In every era, global progressive thinkers have used creativity as a means for cultural reformation and social justice in response to oppressive regimes. For example, theater, cartoons, social art, film, and other forms of representative arts have always been used as critical instigation to create agency or critical commentary on current affairs. In the education sector, teachers in schools often say one of two things: they are not creative or that they don't have the time to be creative given the curricular demands and administrative mandates that they are required to follow. Each day, educators are working to find exceptionally creative ways to engage their students with limited resources and supplies, and this becomes even more of a challenge during turbulent times. Creativity as Progressive Pedagogy: Examinations Into Culture, Performance, and Challenges primarily focuses on pedagogical creativity and culture as related to various aspects of social justice and identity. This book presents experience-based content and showcases the necessity for pedagogical creativity to give students agency and the connections between cultural sensitivity and creativity. Covering topics such as the social capital gap, digital spaces, and underprivileged students, this book is an indispensable resource for educators in both K-12 and higher education, administrators, researchers, faculty, policymakers, leaders in education, pre-service teachers, and academicians.
Creative teaching as well as teaching creativity are cutting edge issues in psychology today as recent academic and popular media coverage has shown. This volume expands on that interest with chapter authors drawn from interdisciplinary areas. It includes examples of creatively teaching across the education system, including preschool, K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level education. The variety of subjects covered by the chapters include psychology,math, science, and reading. In addition to creative teaching which may lead to enhanced learning and achievement in students, as well enhanced creativity,another focus is teaching with the objective to enhance creativity.
The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. Book Features: Presents a research-based approach to teaching and learning for creativity. Identifies which learning outcomes support creativity and offers practical advice for how to teach for these outcomes. Shows how students learn content-area knowledge while also learning to be creative with that knowledge. Describes principles and techniques that teachers can use in all subjects. Demonstrates that a combination of school structures, cultures, incentives, and leadership are needed to support creative teaching and learning.
In Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing Learners Who Generate Ideas and Can Think Critically,Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer define and demystify the essence of creative thinking, and offer action-oriented and research-informed suggestions as to how it can best be developed in learners. Where once it was enough to know and do things, young people now need more than subject knowledge in order to thrive: they need capabilities. Teaching Creative Thinking is the first title in the three-part Pedagogy for a Changing World series, founded upon Lucas and Spencer's philosophy of dispositional teaching a pedagogical approach which aims to cultivate in learners certain dispositions that evidence suggests are going to be valuable to them both at school and in later life. A key capability is creative thinking, and, in 2021, one of the guardians of global comparative standards, PISA, is recognising its importance by making creative thinking the 'innovative assessment domain' to supplement their testing of 15-year-olds' core capabilities in English, maths and science. Creative thinkers are inquisitive, collaborative, imaginative, persistent and disciplined and schools which foster these habits of mind in learners need to be creative in engaging children and young people by embedding creativity into their everyday educational experiences. In this extensive enquiry into the nature and nurture of creative thinking,the authors explore the effectiveness of various pedagogical approaches including problem-based learning, growth mindset, playful experimentation and the classroom as a learning community and provide a wealth of tried-and-tested classroom strategies that will boost learners' critical and creative thinking skills. The book is structured in an easy-to-access format, combining a comprehensive listing of practical ideas to stimulate lesson planning with expert guidance on integrating them into your practice, followed by plenty of inventive suggestions as to how learners' progress can be assessed and tracked along the way by both the pupil and the teacher. The authors then go further to offer exemplars of success by presenting case studies of schools' innovations in adopting these approaches, and dedicate a chapter to dispelling any pressing doubts that teachers may have by exposing the potential pitfalls and offering advice on how to avoid them. Venturing beyond the classroom setting, Teaching Creative Thinkingalso delves into the ways in which a school can work towards the provision of co-curricular experiences such as partnering with a range of external community groups and better engage its leadership team and pupils' parents with the idea of creative thinking in order to support learners with opportunities to grow. The authors offer many examples which will inspire schools to do just this, and collate these ideas into building a framework for learning that equips young people in schools today with the twenty-first century skills and capabilities that will enable them to thrive in the workforce of tomorrow. Replete with research-led insight and ready-to-use strategies, Teaching Creative Thinkingis a powerful call to action and a practical handbook for all teachers and leaders, in both primary and secondary settings, who want to embed a capabilities approach in their schools.
