Although the topic of creativity is not recieving as much attention as it deserves in the academic field, it is nonetheless a very important issue in education and child development. While factual knowledge is just a click on the computer away, the notion of "teaching from textbooks" is becoming less appropriate in the era of 2.0. (or soon, 3.0) We are not merely "knowledge receivers," but active "knoweldge creators" through many interactive platforms on- and off-line.
What, then, can make our children be outstanding when they grow up while most of them already have immediate access to general knowledge? Perhaps innovation and creativity are the keys to stay competitive.
Creativity is a difficult subject to deal with in school settings. Teachers would ask "Can we actually teacher creativity? How do we teach it? And most importantly, can we and how do we measure creativity?" I'd like to tackle the last two questions in this review.
First of all, we have to acknowledge the arguement that creativity is situated in knowledge. The depth of creativity shown in a 6-year-old's art work definitely demonstrate differences in a 3-year-old's for many reasons - their developmental stage, increment in knowledge and experiential factors. If creativity "improves" by age, like all other subject, it is, therefore, measurable in a classroom setting.
The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) has published a document in May 1999 to raise challenges to the field of Creativity and Cultural Education. It defines Creativity as "Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value." The 3 key terms in this definition has become the domains on which assessment of creativity is based.
1) Imaginative Activity
It does not equal to daydreaming or fantasizing. Imaginative activity here refers to a mental process with purpose which intends to produce an unconventional outcome or unusual connection among different subjects.
2) Originality
It is hard to be original. In an average classroom, children are usually encourage to generate solutions to different problems which largely relies on their personal experience and knowledge. Original work can only result from taking risk to visit the unpermitted grounds and thinking out-of-the-box. (which makes it very difficult to promote in conventional schools)
3) Value
Both imaginative activity and originality cannot justify the acts of creativity. A truly creative piece of work has to have values that links to the initial purpose of the imaginative activity. A valuable creative product always comes from a satisfying process of creating and thinking. However, such enjoyable process do not lead to valuable products all the time. Teachers assume the role to educate children what makes a creative product valuable.
Based on these 3 domains, Creative partnerships supported by the Arts Council England, has come up with an assessment guideline for teachers to assess students' creative development. Please click on the following picture to directly download the document from the page from the Creative Partnerships Website -
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| The Creativity Wheel (16 pages; 6.3MB PDF format) |
For the full report by NACCCE, please click the following link -
(243 pages; 1322kb; PDF format)
10 years after the publication of this document, Mike Baker, an expert education consultant, wrote an article on BBC News online called Benefits of Creative Classroom. The article reviews what has happened since then, and what's next.
References:
Craft, A. (2005). Creativity in Schools: Tensions and Dilemmas. London: Routledge.
Creative Partnerships (2010). http://www.creative-partnerships.com/ (last access 30 May 2010).
NACCCE (1999). All Our Futures: Creativity, culture and Education, London: Department for Education and Employment.