importance of creative in education

What creativity really is - and why schools need it

Associate Professor of Psychology and Creative Studies, University of British Columbia

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Although educators claim to value creativity , they don’t always prioritize it.

Teachers often have biases against creative students , fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

Why the disconnect between educators’ official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school?

How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated ?

These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. We study the creative process , as well as how ideas evolve over time and across societies. I’ve written almost 200 scholarly papers and book chapters on creativity, and lectured on it worldwide. My research involves both computational models and studies with human participants. I also write fiction, compose music for the piano and do freestyle dance.

What is creativity?

Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Specifically, creativity involves cognitive processes that transform one’s understanding of, or relationship to, the world.

There may be adaptive value to the seemingly mixed messages that teachers send about creativity. Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution. As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.

In biological evolution, the novelty-generating components are genetic mutation and recombination, and the novelty-preserving components include the survival and reproduction of “fit” individuals. In cultural evolution , the novelty-generating component is creativity, and the novelty-preserving components include imitation and other forms of social learning.

It isn’t actually necessary for everyone to be creative for the benefits of creativity to be felt by all. We can reap the rewards of the creative person’s ideas by copying them, buying from them or simply admiring them. Few of us can build a computer or write a symphony, but they are ours to use and enjoy nevertheless.

Inventor or imitator?

There are also drawbacks to creativity . Sure, creative people solve problems, crack jokes, invent stuff; they make the world pretty and interesting and fun. But generating creative ideas is time-consuming. A creative solution to one problem often generates other problems, or has unexpected negative side effects.

Creativity is correlated with rule bending, law breaking, social unrest, aggression, group conflict and dishonesty. Creative people often direct their nurturing energy towards ideas rather than relationships, and may be viewed as aloof, arrogant, competitive, hostile, independent or unfriendly.

Also, if I’m wrapped up in my own creative reverie, I may fail to notice that someone else has already solved the problem I’m working on. In an agent-based computational model of cultural evolution , in which artificial neural network-based agents invent and imitate ideas, the society’s ideas evolve most quickly when there is a good mix of creative “inventors” and conforming “imitators.” Too many creative agents and the collective suffers. They are like holes in the fabric of society, fixated on their own (potentially inferior) ideas, rather than propagating proven effective ideas.

Of course, a computational model of this sort is highly artificial. The results of such simulations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, they suggest an adaptive value to the mixed signals teachers send about creativity. A society thrives when some individuals create and others preserve their best ideas.

This also makes sense given how creative people encode and process information. Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations. Some of these associations will be spurious. On the bright side, some may lead to new ideas that are useful or aesthetically pleasing.

So, there’s a trade-off to peppering the world with creative minds. They may fail to see the forest for the trees but they may produce the next Mona Lisa.

Innovation might keep us afloat

So will society naturally self-organize into creators and conformers? Should we avoid trying to enhance creativity in the classroom?

The answer is: No! The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before. In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels — to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.

This is particularly important now. In our high-stimulation environment, children spend so much time processing new stimuli that there is less time to “go deep” with the stimuli they’ve already encountered. There is less time for thinking about ideas and situations from different perspectives, such that their ideas become more interconnected and their mental models of understanding become more integrated.

This “going deep” process has been modeled computationally using a program called Deep Dream , a variation on the machine learning technique “Deep Learning” and used to generate images such as the ones in the figure below.

The images show how an input is subjected to different kinds of processing at different levels, in the same way that our minds gain a deeper understanding of something by looking at it from different perspectives. It is this kind of deep processing and the resulting integrated webs of understanding that make the crucial connections that lead to important advances and innovations.

Cultivating creativity in the classroom

So the obvious next question is: How can creativity be cultivated in the classroom? It turns out there are lots of ways ! Here are three key ways in which teachers can begin:

Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving .

Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, such as by painting murals that depict biological food chains, or acting out plays about historical events, or writing poems about the cosmos. After all, the world doesn’t come carved up into different subject areas. Our culture tells us these disciplinary boundaries are real and our thinking becomes trapped in them.

Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection. This provides time and space to foster the forging of new connections that is so vital to creativity.

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Creative Learning in Education

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Creative learning in schools represents a specific form of learning that involves creative expression in the context of academic learning. Opportunities for students to engage in creative learning can range from smaller scale curricular experiences that benefit their own and others’ learning to larger scale initiatives that can make positive and lasting contributions to the learning and lives of people in and beyond the walls of classrooms and schools. In this way, efforts aimed at supporting creative learning represent an important form of positive education. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and discuss the co-constitutive factors involved in creative learning. The chapter opens by clarifying the nature of creative learning and then discusses interrelated roles played by students, teachers, academic subject matter, uncertainty, and context in creative learning. The chapter closes by outlining future directions for research on creative learning and positive education.

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Creative Ecologies and Education Futures

Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity

Supporting creative teaching and learning in the classroom: myths, models, and measures.

Although schools and classrooms have sometimes been characterized as contexts that suppress or even kill student creativity (Robinson, 2006 ), educational settings hold much promise for supporting students’ creative learning. Prior research has, for instance, indicated that there is on an average positive relationship ( r  = .22) between measures of creativity and academic achievement (Gajda, Karwowski, & Beghetto, 2016 ). This association tends to grow when measures are more fine-tuned to assess creativity and academic learning in specific subject areas (Karwowski et al., 2020 ). These findings suggest that under the right conditions, creativity and learning can be complementary.

Indeed, creativity researchers have long asserted that creativity and learning are tightly coupled phenomena (Guilford, 1950 , 1967 ; Sawyer, 2012 ). Moreover, recent theoretical and empirical work has helped to clarify the construct and process of creative learning (Beghetto, 2020 ; Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ; Gajda, Beghetto, & Karwowski, 2017 ). Creative learning in schools represents a specific form of learning that involves creative expression in the context of academic learning. More specifically, creative learning involves a “combination of intrapsychological and interpsychological processes that result in new and personally meaningful understandings for oneself and others” (Beghetto, p. 9).

Within the context of schools and classrooms, the process of creative learning can range from smaller scale contributions to one’s own and others’ learning (e.g., a student sharing a unique way of thinking about a math problem) to larger scale and lasting contributions that benefit the learning and lives of people in and beyond the walls of the classroom (e.g., a group of students develop and implement a creative solution for addressing social isolation in the lunchroom). In this way, efforts aimed at supporting creative learning represents a generative form of positive education because it serves as a vehicle for students to contribute to their own and others learning, life, and wellbeing (White & Kern, 2018 ). The question then is not whether creative learning can occur in schools, but rather what are the key factors that seem to support creative learning in schools and classrooms? The purpose of this chapter is to address this question.

What’s Creative About Creative Learning?

Prior to exploring how creative learning can be supported in schools and classrooms, it is important to first address the question of what is creative about creative learning? Creative learning pertains to the development of new and meaningful contributions to one’s own and others’ learning and lives. This conception of creative learning adheres to standard definitions of creativity (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004 ; Runco & Jaeger, 2012 ), which includes two basic criteria: it must be original (new, different, or unique) as defined within a particular context or situation, and it must be useful (meaningful, effectively meets task constraints, or adequately solves the problem at hand). In this way, creativity represents a form of constrained originality. This is particularly good news for educators, as supporting creative learning is not about removing all constraints, but rather it is about supporting students in coming up with new and different ways of meeting academic criteria and learning goals (Beghetto, 2019a , 2019b ).

For example, consider a student taking a biology exam. One question on the exam asks students to draw a plant cell and label its most important parts. If the student responds by drawing a picture of a flower behind the bars of a jail cell and labels the iron bars, lack of windows, and incarcerated plant, Footnote 1 then it could be said that the student has offered an original or even humorous response, but not a creative one. In order for a response to be considered creative, it needs to be both original and meaningfully meet the task constraints. If the goal was to provide a funny response to the prompt, then perhaps it could be considered a creative response. But in this case, the task requires students to meet the task constraints by providing a scientifically accurate depiction of a plant cell. Learning tasks such as this offer little room for creative expression, because the goal is often to determine whether students can accurately reproduce what has been taught.

Conversely, consider a biology teacher who invites students to identify their own scientific question or problem, which is unique and interesting to them. The teacher then asks them to design an inquiry-based project aimed at addressing the question or problem. Next, the teacher invites students to share their questions and project designs with each other. Although some of the questions students identify may have existing answers in the scientific literature, this type of task provides the openings necessary for creative learning to occur in the classroom. This is because students have an opportunity to identify their own questions to address, develop their own understanding of new and different ways of addressing those questions, and share and receive feedback on their unique ideas and insights. Providing students with semi-structured learning experiences that requires them to meet learning goals in new and different ways helps to ensure that students are developing personally and academically meaningful understandings and also provides them with an opportunity to potentially contribute to the understanding of their peers and teachers (see Ball, 1993 ; Beghetto, 2018b ; Gajda et al., 2017 ; Niu & Zhou, 2017 for additional examples).

Creative learning can also extend beyond the walls of the classroom. When students have the opportunity and support to identify their own problems to solve and their own ways of solving them, they can make positive and lasting contributions in their schools, communities, and beyond. Legacy projects represent an example of such efforts. Legacy projects refer to creative learning endeavours that provide students with opportunities to engage with uncetainty and attempt to develop sustainable solutions to complex and ill-defined problems (Beghetto, 2017c , 2018b ). Such projects involve a blend between learning and creative expression with the aim of making a creative contribution. A group of fourth graders who learned about an endangered freshwater shrimp and then worked to restore the habitat by launching a project that spanned across multiple years and multiple networks of teachers, students, and external partners is an example of a legacy project (see Stone & Barlow, 2010 ).

As these examples illustrate, supporting creative learning is not simply about encouraging original student expression, but rather involves providing openings for students to meet academic learning constraints in new and different ways, which can benefit their own, their peers’, and even their teachers’ learning. Creative learning can also extend beyond the classroom and enable students to make a lasting and positive contribution to schools, communities, and beyond. In this way, the process of creative learning includes both intra-psychological (individual) and inter-psychological (social) aspects (Beghetto, 2016).

At the individual level, creative learning occurs when students encounter and engage with novel learning stimuli (e.g., a new concept, a new skill, a new idea, an ill-defined problem) and attempt to make sense of it in light of their own prior understanding (Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ). Creative learning at the individual level involves a creative combinatorial process (Rothenberg, 2015 ), whereby new and personally meaningful understanding results from blending what is previously known with newly encountered learning stimuli. Creativity researchers have described this form of creativity as personal (Runco, 1996), subjective (Stein, 1953 ), or mini - c creativity Footnote 2 (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007 ). This view of knowledge development also aligns with how some constructivist and cognitive learning theorists have conceptualized the process of learning (e.g., Alexander, Schallert, & Reynolds, 2009 ; Piaget, 1973 ; Schuh, 2017 ; Von Glasersfeld, 2013 ).

If students are able to develop a new and personally meaningful understanding, then it can be said that they have engaged in creative learning at the individual level. Of course, not all encounters with learning stimuli will result in creative learning. If learning stimuli are too discrepant or difficult, then students likely will not be able to make sense of the stimuli. Also, if students are able to accurately reproduce concepts or solve challenging tasks or problems using memorized algorithms (Beghetto & Plucker, 2006 ) without developing personally meaningful understanding of those concepts or algorithms, then they can be said to have successfully memorized concepts and techniques, but not to have engaged in creative learning. Similarly, if a student has already developed an understanding of some concept or idea and encounters it again, then they will be reinforcing their understanding, rather than developing a new or understanding (Von Glasersfeld, 2013 ). Consequently, in order for creative learning to occur at the individual level, students need to encounter optimally novel learning experiences and stimuli, such that they can make sense of those stimuli in light of their own prior learning trajectories (Beghetto & Schuh, in press; Schuh, 2017 ).

