Creativity

Mention the word “creativity” and people usually think of some famous artist or musician. Most people do not consider themselves to be particularly creative. One of the essential goals of modern education must surely be to change this perception.

Creativity can be defined in many ways but I especially like Sir Ken Robinson’s definition. Sir Ken is one of the world’s most highly respected thinkers on creativity and education and his view is that:

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value”.

Defined in this way it is easy to see that every human being can be creative in many different ways. Every teacher and every parent needs to be conscious of this fact when interacting with our children. We must nurture creativity in our children not stifle it by insisting that children always conform to our own ways of thinking or to our own ways of doing things. We must encourage our children to think outside the square and we must support them in their efforts when they do so.

History is full of examples of people who changed the world by thinking outside the square. We can all name the famous examples from the history books or from the newspapers – the explorers, the leaders, the academics, the entrepreneurs and yes the great artists, musicians and writers. What we need to remember though, is that there are countless examples of everyday men and women who make wonderfully creative contributions to their workplaces, societies and communities, often without ever being formally recognized or rewarded for doing so. We can all do it. We should all strive to do it.

Over the next few years, teachers in all schools must face the many challenges that 21st Century education brings. One of those challenges is to foster creativity in all our students, in all areas of the curriculum. If we are to do this, we must relinquish our time-honoured position of gatekeeper to knowledge. We must accept that the students sitting in front of us, even in Year 7, know how to access more knowledge than they could use in a lifetime. We must accept that our students know far more about technology and how to use it than we will ever know. This can be a frightening fact but it need not be. This realisation can be very liberating. This realisation can liberate us from that old industrial paradigm of education and can allow us to reconceptualise our role. We can begin to explore the roles of learning mentor, learning consultant, learning motivator.

To foster creativity amongst all our students, we must be creative ourselves and be open to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, and new ways of being “teacher”. In the words of one famous creative thinker and innovator, Albert Einstein:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

All this sounds like hard work and a lot of it. What, then, is our motivation for doing all this hard work? I believe that high quality teaching and learning is a moral imperative. The provision of excellent teaching that facilitates student engagement, sets high expectations, encourages creativity and ensures a high level of social support for all students is essential to enabling the best possible learning outcomes for students. We owe the next generations our best work.