There is a shift and emphasis within our curriculum to ensure we allow children’s creativity to be maximised and encouraged – to ensure we don’t lose the ‘big picture’ holistic approach to our curriculum with the implementation of the 3 R’s Standards.
As a staff we have talked and discussed in length creativity and viewed and listened to the thoughts of Sir Ken Robinson. With all this in mind, I thought I would challenge the staff to see how we prohibit children’s creativity, and then with this understanding, how we could improve.
I posed a question to the staff, “How in our classes, do we restrict children’s creativity?’. There was much discussion and debate and I was awaiting the feedback. The feedback that was shared surprised me. The staff replied that we restrict children’s creativity all the time…….not what I was wanting to hear! But then the staff elaborated, their interpretation was, that we restrict their creativity by; timetables, bells, routine, core learning areas (literacy, numeracy) learning intentions, success criteria, set concepts.
A lot of these things, I had never considered – timetables, routine, core learning areas. Through these, we do potentially restrict creativity. As a strong advocate of formative practice, I was unnerved by the learning intention and success criteria comment – are these really restricting creativity?
I had never considered bells and timetables to restrict creativity – interesting…
As discussion ensued, one teacher asked, ‘Exactly, what is creativity?’ A great question – what is it really? She said, that with learning intentions and success criteria, then we will always restrict creativity as we have already pre-determined what is to be learnt. She also relayed that Success Criteria eliminates the freedom for children to ‘do as they please’ and be creative.
For me, to summarise for the staff, and bring the meeting together, enabled me to form my own interpretation, judgment and deeper understanding of creativity and exactly what it meant for me. This feedback had deepened my own understanding.
I now believe there are two aspects to creativity within the classroom.
Firstly is the ‘loosest’ of definitions. Creativity can be like ‘free range chooks’ – children allowed to do as they please to complete the learning. ‘Create a piece of artwork’ – and let the children do as they please to arrive at the conclusion. For me, this would be a challenge for children to meet as there is no purpose or meaning.
Secondly, and more profoundly for me, is what I am going to call, Scaffolded Creativity. Again, as an advocate of Formative Assessment, I strongly believe learning intentions and success criteria have a place in class. We know, and research tells us (especially Nuthall 2007, Clarke 2003) that children must be aware of the PURPOSE for their learning. Without purpose, why do it? Having a purpose for learning makes it meaningful and relevant. Learning Intentions should be clear and unambiguous and related to the SKILL that children are getting better at. Therefore, with a SKILL based learning intention, children are then able to meet that learning intention HOW they want to and HOW they interpret it. This allows for their OWN creativity – to meet the learning to their unique experience. Similarly, success criteria can be broad enough to allow this. Success Criteria can be both product and process criteria – it is the process criteria that allows children to be creative. Co-constructing criteria that allows scope for individual interpretation, while still meeting the intended learning, will allow for each child’s creativity.
So….scaffolded creativity is what I have come to. We want our children to be creative, but ultimately, there must be a purpose to the learning. However children chose to meet the intended learning, is their interpretation and creativity – allowing them the ‘freedom’ to get there as they choose.