Creative learning can also extend beyond individual knowledge development. At the inter-psychological (or social) level, students have an opportunity to share and refine their conceptions with teachers and peers, making a creative contribution to the learning and lives of others (Beghetto, 2016). For instance, as apparent in the legacy projects, it is possible for students to make creative contributions beyond the walls of the classroom, which occasionally can be recognized by experts as a significant contribution. Student inventors, authors, content creators, and members of community-based problem solving teams are further examples of the inter-psychological level of creative contribution.

In sum, creative learning is a form of creative expression, which is constrained by an academic focus. It is also a special case of academic learning, because it focuses on going beyond reproductive and reinforcement learning and includes the key creative characteristics (Beghetto, 2020 ; Rothenberg, 2015 ; Sawyer, 2012 ) of being both combinatorial (combining existing knowledge with new learning stimuli) and emergent (contributing new and sometimes surprising ideas, insights, perspectives, and understandings to oneself and others).

Locating Creative Learning in Schools and Classrooms

Having now explored the question of what makes creative learning creative, we can now turn our attention to locating the factors and conditions that can help support creative learning in schools and classrooms. As illustrated in Fig.  19.1 , there are at least four interrelated components posited as being necessary for creative learning to occur in schools, classrooms, and beyond: students, teachers, academic subject matter, and uncertainty. Creative learning in schools and classrooms occurs at the intersection of these four factors. Further, the classroom, school, and broader sociocultural contexts play an important role in determining whether and how creative learning will be supported and expressed. Each of these factors will be discussed in the sections that follow.

Factors involved in creative learning in schools, classrooms, and beyond

The Role of Students in Creative Learning

Students, of course, play a central role in creative learning. At the individual level, students’ idiosyncratic learning histories will influence the kinds of creative insights, ideas, and interpretations they have when engaging with new learning stimuli (Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ; Schuh, 2017 ). Although a case can be made that subjective and personally meaningful creative insights and experiences are sufficient ends in themselves (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007 ; Runco, 1996 ; Stein, 1953 ), creative learning tends to be situated in well-developed subject areas. Moreover, the goals of most formal educational activities, such as those that occur in schools and classrooms, include making sure that students have developed an accurate or at least a compatible understanding of existing concepts, ideas, and skills (Von Glasersfeld, 2003). Consequently, creative learning in schools—even at the individual level—involves providing students with opportunities to test out and receive feedback on their personal understandings and insights to ensure that what they have learned fits within the broader academic subject area. When this occurs, creative learning at the individual level represents a blend of idiosyncratic and generally agreed upon academic knowledge.

Notably, the idiosyncratic portion of this blend is not merely surplus ideas or insights, but rather has the potential to creatively contribute to the learning and understanding of others. Indeed, the full expression of creative learning extends beyond the individual and also has the opportunity to contribute to the learning and lives of others. At both the individual and social level of creative learning, students’ need to be willing to share, test, and receive feedback on their conceptions, otherwise the full expression of creative learning will be short-circuited. Thus, an important question, at the student level, is what factors might influence students’ willingness to share their ideas with others?

Creativity researchers have identified at least three interrelated student factors that seem to play a role in determining students’ willingness to share their conceptions with others: creative confidence, valuing creativity , and intellectual risk - taking. Creative confidence beliefs refer to a somewhat broad category of creative self-beliefs that pertain to one’s confidence in the ability to think and act creatively (Beghetto & Karwowski, 2017 ). Creative confidence beliefs can range from more situationally and domain-specific beliefs (e.g., I am confident I can creatively solve this particular problem in this particular situation) to more general and global confidence beliefs (e.g., I am confident in my creative ability). Much like other confidence beliefs (Bandura, 2012 ), creative confidence beliefs are likely influenced by a variety of personal (e.g., physiological state), social (e.g., who is present, whether people are being supportive), and situational (e.g., specific nature of the task, including constraints like time and materials) factors. Recent research has indicated that creative confidence beliefs mediate the link between creative potential and creative behaviour (Beghetto, Karwowski, Reiter-Palmon, 2020 ; Karwowski & Beghetto, 2019 ).

In the context of creative learning, this line of work suggests that students need to be confident in their own ideas prior to being willing to share those ideas with others and test out their mini-c ideas. However, valuing creativity and the willingness to take creative risks also appear to play key roles. Valuing creativity refers to whether students view creativity as an important part of their identity and whether they view creative thought and activity as worthwhile endeavours (Karwowski, Lebuda, & Beghetto, 2019 ). Research has indicated that valuing creativity moderates the mediational relationship between creative confidence and creative behaviour (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2019 ).

The same can be said for intellectual risk-taking, which refers to adaptive behaviours that puts a person at risk of making mistakes or failing (Beghetto, 2009 ). Findings from a recent study (Beghetto, Karwowski, Reiter-Palmon, 2020 ) indicate that intellectual risk-taking plays a moderating role between creative confidence and creative behaviour. In this way, even if a student has confidence in their ideas, unless they identify with and view such ideas as worthwhile and are willing to take the risks of sharing those ideas with others, then they are not likely to make a creative contribution to their own and others learning.

Finally, even if students have confidence, value creativity, and are willing to take creative risks, unless they have the opportunities and social supports to do so then they will not be able to realize their creative learning potential. As such, teachers, peers, and others in the social classroom, school, and broader environments are important for bringing such potential to fruition.

The Role of Teachers in Creative Learning

Teachers play a central role in designing and managing the kinds of learning experiences that determine whether creativity will be supported or suppressed in the classroom. Indeed, unless teachers believe that they can support student creativity, have some idea of how to do so, and are willing to try then it is unlikely that students will have systematic opportunities to engage in creative learning (Beghetto, 2017b ; Davies et al., 2013 ; Gralewski & Karawoski, 2018 ; Paek & Sumners, 2019 ). Each of these teacher roles will be discussed in turn.

First, teachers need to believe that they can support student creativity in their classroom. This has less to do with whether or not they value student creativity, as previous research indicates most generally do value creativity, and more about whether teachers have the autonomy, curricular time, and knowledge of how to support student creativity (Mullet, Willerson, Lamb, & Kettler, 2016 ). In many schools and classrooms, the primary aim of education is to support students’ academic learning. If teachers view creativity as being in competition or incompatible with that goal, then they will understandably feel that they should focus their curricular time on meeting academic learning goals, even if they otherwise value and would like to support students’ creative potential (Beghetto, 2013 ). Thus, an important first step in supporting the development of students’ creative potential is for teachers to recognize that supporting creative and academic learning can be compatible goals. When teachers recognize that they can simultaneously support creative and academic learning then they are in a better position to more productively plan for and respond to opportunities for students’ creative expression in their everyday lessons.

Equipped with this recognition, the next step in supporting student creativity is for teachers to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for infusing creativity into their curriculum (Renzulli, 2017 ) so that they can teach for creativity. Teaching for creativity in the K-12 classroom differs from other forms of creativity teaching (e.g., teaching about creativity, teaching with creativity) because it focuses on nurturing student creativity in the context of specific academic subject areas (Beghetto, 2017b ; Jeffrey & Craft, 2004 ). This form of creative teaching thereby requires that teachers have an understanding of pedagogical creativity enhancement knowledge (PCeK), which refers to knowing how to design creative learning experiences that support and cultivate students’ adapted creative attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, and actions in the planning and teaching of subject matter (Beghetto, 2017a ). Teaching for creativity thereby involves designing lessons that provide creative openings and expectations for students to creatively meet learning goals and academic learning criteria. As discussed, this includes requiring students to come up with their own problems to solve, their own ways of solving them, and their own way of demonstrating their understanding of key concepts and skills. Teaching for creativity also includes providing students with honest and supportive feedback to ensure that students are connecting their developing and unique understanding to existing conventions, norms, and ways of knowing in and across various academic domains.

Finally, teachers need to be willing to take the instructional risks necessary to establish and pursue openings in their planned lessons. This is often easier said than done. Indeed, even teachers who otherwise value creativity may worry that establishing openings in their curriculum that require them to pursue unexpected student ideas will result in the lesson drifting too far off-track and into curricular chaos (Kennedy, 2005 ). Indeed, prior research has demonstrated that it is sometimes difficult for teachers to make on-the-fly shifts in their lessons, even when the lesson is not going well (Clark & Yinger, 1977 ). One way that teachers can start opening up their curriculum is to do so in small ways, starting with the way they plan lessons. Lesson unplanning—the process of creating openings in the lesson by replacing predetermined features with to-be-determined aspects (Beghetto, 2017d )—is an example of a small-step approach. A math teacher who asks students to solve a problem in as many ways as they can represent a simple, yet potentially generative form of lesson unplanning. By starting small, teachers can gradually develop their confidence and willingness to establish openings for creative learning in their curriculum while still providing a supportive and structured learning environment. Such small, incremental steps can lead to larger transformations in practice (Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ) and reinforce teachers’ confidence in their ability to support creative learning in their classroom.

The Role of Academic Subject Matter in Creative Learning

Recall that creativity requires a blend of originality and meaningfully meeting criteria or task constraints. If students’ own unique perspectives and interpretations represent the originality component of creativity, then existing academic criteria and domains of knowledge represent the criteria and tasks constraints . Creativity always operates within constraints (Beghetto, 2019a ; Stokes, 2010 ). In the context of creative learning, those constraints typically represent academic learning goals and criteria. Given that most educators already know how to specify learning goals and criteria, they are already half-way to supporting creative learning. The other half requires considering how academic subject matter might be blended with activities that provide students with opportunities to meet those goals and criteria in their own unique and different ways. In most cases, academic learning activities can be thought of as having four components (Beghetto, 2018b ):

The what: What students do in the activity (e.g., the problem to solve, the issue to be addressed, the challenge to be resolved, or the task to be completed).

The how: How students complete the activity (e.g., the procedure used to solve a problem, the approach used to address an issue, the steps followed to resolve a challenge, or the process used to complete a task).

The criteria for success: The criteria used to determine whether students successfully completed the activity (e.g., the goals, guidelines, non-negotiables, or agreed-upon indicators of success).

The outcome: The outcome resulting from engagement with the activity (e.g., the solution to a problem, the products generated from completing a task, the result of resolving an issue or challenge, or any other demonstrated or experienced consequence of engaging in a learning activity).

Educators can use one or more of the above components (i.e., the what, how, criteria, and outcome) to design creative learning activities that blend academic subject matter with opportunities for creative expression. The degrees of freedom for doing so will vary based on the subject area, topics within subject areas, and teachers’ willingness to establish openings in their lessons.

In mathematics, for instance, there typically is one correct answer to solve a problem, whereas other subject areas, such as English Language Arts, offer much more flexibility in the kinds of “answers” or interpretations possible. Yet even with less flexibility in the kinds of originality that can be expressed in a particular subject area, there still remains a multitude of possibilities for creative expression in the kinds of tasks that teachers can offer students. As mentioned earlier, students in math can still demonstrate creative learning in the kinds of problems they design to solve, the various ways they solve them, and even how they demonstrate the outcomes and solutions to those problems.

Finally, teachers can use academic subject matter in at least two different ways to support opportunities for creative learning in their classroom (Beghetto Kaufman, & Baer, 2015 ). The first and most common way is to position subject matter learning as a means to its own end (e.g., we are learning about this technique so that you understand it ). Creativity learning can still operate in this formulation by providing students with opportunities to learn about a topic by meeting goals in unique and different ways, which are still in the service of ultimately understanding the academic subject area. However, the added value in doing so also allows opportunities for students to develop their creative confidence and competence in that particularly subject area.

The second less common, but arguably more powerful, way of positioning academic subject matter in creative learning is as a means to a creative end (e.g., we are learning about this technique so that you can use it to address the complex problem or challenge you and your team identified ). Students who, for instance, developed a project to creatively address the issue of contaminated drinking water in their community would need to learn about water contamination (e.g., how to test for it, how to eradicate contaminates) as part of the process of coming up with a creative solution. In this formulation, both academic subject matter and creative learning opportunities are in the service of attempting to make a creative contribution to the learning and lives of others (Beghetto, 2017c , 2018b ).

The Role of Uncertainty in Creative Learning

Without uncertainty, there is no creative learning. This is because uncertainty establishes the conditions necessary for new thought and action (Beghetto, 2019a ). If students (and teachers) already know what to do and how to do it, then they are rehearsing or reinforcing knowledge and skills. This assertion becomes clearer when we consider it in light of the structure of learning activities. Recall from the previous section, learning activities can be thought of as being comprised of four elements: the what, the how, the criteria for success, and the outcome.

Typically, teachers attempt to remove uncertainty from learning activities by predefining all four aspects of a learning activity. This is understandable as teachers may feel that introducing or allowing for uncertainty to be included in the activity may result curricular chaos, resulting in their own (and their students) frustration and confusion (Kennedy, 2015). Consequently, most teachers learn to plan (or select pre-planned) lessons that provide students with a predetermined problem or task to solve, which has a predetermined process or procedure for solving it, an already established criteria for determining successful performance, and a clearly defined outcome.

Although it is true that students can still learn and develop new and personally meaningful insights when they engage with highly planned lessons, such lessons are “over-planned” with respect to providing curricular space necessary for students to make creative contributions to peers and teachers. Indeed, successful performance on learning tasks in which all the elements are predetermined requires students to do what is expected and how it is expected (Beghetto, 2018a ). Conversely, the full expression of creative learning requires incorporating uncertainty in the form of to-be-determined elements in a lesson. As discussed, this involves providing structured opportunities for students (and teachers) to engage with uncertainty in an otherwise structured and supportive learning environment (Beghetto, 2019a ).

Indeed, teachers still have the professional responsibility to outline the criteria or non-negotiables, monitor student progress, and ensure that they are providing necessary and timely instructional supports. This can be accomplished by allowing students to determine how they meet those criteria. In this way, the role that uncertainty plays in creative learning can be thought of as ranging on a continuum from small openings allowing students to define some element of a learning activity (e.g., the how, what, outcomes) to larger openings where students have much more autonomy in defining elements and even the criteria for success, such as a legacy project whereby they try to make positive and lasting contributions to their schools, communities and beyond.

The Role of Context in Creative Learning

Finally, context also plays a crucial role when it comes to creative learning. Creative learning is always and already situated in sociocultural and historical contexts, which influence and are influenced by students’ unique conceptions of what they are learning and their willingness to share their conceptions with others. As illustrated in Fig. 19.1 , there are at least three permeable contextual settings in which creative learning occurs. The first is the classroom context. Although classrooms and the patterns of interaction that occur within them may appear to be somewhat stable environments, when it comes to supporting creative expression, they can be quite dynamic, variable, and thereby rather unpredictable within and across different settings (Beghetto, 2019b ; Doyle, 2006 ; Gajda et al., 2017 ; Jackson, 1990 ). Indeed, even in classrooms that are characterized as having features and patterns of interaction supportive of creative learning, such patterns may be difficult to sustain over time and even the moment-to-moment supports can be quite variable (Gajda et al., 2017 ).

It is therefore difficult to claim with any level of certainty that a given classroom is “supportive of creativity”; it really depends on what is going on in any given moment. A particular classroom may tend to be more or less supportive across time, however it is the sociodynamic and even material features of a classroom setting that play a key role in determining the kinds and frequency of creative learning openings offered to students (Beghetto, 2017a ).

The same can be said for the school context. The kinds of explicit and tacit supports for creative learning in schools likely play an important role in whether and how teachers and students feel supported in their creative expression (Amabile, 1996 ; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2014 ; Renzulli, 2017 ; Schacter, Thum, & Zifkin, 2006 ). Theoretically speaking, if teachers feel supported by their colleagues and administrators and are actively encouraged to take creative risks, then it seems likely that they would have the confidence and willingness to try. Indeed, this type of social support and modelling can have a cascading influence in and across classrooms and schools (Bandura, 1997 ). Although creativity researchers have theorized and explored the role of context on creative expression (Amabile, 1996 ; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2014 ), research specifically exploring the collective, cascading, and reciprocal effects of school and classroom contexts on creative learning is a promising and needed area of research.

In addition to classroom and school settings, sociocultural theorists in the field of creativity studies (Glăveanu et al., 2020 ) assert that the broader sociocultural influences are not static, unidirectional, or even separate from the people in those contexts, but rather dynamic and co-constitutive processes that influence and are influenced by people in those settings. Along these lines, the kinds of creative learning opportunities and experiences that teachers and students participate in can be thought of as simultaneously being shaped by and helping to shape their particular communities, cultural settings, and broader societies. Consequently, there are times and spaces where creative learning may be more or less valued and supported by the broader sociocultural context. Although some researchers have explored the role of broader societal contexts on creativity (Florida, 2019 ), additional work looking at the more dynamic and reciprocal relationship of creative learning in broader sociocultural and historical contexts is also needed.

Future Directions

Given the dynamic and multifaceted nature of creative learning, researchers interested in examining the various factors involved in creative learning likely would benefit from the development and use of analytic approaches and designs that go beyond single measures or static snapshots to include dynamic (Beghetto & Corazza, 2019 ) and multiple methods (Gajda et al., 2017 ). Such approaches can help researchers better understand the factors at play in supporting the emergence, expression, and sustainability of creative learning in and across various types of school and classroom experiences.

Another seemingly fruitful and important direction for future research on creative learning is to consider it in light of the broader context of positive education. Such efforts can complement existing efforts of researchers in positive education (Kern, Waters, Adler, & White, 2015 ), who have endeavoured to simultaneously examine multiple dimensions involved in the wellbeing of students. Indeed, as discussed, creative learning occurs at the nexus of multiple individual, social, and cultural factors and thereby requires the use of methods and approaches that can examine the interplay among these factors.

In addition, there are a variety of questions that can guide future research on creative learning, including:

How might efforts that focus on understanding and supporting creative learning fit within the broader aims of positive education? How might researchers and educators work together to support such efforts?

What are the most promising intersections among efforts aimed at promoting creative learning and student wellbeing? What are the key complementary areas of overlap and where might there be potential points of tension?

How might researchers across different research traditions in positive education and creativity studies collaborate to develop and explore broader models of wellbeing? What are the best methodological approaches for testing and refining these models? How might such work promote student and teacher wellbeing in and beyond the classroom?

Creative learning represents a potentially important aspect of positive education that can benefit from and contribute to existing research in the field. One way to help realize this potential is for researchers and educators representing a wide array of traditions to work together in an effort to develop an applied understanding of the role creative learning plays in contributing to learn and lives of students in and beyond schools and classrooms.

Creative learning represents a generative and positive educational experience, which not only contributes to the knowledge development of individual students but can also result in creative social contributions to students’ peers, teachers, and beyond. Creative learning thereby represents an important form of positive education that compliments related efforts aimed at building on the strengths that already and always inhere in the interaction among students, teachers, and educational environments. Creative learning also represents an expansion of prototypical learning efforts because it not only focuses on academic learning but also uses it as a vehicle for creative expression and the potential creative contribution to the learning and lives of others. In conclusion, creative learning offers researchers in the fields of creativity studies and positive education an important and complimentary line of inquiry.

This example is based on a popular internet meme of a humorous drawing in response to this question.

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Beghetto, R.A. (2021). Creative Learning in Education. In: Kern, M.L., Wehmeyer, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64537-3_19

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Article contents

Creativity in education.

• Anne Harris Anne Harris RMIT University
•  and  Leon De Bruin Leon De Bruin RMIT University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.383
• Published online: 26 April 2018

Creativity is an essential aspect of teaching and learning that is influencing worldwide educational policy and teacher practice, and is shaping the possibilities of 21st-century learners. The way creativity is understood, nurtured, and linked with real-world problems for emerging workforces is significantly changing the ways contemporary scholars and educators are now approaching creativity in schools. Creativity discourses commonly attend to creative ability, influence, and assessment along three broad themes: the physical environment, pedagogical practices and learner traits, and the role of partnerships in and beyond the school. This overview of research on creativity education explores recent scholarship examining environments, practices, and organizational structures that both facilitate and impede creativity. Reviewing global trends pertaining to creativity research in this second decade of the 21st century, this article stresses for practicing and preservice teachers, schools, and policy makers the need to educationally innovate within experiential dimensions, priorities, possibilities, and new kinds of partnerships in creativity education.

• creative ecologies
• creative environments
• creative industries

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Why is Creativity Important in Education?

At its core, creativity is the expression of our most essential human qualities: our curiosity, our inventiveness, and our desire to explore the unknown. As we navigate an increasingly complex and changing world, promoting creativity in education is more important than ever before.

Prisma is the world’s most engaging virtual school that combines a fun, real-world curriculum with powerful mentorship from experienced coaches and a supportive peer community

The Importance of Creativity

We are all creative people, whether you think of yourself as creative or not. It takes creative thinking to paint a picture, but it also takes creative thinking to figure out the right formula to use in a spreadsheet, to invent a twist on a chocolate chip cookie recipe, or to plan a birthday party. But some people are more practiced and comfortable in the creative process than others.

At its core, creativity is the expression of our most essential human qualities: our curiosity, our inventiveness, and our desire to explore the unknown. Using creativity, we are able to push the boundaries of what is possible, imagine new worlds, and find solutions to the most pressing problems facing our society.

In a world where automation looms to take over all but the most innovative tasks—ones that truly require unique thinking—how can we make sure the next generation is capable of creatively solving these problems? We founded Prisma precisely because we were concerned traditional forms of education weren’t up to the challenge of creating future innovators.

In this post, we will explore the importance of creativity in the education system, the role of creativity in students' emotional development, and the ways in which it can be taught .

Creativity in Education

Despite the vital role creativity plays in our lives, it is often undervalued and neglected in our educational system. We are taught to memorize facts and figures, follow rules and procedures, and conform to the expectations of others. This approach may produce technically proficient students, but it fails to cultivate the spirit of creativity at the heart of true innovation.

In a rapidly evolving world with increasing automation, the ability to think creatively and come up with innovative solutions to problems is critical. This is particularly true in education, where fostering creativity can help students develop important critical thinking skills, as well as prepare them for the 21st-century workforce.

Creativity=Critical Thinking

“There’s no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would forever be repeating the same patterns.” -Edward de Bono

What does creativity have to do with critical thinking ? At its core, creativity is about problem-solving . This is a skill becoming increasingly important right now as the world rapidly changes. To keep up with these changes, young people need to be able to come up with creative ways to solve problems, and be able to adapt to new situations quickly.

At Prisma, learners engage in a workshop called Collaborative Problem-Solving twice per week. These workshops might involve a critical thinking simulation, like when learners had to choose which businesses to invest in, Shark Tank style; or a science simulation where they had to figure out how to power a city using a combination of resources. In real life, much of creative problem solving happens in teams, yet in many traditional schools, kids are asked to solve problems on their own.

To build the form of creativity that leads to innovative thinking, learners need complex, interesting problems to solve. Education needs to figure out ways to design these kinds of authentic problems to prepare learners to succeed.

Creativity & Social Emotional Skills

“The most regretful people on Earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.” -Mary Oliver

One of the benefits of creativity is the role it can play in the development of emotional intelligence . As mentioned above, creativity is an essential part of what it means to be human. It feels good to make something and be proud of it! When learners are given the opportunity for creative expression, it can help them develop their self-esteem and build confidence .

Prisma learners complete a creative project every 6 weeks based on our interdisciplinary learning themes , and present their final projects during a celebratory “Expo Day.” LaShonda S., a Prisma parent, described how making a creative project for the first time impacted her son this way: “His sense of pride and accomplishment has gone through the roof. He has told all of our family and friends about his podcast.”

