Transfer. Baillie. (Baillie 2003). Baillie's diagram illustrates moments where student need to be able to take ..... Dewulf, Simon and Baillie, Caroline. (1999) CASE ...
Educational Research Association of Singapore Conference keynote November 2005
Nurturing and Harnessing Creativity: Lessons from the Humanities for Innovation and Enterprise. Professor Gina Wisker PhD APU Cambridge UK Introduction The economy demands creativity, and a healthy economy is necessary to a wealthy society which then produces assets for general consumption; better public amenities and services. But it also produces individual assets. In addition, there has been a growing assumption within the discourse on creativity, perhaps voiced first by Maslow (1970) that the creative individual is a fulfilled one; and one whose life is characterised by ‘agency’ – the capacity to take control and make something of it. (Craft, A, ‘The Limits to Creativity in Education: Dilemmas for the Educator.’ British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2, June 2003, p. 114) In today’s fast moving, overloaded, knowledge economies, it is more important than ever before to recognise, encourage, harness and reward creativity. Creativity, commonly associated with both the humanities, arts and the sciences, is in danger of being lost if we concentrate merely on reproduction of established knowledge and formulae, on conformity and familiar practice. Instead, we need to encourage the release of imaginative, new ideas and new metaphorical ways of thinking, identifying both problems / issues / needs and the innovations or reconceptualisations which could help solve the problems further and ensure benefit from the innovations. Using theorised and practical ideas from the new UK creativity agenda (Jackson, 2003 ) and examples from a range of arts and humanities subjects in practice, this paper considers strategies to encourage and assess creativity, including brainstorming, mind and concept mapping, role play, synectics, lateral thinking, thinking ‘outside the box’ and emotional intelligence. We will consider curriculum structures and practices which enable creativity, including independent learning, professional and personal storytelling, effective risk-taking in research, teaching, learning and assessment in educational practice . Such strategies release energies and lead towards lateral, flexible thinking enabled by the use of imagination, metaphors, images and representations. So, the practices of the arts and humanities expressed
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through ideas, media and in a variety of forms are recognised as transferable to a diversity of other subject areas and a wealth of contexts in education and employment, as they provide approaches and models to successfully release, nurture then harness creativity for innovation and enterprise in the new knowledge economies. Creativity Unleashed First, it is useful to ask ourselves in private who among us nurtures the private, possibly guilty secret that we have creative abilities in the arts and humanities? These could be abilities that are not being used in our everyday work and which seem on a par, perhaps, with taking a long walk or a warm bath, yoga, something with which to relax, shared with just a chosen few if anyone. Who is a closet writer of poetry, painter of pictures, cook of beautiful meals, grower of a garden in which herbs and flowers are in a delicate and imaginative balance, maker of pots, clothes, sculptures, stories, music, song, flower arrangements? As someone who works in the creative arts – creative writing and literature, I often find quite senior adult colleagues from all walks of life returning to learning to ‘discover themselves’ through what is on offer in the arts and humanities. Despite their professional success, they feel thwarted. Somehow work, working in business, management, administration, commerce, politics has not enabled them to use or develop their creative potential. In adult education they are to be seen painting in the gardens of seventeenth-century mansions outside Cambridge or gathering in remote farmhouses in Devon to write poetry. And I have wondered on their behalves what it is in the work they have been involved in for so many years that has so thwarted their creativity? What is it that has so prevented their making use of the creative abilities which they clearly have and which were probably nurtured in primary school and in the home, but tucked away, only appearing in hobbies shared with a chosen few, marginalised as not useful when they entered ‘serious’ study and then the world of work, salaries, taxes and 'serious' problems. Creativity is essential in all disciplines, interdisciplines, and the world of work and more distinctly for our cultures, society and social world. It is equally necessary for the engineering, commercial, industrial and scientific professional areas as for those more obviously related to the arts and humanities, to develop specific projects which expand learning ability, and solve problems. Creativity is important for all of us and the future of our societies for three reasons: 1. It expands the potential of the whole person emotionally, psychologically, cognitively – releasing it into action. 2. Nurturing and harnessing creative thinking and practices help us to transfer these abilities to solve a range of problems in business and professional life as well as personal development. 3. Economically it is invaluable as the source of new ideas and forms, solutions to problems. Creative outputs contribute to national and personal financial security. The arts and humanities – the home base
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of creativity – themselves generate a great deal of jobs and gross national product. It is not merely outdated, but clearly absurd now for the arts and humanities and the creativity they nurture and harness somehow to be seen as being merely playful, non-utilitarian, something clearly not transferable to the real world of difficulties, challenges, problems, innovation, enterprise and the knowledge economy. We are going to consider: • • • •
Creativity – what is it and why does it matter / why nurture and harness it? The imaginative creativity curriculum. What processes and practices in the curriculum, learning, teaching and assessment might encourage and harness creativity? Examples from the arts and humanities explored.
