Lesson 2: What If?
Navigation Links:
Welcome to our final lesson in our Teaching for Creativity course. In this lesson, we'll spend some time "dreaming up the future" of education. Let's begin!
What if the education system completely transformed to better support student and teacher creativity? Self-reflect about this question. What do you envision?
We're going to discuss one theory, by researcher Dr. Keith Sawyer, a distinguished expert on the study of creativity, about what might need to happen for schools as a whole to be more creative.
A Creative Inquiry Process
Curriculum Changes
Dr. Keith Sawyer says that one of the changes that would need to be made to better support student creativity is to change the curriculum. He states "the curriculum should provide opportunities for multiple learning trajectories that could result from a creative inquiry process" (Sawyer, 2015, p. 27). In this way, students would be able to learn information in a way that works for them, though, ultimately, the students would still be required to reach the same goal.
Better Assessments
Another change Sawyer suggests is to adapt assessments to fit an inquiry process model of learning. This includes ensuring that assessments incorporate deeper conceptual understanding, and accommodate for any differences in how students learn the content (Sawyer, 2015). Of course, this would require very careful planning. Educators would need to have fair ways to assess student learning, especially if the assessments include measures of creative thinking.
Learning Goals
A third change that Sawyer (2015) supports are "learning goals [that] explicitly incorporate creative learning. Schools and districts should ensure that the expected learning outcomes do not emphasize breadth over depth" (p. 27). Of course, this is also a change that state education and/or government education officials would need to support. Education standards would also need to reflect such changes.
Professional Development
Sawyer's fourth point consists of improvements to teachers' professional development. He suggests that professional development needs to be backed in research about creativity and its application to the content areas. He provides the following example as it relates to creative learning: "science education research that explores the appropriate role of guiding scaffolds" (Sawyer, 2015, p. 27).
The following statements further describe Dr. Sawyer's vision of an education system that supports creativity:
Wrapping Up
Of course, this is only one researcher's ideas about how the education system could be improved to better support creativity. I'm sure you probably have a few ideas of your own! While we as educators may not be able to transform the entire education system, we have learned throughout this course how we can teach for creativity using what we have at our disposal. And the most important tool we have at our disposal? The creativity that lies inside us all. Please watch the inspiring TED Talk below for some final thoughts about creativity and its importance to society, and complete this final reflection about the course: Final Course Reflection
To quote my favorite fireworks show from the Happiest Place on Earth, "and so our journey comes to end, but yours continues on. Grab ahold of your dreams and make them come true." Thank you for joining me on this journey of creativity. Keep dreaming, and never stop working those "creative muscles," or encouraging the development of your students' creativity. Who knows? Maybe the next great inventor is sitting in your classroom right now!
Click here to return to the Teaching for Creativity Course Homepage.
Lesson Resources
Sawyer, K. (2015). A call to action: The challenges of creative teaching and learning. Teachers College Record, 117, 1-34. https://keithsawyer.com/PDFs/Sawyer%202015%20TCR.pdf
TEDx Talks. (2018, May 4). The theory of creativity: Duncan Wardle: TEDxAUK [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/_8MwiGYzlyg