"The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America's most innovative classrooms to show what is working--and what isn't--in our schools. What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms--places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity. This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education--one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.
Developing Creativity in the Classroom applies the most current theory and research on creativity to support the design of teaching and learning. Creative thinking and problem solving are at the heart of learning and application as students prepare for innovation-driven careers. This text debunks myths about creativity and teaching and, instead, illustrates productive conceptions of creative thinking and innovation, including a constructivist learning approach in which creative thinking enhances and strengthens conceptual understanding of the curriculum. Through models of teaching that support creativity and problem solving, this book extends the idea of a creative pedagogy to the four core curriculum domains. Developing Creativity in the Classroom focuses on explanations and examples of how creative thinking and deep learning merge to support engaging learning environments, rising to the challenge of developing 21st-century competencies.
This book provides students and practising teachers with a solid, research-based framework for understanding creative problem solving and its related pedagogy. Practical and accessible, it equips readers with the knowledge and skills to approach their own solutions to the creative problem of teaching for creative problem solving. First providing a firm grounding in the history of problem solving, the nature of a problem, and the history of creativity and its conceptualisation, the book then critically examines current educational practices, such as creativity and problem solving models and common classroom teaching strategies. This is followed by a detailed analysis of key pedagogical ideas important for creative problem solving: creativity and cognition, creative problem solving environments, and self regulated learning. Finally, the ideas debated and developed are drawn together to form a solid foundation for teaching for creative problem solving, and presented in a model called Middle C. Middle C is an evidence-based model of pedagogy for creative problem solving. It comprises 14 elements, each of which is necessary for quality teaching that will provide students with the knowledge, skills, structures and support to express their creative potential. As well as emphasis on the importance of self regulated learning, a new interpretation of Pólya's heuristic is presented.
How can you unlock your own creativity to help children learn science creatively? How do you bring the world of ‘real science’ into the classroom? Where does science fit in a creative curriculum? This second edition of Teaching Science Creatively has been fully updated to reflect new research, initiatives and developments in the field. It offers innovative starting points to enhance your teaching and highlights curiosity, observation, exploration and enquiry as central components of children’s creative learning in science. Illustrated throughout with examples from the classroom and beyond, the book explores how creative teaching can harness children’s sense of wonder about the world around them. With easily accessible chapters, it offers a comprehensive introduction to the core elements of creative science learning, supporting both teacher and child in developing scientific concepts and skills. The book explores key issues such as: • the links between scientific and creative processes • how to teach creatively, and for creativity • the role of play in early scientific learning • developing scientific understanding through drama (new) • using the outdoors in science • how theories of learning relate to children’s creative development • teaching science topics in innovative and creative ways – games, drama, role play, puppets, mini-safaris and welly walks! Stimulating and accessible, with contemporary and cutting-edge practice at the forefront, Teaching Science Creatively introduces fresh ideas to support and motivate both new and experienced primary teachers. It is an essential purchase for any professional who wishes to incorporate creative approaches to teaching science in their classroom.
Creativity and critical thinking are key skills for complex, globalised and increasingly digitalised economies and societies. While teachers and education policy makers consider creativity and critical thinking as important learning goals, it is still unclear to many what it means to develop these skills in a school setting. To make it more visible and tangible to practitioners, the OECD worked with networks of schools and teachers in 11 countries to develop and trial a set of pedagogical resources that exemplify what it means to teach, learn and make progress in creativity and critical thinking in primary and secondary education.
Growing clamour to reintroduce creativity back into classrooms - internationally Synthesises practice, policy and research in one place Suggests practical ways of taking forward pupils' creative development Relevant for teachers who work with pupils from 3-18 Anna Craft is uniquely placed to write this book and spent time researching this issue with Professor Howard Gardner at Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA
