It is important that we have clarity about when it makes sense to insert the opportunity to develop these qualities and the creativity they support into our learning plans. Sometimes the creativity will lie in the products and performances that students create, and sometimes the creativity will rest in the processes we use to get to very specific products. We may look to our learning goals (standards, outcomes) to guide this decision.
When a goal asks students to focus on developing a specific product (informational writing, a map, a short narrative paragraph, a formula, an accounting spreadsheet, a dramatic play), then allowing students to determine the form their product will take and determine their own success criteria may not be an option. In these cases, we may choose, instead, to use creative processes to get to that single end product. We may invite students to explore how to best work through the writing process and design a plan that is personally relevant. Or we may allow students to engage in research in ways that encourage personal decision making, source curation, and data collection. We may ask them to imagine a plan for rehearsal that will give them the best results possible. By employing creative decision making within the process of learning, even when the product is non-negotiable, our students have a strong hand in creating the learning design and, as a result, practicing many skills they need to become creative individuals.
Other learning goals may require students to engage in very specific processes (collaborative thinking, data analysis, lab safety, ball throwing). In cases like these, predetermined criteria guide and develop the process, and the creative potential lies in the product. Students may create their own games in which to practice throwing a ball. Or they may be able to engage in data analysis as part of a creative service project. They may employ lab safety in experiments of their own design, or collaborate as part of creating a mural with classmates. The opportunity for lesson design that unlocks creativity is immense, even when certain aspects of our teaching and learning seem non-negotiable.
We can always plan learning experiences that allow students to practice developing qualities of creative people. We may specifically encourage curiosity by introducing unusual or unfamiliar objects to elementary students in a science or a social studies class and ask them to generate questions based on what they see (or smell, or hear). Or we may show students in middle or high school ambiguous images and have them engage in a quick write (writing for two to ten minutes without stopping, editing, or planning ahead) based on all the things they wonder about what they see. If we were trying to nurture risk taking, we may invite students to work in teams to solve unfamiliar mathematics problems, promising only feedback and discussion (no grades) as a result of their efforts. Or we might invite students to engage in new cardiovascular fitness activities, even though they may not feel completely comfortable with them, and then praise them for trying something new, followed by a reflection on the results in order to improve their performance. Fostering creativity means attending to not only what students do but also how they do it in our classrooms. Understanding the qualities of creativity supports our work toward developing these qualities in our learners.
Creativity Across Contexts
For the sake of practicality, teachers may find it helpful to explore the nature of creativity within various content areas. Teachers can develop creativity in every subject area at every grade level—they just have to imagine new ways for learning to emerge. Table 1.1 explores ways to develop creativity within and across content areas.
Table 1.1: Accessing Creativity in Various Content Areas
| Content Area | Ways Teachers Can Develop Student Creativity |
| English Language Arts | ♦ Allow students voice and choice in their work.♦ Use leading questions to help students identify the purpose for and meaning within their work.♦ Have students revise and review their work to enhance, elaborate, refine, and focus.♦ Combine ideas across texts.♦ Let students use varied modalities to enhance their message (for example, images, video, digital tools, sound effects, maps, voice-overs).♦ Invite students to respond to texts in ways that matter to them (for example, choose a song to go with the text, write a letter to a friend, design a commercial). |
| Mathematics | ♦ Engage learners in open-ended, interdisciplinary, and real-world processes.♦ Create problems where the steps are not formulaic and the solutions are not predetermined; reinforce original and flexible approaches.♦ Provide open-ended materials and loose parts (for example, materials like buttons, beads, nuts and bolts).♦ Connect mathematics to real-life applications.♦ Invite students to create problems.♦ Provide mathematics artifacts and invite students to form questions.♦ Engage in complex mathematics talks (exchanges of mathematical ideas and problem-solving strategies). |
| Science | ♦ Engage in experimentation.♦ Seek connections.♦ Invite students into real-life problems and challenges.♦ Generate questions and identify potential errors.♦ Allow students to choose materials, methods for sharing research, and audiences for their work. |
| Social Studies or History | ♦ Challenge students to propose solutions to world challenges.♦ Prompt students to imagine social or political structures under a variety of conditions or variables.♦ Design tools or resources to enhance a need (for example, build a tool to drain a playground puddle or create a resource to support students new to the school).♦ Have students relate personal identity with social realities.♦ Connect the present to the past.♦ Allow students to engage in a variety of artifacts (for example, maps, data) and invite questions. |
| Health Education | ♦ Ask students to craft supports and plans to address health-related challenges.♦ Have students examine relationships (between factors, structures, organizations, and emotions).♦ Explore issues from individual and societal perspectives.♦ Challenge students to propose impacts, solutions, and future concerns. |
| Physical Education | ♦ Encourage students to design new activities, games, or events.♦ Have students craft a plan to achieve a desired outcome.♦ Ask students to propose solutions to fitness-related challenges.♦ Challenge students to invent and organize drills and activities that enhance performance and precision. |
| Arts Education | ♦ Encourage students to express a unique vision or message through artwork.♦ Challenge students to improvise and elaborate.♦ Have students combine elements (notes, tone, line, shape, movement, voice) in personally meaningful ways (a score, a play, a painting, an installation, a dance).♦ Ask students to select or curate components and items.♦ Allow students to engage in a performance as a performer or a viewer. |
| Practical and Applied Arts | ♦ Have students use practical skills to imagine new products, new applications, and new designs.♦ Ask students to apply resources (ingredients, materials) in new and unique ways.♦ Encourage students to curate and make decisions; consider many variables when designing. |
| Foreign Languages | ♦ Ask students to imagine multiple ways to communicate meaning.♦ Instruct students to craft personal messages.♦ Guide students in synthesizing isolated information to generate new meaning.♦ Synthesize a variety of strategies to comprehend meaning. |
| Business and Career Education | ♦ Challenge students to build on the ideas of existing businesses.♦ Have students identify societal needs for development of products.♦ Ask students to collaborate in teams to design business plans.♦ Prompt students to imagine a variety of career options and the requirements for them.♦ Encourage students to invent new careers. |
Source: Sawyer, 2006; Smutny & von Fremd, 2009.
For more in-depth examples of how students might practice creativity in mathematics and English language arts, see figure B.1 (pages 204–208) and figure B.2 (pages 208–212) in appendix B.
Threats to Creativity
In order to develop this kind of organic creativity in our classrooms, teachers need to be aware of those factors that may reduce or even inhibit its development. Table 1.2 captures some of these potential threats