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The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education pp 473–491 Cite as

Creative Learning in Education

  • Ronald A. Beghetto 3  
  • Open Access
  • First Online: 25 June 2021

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Creative learning in schools represents a specific form of learning that involves creative expression in the context of academic learning. Opportunities for students to engage in creative learning can range from smaller scale curricular experiences that benefit their own and others’ learning to larger scale initiatives that can make positive and lasting contributions to the learning and lives of people in and beyond the walls of classrooms and schools. In this way, efforts aimed at supporting creative learning represent an important form of positive education. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and discuss the co-constitutive factors involved in creative learning. The chapter opens by clarifying the nature of creative learning and then discusses interrelated roles played by students, teachers, academic subject matter, uncertainty, and context in creative learning. The chapter closes by outlining future directions for research on creative learning and positive education.

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Although schools and classrooms have sometimes been characterized as contexts that suppress or even kill student creativity (Robinson, 2006 ), educational settings hold much promise for supporting students’ creative learning. Prior research has, for instance, indicated that there is on an average positive relationship ( r  = .22) between measures of creativity and academic achievement (Gajda, Karwowski, & Beghetto, 2016 ). This association tends to grow when measures are more fine-tuned to assess creativity and academic learning in specific subject areas (Karwowski et al., 2020 ). These findings suggest that under the right conditions, creativity and learning can be complementary.

Indeed, creativity researchers have long asserted that creativity and learning are tightly coupled phenomena (Guilford, 1950 , 1967 ; Sawyer, 2012 ). Moreover, recent theoretical and empirical work has helped to clarify the construct and process of creative learning (Beghetto, 2020 ; Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ; Gajda, Beghetto, & Karwowski, 2017 ). Creative learning in schools represents a specific form of learning that involves creative expression in the context of academic learning. More specifically, creative learning involves a “combination of intrapsychological and interpsychological processes that result in new and personally meaningful understandings for oneself and others” (Beghetto, p. 9).

Within the context of schools and classrooms, the process of creative learning can range from smaller scale contributions to one’s own and others’ learning (e.g., a student sharing a unique way of thinking about a math problem) to larger scale and lasting contributions that benefit the learning and lives of people in and beyond the walls of the classroom (e.g., a group of students develop and implement a creative solution for addressing social isolation in the lunchroom). In this way, efforts aimed at supporting creative learning represents a generative form of positive education because it serves as a vehicle for students to contribute to their own and others learning, life, and wellbeing (White & Kern, 2018 ). The question then is not whether creative learning can occur in schools, but rather what are the key factors that seem to support creative learning in schools and classrooms? The purpose of this chapter is to address this question.

What’s Creative About Creative Learning?

Prior to exploring how creative learning can be supported in schools and classrooms, it is important to first address the question of what is creative about creative learning? Creative learning pertains to the development of new and meaningful contributions to one’s own and others’ learning and lives. This conception of creative learning adheres to standard definitions of creativity (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004 ; Runco & Jaeger, 2012 ), which includes two basic criteria: it must be original (new, different, or unique) as defined within a particular context or situation, and it must be useful (meaningful, effectively meets task constraints, or adequately solves the problem at hand). In this way, creativity represents a form of constrained originality. This is particularly good news for educators, as supporting creative learning is not about removing all constraints, but rather it is about supporting students in coming up with new and different ways of meeting academic criteria and learning goals (Beghetto, 2019a , 2019b ).

For example, consider a student taking a biology exam. One question on the exam asks students to draw a plant cell and label its most important parts. If the student responds by drawing a picture of a flower behind the bars of a jail cell and labels the iron bars, lack of windows, and incarcerated plant, Footnote 1 then it could be said that the student has offered an original or even humorous response, but not a creative one. In order for a response to be considered creative, it needs to be both original and meaningfully meet the task constraints. If the goal was to provide a funny response to the prompt, then perhaps it could be considered a creative response. But in this case, the task requires students to meet the task constraints by providing a scientifically accurate depiction of a plant cell. Learning tasks such as this offer little room for creative expression, because the goal is often to determine whether students can accurately reproduce what has been taught.