Without creativity there can be no movement forward in thought and action. Without imagination first left to roam then gradually harnessed and focused on issues, needs, problems and developments, all we can hope to do is repeat our old answers and our old mistakes. Without creative, alternative thinking, we would not have had a wealth of strategies and products which we now depend on. For instance, there is the search search engine ‘Google’ (which of course now seems only logical) . Type in the rough set of words and out come the many opportunities for their interpretation equalling sites where you can seek for relevant information. This operates on the word choice of the seekers and relations based on a related word. Before Google we searched for specific and absolutely accurate titles, and before that we had no 'virtual' locations in which to find and grow information, interactions and expressions such as the net offers us. This really does not have a very long history and each element of it derives from creative thinking, a wealth of imaginative gestures to start to address problems of information construction, representation, change and building. Without risk, challenge and change there is no forward movement in thought and action whether it be in terms of something focussed or something absolutely essential for human behaviour, social, political and business action. And as educators we have a duty to enable our students to see there is a direct link between the ostensible playfulness and the practicality of the creative humanities and arts, to build on links and processes which these encourage, involve and nurture. This is necessary, so that in a measured way, they can be utilised and developed for individual well-being and the transfer into the world of work, local, national, international business and workoriented needs and problems. Background There are economic, social, psychological and individual human reasons to nurture and harness creativity. It is powerful to put them together in an educational context. Craft (2003) recognises that:
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Since the end of the 1990s, creativity has become a growing area of interest once more within education and wider society. In England creativity is now named within the school curriculum and in the curriculum for children aged 3–5. There are numerous government and other initiatives to foster individual and collective creativity, some of this bringing together the arts, technology, science and the social sciences. As far as education is concerned, this growth in emphasis and value placed on encouraging creativity can be seen as being in stark contrast with the government policy prevalent from the late 1980s onward. One of the underpinning themes and justifications for this re-kindling of interest in fostering creativity is that the individual and collective empowerment which is fostered by the development of creative skill is seen to be a good thing at the social and economic level in particular (Craft, A, ‘The Limits to Creativity in Education: Dilemmas for the Educator’. British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2, June, 2003, p. 113) Creativity is an emotional human ability and necessity. Without it, both society and the individual wither away. As well as reflecting the wider world, creativity is a response to it, as continual innovation and resourcefulness have become necessary to economic survival. (Craft, A, ‘The Limits to Creativity in Education: Dilemmas for the Educator’. British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2, June, 2003, p. 114) In the UK, currently one of the most significant movements in education, particularly in Higher Education (HE), is that of the imaginative curriculum and of creativity, in the context of our needs to identify and develop the kind of lateral thinking, imaginative and creative thinking most clearly exemplified in the arts and humanities, and to encourage and enable these skills and abilities to be developed by all learners for a whole raft of outcomes. Educators have looked to the identification and development of the imaginative curriculum to provide learning structures and outcomes, processes and behaviours, activities and assessment formats that enable, recognise, and reward creativity. Let us ask the questions: Why is it useful for staff and students to develop approaches and skills that utilise and harness creativity? In today’s world of education and work we need to be: • Innovative • Questioning • Emotionally intelligent • Able to rise to new challenges – flexible • Able to cope with diversity and change with insight and flexibility, imaginative, engaged, reflexive
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• Able to apply theories in practice and to new situations • Ethically and critically engaged • Able to use creative problem-solving, planning, project construction, actioning, management and evaluation to solve problems • Able to rise to challenges and learn from these experiences for the future • Able to reflect constructively and evaluatively on previous and current experiences, learning from own actions and those of others • Able to transfer creative and problem solving strategies to a variety of changing contexts. The creative and imaginative curriculum development in the UK has now produced several papers and small booklets. One of their concerns has been the wealth of approaches to studying creativity and to studying creatively and the ways in which these offer us strategies for learning and teaching.
Who is creative? Creativity is not just the province of a few 'greats' but of all of us. There are differences of kind and extent between extraordinary creativity and ordinary and everyday creativity, so that some, not all of us might well be inventors, great artists but the extraordinary nature of the few does not exclude the development of creativity in the many. We all have the potential to be creative, in a variety of ways in a variety of contexts. For our students, their learning, teaching, assessment and curriculum structures an activities can suppress it or nurture, harness and reward it. Creativity in students’ learning is considered to be undervalued, generally not recognised (Jackson 2003). A few thoughts: • You cannot force creativity but you can foster it • Without challenge and risk-taking there is nothing new • ‘Without contraries there is no progression’ (Blake) • Imagination fashioned so as to yield an outcome that is of value as well as original (National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education /NACCCE, p. 29)is powerful and valuable for all of us • ‘Successful intelligence’ depends on effectively exploring a combination of analytical, practical and creative abilities (Sternberg 1996) It is important to avoid sponge-like learning and to engage self-expression and creativity with innovation and enterprise. What do we mean by creativity? And how can we encourage and reward it through learning, teaching and assessment practices? There are organic approaches that have been developed to encourage an independent creativity in individuals (Finke et al, 1992) and links between creativity and leadership, in relation to management development. Creativity is defined in many instances as problem-solving and decision-making and so in several curriculum contexts, approaches have developed to improve
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problem-solving in engineering and decision-making in management (Finke et al, 1992). There are psychoanalytical theories that consider creativity to be the result of previous mental activity (Kris Kubuie Rigg in Clemen, 1996), psychometrics which identify creativity among general thinking and behaviour processes, usually with an aim to select for employment, identifying convergent and divergent thinking (Eysenck in Boden, 1996), and sociological and theoretical thinking which is concerned with the results of the environment on creativity (Amabile and Simonton in Finke, 1992). We might be able to test for traces of creativity and then recognise, reward and build on these in our teaching. 'Multiple components approaches' to creativity use the investment theory that creativity involves many aspects, including intellectual processes, knowledge structuring intellectual style, personality traits, environmental context (Sternberg and Lubart in Finke et al, 1992) There are also some views of what it might be which actually leads to the generation and success of the creative process and these use a biographic kind of approach, where artists and other creative people study the creative individual's flair, traits etc, in the hope of reconstructing these and so working out motivational and environmental factors in the production of the creative. With some students, such theories lead them to modelling or copying the processes to embed them and move on. The most popular model since the 1980s has probably been a cognitive one, which operates using a variety of conceptions of what creative thinking can be seen to be: a random association of ideas, a juxtaposition of two previously unrelated thoughts, chance configuration of ideas, the transformation of conceptual space, magic, synthesis, and a selective combination of ideas. In our teaching we might be able to model this also using creative visualisation and helping students to develop that as another strategy, where they can use a visual analogy that leads them to be able to express more complex ideas. One argument has been that some people have creative potential and that some people just don’t. These gifted people clearly don’t have to work hard at it, they are lucky and blessed, the rest of us, not being creative, can leave the creativity up to them. This is wrong and lazy. In fact, it is more complex. Creativity is probably an interaction between personality traits, background, external organisation and environmental context, skills, knowledge, attitude, behaviours, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, flexibility and so on. Creativity can be evidenced in a number of ways, including the capacity to connect and evaluate ideas and potential solutions through the use of ‘extended abstract outcomes of learning’ e.g. hypothesising, synthesis, reflecting in familiar and unfamiliar contexts. Creativity uses intellectual processes, knowledge structures and intellectual style through using e.g. visualisations to engage our ideas. On a cognitive level, metaphor visualisation and analogy can be used in learning and teaching activities, and encouraged through methods of assessment. Through imagining and connecting a visual expression with other expressions of issues, ideas –comes transformation and new energies, new perceptions, creativity assessed and recognised.
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Let us look at a variety of arts and humanities oriented or based examples of creativity in action and consider how this identifies certain learning and behaviour traits, utilises certain environmental and curriculum possibilities, what it encourages in the student and how this can be assessed, evaluated and made explicit to the student. We will consider where the creativity has been developed and has produced sound outcomes and can exhibit this to others for assessment and future transfer into other subjects and areas of work. It is important to visualise the different stages and expressions of nurturing and harnessing creativity from stimuli and active thought processes, which encourage creativity, through the stages of developing it, whether it is for creative or problem-solving, using creative techniques for expressing and communicating the achievement and the transferable skills for developmental and expressive ends. There are many words identified with creativity – some to do with its functions, some context, some situation. It might be useful to: • •
Choose, order and add to the following words related to creativity, in order to identify your views of what it can be in practice, how to encourage it and reward it. Then consider these choices – what do they mean? How might they affect your views and actions in a learning, teaching, assessment and curriculum context?
