9. Creativity is about off-the-wall or weird ideas: This last myth relates to the misguided belief that students can only develop creativity through the arts. People expect creative products to look odd, discomfiting, or disorganized; it is often because society labels these kinds of products as creative. Creativity, in this case, acts as a justification for products or processes that may feel uncomfortable or unappealing. Some people may claim creative license as an explanation when they offer a process or product that others may not enjoy or accept. In contrast, creativity in its many forms might resemble a tidy mathematics problem, or a clear experimental process. Sawyer (2006) proposes that creativity is “the constant dialogue between unconscious inspiration and conscious editing; between passionate inspiration and disciplined craft” (p. 320). It might look like a well-crafted narrative essay or an organized community event. Creativity does not always look messy. In fact, a true benefit of creativity is its ability to yield refined, organized, logical results (Sawyer, 2006).
By exploring some of the myths surrounding creativity, we can begin to reimagine how creativity might live inside everyday classrooms. Recognizing that creativity is not only attainable for every student but it is also an important way to develop the kinds of skills and strategies students will be able to use throughout their lives allows us to begin to plan how to introduce it into a variety of classroom contexts. The next section details stages that lead to strong creative processes through effective formative assessment.
The Creative Process
While creativity is not prescriptive and can be unpredictable, there are four main stages students move through as they explore creative endeavors while working toward achieving learning goals: (1) exploration, (2) elaboration, (3) expression, and (4) reflection and response. The following subsections (pages 18–19) define and elaborate on each stage. It is important to note up front that while the four stages of the creative process may seem sequential, they are, in fact, flexible. Students may move fluidly back and forth between each, as need dictates. There is no hierarchy, and there is no hard-and-fast rule about how long students should spend in each stage of the process. In fact, it is through the process of assessment that these decisions are made. Assessment reveals degrees of comfort with materials and processes, prior knowledge about the topic or context for the creativity, and learning preferences that may predispose students to certain approaches. Assessment acts as the bridge between one stage and the next. It tells teachers and students when it is time to extend and deepen thinking and focus on new short-term goals. It predicts how much time students might spend in each stage of the creative process.
With regard to timing, it is important to know that creativity can be an extended process that frames an entire unit of study taking several days, or it can move quite quickly, occurring in a single lesson. Students may spend an entire class period generating questions and brainstorming ideas in the exploration stage, or teachers may limit exploration to a five-minute introduction of a single concept that is the focus for one class period. Creativity can occur in many different ways with varying degrees of longevity, scale, and scope. The important thing is to be open to the possibility of inserting the creative stages into daily experiences.
Part of our work in unlocking creativity is exposing our learners to the following four stages in a variety of contexts and inviting them to discover who they are as creative individuals. Some students may find that they need more time in the elaboration stage while others find the expression stage to be the most time consuming. Some learners discover they are able to engage in reflection best when they work with another person, while others prefer to do it alone. Creativity manifests differently for different people, and our students are no exception. We can diligently expose our students to creative processes and ask them to consider which conditions support their creative work and which do not.
Exploration
Exploration is the stage that invites learners into creative processes. This is when students explore materials, questions, and goals and begin to imagine how their creative pursuit might unfold. Elementary students might explore the connection between blocks and LEGO figures, spending time creating stories that involve both. Middle-grades students may choose materials around which to design a lab that answers a critical question. High school students may identify needs within their community that could act as a catalyst for an action plan in physical education. It is at this stage that students first explore goals, derived from standards and learning targets in combination with their own hopes and expectations, as well as criteria that will define their creative decision making.
Elaboration
Elaboration occurs when students settle on a purpose for their creative work. They engage in research and develop the additional skills they might need to expand on their original ideas. This may look like first-grade students exploring butterflies on the internet as part of a science project or middle school students interviewing a community leader to determine important aspects of an advertising campaign. This is the time when learners linger in their questions and refine their goals and criteria for success.
Expression
Expression occurs when students decide how to share their creative work and prepare to do so. This may manifest as a large-scale architecture project that learners in the elementary grades create and share with their peers or a performance that senior students share with the rest of the school, or a small-scale output over a short period of time such as sharing a solution to a mathematics problem with classmates. It is at this point in the creative process that students refine their work and prepare to engage with an audience (big or small), seeking feedback both before and after sharing. At this stage, students may rehearse in front of a smaller group before a larger performance, or they may share a prototype with a critical friend before creating the final, polished version. This stage is about preparation and expression of creative work.
Reflection and Response
Lastly, reflection and response occurs when learners consider their creative efforts and make decisions moving forward. At this stage, they set goals that bridge past creative efforts to future ones. They determine which of their decisions are most successful and which need adjusting. In many cases, this stage is also the final opportunity for students to refine creative products before submitting them for summative assessment. Students focus on celebrating successes and setting goals for future learning.
Figure 1.1 (page 20) illustrates the connection between these four stages and the role that assessment plays in unlocking creativity, connecting and driving creative work from one stage to the next. Also see the reproducible “Applying Assessment Within the Stages of the Creative Process” (pages 45–46) for information on how different types of assessment apply within each stage of the creative process, and guiding questions for assessment work in each stage.
Figure 1.1: Assessment and the creative process.
Creativity in a Classroom Context
Reading research about creativity is fascinating. The topic, even in its most general sense, could keep a person exploring for quite some time. Added to that is all the research on creativity in an educational context, which