Building students’ creativity isn’t just about the warm and fuzzy feelings, though. Going through a creative process is tough, and can build resilience, grit , and tenacity. It’s much easier to follow step-by-step instructions than it is to brainstorm, ideate, and iterate on your own idea. Creative projects can help kids learn to take risks and embrace failure, which is always an important part of the creative process.

In addition, creativity can help students develop important social skills. When learners work on creative projects together, they learn to collaborate and communicate effectively. This is an important skill for the 21st-century workforce , where teamwork and collaboration are essential. Since Prisma is a virtual school, our learners go even further, learning how to collaborate on creative projects virtually with young people all over the world, much like many adults do in their jobs today.

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• Prisma is an accredited, project-based, online program for grades 4-12.
• Our personalized curriculum builds love of learning and prepares kids to thrive.
• Our middle school , high school , and parent-coach programs provide 1:1 coaching and supportive peer cohorts .

Role of Creativity in the Education System

The education system has not always prioritized creativity. In fact, many education systems around the world have placed a greater emphasis on rote learning and standardized testing than on creativity and innovation.

Chen Jining, the president of Tsinghua University in China, once described the dichotomy between “A students” And “X students.” “A students” were those who followed all the rules, achieved excellent grades from kindergarten through high school, and aced standardized tests. Jining noticed what these Chinese students often lacked, however, was an aptitude for risk taking, trying new things, and “defining their own problems rather than simply solving the ones in the textbook.” (Mitchell Resnick, Lifelong Kindergarten ). The kind of creative people who could do those things could be thought of as “X students.”

High-achieving students who lack creativity are a major problem for any society who wants to solve problems, invent solutions, and innovate. What kind of learning environment might create a society of “X students” rather than just “A students”?

Creative Thinkers in Education

Fortunately, there are many educators and thinkers working to promote creativity in education. Sir Ken Robinson made a splash when he argued in a highly popular TedTalk and other writing & speeches that traditional education systems kill creativity.

Prisma’s curriculum was inspired by Seymour Papert , a mathematician and computer scientist who was a pioneer in the field of educational technology. Papert believed technology could be used to promote creativity and empower students to learn in new and innovative ways. He also believed creativity was a key component of the learning process, and that students should be given the freedom to explore and experiment to develop their creative thinking skills. His philosophy that learners learn most when engaged in a process of “ hard fun ” inspired the design of Prisma’s engaging curriculum themes & creative projects.

Another influential thinker in the field of creativity in education is Peter Gray , a psychologist and author who has written extensively on the importance of play and creative expression in children's lives. Gray argues play and creativity are essential for children's emotional and cognitive development and that schools should prioritize these activities to promote social skills and academic success.

Assessing Creativity

Unlike standardized tests, which (arguably) provide a clear measure of students' knowledge and understanding, creativity is more difficult to assess. This prompts some educators to dismiss its importance. However, there are ways to measure creativity, such as through creative projects and assessments focusing on problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Before joining the founding team of Prisma, I researched creative assessment at Harvard. We discovered strategies such as assessing the process as well as the final product, allowing opportunities for peer & family feedback, and incorporating self-assessment and self-reflection helped reliably assess students’ creativity.

4 Ways to Teach Creativity

So how can teachers and homeschool parents foster creativity?

• Design a creative classroom environment , or make your home workspace more creatively inspiring. Of course, at a baseline, a creative learning environment may include materials like art supplies, building blocks, and maker tools, but kids can also be creative with digital tools like Procreate , TinkerCad , Canva , and plain old pen and paper. Remember, creativity is about ideas, not materials!
• Provide opportunities for brainstorming , encouraging students to come up with their own ideas. Instead of deciding in advance what learners will create and what the steps will be, consider coming up with the project together, or letting learners design their own . At Prisma, learners get multiple options each cycle for projects they can complete, and also have the opportunity to propose and design their own projects.
• Foster a creative mindset . This involves encouraging students to take risks and embrace failure, and helping them understand creativity is a process, not a product. At Prisma, this looks like using badges instead of traditional grades , and offering lots of opportunities for kids to reflect on not only what they made, but what they learned along the way. Don’t just give praise for what a learner completed, but their behavior during the process: for example, “I noticed how you changed your idea after you got peer feedback, what a great creative mindset!” instead of “Your drawing is really good!”
• Teach creative thinking skills explicitly . This can involve teaching students how to brainstorm effectively, how to find a creative flow state , and how to give & get feedback on their ideas. At Prisma, we use design thinking frameworks and teach learners the steps.

So what happens when schools decide to emphasize these strategies? Kids can do amazing things! As one Prisma parent describes, “ This year, my 10 year old designed her own ecosystem in TinkerCAD, started her own business with a functioning website, served as "Swedish Ambassador to the UN council" where she debated how to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis, coded her own game to educate others on Audio-Sensory-Processing-Disorder, and wrote her own fairy tale.”

Creativity is a critical component of education in the 21st century. By promoting creativity, you can help students develop important problem-solving and critical thinking skills, as well as foster their emotional and social development. While there are challenges to promoting creativity in the education system, there are also many educators and thinkers who are working to make creativity a priority in education. As we navigate an increasingly complex and changing world, promoting creativity in education is more important than ever before.

More Resources for Creative Education

Our Guide to Design Thinking For Kids

Our Guide to Entrepreneurship For Kids

Our Guide to Curiosity in Education

Our Guide to Interdisciplinary Education

Our Guide to Real-World Education

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Human beings have always been creative. The fact that we have survived on the planet is testament to this. Humans adapted to and then began to modify their environment. We expanded across the planet into a whole range of climates. At some point in time we developed consciousness and then language. We began to question who we are, how we should behave, and how we came into existence in the first place. Part of human questioning was how we became creative.

The myth that creativity is only for a special few has a long, long history. For the Ancient Chinese and the Romans, creativity was a gift from the gods. Fast forward to the mid-nineteenth century and creativity was seen as a gift, but only for the highly talented, romantically indulgent, long-suffering and mentally unstable artist. Fortunately, in the 1920s the field of science began to look at creativity as a series of human processes. Creative problem solving was the initial focus, from idea generation to idea selection and the choice of a final product. The 1950s were a watershed moment for creativity. After the Second World War, the Cold War began and competition for creative solutions to keep a technological advantage was intense. It was at this time that the first calls for STEM in education and its associated creativity were made. Since this time, creativity has been researched across a whole range of human activities, including maths, science, engineering, business and the arts.

The components of creativity

So what exactly is creativity? In the academic field of creativity, there is broad consensus regarding the definition of creativity and the components which make it up. Creativity is the interaction between the learning environment, both physical and social, the attitudes and attributes of both teachers and students, and a clear problem-solving process which produces a perceptible product (that can be an idea or a process as well as a tangible physical object). Creativity is producing something new, relevant and useful to the person or people who created the product within their own social context. The idea of context is very important in education. Something that is very creative to a Year One student – for example, the discovery that a greater incline on a ramp causes objects to roll faster – would not be considered creative in a university student. Creativity can also be used to propose new solutions to problems in different contexts, communities or countries. An example of this is having different schools solve the same problem and share solutions.

Creativity is an inherent part of learning. Whenever we try something new, there is an element of creativity involved. There are different levels of creativity, and creativity develops with both time and experience. A commonly cited model of creativity is the 4Cs [i] . At the mini-c level of creativity, what someone creates might not be revolutionary, but it is new and meaningful to them. For example, a child brings home their first drawing from school. It means something to the child, and they are excited to have produced it. It may show a very low level of skill but create a high level of emotional response which inspires the child to share it with their parents.

The little-c level of creativity is one level up from the mini-c level, in that it involves feedback from others combined with an attempt to build knowledge and skills in a particular area. For example, the painting the child brought home might receive some positive feedback from their parents. They place it on the refrigerator to show that it has value, give their child a sketchbook, and make some suggestions about how to improve their drawing. In high school the student chooses art as an elective and begins to receive explicit instruction and assessed feedback. In terms of students at school, the vast majority of creativity in students is at the mini-c and little-c level.

The Pro-c level of creativity in schools is usually the realm of teachers. The teacher of art in this case finds a variety of pedagogic approaches which enhance the student artist’s knowledge and skills in art as well as building their creative competencies in making works of art. They are a Pro-c teacher. The student will require many years of deliberate practice and training along with professional levels of feedback, including acknowledgement that their work is sufficiently new and novel for them to be considered a creative professional artist at the pro-c level.

The Big-C level of creativity is the rarefied territory of the very few. To take this example to the extreme, the student becomes one of the greatest artists of all time. After they are dead, their work is discussed by experts because their creativity in taking art to new forms of expression is of the highest level. Most of us operate at the mini-c and little-c level with our hobbies and activities. They give us great satisfaction and enjoyment and we enjoy building skills and knowledge over time.  Some of us are at the pro-c level in more than one area.

The value of creativity in education

Creativity is valuable in education because it builds cognitive complexity. Creativity relies on having deep knowledge and being able to use it effectively. Being creative involves using an existing set of knowledge or skills in a particular subject or context to experiment with new possibilities in the pursuit of valued outcomes , thus increasing both knowledge and skills. It develops over time and is more successful if the creative process begins at a point where people have at least some knowledge and skills. To continue the earlier example of the ramp, a student rolling a ball down an incline may notice that the ball goes faster if they increase the incline, and slower if they decrease it. This discovery may lead to other possibilities – the student might then go on to observe how far the ball rolls depending on the angle of the incline, and then develop some sort of target for the ball to reach. What started as play has developed in a way that builds the student’s knowledge, skills and reasoning. It represents the beginning of the scientific method of trial and error in experimentation.

Creativity is not just making things up. For something to meet the definition of creativity, it must not only be new but also relevant and useful. For example, if a student is asked to make a new type of musical instrument, one made of salami slices may be original and interesting, but neither relevant nor useful. (On the other hand, carrots can make excellent recorders). Creativity also works best with constraints, not open-ended tasks. For example, students can be given a limit to the number of lines used when writing a poem, or a set list of ingredients when making a recipe. Constrained limits lead to what cognitive scientists call desirable difficulties as students need to make more complex decisions about what they include and exclude in their final product. A common STEM example is to make a building using drinking straws but no sticky tape or glue. Students need to think more deeply about how the various elements of a building connect in order for the building to stand up.

Creativity must also have a result or an outcome . In some cases the result may be a specific output, such as the correct solution to a maths problem, a poem in the form of a sonnet, or a scientific experiment to demonstrate a particular type of reaction. As noted above, outputs may also be intangible: they might be an idea for a solution or a new way of looking at existing knowledge and ideas. The outcome of creativity may not necessarily be pre-determined and, when working with students, generating a specific number of ideas might be a sufficient creative outcome.

Myths about creativity

It is important that students are aware of the components that make up creativity, but it is also critical that students understand what creativity is not, and that the notion of creativity has been beset by a number of myths. The science of creativity has made great progress over the last 20 years and research has dispelled the following myths:

• Creativity is only for the gifted
• Creativity is only for those with a mental illness
• Creativity only lives in the arts
• Creativity cannot be taught
• Creativity cannot be learned
• Creativity cannot be assessed
• Schools kill creativity in their students
• Teachers do not understand what creativity is
• Teachers do not like creative students

The science of creativity has come a long way from the idea of being bestowed by the gods of ancient Rome and China. We now know that creativity can be taught, learned and assessed in schools. We know that everyone can develop their creative capacities in a wide range of areas, and that creativity can develop from purely experiential play to a body of knowledge and skills that increases with motivation and feedback.

Creativity in education 

The world of education is now committed to creativity. Creativity is central to policy and curriculum documents in education systems from Iceland to Estonia, and of course New Zealand. The origins of this global shift lie in the 1990s, and it was driven predominantly by economics rather than educational philosophy.