Nurture Stimulate Challenge Product Risk Imagination Exclude Reflect Order Multiplicity Original Chaos Interdisciplinary Discipline Complexity Contingency Opposition Team Lateral Divergent Transfer Inspire Plan Image Metaphor Symbol Sign Senses Different New Deviate Perception Multicultural Culture Involve Spark Multidimensions Harmony Discard Danger Team Motivate Personal Vital Solutions Individual Professional Educational Entertainment Public Intuition Disorder Creativity in Education While we might always have looked at ways of nurturing creativity in our curricula at all stages of education, the UK movement of the ‘Imaginative Curriculum’ is still a relatively new development and enables us to think through 1) what academic creativity might variously be described to be, 2) why recognising, enabling and harnessing and transferring it might be good for students and society, and 3) focus on where and how in our curriculum –
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learning and teaching, assessment, content, design, outcomes, structures and so on – we might be able to recognise effective strategies and build on them. A key publication in the creative agenda is ‘All our Futures, Creativity, Culture and Education’ (NACCCE), Department for Education and Employment/DFEE (1999). The initiative for this publication came originally from the Department of Media, Culture and Sport (DMCS), but was responded to by both the DMCS and the DFEE (according to Hartley, 2003). Craft (2003) identifies the difference between ‘extraordinary creativity’, which she says ‘may be defined as the sort of publicly acclaimed creativity which changes knowledge and/or our perspective on the world’ (p. 114) and ‘everyday’ or ‘ordinary creativity’, which gives rise to the assumption that ‘the ordinary person can be creative’ (p. 115). The Imaginative Curriculum Nurturing Creativity Project was started in January 2002, supported by the underlying belief that ‘HE students can be more effective, successful and contented learners if they can recognize and harness their creative abilities as well as the more traditional academic capabilities that HE traditionally develops.’ (Jackson, 2003, p. 1). According to Jackson, academic creativity is evidenced through the capacity to connect and evaluate ideas and potential solutions, through the use of ‘the extended abstract outcomes of learning’, such as ‘hypothesising, synthesising, and reflecting’ within familiar and unfamiliar contexts. However, creative activity must ultimately be of use too – NACCCE describe creative thinking as ‘imaginative activity fashioned so as to yield an outcome that is of value as well as original’ (p. 29). Seltzer and Bentley (1999) include the application of such learning outcomes in their definition of creativity, which suggests the exploitation element of ‘successful intelligence’ as described by Sternberg (1996). Sternberg considers that there are three strands to ‘successful intelligence’, which depend on people ‘effectively exploiting’ a combination of analytical, practical and creative abilities. The Imaginative Curriculum Nurturing Creativity Project team are evaluating the use of Sternberg’s theory as a conceptual framework for the development of work within the programme. Ogunleye (2002) notes how a focus on creativity in the learning process and curriculum has the potential to contribute to widening participation and inclusion agendas. If students can be encouraged to develop self-initiative, adapt their existing knowledge in new and novel ways and successfully transfer their imaginative solutions to a variety of contexts and problems, there is the potential to unlock the capabilities of students of a wider range of ability, ‘cognitive disposition’ (p. 7) and presumably, experience. Focusing on the kind of opportunities for creativity and creative outcomes fostered in the arts and humanities in particular, we will take some examples of such fostering, empowering, recognition, reward, harnessing and then transfer.
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Ogunleye argues that despite the prescriptive demands of an imposed curricula, creativity in students can be fostered through appropriate teaching and learning practice. For adults, that precludes ‘pre-packaged’ solutions to class activities or project assignments. 'Adult learners should be encouraged to explore answers for themselves.’ (p. 6) Ogunleye (2002) He quotes a number of research studies which support his assertion that teachers should examine whether the questions they ask their students make the cognitive demands upon them which are ‘particularly essential to developing learners’ creative thinking skills’ (p. 7). In a module designed explicitly to foster student creativity – ‘Entrepreneurship: Personal Creativity’ at the University of Strathclyde – Morrison and Johnston (2003) report on the endeavour to nurture innovative and creative activity ‘through the heightening of personal qualities of reflecting, doing, valuing, feeling, behaving and relating to others’ (p. 148). The ‘class’ is designed by the students themselves, and a team of lecturers with expertise in education, personal creativity and innovation. From the beginning, students are empowered as ‘active, self-managing, agents’ (p. 151), working within an environment which more closely resembles that of professional practice than traditional classroom. The authors report that the students gain selfconfidence and team spirit. From the mid-point of the module, class management is passed to the students, and lecturers remain as consultants. However, this is not always entirely comfortable for students. Morrison and Johnston recognise that students sometimes ‘have difficulty accepting that their own ideas are valuable or that other students can be as critical a resource as lecturers’ (p. 152). When this occurs, students are referred back to the class objectives and ‘forward to the realities of work-place and entrepreneurial situations’ (p. 152). However, there may be limitations other than the confidence of the students on their capacity to learn and apply creative thinking. Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a multi-cultural student population. Craft (2003) identifies how creativity may be culturally sensitive, for example, there is a ‘strong emphasis on individuality’ and an assumption of value ‘on being able to think independently of social norms’ (p. 120). She points out that in circumstances of unrestricted personal choice and agency, creativity in the search for alternatives may flourish. However, in a submissive environment, and/or where there is a risk of the need to avoid ‘social or political sanctions’, ‘creativity would suffocate’. (p. 120). Although the spread of globalisation and influence of Western culture and markets continues, as Craft points out, ‘We still live in a world where there are distinct cultural identities both within and between nation-states, as well as different traditions and value sets’ (p. 121). In this case, Craft argues, ‘if creativity is culturally specific, how appropriate is it to encourage within education?’ (p. 122). My own thoughts here are that it might well be culturally specific in terms of what is recognised and rewarded. There are culturally different creative practices and solutions that we need to identify, share, differentiate, reward and nurture. Some of the very creative, cultural differences can prompt creativity through their diversity – indicating how much diverse, imaginative,
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creative expressions and solutions can be crafted. Kinds of curriculum are important here.
