps we need to extend the definition of “art” to dealing with people and situations in new and effective ways. The creativity I admire most, especially in my staff, is simply figuring out a way of accomplishing a task in a better way. Or dealing effectively with a problem — mechanical or human. We must never narrow what constitutes a “creative” endeavor.
How exactly do human beings demonstrate creativity?
Why do we restrict creativity to the art room and creative writing class when it should be in every class, unit, and activity? Librarians, let’s address creativity in projects in all subjects.
Myth 2. Creativity does not require learning or discipline. When many of us look at a Jackson Pollock painting, we usually think something like, “Gee whiz, give a) a monkey, b) a little kid, or c) me a can of paint and I can make a painting like that.” We’d be wrong. Even abstract artists understand balance and tone, and exhibit great craftsmanship and technical skills. The most original written ideas in the world are inaccessible when locked behind faulty grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization. Digital music composition programs like GarageBand will not cure a tin ear. Some of the most creative poetry follows the strict structures of the sonnet, villanelle, or haiku.
Too many students think that sufficient creativity will overcome a lack of skill or need for discipline or necessity for practice. Creativity unaccompanied by drive, self-discipline, or just hard work and practice isn’t worth much. Do we ask students to be both creative and disciplined? Do we set some parameters to the creative activity?
Jim Moulton writes about “freedom within a structure” - that only by setting some limits do students become truly creative. (Moulton, 2009) Students need to be able to use concrete skills within the context of a larger creative endeavor:
Good assessment guides like rubrics and checklists often have fairly specific indicators of “quality”:
Such parameters do not restrict creativity, but can help focus and enhance it.
Myth 3. Creativity is fluff and we do not need to assess whether students can demonstrate it. If we ask students to demonstrate creativity or innovation, we need some tools to determine whether they have done so successfully. As much as I admire identifying creativity as a 21st century skills, I am not sure it is fair to hold students to account for mastering it if we can’t describe what it looks like, provide models, and be able to objectively determine whether a student has been creative.
Like pornography, I don’t think I can define creativity, but I think I know it when I see it. But that won’t cut it in the assessment world. In order for us to determine whether creativity has been shown in a project or during a task, we need to know what it is.
While there are over 200 definitions for creativity in the professional literature (Treffinger, 2002), nearly all are comprised of two components: originality and effectiveness. Any assessment of creativity will need to address both halves of this definition. Does the work have some element of newness, of innovation and does the new approach make the end product better, not just different.
One way to assess creativity is simply to ask students themselves about how they feel they have exhibited a creative approach to the assignment and how that approach made results better. Peer-evaluation of creativity may well be helpful. Is there a section of your rubric for creativity or a box on the check list for original thinking? There should be.
Myth 4. Only academically “gifted” children are creative. Sir Ken Robinson reminds educators that we should not be asking “if” a child is intelligent, but instead be asking “how” a child is intelligent. I would riff on that statement by adding that we should not be asking “if” a child is creative, but “how” a child is creative.
Business reports bear this out:
When students aren’t being creative, it may be because they don’t have enough interest in the project or subject - there is no intrinsic motivation for doing creative work. Studies also show that neither extrinsic rewards nor competition spur creativity.
Finding what most interests individuals may be the best way we can stimulate creativity. Linking a personal interest to a required area of study is one successful approach. If the student required to “write a report” about a historical time period, but his real interest is in automobiles, encourage a question like, “How did the Great Depression impact the development of the automobiles in the U.S.?”
Myth 5. Technology use automatically assumes creativity. Anyone who has ever seen a slideshow with only large blocks of dry text and no graphic elements knows the fallacy of this assumption. A word-processed essay might be more legible, but not necessarily more interesting, exciting, or moving.
Many programs can, however, enhance the creative effort - if creativity is asked for by the teacher. Photo and video editing allows students to create work only professionals could do ten years ago. Simple online tools allow the formation word clouds, of text overlayed on graphics, and of slideshows set to music with exciting transitions. Seek out those programs - often free or low cost - that let students convey information in original ways.
Technology also allows students to share their creative work with audiences beyond the classroom, raising the level concern about the quality of the work shared - including just how creative it can be considered. When grandma’s looking at your presentation in Slideshare, you want her to be impressed.
Myth 6. Librarians and teachers themselves do not need to display creativity. I’ve always felt students learn more from our examples than from our words. It’s difficult to ask others to be creative when we don’t exhibit (or inhibit) creativity in our daily work. If our own lessons are dull and uninspired, if our libraries are drab and lifeless, and if we don’t talk up the resources in our libraries that are models of creativity, students will know us for the hypocrites we are.
As professionals , we need learn more about creativity and the creative process. This may be difficult with the “one-right-answer” test score mentality. Are any staff development efforts being diverted from “raising test scores” to “thinking outside the quadrilateral parallelogram?” This needs to be a personal effort, done in league with our professional learning networks.
I know that I have a lot more to learn about enhancing and supporting creativity in education.
Myth 7. Everyone wants creative students. When I give a workshop on creativity, one of my slides shows a sculpture made out of what looks like a dog dropping. Small gasps can often be heard.
Creative people have a long history of making others nervous or upset. From Elvis’s gyrations, Monet’s abstractions, Job’s technologies, to Gandhi’s resistance - innovation is met with resistance. Our students (and teachers) who are truly creative just might rattle our preconceptions and our sense of taste. Genuinely new products just may take some getting used to. Recognize this and remember that not all people celebrate the creative spirit.
Albert Einstein famously said, “The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” Think creatively about creativity in your library program, lessons, and students.
Bronson, Po and Ashely Merryman, The Creativity Crisi. Newsweek, July 2010
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html>
Breen, Bill. “The 6 Myths of Creativity,” Fastcompany.com, Dec 1, 2004. <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/creativity.html>
“100 Simple Ways to be More Creative on the Job,” Heart of Innovation Blog
<http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2011/06/post_7.shtml>
Moulton, Jim. “It’s Time to Get Serious About Creativity in the Classroom,” Edutopia, August 21, 2009. <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/freedom-structure-balance-classroom>
Treffinger, et al Assessing Creativity: A Guide for Educators. NCR G/T, 2002.
<http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm02170/rm02170.pdf>
Williams, Robin The Non-Designers Design Book 3rd edition, Berkley, CA: Peachpit Press 2008,
Sidebar: Why Robots Make the Best Students
When automation is written about in education, it’s usually the teacher whose tasks are off-loaded to the computer through programmed instruction. My suggestion is that if we were to replace human students with robots, teaching will a lot more effective!
Robots make terrific students because:
Skills are important, and I think the best teachers teach discrete skills in ways that allow diverse learners to become successful. That is one of the easy parts, if there are any, to classroom teaching.
More difficult is to provide the deeper learning activities in which real creativity is nurtured and developed. These are activities that ask students to make use of their new skills to accomplish complex tasks. And the very best activities ask them to be creative in the application of their new-found skills.
…all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation — people who are turned on by their work often work creatively — is especially critical. (Breen, 2004)