There has also been a global trend in education to move from knowledge acquisition to competency development. Creativity often is positioned as a competency or skill within educational frameworks. However, it is important to remember that the incorporation of competencies into a curriculum does not discount the importance of knowledge acquisition. Research in cognitive science demonstrates that students need fundamental knowledge and skills. Indeed, it is the sound acquisition of knowledge that enables students to apply it in creative ways . It is essential that teachers consider both how they will support their students to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills in their learning area as well as the opportunities they will provide for applying this knowledge in ways that support creativity. In fact, creativity requires two different sets of knowledge: knowledge and skills in the learning area, and knowledge of and skills related to the creative process, from idea generation to idea selection, as well as the appropriate attitudes, attributes and environment.

Supporting students to be creative

In order for teachers to support students to be creative, they should attend to four key areas. Firstly, creativity needs an appropriate physical and social environment . Students need to feel a sense of psychological safety when being creative. The role of the teacher is to ensure that all ideas are listened to and given feedback in a respectful manner. In terms of the physical environment, a set of simple changes rather than a complete redesign of classrooms is required: modifying the size and makeup of student groups, working on both desks and on whiteboards, or taking students outside as part of the idea generation process can develop creative capacity. Even something as simple as making students more aware of the objects and affordances which lie within a classroom may help with the creative process.

Secondly, teachers can support students to develop the attitudes and attributes required for creativity , which include persistence, discipline, resilience, and curiosity. Students who are more intellectually curious are open to new experiences and can look at problems from multiple perspectives, which builds creative capacity. In maths, for example, this can mean students being shown three or four different ways to solve a problem and selecting the method that best suits them. In Japan, students are rewarded for offering multiple paths to a solution as well as coming up with the correct answer.

Thirdly, teachers can support the creative process . It begins with problem solving, or problem posing, and moves on to idea generation. There are a number of methods which can be used when generating ideas such as brainstorming, in which as many ideas as possible are generated by the individual or by a group. Another effective method, which has the additional benefit of showing the relationships between the ideas as they are generated, is mind-mapping. For example, rather than looking at possible causes of World War Two as a list, it might be better to categorise them into political, social and economic categories using a mind map or some other form of graphic organiser. This creative visual representation may provide students with new and useful insights into the causes of the war. Students may also realise that there are more categories that need to be considered and added, thus allowing them to move from surface to deep learning as they explore relationships rather than just recalling facts. Remember that creativity is not possible without some knowledge and skills in that subject area. For instance, proposing that World War Two was caused by aliens may be considered imaginative, but it is definitely not creative.

The final element to be considered is that of the outcomes – the product or results – of creativity . However, as with many other elements of education, it may be more useful to formatively assess the process which the students have gone through rather than the final product. By exploring how students generated ideas, whether the method of recording ideas was effective, whether the final solutions were practical, and whether they demonstrated curiosity or resilience can often be more useful than merely grading the final product. Encouraging the students to self-reflect during the creative process also provides students with increased skills in metacognition, as well as having a deeper understanding of the evolution of their creative competencies. It may in fact mean that the final grade for a piece of work may take into account a combination of the creative process as observed by the teacher, the creative process as experienced and reported by the student, and the final product, tangible or intangible.

Collard, P., & Looney, J. (2014). Nurturing creativity in education . European Journal of Education, 49 (3), 348-364.

Craft, A. (2001). An analysis of research and literature on creativity in education : Report prepared for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

Runco, M. (2008). Creativity and education . New Horizons in Education, 56 (1), 96-104.

[i] Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity .  Review of General Psychology,  13(1), 1-12.

By Tim Patston

PREPARED FOR THE EDUCATION HUB BY

Dr Tim Patston

Dr Tim Patston is a researcher and educator with more than thirty years’ experience working with Primary, Secondary and Tertiary education providers and currently is the leader of consultancy activities for C reative Actions . He also is a senior adjunct at the University of South Australia in UniSA STEM and a senior fellow at the University of Melbourne in the Graduate School of Education. He publishes widely in the field of Creative Education and the development of creative competencies and is the featured expert on creativity in the documentary Finding Creativity, to be released in 2021. 

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The Significant Benefits Of Creativity In The Classroom

Creativity in the classroom is another form of play, and play is universally important to each individual’s sense of joy and well-being.

What Are The Significant Benefits Of Creativity In The Classroom?

by  TeachThought Staff

Creativity is a valuable skill.

All too often people outgrow their imagination as adulthood approaches due to an encroaching sense of self-doubt, an ingrained belief that it’s an impractical pursuit, or firm guidance from more experienced grown-ups advising engineering over art school.

Although almost everyone would agree that creativity is important, budget cuts to areas of education like art and music programs demonstrate differently.

However, even those in S.T.E.M.-related fields benefit from thinking creatively. Henry Ford gave people automobiles instead of the faster horses they would have requested; Elon Musk is working on an underground tunnel system with car elevators and a hyperloop instead of improving ground transportation — efforts like these require more than technical ability; they demand imagination, creativity, and a sense of belief in the impossible.

“Without imagination and investigation of ideas our collective fund of knowledge would languish. We do need assessments to determine what students learn and understand, but we can incorporate imagination in the creation of those assessments to ensure that students’ creative thoughts and higher executive functions are incorporated into their assessment experiences,” said Dr. Judy Willis in Planning For Creativity: 4 Simple Strategies You Can Master . Creativity should be encouraged along with technical knowledge since the two go hand in hand.

And maybe more importantly, creativity infuses life with a different sort of depth and richness. As Osho said, “To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.”

The ripple effect of encouraging that sort of philosophy in students would be vast and broad-reaching. Creativity inspires happiness and a desire to share that with others. What’s more important than that?

Sylvia Duckworth created the following sketchnote listing 12 benefits of creativity in the classroom. An actual list would be nearly endless, but these are a great start to that conversation.

1. Creativity is Multidisciplinary

Not only can you practice creativity through many different mediums, its benefits are applicable to almost all professions.

2. Creativity allows you to express yourself

An integral part of the human condition involves learning who we are and recognizing how that fits into the rest of the world. Creativity allows self-discovery, as well as the opportunity to share a hidden side of ourselves.

3. Creativity promotes thinking and problem-solving

From technical details of writing, drawing, or composing to the challenge of creating, problem-solving is a required component of the creative process.

4. Creativity reduces stress and anxiety

People usually pursue creative projects because they enjoy the process or the outcome. Just the act of creating inspires a sense of contentment.

5. Creativity allows you to enter your happy zone and have fun

Creativity is really another form of play, and play is universally important to each individual’s sense of joy and well-being.

6. Creativity gives you a sense of purpose

Writers, artists, and musicians often identify by those words whether they make money at their craft or not. Their creative method is their way of processing the world and a way of describing who they are.

7. Creativity can lead to feelings of accomplishment and pride

T he combination of brainstorming, the technical process, and a finished process is often the perfect recipe for personal satisfaction.

8. Creativity can link you to others with the same passion

Art is important because it fosters a sense of connection and understanding of what it means to be human. A creative focus can help you find your community and feel less alone in the world.

9. Creativity improves your ability to focus

The act of creating requires dedication and commitment, not only to each individual project but to the craft itself.

10. Creativity promotes risk-taking and iteration

Making things isn’t easy; making things others will appreciate is even harder. Creativity requires courage, confidence, and the willingness to fail and try again.

11. Creativity is a prerequisite for innovation

Every advancement known to mankind started with a new idea, and new ideas are inspired by imagination and creativity.

12. Creativity encourages us to be lifelong learners

Creativity requires the humbleness to know that there’s always room for improvement and a commitment to continue challenging your ideas and ability until new growth occurs.

The Benefits Of Creativity In The Classroom

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Why teaching for creativity should be central to the curriculum

Drew rowlands, chair of education and a board member of shakespeare north, suggests that schools need to be explicit about teaching for creativity.

The latest Ofsted Education Inspection Framework has a greater emphasis on offering a broad curriculum. School leaders are required to describe the quality of the education they are offering young people in terms of ‘Intent’ (what they are trying to achieve), ‘Implementation’ (how it will be taught and assessed) and ‘Impact’ (the effect on pupils).

The framework gives schools the opportunity to put creativity at the heart of their intent and teaching for creativity as an underpinning mechanism for how they will implement their curriculum, all to ensure that the creativity of all pupils is developed across the curriculum.

Creative teaching prepares young people for an uncertain future

We are living in a world during exponential times of change, which has been described by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus as VUCA - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. A world in which:

• The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years .
• Nano Technician, Vertical Farmer, Big Data Architect and Meme Archivist are just four roles today that we hadn’t heard of ten years ago; meaning that students will be entering jobs that currently don’t exist.
• 90% of global data has been created in the last 2 years.
• 50% of current work activities are technically automatable.

The World Economic Forum Future Jobs Report of 2020 has suggested fifteen skills that will be most needed between now and 2025. At least 10 of these are direct outputs of developing independent learners through creativity such as:

• Analytical thinking and innovation.
• Complex problem-solving.
• Creativity, originality and initiative.
• Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.
• Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation.

Schools have a clear role in equipping students with the knowledge, skills and understanding of how to develop and utilise their creativity. For the competencies that make us creative are the same ones that will make us resilient to change and agile to the uncertain times in which we live.

Creating meaningful learning experiences

Where schools have effective curriculum intent, they are often focused on a strong commitment to developing meaningful learning experiences that help pupils develop their capacity to learn. In England, the Teaching and Learning Toolkit produced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) places metacognition (the act of learning to learn) at the top of its meta-analysis of interventions that impact on pupil progress.

In essence, teaching for creativity is the pedagogical practice that allows metacognition, or the act of learning to learn, to happen.

Teaching for creativity

If curriculum intent is focused on creativity, teachers will need to embrace teaching for creativity as the tool for implementation. Many teachers already teach creatively. They use imaginative and innovative approaches to deliver curriculum and make learning interesting and memorable.

However, teaching for creativity is slightly different. It enables children to develop their own learning capacities. The following features summarise research into key aspects associated with teaching for creativity.

Be playful with style and pace

• Try setting students tasks with differing time constraints. This will challenge pupils to adapt and think quickly.
• Contrast this with tasks where pupils have to think more carefully and make decisions over a longer time.
• For example, this could involve a blend of 5 minute exercises in which pupils have to generate answers/solutions and more complex challenges requiring pupils to collaborate to create an outcome over 20+ minutes.
• In the longer example there are opportunities to build pupil responsibility by creating scenarios in which pupils have to explain and justify their decision or solutions. Allowing pupils to undertake more complex challenges inevitably involves them taking risks thereby experiencing a culture that allows for mistakes and the learning that emerges from these.

Generate pupil’s imagination

• Develop pupil’s imagination by asking open questions that encourage dialogue and exploration. This approach helps pupil’s to develop deeper transferable thinking.
• Start a lesson with a provocation or with a series of intriguing questions. Exploring issues from different perspectives and experimenting with thoughts and options stimulates imagination, often referred to as 'possibility thinking', and can be a useful approach to warm up creative thinking skills.

Make time for play

• Play is free of constraints and encourages pupils to generate new ideas within a safe environment. This makes them more malleable to learning, helps them to experiment in their thinking and increases motivation and engagement.

The creative process

When creativity is taught effectively, it’s structured, disciplined and robust. The model below outlines a creative process developed by CapeUK (now IVE). It aims to recognise different dimensions that a creative process might go through.

The CapeUK/IVE Creative Process

In this method, teachers control the process. They frame each stage by posing questions that allow learners to respond and set a time limit for each step. In this way, the teacher can be confident there is structure, but, at the same time, pupils control the learning. They’re responsible for generating ideas, framing those ideas towards a solution, testing and refining them as part of the ‘doing’ and finally presenting and reflecting on their solution to the challenge.

Creativity - from intent to implementation and impact

A school that puts creativity at their heart of curriculum intent will be planning to:

• Equip pupils with the tools to learn independently.
• Inspire a love of learning.
• Embed a culture that enables learners to grow in resilience and embrace challenge.
• Empower learners to find new solutions.
• Prepare learners fully for our changing world.

In order to implement this vision learning will be typified by:

• Effective questioning on the part of the teacher.
• Engaged pupils who own the solution they are working towards.
• High degrees of collaboration.
• Learning from things that don’t work.
• Pupils and teacher exploring challenges without preconceived ideas of outcome/solution.
• Strong structure with pupils learning at pace.
• Pupils producing outcomes that have relevance to both their learning and lives.

If schools puts creativity at the heart of their curriculum intent with teaching for creativity as the mechanism for how that intent is implemented, the impact can be an outstanding learning environment where significant and sustained progress is evident in all aspects of school life.

Drew Rowlands is Chair of Education and a board member of Shakespeare North.

Further Reading

Cochrane, P. and Cockett, M. (2006). Building a creative school: A dynamic approach to school development. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham.

QCA (2004) Creativity: Find it Promote it

Lucas, B., Claxton, G. and Spencer, E. (2013) Progression in Student Creativity in School: First Steps Towards New Forms of Formative Assessments. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Vincent-Lancrin, S., et al. (2019). Fostering Students' Creativity and Critical Thinking: What it Means in School. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Jeffrey, B. and Craft, A. (2004). Teaching creatively and teaching for creativity: distinctions and relationships . Educational Studies, 30:1, 77-87.

Davis, L. (2018). Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How To Foster Creativity In The Classroom. Psych Learning Curve.

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The importance of embedding creativity in education

Creativity in an educational context is often thought of in terms of creative subjects such as music, art, and drama. These subjects certainly nurture creativity, but creativity is an integral part of teaching and learning across all subjects. It involves an active curiosity when seeing something for the first time and how we react to it. Sometimes this involves an element of risk-taking, which can be developed in the safe environment of learning.

Cultivating creative thinking amongst students is highly dependent on creative leaders being visible within the learning and work environments. For this reason it’s important that creative leadership is evident from primary school to high school or college, and on into higher education. Creative thinking should be encouraged amongst all stakeholders and considered a valuable quality that initiates individuals into responding flexibly and adaptively in their problem-solving and decision-making.

Creative leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic

The ongoing impact of the global pandemic upon the learning environment and how educational institutions respond, means that the need for school leadership which takes a creative approach is greater than ever. In the introduction to the final report on the Creating Socially Distanced Campuses and Education Project launched by Advance HE, it is noted that there are five faces of transformational leadership that have come to the fore:

• Crisis leadership
• Courageous leadership
• Compassionate leadership
• Collaborative leadership
• Creative leadership

Elaborating upon creative leadership, Doug Parkin, Principal Adviser for Leadership and Management at Advance HE, says,

“The academic endeavour is at its core a creative one. Even very technical and rigorously precise research has a creative basis. From the most complex curriculum review challenge to the most wicked interdisciplinary research question, creativity and positivity unlocks human potential at every stage. It ignites ideas, inspires, and develops focus, commitment and energy. And leadership can and should complement this by being creative and using creativity as the basis for communication, positivity and engagement.”

He also quotes Kimsey-House et al when he writes “People are naturally creative, resourceful and whole.” This is an important point as people sometimes believe that they are not creative when being creative is an inherently human trait that often simply hasn’t been developed. Continued professional learning and development can support head teachers and staff in fostering creative processes so that they can use them both in their approach to management and their teaching practice.

Expressing creativity in teaching

Teacher creativity can be expressed through preparation and development, originality and novelty, fluency, freedom in thinking and acting, sensitivity to problems, and flexibility in finding alternative solutions to problems. School leaders and principals are key role models in promoting creativity in the education system and when they lead by example, it’s easier for creative learning to take hold amongst both teachers and students. Professor Louise Stoll from the UCL Centre for Educational Leadership states that, “Creative leaders…provide the conditions, environment and opportunities for others to be creative.”

No matter how many inputs and initiatives towards creative learning are suggested by staff or students, if headteachers do not embrace a creative methodology, the outputs will be subpar. For this reason, leadership development is also a critical factor in school improvement through creativity. Those who are creative know that a school culture in which stakeholders are always learning only leads to more creativity, and that creativity is itself a vital part of facilitating learning – it becomes a virtuous cycle.

An interesting case study that involved both pupils and teachers is that of Manorfield Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Head teacher Paul Jackson explained in an article in Headteacher Update,

“We engaged an architect to design us a model classroom that would put teaching and learning at the centre. Pupils and teachers worked with him on ideas. The idea was that if that worked, it would become a ‘lab’ where we tested things and if they worked we would roll it out elsewhere. Our children visited hotels and offices to get design ideas and then reported their ideas back to the architect. The result was the transformation of a previously cluttered classroom into a modern, light, and airy space and we’re now applying the lessons that we learned to the conversion of two redundant offices into a new, inspiring Key Stage 1 library area. I think it was a good example of using outside expertise to challenge our thinking.”

This kind of creative work is hugely beneficial to learners of all ages, but particularly to young minds. By involving them in the shaping of their environment, their opinions on high level decision-making are validated. The children are the ones who will primarily be learning in the school space, so letting them know that their input is important has a positive impact on their learning and sense of agency. When learning spans both the classroom and real-world scenarios, creativity can really come to fruition as students see the real-life effect of their decisions.

How important is creativity in education?

Creativity is sometimes referred to as one of the key competencies of the 21 st century and is also intrinsic to sustainable development. 

As the world increasingly faces challenges related to climate change, the education of the next generation is pivotal in helping to cultivate innovative thinking and problem solving to address sustainability issues. Creative education is not just a more fun and resourceful way of learning, it helps prepare children and young adults for creative work and the challenges of everyday life.

Take a creative approach with an MA Education Leadership and Management

The educational sector is changing in the wake of Covid-19 and the weak points that the pandemic restrictions exposed in the current structures of pedagogy. Educational leaders want their schools to be more resilient and their staff and students to be actively learning and collaborating beyond the restraints of traditional learning methodologies. When it comes to the success of remote learning, there are more dynamic ways to share information than simply through webinars, and creativity has shown how limits can be overcome.

If you’re looking for professional development that lets you consider these challenges of teaching and many more, while exploring creative leadership styles and leadership roles, a master’s in education could be for you. Find out more about the learning opportunities offered by a 100% online MA Education Leadership and Management and how you can register today.

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Supporting the Development of Creativity

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By: Laurel Bongiorno

A three year old sits at the kitchen table extremely focused on his art.

He’s gathered white paper, a glue bottle, scissors, small bits of colored paper, tissue paper, and finger paint from his own special art box. He chooses which paper to cut and which to tear. He intently glues each small item to the white paper, creating a collage. He then finger paints bright red all around his gluing, creating a framed-effect.  With delight, he shows his sister his creation, and begins to make another piece of art.

A four-year-old waits for instructions while her mother gathers materials for her to create a flower basket.

Her mom places a piece of large white paper, a glue bottle, a pair of scissors and small pieces of tissue paper on the table and says, “Okay, you can make this however you want --- BUT the basket is the base and I cut that for you, and then the tissue papers pieces are the flowers.  Let me show you how to tear the tissue paper.”  The four-year-old pastes the basket in place and glues the flowers, creating the basket of flowers as planned.  She shows her mother what she’s made and says, “Is this right?”

These examples show two very different types of art experiences.  In the first, a process art experience, the child has many opportunities to explore the materials, think, express himself, and create. The second is a product focused art experience where the child follows directions given to her to make a predetermined end product.

These two types of art experiences don’t support children’s development in the same ways. It's important to know the difference in order to offer children art experiences that support their creativity, enjoyment of art, thinking skills, and healthy development.

Process Art Experiences Support Many Aspects of Children’s Development

Physical Development:  Your child’s small motor skills develop as he glues, draws, paints, and plays with clay or homemade dough.  Small motor skills are important for future writing.

Language & Literacy Development:  As you talk with your child her vocabulary expands when you name new art materials, tools, and concepts such as  scissors ,  collage ,  purple ,  wide ,  sticky , and  smooth . Your child often tells you about the ideas she’s expressing through the art and this type of conversation supports literacy development.

Social and Emotional Development:   There is joy and self-exploration in self-expression. Art supports the development of self-regulation and self-control as your child focuses, makes choices, and feels successful.  The ability to focus is important to future school success.

Product Art Experiences Do Not Support Rich Learning

Product art offers children a few learning opportunities (following directions and developing small motor control) but does not offer the rich opportunities for cognitive, language, and social and emotional development open ended art experiences offer.

Clues To Identifying Product and Process Art

Product Art:

• Your child follows a sample, pattern, or model and follows instructions
• Adults know in advance what the artwork will look like
• There's a right way and a wrong way
• Adults feel the need to "fix" the art
• Patterns and cut-outs are easily available online

Process Art:

• There's no sample, pattern, or model
• Your child explores lots of interesting materials
• Adults have no idea what children will create
• There's no right or wrong way to do the art
• Children are relaxed and focused
• Your child wants to do more
• The art is truly an "original" every time

In addition,  children react differently  to these two types of art experiences.

Children doing  product art  might say:

• "Can I be done now?"
• "Is this right?"
• "Mine doesn't look right."
• "I can't do this!"

Children doing  process art  might say:

• "Can I have more time?"
• "Can I have more paper?
• "Is there any yellow?"
• "I want to make another one"

Parents Can Offer Exploratory Process Art Experiences:

• Provide a place for art materials such as a special bin or drawer
• Save recycled materials (like magazines) children can later use to create collages
• Include watercolor paints, finger paints, and offer brushes and interesting painting tools such as toothbrushes and potato mashers 
• Offer many drawing materials like markers, crayons, and colored pencils of different sizes
• Have lots of blank paper (rather than coloring books)
• Include tape, glue, and scissors
• Make homemade dough and offer clay
• Try art outside – use natural materials like leaves in art projects or paint outside for a change of setting

Dr. Laurel Bongiorno , Dean of the Division of Education and Human Studies at Champlain College, writes and presents on a variety of early care and education topics -- play as learning, parents' and teachers' understanding of play, process art, and early childhood leadership.  She is a past president of the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children.

Creative Arts and Music

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Creativity education is equally important for careers in stem and the arts.

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Creativity is a core competency for careers in both the arts and sciences.

What makes someone a creative person? For most of us, the first thing that comes to mind is the arts. How many of us use the term creative to describe a person who is good at math? But new research calls that perception into question, finding that the same amazing human creativity is at the root of both.

The myth (and it is a myth) that the arts are creative and the sciences are quantitative shapes the way we approach education. And that can be a problem because the skills that come with creativity are necessary in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields too.

The researchers from Australia and the Netherlands who partnered to write this study are calling for schools and universities to focus more on teaching creativity. Their study has found that creativity is a core competency across disciplines, which makes it crucial for future career success.

It’s not that we didn’t already value creativity, but understanding it as a core competency in science is a new idea for some of us. Even though many of us are actually wired to experience a ‘high’ from moments of creative insight , we remain confused about what creativity actually is and where it’s important.

To sort this out, the study looked at 2277 German undergraduate students between the ages of 17 and 37. Within that sample, 2147 of the students were enrolled in STEM courses and 130 enrolled in art courses. Within the STEM group, some were studying science specific domains and other were studying engineering micro-domains. The goal was to explore how the students thought about and perceived their creativity, and to see if it differed between the groups.

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They found the creativity differed surprisingly little between the Arts and Science students. In particular, openness , creative self-efficacy and divergent thinking were important in every kind of creativity. Indeed, the study authors saw them as pre-requisites, as the building blocks necessary for creativity to happen.

Openness refers to the personality trait often described by the Big Five personality research as “openness to experience.” Someone who scores high in openness is intellectually curious and open-minded to considering new ideas. They are also more likely to try new things and explore in their imagination.