Let’s look at stages of creativity:
Stages – prompts
Removal of comfort zone Strategies of disorientation or relative safety Maslow’s hierarchy disturbed and restored?? or a safe platform Reflection, analysis, transfer
CREATIVE PROCESS In 4 steps
1. Exploring the question 2. Generating ideas 3. Developing ideas 4. Planning for action 5. Actioning 6. Reflecting on outcomes, reflecting on it
Baillie
7. Transfer
(Baillie 2003) Baillie's diagram illustrates moments where student need to be able to take risks, be removed form their comfort zones, try out new forms of thinking and action , and that here are specific strategies and stages to identifying creative thinking and acting, putting it into practice for results, and transferring its strategies. Craft (2003) describes the development of creativity research and notes four primary limits to creativity in education. 1. Terminology. She identifies the difficulty with the precise definitions and use of meanings of terms such as creativity, imagination and innovation; creative teaching, teaching for creativity and creative learning. 2. Conflicts in policy and practice. Craft identifies how whilst, historically, creativity was being encouraged in education, the curriculum, pedagogy and management of schools was coming under tighter and tighter control. In addition, ‘early years’ creativity curriculum development ‘is located in a specific set of domains – the creative and expressive arts’ (p. 119), whilst creativity in later age is ‘more concerned with the development of creativity as a cross-curricular – and transferable – skill’ (p. 119). 3. Limitations in curriculum organisation. Here, Craft argues that whilst it is probably possible to think creatively within any subject, the organisation of the curriculum as discreet subjects may inhibit attempts to think creatively across
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‘subject boundaries’. 4. Limitations stemming from centrally-controlled pedagogy. There are even more issues and practices to consider at the level of dialogue, learning conversations, teacher/student questioning and response interactions. This can be useful to consider in classrooms at all stages of learning and in supervision of projects, dissertations and postgraduate theses. Nassaji and Wells (2000) note how the conversation between teachers and students follow a different pattern from the general interaction ‘three-move exchange structure: Question-Answer-Acknowledgment’ (p. 1) identified by Halliday (1984). In the classroom, conversation typically follows a ‘questionanswer-evaluate’ pattern, where the teacher evaluates the acceptability or correctness of the response of the learner. Linguistically, this is interesting for a number of reasons, including considerations of equality and power. However, Nassaji and Wells describe how Berry (1981) makes the distinction between the levels of knowledge of each of the participants of the topic under discussion in the classroom. Whereas in many interactions – ‘What time is it please?’ (Q), ‘6 o’clock’ (A), ‘Thanks’ (A) – the knowledge is with the respondent, in teacher/student interactions the knowledge is with the initiator of the question, and thus a confirmation of the learner’s response is necessary to complete the conversational pattern. Traditional patterns of teacher questioning, therefore, reinforce the position of the teacher as the ‘primary knower’, thus perpetuating the concept of ‘one right answer’, which is known by someone other than the individual student. However, Nassaji and Wells suggest that if the student is the ‘primary knower’, there is no need for the teacher to evaluate the student’s answer. Through commenting on a student’s answer to extend the discussion, or asking another question that invites the student to do so, the teacher ‘casts the responder in the role of primary knower and thereby to create a more equal mode of participation’ (Nassaji and Wells, 2002, p. 6). In supervisor/student dialogues, the student is the ‘primary knower’, but will be questioned by the supervisor. Craft cites several studies which suggest that the appropriate organisational climate to support the development of creativity enables ‘pupils and teachers to feel: • • • •
That new ideas are met with encouragement and support; Able to take initiative and to find relevant information; Able to interact with others; and That uncertainty is tolerated and thus risk-taking encouraged.’ (p. 120).
Where there is a high level of central control over both content and teaching strategy, this environment is unlikely to exist. Tait (2002) analysed conversational data gleaned through a series of online conferences, in an attempt to determine how ‘academics think about creativity in the curriculum’ (p. 1). She identified constraints to the development of a creative curriculum due to conflict between traditional academic structures and an environment that might foster creativity. An environment where only pre-determined, measurable and assessed learning outcomes are supported does not allow for flexibility and innovative enquiry. Tait (2002) suggests that a climate of ‘enhancement and professional trust, rather than assurance and
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compliance’ (p. 10) would allow for ‘safe and honest exploration and resistance, as well as encouraging growth.’ (p. 11). The environment and culture must be such that learning from, and sharing experiences of, failure is accepted. An environment which supports the concept of ‘one right answer’, ‘one right way’ and ‘hard facts’ is unlikely to allow for risk-taking in devising solutions to problems, or to foster the self-confidence, self-esteem, motivation, persistence and belief that obstacles can be overcome, which are necessary to help ‘students to learn in complex and unpredictable situations’. (Jackson, date unknown (ImagCurrDoc2). p. 2). I would argue that views which see in the arts and humanities only selfdevelopment, entertainment, some personal expression and which see these as not particularly useful or transferable, are most harmful to creativity. We need to change social and cultural perceptions of the arts and humanities and their role in generating and harnessing creativity, then change curriculum and practice, building on identifiable strategies for encouraging, nurturing and harnessing creativity. We can see, from the literature and experience of others, that creativity generally, and that based in the arts and humanities in particular, can be fostered through attitudes, curriculum structures, identifiable and explained learning outcomes and overall constructive alignment between these and the learning, teaching and assessment practices. Creativity Unleashed Two Various learning theories have suggested that creativity, a left brain or intuition-oriented activity, can be encouraged and enabled through certain strategies. If, as some claim, the creative impulse to solve problems, think imaginatively and divergently outside the box comes into our minds when we are not focusing directly on it, that as the idea, memory, thought, problem, way through appear to us they come in as a form of intuition or imagination, it can also be the case that it is important to learn how to relax and be stimulated in such a way as to enable such thoughts and then, as a second step, learning how to harness, direct and manage them towards actions. These are important activities and skills for ourselves and our students. There are a variety of practices in the arts and humanities that encourage such lateral thinking, and there are also practices in the more artistic, intuitive, imaginative levels of education relevant to business and other human interactions which involve a creative problem solving kind of process. Some can be guided by group session stimuli, and others by encouraging an individualistic state of mind. Let us look at a variety of activities which engage feelings, and encourage creativity: • Brainstorming and negative brainstorming- students are asked to identify a range of ideas, we gather them, then draw into themes and consider how to shape into a productive response. With negative
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brainstorming we look at whatever might go wrong- then shape a response of avoidance, and of coping with possible problems. • Independent learning opportunities-these free up choice, and the potential for creative planning to address learning outcomes. • Synectics-visual metaphors and analogies (see the slice of cake and building/journey, below) which release creative imaginative energies and help shape a response based on these visualisations and analogies. • Metaphors and modelling-as synectics-but producing a model of a response-the creative articulation is followed by an analytical articulation of what the model represents • Group activities taking a project forward-using group energies to share ideas generation and work- this is creative due to sharing and sparking off ideas • Games and simulations-these model and simulate the issues and solutions to situations and so release creative energies in the simulation which can be identified, articulated and channelled for other real life situations -eg in work. • Forcefield analysis for problem solving and forward action planninghere through using a diagram, the student identifies forces activities situations and people which can prevent them form sorting out a problem and those which can help them, they then pan to manage or avoid the problems using the help of others and harness the helpful situations and people etc to address the problem or carry out the task etc-it leads to an action plan. • Storytelling-a response to an issue, event, is organised into a professional or personally oriented narrative. Telling it to others helps shape it and then the problem can be shared, the issue talked through and action planned. These are a range of ways in which we might work with students to encourage a creative response to issues and problems , and which can be transferred from their roots in the arts and humanities into a variety of other situations and subjects. You might also like to think about how the creative energies used here are initially encouraged. Given a situation we need to ask: • How does this make me feel? What are the key elements here? Then • how can I identify what I feel? What do I think is going on here? • How might I harness and direct this feeling into a specific form – whether in words or movement or a shape? • •
Produce an artefact or creative response. Step back and analyse what the shape, movement, words, dance etc are trying to say. Manage the thought processes through to articulation and shaping of a response which engages with the problem or question you are trying to address.
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When this is successful, it manages to clarify and communicate the way in which the creative, artistic activity engages with the issue or problem and expresses a response to it which can be communicated analytically to others. For students, sometimes what enables an articulate response to specific issues and problems, is the activity of first imagining the problem or issue themselves as something else, using analogy or metaphor to objectify the problem, and then using problem-solving strategies systematically to imagine and represent a solution or response. The next step is to explain this to others, clearly. Suggest that students articulate it clearly; start to address the problem in categories or in pieces in order to make it manageable then bring it back again into a bigger overall picture . This process be seen as a way through. Some examples of creativity in practice in the arts and humanities: •
English literature students’ ability to imagine, enact, articulate a variety of perceptions and points of view – through writing from different perspectives adopting writers’ forms, changing narrative point of view, staging dramatically, writing stories and poems.
•
In architecture, students move from a need, to a brief for a practical design, modelling it, analysing how it satisfies the need and is a workable design.
•
In personal/professional storytelling they move from real events through their structuring reflection analysis evaluation and some transfer.
•
In synectics they draw/model an analogy between a situation/event and something similar paralleling/problematising part by part, drawing comments and conclusions together then planning and moving forward.
