A definition of creativity
This is the definition provided by QCA and is based on recommendations made in the document All Our Futures:
First, they [the characteristics of creativity] always involve thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, overall this imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the objective. |
This diagram, from Csíkszentmihályi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, describes the relationship between Challenges and Skills. Low challenge and high skills leads to boredom. High challenge and low skills can result in anxiety. Flow is experienced when the degree of challenge is balanced by the skills of the person engaged in a particular activity. In fact, a challenge that is slightly greater than the skills possessed results in continued learning and progress along the Flow Channel.
"Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution." |
This Wiki attempts to review the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy in the context of learning with digital tools.
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Bloom's Taxonomy Revised
Benjamin Bloom first published his "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" in 1956. It attempts to classify different forms and levels of learning. Bloom identifies three domains in which this learning takes place - the cognitive, the affective and the psychomotor. The most discussed of these is the cognitive domain. The original levels within this domain were: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Educators often refer to the notion of "higher order thinking". The belief is that, once the lower order thinking skills (knowing, understanding, applying) have been acquired, higher order thinking can take place (analysis, synthesis and evaluation).
In 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl proposed a revised model of Bloom's taxonomy for the cognitive domain. The illustration opposite provides a link to an animated resource describing this model. There are two significant changes: 1. the shift from nouns to verbs 2. the top category has changed from "evaluation" to "creating" According to this model, the ability to create new knowledge, to create something original and of value, belongs with the higher orders of thinking. |
Here is a list of learning verbs that might be associated with each of the levels of thinking in this revised taxonomy:
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Conceived by Edward de Bono, the Six Thinking Hats approach aims to support group discussion and individual thinking through a structured process which assumes that the brain thinks in a number of distinct ways.
These are:
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De Bono argues that the dominant form of thinking in Western culture is represented by the black hat of negative judgement (logic). The system of thinking hats legitimises the use of other approaches to solving problems by valuing the role of intuition, creativity and instinct. |
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Personal Learning and Thinking Skills
Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS) are an important feature of the new national curriculum and attempt to "provide a framework for describing the qualities and skills needed for success in learning and life."
The framework comprises six groups of skills:
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Cross-curriculum Dimensions
"To achieve the aims of the curriculum, young people need to experience opportunities to understand themselves and the world in which they live. Cross-curriculum dimensions provide important unifying areas of learning that help young people make sense of the world and give education relevance and authenticity. They reflect the major ideas and challenges that face individuals and society.Dimensions can add a richness and relevance to the curriculum experience of young people. They can provide a focus for work within and between subjects and across the curriculum as a whole, including the routines, events and ethos of the school."
Cross-curriculum dimensions include: |
The following list is taken from an excellent online introduction to creativity in education by Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, University of Georgia:
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Image by Zach Bulick
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Arthur J. Cropley has the following to say about the link between creative teaching and creative learning: "Research has shown the importance for the emergence of creativity of a "congenial environment" and appropriate "social support factors". The classroom is, of course, one of the most important environments in which children spend time. Some teachers are particularly good at organising this environment in a way that promotes students' creativity. They provide a model of creative behaviour, reinforce such behaviour when pupils display it, protect creative pupils from conformity pressure applied by their peers and the system, and establish a classroom climate that permits alternative solutions, tolerates constructive errors, encourages effective surprise and does not isolate non-conformers. Research on teachers rated as particularly successful with gifted children has made a direct link between giftedness and creativity: These teachers, among other things, emphasised "creative production", showed "flexibility", accepted "alternative suggestions", encouraged "expression of ideas", and tolerated "humour". They were themselves creative and had stronger personal contacts with their students." |
Creativity and educational reform
Elliott W. Eisner has made a significant contribution to the debate about the role of creativity in school reform. Eisner articulates a view of schools as places where children create meaning from experience, and that this requires an education devoted to the senses, to meaning-making and the imagination. He believes that the curriculum should foster multiple 'literacies' in students (especially by looking to non-verbal modes of learning and expression) and a deepening of the 'artistry' of teachers. Consequently, Eisner argues against a technocratic view of education, one in which schools can be easily measured by a set of pre-determined outcomes. This view is echoed by other thinkers, like Sir Ken Robinson, who value the role of the imagination in the process of building understanding.
In a fascinating talk delivered in 2002 at Stanford University entitled "What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education?" Eisner argues persuasively that artistry should be at the core of the education process and that the arts provide highly valuable and distinctive modes of thinking. Referring back to the ideas of Sir Herbert Read, Eisner proposes that the main purpose of education should be the creation of artists:
"By the term artist neither he nor I mean necessarily painters and dancers, poets and playwrights. We mean individuals who have developed the ideas, the sensibilities, the skills, and the imagination to create work that is well proportioned, skilfully executed, and imaginative, regardless of the domain in which an individual works. The highest accolade we can confer upon someone is to say that he or she is an artist whether as a carpenter or a surgeon, a cook or an engineer, a physicist or a teacher. The fine arts have no monopoly on the artistic." |
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The speech ends with a rallying cry to all educators to set their sites high and campaign for a new vision of schools and schooling that has much in common with the Schools of Creativity project:
"I am talking about a culture of schooling in which more importance is placed on exploration than on discovery, more value is assigned to surprise than to control, more attention is devoted to what is distinctive than to what is standard, more interest is related to what is metaphorical than to what is literal. It is an educational culture that has a greater focus on becoming than on being, places more value on the imaginative than on the factual, assigns greater priority to valuing than to measuring, and regards the quality of the journey as more educationally significant than the speed at which the destination is reached. I am talking about a new vision of what education might become and what schools are for." The trailer opposite is for a film entitled "We are the people we've been waiting for". Click here to visit the website to find out more. |
The Creative Economy
An important context for the increasing support for creativity in education at a national level is the perception that the the skills associated with creativity - resilience, flexibility, effective communication, inventiveness, imagination, collaboration etc. - may be of increasing importance to the economy. This is an extract from a recent government publication about finding new talents for a new economy:
"The creative industries start with individual creativity. So, too, does every child’s learning experience. There is a growing recognition of the need to find practical ways of nurturing creativity at every stage in the education system: from the nursery through to secondary school; whether in academic or vocational courses; on apprenticeships or at university. In a world of rapid technological and social change, creativity extends well beyond art or drama lessons. It is as much about equipping people with the skills they need to respond creatively and confidently to changing situations and unfamiliar demands; enabling them to solve the problems and challenges they face at home, in education, at work; and making a positive contribution to their communities." In response to the Roberts Review (2005) entitled Nurturing Creativity in Young People, which followed on from the earlier All Our Futures report, and the success of programmes like Creative Partnerships, the government appears committed to further support for the development of creativity. The pilot Find Your Talent initiative promises to be a first step in investing in the creative and cultural development of young people across Britain. |
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