Teaching for Creativity

I’ve been working my way through Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom, a collection of essays by academics in an edited volume by Ronald Beghetto and James Kaufman. Although primarily aimed at the primary and secondary levels, I think there are some general lessons for tertiary education. Here is a partial list off the top of my head.

1. One can teach for creativity, although educational policies have often resulted in teachers aiming to cover content standards resulting in creativity being neglected.

2. The Arts are important for creative expression, but they are not the only place where creativity can be fostered – other areas in the social sciences, humanities, the natural sciences, and mathematics can leverage teaching for creativity.

3. Creative thinking isn’t just divergent thinking; there is in fact an important role for going back and forth between divergent and convergent thinking. Unfortunately most “tests for creativity” mainly test divergent thinking.

4. There is a competition between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and the latter often drives out the former and can in some cases negatively impact creative thinking in students.

The essay that struck me most thus far is “Teaching for Creativity in an Era of Content Standards and Accountability” by John Baer and Tracey Garrett. Its main premise: “Teaching for creativity and teaching for specific content need not be in opposition… Creative thinking actually requires significant content knowledge, and thinking creatively about a topic helps deepen one’s knowledge of that topic.”

I could not do justice summarizing the clear prose by the authors so I will simply quote sections from their essay. I encourage interested readers to get the book and read this essay in full (it’s #2 of 19).

“There is a sense among many educators that the push for stricter content standards will decrease the amount of time teachers can allocate to the teaching of thinking skills. There is also a concern that content standards will encourage teachers to limit their instruction to that which will be tested.”

“We cannot deny that this happens. But there is significant evidence that the introduction of explicit content standards does not lessen students’ creativity; in fact, it may do just the opposite.” (The authors then cover some of the studies bolstering this point.)

“Thinking depends heavily on knowledge… Mistakes in everyday critical thinking are more often the result of faulty premises (i.e., incorrect factual knowledge) than a lack of general problem-solving skills… It seems that content knowledge is essential to serious thinking, that teaching content-free thinking skills is not possible, that higher-level thinking requires the automatization of lower-level skills, and that to improve students’ thinking in a given domain, students must acquire an understanding of much factual content about that domain as well as a variety of domain-specific cognitive skills.” This last (rather long) sentence summarizes discussions/arguments I’ve had with colleagues over the skills/content divide. I don’t think there’s a divide, but there are others who do.

“So we must teach students content knowledge if we want to improve their thinking. Conversely, often the best way to teach content knowledge is to get students [to] become actively engaged [cognitively] with the content to be learned [and not just being] physically active or emotionally engaged.”

“This is not to suggest that all is well and that there is no conflict between content standards (and test-based accountability) and teaching for creativity. There are very real problems…” The authors go on to discuss some of the problems, and how many of them can be avoided.

“The most effective ways to teach skills and content knowledge often involve the very same activities one would emphasize to promote creative thinking… Although there are situations in which these two goals are at odds, they are more often synergistically linked. More creativity will often lead to more content knowledge, and more content knowledge will lead to more creativity. But there are a few bumps on the road to this educational nirvana…”

Reading this essay has gotten me excited about how to restructure how I use some of my class time (and hence what to assign for outside of class work). Unlike last semester where I attempted a major overhaul of a single class, this time around I am going to be less ambitious and make incremental changes to some of the class sessions. I signed up to teach General Chemistry I in the TuTh (two 1.5-hour sessions) rather than the MWF (three 1-hour sessions) to allow more class activity time in a single stretch. For a long time we only had MWF “lecture” sessions because of the way lectures and labs were scheduled but with recent increasing enrollments we’ve started to experiment with (usually) one TuTh section. By virtue of volunteering to take this time slot, I will have to change the well-oiled plan I have been using for years.

Stay tuned for more of my ideas (or things I’m going to try out) as I blog about them!