Creative work in research Research in itself can be seen as a creative process which operates at each end of the continuum. In order to carry out effective research that has a significant contribution to make to knowledge and understanding in the arts, humanities or other subject areas there needs to be a stimulus or an idea. This can creep in which you are focusing on something else and indeed it is quite likely that if you try and force an idea or question it will emerge as rather stale. Questions and ideas arise when we are not directly focusing on the issues, then we start to shape them and to design the process and the practices which will enable us to carry out and interpret the research and then to finish it off ie interpret the findings and write up an articulate, clearly argued way through what we have done and why we have done it and what it achieves. Example of creative imaginative analogy activity: Identifying research questions, boundaries, conceptual framework
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‘Your slice of cake’ – your research question, areas, data. The idea is to identify the gaps in knowledge and the boundaries to a piece of research. Identifying the research areas as if a piece of cake suggests that there is much else you could look at in a variety of ways - others/you could research the rest later. So, the analogy helps to select the research are and then to focus on carrying out this research.
Your slice - defend choice of subject, question, methods, etc Other questions, theories, methods, data, etc
Once the 'slice of cake' has been identified, students could be asked to: • Take an area which you would like to research • Develop a mind map which lets you consider: • What are the questions? What are the sub questions? • What are the concepts I am using and how do I unpick and problematise or question these? • What theories do I think I need to know something about in order to ask these questions? • Who writes in these areas so I can plan to read them? • What further reading will be necessary in the area in which I know I have gaps? • Draw up a bullet point list of work to do i.e. reading, starting to build research design and identify methodology and methods etc. • Express as a series of shapes with comments filled in.
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Research is a journey
A dissertation/thesis is a building
It looks mapped but – risks, surprises, deviations
Ordered, coherent, organised, linked
Another analogy I use in working with postgraduates is one which compares the research to a journey with planned paths of action and surprising changes and discoveries, and the thesis itself to a building, well built, logically and firmly structured. (Wisker 2005 p ) Some people can transfer the practices of art or creative writing into everyday issues and concerns. A few examples of creative arts and humanities activities and learning opportunities follow. • • • • • • • • •
MA and BA Women’s studies students embodying and externalising an idea, response and argument into a creative product – use and develop emotion, individuality, intuition, analytical and communicative skills. Stages: enquiry, question, research, theorising, appropriate concretising and expression in for example several assessable form such as – quilt, dance, song, drama, mime, video, meal. Analysis, interpretation, communication – share with others for their interpretation Sketchbook captures response and reflection – notes – temporary images to build on and shape Sculpture, mirror painting, modelling, visual embodiment of response, reflection and engagement, statement – must be theorised, analysed and communicated Music as an interpretation of a written score Improvisation and role play – put self into others’ perceptions and points of view At the level of the language and motivation – insight helps transfer and building planned responses – cultural and situational understanding. Literature uses metaphor to engage in a way which can teach, express and explore ideas problems and resolutions.
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•
Historical comparison of variety of readings of events – encourages creative and culturally affected perception and interpretation – awareness all versions, communications and interpretations are constructions All of these creative activities encourage critical perception, lateral thinking, construction not constriction In her work in the use of the sketchbook, my colleague Dr. Gillian Robinson encourages students to capture their perceptions of a scene or incident using sketches in pencil or watercolour. This captures a particular moment, then you step back from the picture in front of you deciding on the right angle, the right version of expression, leaving in sketched forms the traces and tracks for yourself to complete certain elements later. So, the moment can be caught in an expression, work built on afterwards. Sketchbooks are evidence of a variety of momentary effects and responses. There might be several depictions of a single event or scene and these show that we don’t have to rely on a single interpretation and representation at any one time, but might see things from many different angles. The trick is to: • Feel free enough to find a model in which to capture fleeting ideas and responses • Recognise that capturing expression from different angles is a freeing up of different perspectives which can be equally valid, or form the basis for a selection later. •
Then refine, decide what each says, move on.
In carrying out storytelling we can see how through articulating and choosing ways of expressing what is happening or has happened we are moving to shape and articulate interpretations. students can be asked to tell a story about an event and then to retell to someone else, then the next one retells it and so on . Each tie the versions carry a different slant, different perceptions, casting new light on the usefulness and interpretations of the tale. An observer can be used to feed back how the story has changed the student to reflect on how and why they changed it give their own feelings and experiences. Asking students to retell a famous story from another’s perception encourages them to be creative insofar as they are now able to see different points of view. This can be liberating in terms of problem-solving but so it is also in human interactions and in all sorts of subject areas that inform and explain. A law or business student might therefore be able to argue how you could tell the tale from another angle and so interpret the situation, perceive different possibilities, act and perceive creatively. Professional narratives help shape the stages of a professional experience and to build up a sense of development and reflection, moving on in the process.