Self-efficacy means that a person believes they can accomplish what they set out to do. So for the study, creative self-efficacy refers to the belief that they can accomplish a creative task. In psychology, a sense of self-efficacy is consider essential to our success and mental health.

While openness and creative self-efficacy are features of the person themselves, divergent thinking is a matter of process. Often considered the central cognitive process at the root of creativity, the authors found it in both the art and the science students. Divergent thinking refers to the way a person might face an open-ended problem by generating diverse possibilities. It’s hard to imagine how we can create novel solutions without it.

The finding that there are three key features that are central to creativity across disciplines has implications for education. The study authors believe that education should deliberately foster openness, creative self-efficacy and divergent thinking in students. And they’d like it to start in kindergarten and continue through college.

“The big change for education systems would be moving away from a rather fragmented and haphazard approach to teaching creativity, to a much more holistic and integrated approach,” said study author Professor David Cropley of the University of Southern Australia in a press release .

It comes back to the often repeated concern about preparing students for the market of the future. What humans can do that artificial intelligence cannot is creative tasks like understanding gaps in the market, according to Cropley.

“Until this research, we didn’t know whether creativity in STEM was the same as creativity in anything, or if there was something unique about creativity in STEM. If creativity was different in STEM – that is, it involved special attitudes or abilities – then we’d need to teach STEM students differently to develop their creativity,” Cropley explains.

“As it turns out, creativity is general in nature – it is essentially a multi-faceted competency that involves similar attitudes, disposition, skills and knowledge, all transferrable from one situation to another. So, whether you’re in art, maths or engineering, you’ll share an openness to new ideas, divergent thinking, and a sense of flexibility,” says Cropley.

But is openness to ideas something that can be taught? It’s an aspect of personality, and we often see those traits as innate. However, there is ample evidence that personality is shaped by early experience, so early education could indeed enhance openness to experience in children. Further, personality actually does change over time, so even in adulthood we can deliberately modify our personality traits .

“This is great news for teachers, who can now confidently embrace and integrate heightened levels of creativity across their curriculum for the benefit of all students – whether STEM or arts based,” says Cropley.

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The Importance of Creativity

Personal perspective: creative pursuits enhance work/life balance and bring joy..

Posted October 1, 2022 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

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What is creativity ? It’s usually defined in terms of imagination and innovation and especially related to the production of artwork. Yet creativity isn’t necessarily about art per se but is a quality of being artful. It’s about how we make and weave meaning and richness into our days. Being creative means possessing curiosity, the ability to observe keenly, and a passion for innovation to move about in space and time in new ways. It means trying something different, which requires us to take the leap to trust our intuition so we can play in the unknown.

In academe, we need to teach and write in ways that reveal a depth of interpretation, that demonstrate meaning-making, that forge connections, that push the boundaries of existing modes of thought, and that play with new questions and ideas. When it comes to teaching, we might create a new course that invigorates us as teachers. Such new preparations breathe new energy into teaching and keep us engaged as lifelong learners, an important thing to model for students. Recently, I’ve created three new courses for our sociology curriculum and each was transformative for my teaching and writing practice.

It’s paradoxical that in higher education many faculty members often report feeling stifled or deadened when it comes to creative practices. One would think academe would be one of the more open arenas for nurturing creativity. But, formulaic and status-quo constructions generally prevail for what makes scholarship and pedagogy good enough for us to achieve successful annual reviews and ascend the ranks through tenure and promotion.

It saddens me tremendously to hear so many in academe, including several of my important mentors, confess that they can’t wait to retire just to finally write the sort of stuff they want to write. Living and working suspended like that is so conditional and constraining; it functions like a chokehold on our inner creative life. I couldn’t bear to wait that long.

I’ve come to regard the reclamation of my own creativity as a radical act. It’s a way of being more present in my life and work and responding to the urgent and important inner whispers that insist I be more creative today—not decades from now in retirement .

I’ve found the best way to anchor more deeply into that mindset is to borrow energy and momentum from another arena of invention. When I attend concerts, I think about the habits, routines, and practices of the musicians. And I’m always energized to hear about others’ seemingly mundane daily rituals that pave the way for creativity. Witnessing others’ creativity can jump-start our own.

Over the past two years since my mother died, I’ve been unpacking boxes of her paintings. I’ve been blown away by how vast a body of work she produced and inspired by how she kept at it, constantly taking new risks and trying again. In the mornings, after having espresso, I’ve found myself going into the guest room, now turned art gallery, and caressing the nuanced details of some of the pieces. Sometimes I take photographs of them that I pair with fresh flowers or with the work of a favorite potter—playing with colors, shape, light, and form—and then share them on social media .

Invariably, people ask if my mother and the potter created work in tandem because of how much their art complements each other. I explain that, no, in fact, I just noticed the parallels and decided to photograph them together. It’s in the act of making such visual connections and juxtapositions that I feel a high of creative and playful synthesis, and I find that it propels me to want to sit down to do my own writing.

Creativity involves imagining new ways of seeing, sensing and being. Another simple way I do that is to look around a room in my home and find an object, meditate for a moment on its functions and then consider what else it might be used for. The simple act of repurposing an object changes my relationship to it and keeps things fresh. When I get stuck, I try to pause and reflect on times I felt most in a creative flow state, and I call up a multisensory picture of that experience to revisit it for the qualities I most need to tap into.

While we grapple with intense institutional demands and constraints, it’s still possible to craft a creative dossier. For those of us committed to being creative public intellectuals, the issue becomes one of educating colleagues about what we’re doing and why it’s important. At my university, where I work in a multidisciplinary department of social sciences and humanities and where faculty members from disciplines all across the university comprise the tenure and promotion committee, I crafted a personal statement for my file that captured my intentionality around public sociology and the ways it’s a legitimate and firmly grounded part of my discipline.

We’ve seen how the pandemic has changed how people conceptualize work, space, and place, and we can use that to creatively rethink how we manage our time for tasks such as office hours. It might be possible to conduct them outside, or to do a walk-and-talk session with a student on campus. Or perhaps we can offer phone appointments while walking. The spirit of these ideas isn’t to amplify multitasking, but rather to consider ways we might be able to give back to ourselves while supporting others’ success and growth. The point isn’t about adding more but about how we negotiate our time in ways that prioritize creative spaciousness.

Similarly, much of the service being done across campuses is unpaid labor for the purpose of institutional maintenance. We might want to create our own service opportunities. Years back, a colleague and I created monthly events related to gender issues and invited the entire campus community. No such thing had existed there before, and various campus leaders appropriately recognized that endeavor as a meaningful and special contribution of service.

We’re limited by blocking beliefs that if only we could have endlessly unfolding hours and days, we would finally be able to write and publish more—that until it’s perfect, we dare not submit our work yet, and that we probably don’t know what we’re doing anyway, given the impostor syndrome so pervasive in academe. But that mentality of “if only,” “when” and “not until” ramps up our self-expectations and fear and holds us back from taking creative risks. It also feeds into a mentality of scarcity that runs counter to a creative life.

We must make room for our creative endeavors by prioritizing them and not becoming overwhelmed or sidetracked by other demands. I’ve learned that if our initial gut instinct is to say no to something, it’s best to say it or to say, “I’ll have to think about it and get back to you,” and then return with the no. Some colleagues bear down in meetings with intense praise and pressure to get us to agree to something. It’s OK to say, “Thanks for thinking I’d be good at this, but if you need an answer right now, it will have to be no.” In my mind, I picture the famous New Yorker cartoon where a man on the phone looks at his calendar and says, “How about never—is never good for you?”

Our personal lives offer us endless opportunities to be creative. In The Artist’s Way , Julia Cameron suggests daily walks, writing morning pages every day, and taking a creative excursion as regularly as possible. Contained in that model is the need for rituals and structure to be creative. I’d add that being in friendships and intimate relationships that nourish our creativity is essential.

It’s advantageous to approach our responsibilities as creatively as possible, as doing so will enhance work-life balance. When we drop down into the most creative oasis within ourselves, we’re able to experience unleashed freedom, timelessness, flow, and energy in ways that life looks light-filled, colorful, and more spacious than ever before.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Inside Higher Ed on September 23, 2022.

Deborah J. Cohan, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort where she teaches and writes about the intersections of the self and society.

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The Importance of CREATIVE Leadership

Mardecia Bell

Jennifer Domnick

Donna Petherbridge

Jill Sexton

Importance of pursuing creative hobbies

Creative hobbies entail creative use of the mind, body and emotions. They enable flowering of a creative personality and growth of an individual who can offer something new and beautiful to themselves and the world: Yoginder Sikand

• Collecting stamps, first-day covers, coins, picture postcards, matchbox labels, autographs of ‘famous’ people and ‘toothpaste charms’— little toy animals and birds that came with a brand of toothpaste,
• Listening to the radio
• Corresponding with pen-friends from around the world.

I spent a good deal of my spare time (and a fair portion of my pocket-money) on my hobbies.

When I look back now, I realise that most of my hobbies, which reflected and shaped my personality in ways then unknown to me, were passive. By this I mean that they did not entail much action on my part. For instance, collecting coins from different parts of the world involved buying them from a shop or receiving them as gifts and then putting them into a coin album or a simple tin. Likewise most of my other hobbies involved mere collection of items.

Hobbies that are based on collecting things can engender passive consumption, a hoarding mentality and greed, although I didn’t know this then. The substantial volume and variety of my stamps, first-day covers, coins, postcards, matchbox labels, autographs and toothpaste charm collection may have given me great delight, but they didn’t entail much effort on my part beyond collecting items and putting them in an appropriate repository.

Through these hobbies, I was not creating anything new. I was only accumulating things that others had made. These hobbies did not involve substantial development of any capabilities or hidden potential. They did not require creative use of mind, body and emotions, which I now believe a creative hobby does. At the same time, though, I must state that both my ‘hoarding’ hobbies and other hobbies such as reading, listening to the radio and corresponding with pen-friends from different countries enhanced my knowledge of the world, each in its own way.

If I were able to go back to being a child, I would choose a different range of hobbies for myself that entail creative use of the mind, body and emotions and that help the flowering of a creative personality — the growth of a person who can offer something new and beautiful to themselves and the world. Hobbies such as singing, playing a musical instrument, painting, acting, writing, tailoring, pottery, sculpture, woodwork, working with plants and animals, and so on. Here I must state that when I was a child, my parents did arrange for me to access some of these hobbies but owing to diffidence, indifference, laziness or lack of direction and commitment on my part, I failed to avail these opportunities.

Hobbies aren’t just something that only children can cultivate. Even grown-ups and ‘grown-olds’ can have hobbies. It is never too late to take up a creative hobby, not even when, like myself presently, one is in what is possibly the evening of one’s life. But it is best, I can say with the benefit of hindsight, if children start with a creative hobby early in life. Over time, they can go on to excel in it, so much so that it can even become their vocation. This is ideal as you get paid to do something that you love doing.

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Follow our news, recent searches, snap insight: conceived for a minority of students, gifted education programme has been overtaken by wider trends, advertisement.

The revamp of the Gifted Education Programme is not entirely surprising in light of existing attempts by some primary schools to cater to their high-ability students, says National Institute of Education’s Jason Tan.

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

SINGAPORE: One of the key announcements in Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s inaugural National Day Rally speech was the discontinuing of the four-decade-old Gifted Education Programme (GEP) in its current form .

Instead, each primary school will offer its own programmes to stretch high-ability students in their areas of strengths and interest, with the possibility of students taking after-school enrichment modules in nearby schools. This means that students no longer have to transfer to a school that offers the GEP .

Mr Wong pointed out that this reform was part of his government’s move in the direction of realising the vision of “every school is a good school”.

EVOLUTION OF GEP

The GEP, launched in 1984, was one of the first few programmes for academically talented students.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) stressed the need to meet the learning needs of gifted students who required “a high degree of mental stimulation”. It also said that nurturing these students and maximising their potential was an investment in Singapore’s future.

The GEP curriculum had a few distinctive features, including greater depth and breadth in topic coverage, inter-disciplinarity, and more emphasis on creativity and higher-level thinking skills.

The first cohort of 100 primary GEP students enrolled in Raffles Girls’ Primary School and Rosyth School, with another 100 students being placed in the secondary GEP in Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary) and Raffles Institution. The GEP students were taught in self-contained classes within these schools.

Over the next 20 years, the programme expanded from 0.25 per cent to 1 per cent of the relevant age cohort. In 2003, there were nine primary schools and seven secondary schools that offered GEP.

However, the GEP was scaled back in the years that followed. The 2004 launch of the Integrated Programme (IP), a programme for gifted secondary school students that allows them to skip the O-Level examination and proceed to junior college, resulted in shrinking GEP enrolments at secondary schools.

As a result, the MOE announced that GEP would end for secondary schools in 2008, and that it would advise IP schools in the design of their talent development programmes.

Another step in GEP’s evolution was the MOE’s Gifted Education Branch’s sharing of pedagogical strategies for highly able students with non-GEP primary and secondary school teachers. At the same time, a few primary schools that were not GEP centres started their own programmes for high-ability learners.

Commentary: How can Singapore keep up with the unique needs of prodigies?

Commentary: Is DSA becoming almost as important as the PSLE in the transition from primary to secondary school?

Issues of equity.

Issues of equity have surrounded the GEP. For instance, there has been statistical evidence of an over-representation in the GEP of students from socio-economically advantaged homes, while some parents have engaged tutoring centres to prepare their children for the GEP selection test.

In response to criticism that GEP students were not socialising adequately with their non-GEP peers, the MOE announced that from 2008, GEP students would spend from one-third to half of their curriculum time together with non-GEP students.

As Singapore’s schools look to maximise the potential of all students, their goals increasingly resemble those of the GEP. The GEP’s goals include developing attitudes for self-directed lifelong learning, enhancing aspirations for individual excellence and cultivating a commitment towards serving society.

The GEP, which was originally conceived for a tiny minority of students, seems to have been overtaken by wider educational and socio-political trends. The announcement that it will be discontinued in its current form is not entirely surprising in light of existing attempts by some primary schools to cater to their high-ability students.

What remains to be seen is how wider equity issues, such as the advantages that students from socio-economically advantaged homes enjoy in terms of accessing resources for high-ability learners both within and outside school, can be addressed.

Commentary: PISA debate reveals Singaporeans may have limiting beliefs about creativity

Commentary: Are we missing the point in the single-sex vs co-ed school debate?

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Important teaching and learning tool updates for autumn 2024.

Before you dive into autumn semester, be sure to learn about the latest updates to teaching and learning tools and other technology services from the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI). Learn more about our new proctoring tool, Honorlock; review changes and improvements to CarmenCanvas; check out new features in Mediasite; find out how you and your students can access Adobe Express and Creative Cloud; and so much more.

Ohio State offers several supported and vetted tools to enhance the teaching and learning experience. You can explore these options in the Teaching and Learning Resource Center and visit the Learning Systems page on the it.osu.edu site to find the most recent updates to teaching and learning tools.

CarmenCanvas

Changes to Proctoring Solutions

Following an evaluation of new and existing proctoring tools, a committee of Ohio State faculty, staff, and students recommended continuing use of Respondus Lockdown Browser and onboarding a new tool, Honorlock . This change to Ohio State's proctoring solution was made available in Summer 2024 courses. You can learn more about getting started with Honorlock in the Teaching and Learning Resource Center. If you plan to use the tool in your courses, please share this Honorlock guide with your students.

Given the limitations of any proctoring tool, it is still strongly recommended that instructors strive for authentic assessments that are more likely to motivate students to learn and set them up for success in their future careers. You can learn more about designing assignments that encourage academic integrity in the Teaching and Learning Resource Center.   

New Features for Availability and Due Dates

Canvas is working to enhance the Assign To and Due Dates settings. In addition to seeing these options within the edit screen for an individual assignment or quiz, you can now access a flyout menu from the Modules screen. You can assign an entire module to specific students or to one or more sections if you have content that the whole class doesn’t need to see. You can also assign individual items within the module to whomever you select. The same flyout menu has a tab where you can set availability dates for modules and content, making it easier to control when students interact with upcoming course material. 

Improvements to Canvas Inbox

Inbox, the email feature in Canvas, has added new features. Now, you can add signatures to your messages and set up automatic Out of Office replies. Learn more about these new Inbox features in the Teaching and Learning Resource Center.

Redesign of Canvas Discussions

The Discussions tool in Canvas has undergone a redesign process. When you click into a discussion, you will see options to sort replies and to view replies in a new split-screen viewer. Among other new features, role labels will make it easier to identify comments from the course instructor and from the person who started the discussion thread. Users can also be “at mentioned” to bring them into a conversation. Find more details about these and other new features in the Canvas Community .

Explore New Quizzes in Your Courses

The New Quizzes tool is available for you to explore! Activating this feature for your course will allow you to choose between Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes when creating a new assessment. In the Teaching and Learning Resource Center, you can view a release timeline and review accessibility considerations . Shortly after you enable New Quizzes in one or more of your courses, you will receive an email with additional accessibility information and resources.

CarmenBooks Update

CarmenBooks, the program that offers digital textbooks and access to publisher homework systems, is now powered by RedShelf. Students will be able to access all their current CarmenBooks titles by selecting the CarmenBooks icon from the global navigation in Canvas or from the CarmenBooks link within a course. Titles from previous semesters can be accessed with the Unizin Engage link within a course.

Manage Participants Features

Be sure to check out new Manage Participants functionality. When selecting this option for your course, you now have access to a more robust feature set, including the ability to add, bulk add, remove and reactivate students; edit roles for individuals in your course; and export your class roster. More features are coming soon, including more bulk actions. These new features live in Aegis , a platform with tools built by OTDI to help manage and support the teaching and learning toolset.

Zoom-Canvas Integration Update

With the latest update to the Zoom-Canvas integration, Zoom will no longer automatically add events to your course calendar in Canvas. This functionality created issues when copying over courses, so it has been disabled. If you would like your Zoom course sessions added to your calendar, you can create recurring calendar events for your course by following these instructions from Canvas .

Zoom AI Companion

This semester, we have enabled two new AI features in Zoom. The Meeting Summary feature will email the meeting host (and participants if the host allows) a prose-style summary of the meeting. The Smart Recordings feature inserts chapter markers and provides summaries, key takeaways, and action items for your recorded meetings. Learn more about Meeting Summary and Smart Recordings from Zoom Support. 

Added Security for Zoom Recordings

When logging into Zoom, users must be authenticated with their username, password, and multi-factor authentication (Duo). This same level of security now applies to Zoom recordings by default. If you need to share a recording with someone outside Ohio State, you can change this setting on a recording-by-recording basis. Learn more about university guidelines for recording Zoom and Teams meetings.

Remember to Keep Zoom Up-to-date

Be sure you are running the most recent version of Zoom across all your devices. It is always best practice to keep your apps updated for security reasons, and with Zoom it ensures you can take advantage of the latest features. Zoom also requires you to have a recent version of their app installed to join a Zoom call. University-managed devices receive routine updates to Zoom, but you should ensure your personal devices are up to date. Learn more about updating Zoom to the latest version .

Mediasite Improvements

OTDI has been working on strategic enhancements to Mediasite, the university’s media platform. This summer, browser-based recording was enabled. This new feature lets users record audio, video and screen content conveniently from a web browser, with no need for hardware or special software. Automated captioning is also enabled by default for all recordings. Keep in mind, AI captioning still needs to be reviewed to ensure full accessibility. Viewers of your content will see a disclaimer that the captions were auto-generated, but you can remove this disclaimer after editing your captions. Remember, when embedding Mediasite content in your course , it is best to use the integration that is built into Canvas. This will provide your students with the best viewing experience.

Top Hat Student Preview

If you are using the polling tool Top Hat in your course, you may notice a new feature. As an instructor, you will now be able to preview what your students will see during a class presentation. This feature is a great way to ensure you have formatted your questions correctly and gives you a glimpse into the student experience. Learn more about using this feature from Top Hat.

Recording and Proctoring Waiver for Minors

Students under the age of 18 must have a waiver on file signed by a parent or guardian to allow them to interact with instructional tools that use a student’s web camera and microphone, as well as tools that require consent to download and install on a student’s device. In addition, minors without this waiver on file will have Zoom accounts with limited functionality—mainly, they will be unable to host meetings of their own without parental consent. If you are teaching a course with at least one student under the age of 18 who does NOT have this waiver on file, you will receive an email from the Registrar’s office with further instructions and considerations.

Connect to eduroam

Over the summer, osuwireless officially retired and we completed the transition to eduroam as the primary secure network for Ohio State students, faculty and staff. Students, faculty and staff can connect their devices to eduroam today by visiting wireless.osu.edu and selecting Connect to eduroam . One of the great benefits of this transition is that users will no longer have to update their Wi-Fi connection each time they update their Ohio State password – the certificate connection on eduroam lasts for five years! By connecting to eduroam, you also join a growing group of eduroam users and can visit institutions throughout the world while maintaining a secure Wi-Fi connection.

Needs-Based Technology Loan Program

The Student Technology Loan Program (STLP) has been serving students at Ohio State by offering short- and long-term loans of Surface Go and iPad Air technology kits. To better serve students with the greatest need, STLP will reserve loan eligibility for students who have limited technology access and identified financial needs. Going forward, only students who have filled out FAFSA and received financial aid will be eligible to request a loaner device. Students can request a loaner device through ScholarshipUniverse, where students can apply for financial aid.

Classroom Updates

New Learning Spaces Directory

Not sure which classroom will suit your needs? Be sure to check out the new Learning Spaces Directory for faculty, staff and students. This site can help you find the right classroom or study space, and each listing includes photos and specs on what’s available in the space.

How to access Adobe Express and Creative Cloud

Adobe Express is available for free to all Ohio State students, faculty and staff. Adobe Express is an all-in-one web app for photos, videos, documents and graphic design. In addition, Adobe Creative Cloud is available for free in Digital Unions , public computer labs, and computer lab classrooms. Ohio State students, faculty, and staff can also purchase an annual license at a discounted rate. Learn more about the capabilities of Adobe tools and find out if they may enhance your students’ learning experience.

Change to Lab Computer Login

Over the summer, we updated the way users log into certain computers around campus. Students will log into OTDI-managed Windows computers with their lastname.#@buckeyemail.osu.edu and password. Faculty and staff will log in with their lastname.#@osu.edu and password. All users receive a Duo push after entering their Ohio State credentials. Learn more at the it.osu.edu site.

Generative AI is a rapidly evolving technology that Ohio State is actively exploring, and we now have a website as a central resource. AI.osu.edu provides information on current AI initiatives, tools, and guidelines for incorporating AI into academic and professional work. The site includes learning materials and sections detailing approved AI tools, policies, and instructional resources. We encourage contributions to the site to ensure it remains a comprehensive and up-to-date resource for the Ohio State community.

Email and Storage Changes

Ohio State is adjusting storage allowances for email, OneDrive and Teams to manage costs due to Microsoft's education licensing price changes. New storage limits will affect all faculty, staff and students. Email forwarding policies also will change due to these increasing costs and new security measures by external email providers that have been causing messages to be blocked. How this affects you depends on your role at the university.

Changes to Microsoft Flip

If you have been using Flip, the video discussion platform, please take note that some changes from Microsoft will affect your ability to use this tool. Flip is no longer a separate application; it has been integrated into Microsoft Teams for Education. Learn more about this change from the College of Arts and Sciences and discover options that could meet your particular use cases.

• Teaching and Learning Resource Center
• Learning Systems