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Students in a variety of subject areas including health and business can use arts and humanities strategies which utilise artistic expression , analysis and interpretation Role-play also enables you to see what can be said and done and to feel, albeit at a distance, removed from the kinds of emotions that you would experience in the real interaction. This can be immensely useful in commerce, business, law and management, dealing with others experiencing cultural diversity, for example. Assessment
If it matters, students need to have it assessed. If we substitute non-creative assessment we denigrate the creative response. Our assessment practices need to be creative also. Some assessment modes we might use include: • Logs – encouraging reflection • Portfolios – which ensure a variety of evidence and reflection • Case studies • Games, simulations and consultancies • Storytelling and critical incidents plus reflection and analysis – in audio, video, written forms You might like to consider how you might use any of these modes of assessment with your students. When? Where ? and for what learning outcomes?
Using some of the creative ideas and practices, specifically those from the arts & humanities, how might you / do you use / could you develop: • curriculum structures & opportunities • learning & teaching strategies • assessment modes which encourage and reward creativity and reflection with your students? Conclusion
A world which marginalises and penalises the creative and emotional aspects of what it means to be human, valorising only that which relies on demand, logic, the reductive and mechanistic, might make money but will have no soul, personal or social fulfilment in the contemporary context, and no future. Creativity is back on the educational and economic agenda and with it, emotional intelligence, creative production and consumption. Creativity encourages learning. Creativity is situated in a mobile, diverse way between development and expression of the self through emotional and creative expression, and the kind of problem-solving initiatives, the harnessed creativity useful to a knowledge economy, to oractical situations in a variety of job contexts and to markets.
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The arts and humanities, no longer seen as merely self-development or frills, have many strategies and practices from which we can all learn to encourage, enable and empower, nurture and harness creativity for positive, personal and social development and cultural ends. To so recognise, reward nurture and harness creativity initially evidenced in the arts humanities, in a variety of subjects and jobs, we will need to look to both build on successful practices and to innovate at the levels of all our educational practices adding the affective, domain, the creative, to assessment, learning and teaching strategies. References Amabile and Simonton in Finke et al. (1992) Creative Cognition: Theory, Research and Applications, London: The MIT Press. Baillie, Caroline. (2003) The Travelling Case: How to Foster Creative Thinking in Higher Education. Liverpool: UK Centre for Materials Education, University of Liverpool, p. 8. Berry, M. (1981) ‘Systemic linguistics and discourse analysis: a multi-layered approach to exchange structure’, Studies in Discourse Analysis. Eds. M. Coulthard and M. Montgomery. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Craft, A. (2003) ‘The Limits to Creativity in Education: Dilemmas for the Educator’, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 51, 2, June 2003, p. 113-127. Dewulf, Simon and Baillie, Caroline. (1999) CASE Creativity in Art, Science and Engineering: How to Foster Creativity, Department for Education and Employment. Eysenck, H.J. (1996) The Measurement of Creativity. In Boden, M.S. (ed) Dimensions of Creativity, London: The MIT Press. Finke R.A, Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M. (1992) Creative Cognition: Theory, Research and Applications, London: The MIT Press. Halliday, MAK. (1984) ‘Language as code and language as behaviour: A systemic functional interpretation of the nature and ontogenesis of language’, The Semiotics of Culture and Language: Language and Other Semiotic Systems of Culture v. 2 (Open Linguistics Series). Eds. Robin P. Fawcett and M.A.K. Halliday. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group – Pinter. Hartley, D. (2003) ‘The Instrumentalisation of the Expressive’ in Education, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1, March 2003, pp. 6-19. Jackson, N (2003) ‘Imaginative Curriculum Nurturing Creativity Project’, Learning and Teaching Support Network, Generic Centre,
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http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Education/ic/imaginative-curriculum-creativityproject.doc Accessed 24/9/04, p. 2. Morrison, A and Johnston, B. (2003) ‘Personal creativity for entrepreneurship.’ Teaching and Learning strategies. Active Learning in Higher Education, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 145-158. National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE), Department for Education and Employment (DFEE), ‘All our Futures, Creativity, Culture and Education’ (1999), p. 29. Nassaji, H. and Wells, G. (2000) ‘What’s the Use of ‘Triadic Dialogue’?: An Investigation of Teacher-Student Interaction’, Applied Linguistics 21/3, p. 376406. Ogunleye, J. (2002) ‘Creative Approaches to Raising Achievement of Adult Learners in English Further Education’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp 6, 7. Rigg, Kris Kubuie in Clemen, R.T. (1996) Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision Analysis, Duxbury Press. Seltzer K. and Bentley T. (1999) The Creative Age: Knowledge and skills for the new economy. London: DEMOS. Sternberg, R.J. and Lubart in Finke et al, (1992) Creative Cognition: Theory, Research and Applications, London: The MIT Press. Sternberg, R.J. (1996) Successful Intelligence. New York: Plume. Tait, J. (2002) ‘What conditions and environment could support teachers in finding space for ‘creativity’ in their work with curriculum?’ Learning and Teaching Support Network, Generic Centre, http://www.ltsn.ac.uk. Accessed 24/9/04, pp. 10, 11. Wisker, G. (2001) The Postgraduate Research Handbook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wisker, G (2005) The Good Supervisor . Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan
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