Conversely, consider a biology teacher who invites students to identify their own scientific question or problem, which is unique and interesting to them. The teacher then asks them to design an inquiry-based project aimed at addressing the question or problem. Next, the teacher invites students to share their questions and project designs with each other. Although some of the questions students identify may have existing answers in the scientific literature, this type of task provides the openings necessary for creative learning to occur in the classroom. This is because students have an opportunity to identify their own questions to address, develop their own understanding of new and different ways of addressing those questions, and share and receive feedback on their unique ideas and insights. Providing students with semi-structured learning experiences that requires them to meet learning goals in new and different ways helps to ensure that students are developing personally and academically meaningful understandings and also provides them with an opportunity to potentially contribute to the understanding of their peers and teachers (see Ball, 1993 ; Beghetto, 2018b ; Gajda et al., 2017 ; Niu & Zhou, 2017 for additional examples).

Creative learning can also extend beyond the walls of the classroom. When students have the opportunity and support to identify their own problems to solve and their own ways of solving them, they can make positive and lasting contributions in their schools, communities, and beyond. Legacy projects represent an example of such efforts. Legacy projects refer to creative learning endeavours that provide students with opportunities to engage with uncetainty and attempt to develop sustainable solutions to complex and ill-defined problems (Beghetto, 2017c , 2018b ). Such projects involve a blend between learning and creative expression with the aim of making a creative contribution. A group of fourth graders who learned about an endangered freshwater shrimp and then worked to restore the habitat by launching a project that spanned across multiple years and multiple networks of teachers, students, and external partners is an example of a legacy project (see Stone & Barlow, 2010 ).

As these examples illustrate, supporting creative learning is not simply about encouraging original student expression, but rather involves providing openings for students to meet academic learning constraints in new and different ways, which can benefit their own, their peers’, and even their teachers’ learning. Creative learning can also extend beyond the classroom and enable students to make a lasting and positive contribution to schools, communities, and beyond. In this way, the process of creative learning includes both intra-psychological (individual) and inter-psychological (social) aspects (Beghetto, 2016).

At the individual level, creative learning occurs when students encounter and engage with novel learning stimuli (e.g., a new concept, a new skill, a new idea, an ill-defined problem) and attempt to make sense of it in light of their own prior understanding (Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ). Creative learning at the individual level involves a creative combinatorial process (Rothenberg, 2015 ), whereby new and personally meaningful understanding results from blending what is previously known with newly encountered learning stimuli. Creativity researchers have described this form of creativity as personal (Runco, 1996), subjective (Stein, 1953 ), or mini - c creativity Footnote 2 (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007 ). This view of knowledge development also aligns with how some constructivist and cognitive learning theorists have conceptualized the process of learning (e.g., Alexander, Schallert, & Reynolds, 2009 ; Piaget, 1973 ; Schuh, 2017 ; Von Glasersfeld, 2013 ).

If students are able to develop a new and personally meaningful understanding, then it can be said that they have engaged in creative learning at the individual level. Of course, not all encounters with learning stimuli will result in creative learning. If learning stimuli are too discrepant or difficult, then students likely will not be able to make sense of the stimuli. Also, if students are able to accurately reproduce concepts or solve challenging tasks or problems using memorized algorithms (Beghetto & Plucker, 2006 ) without developing personally meaningful understanding of those concepts or algorithms, then they can be said to have successfully memorized concepts and techniques, but not to have engaged in creative learning. Similarly, if a student has already developed an understanding of some concept or idea and encounters it again, then they will be reinforcing their understanding, rather than developing a new or understanding (Von Glasersfeld, 2013 ). Consequently, in order for creative learning to occur at the individual level, students need to encounter optimally novel learning experiences and stimuli, such that they can make sense of those stimuli in light of their own prior learning trajectories (Beghetto & Schuh, in press; Schuh, 2017 ).

Creative learning can also extend beyond individual knowledge development. At the inter-psychological (or social) level, students have an opportunity to share and refine their conceptions with teachers and peers, making a creative contribution to the learning and lives of others (Beghetto, 2016). For instance, as apparent in the legacy projects, it is possible for students to make creative contributions beyond the walls of the classroom, which occasionally can be recognized by experts as a significant contribution. Student inventors, authors, content creators, and members of community-based problem solving teams are further examples of the inter-psychological level of creative contribution.

In sum, creative learning is a form of creative expression, which is constrained by an academic focus. It is also a special case of academic learning, because it focuses on going beyond reproductive and reinforcement learning and includes the key creative characteristics (Beghetto, 2020 ; Rothenberg, 2015 ; Sawyer, 2012 ) of being both combinatorial (combining existing knowledge with new learning stimuli) and emergent (contributing new and sometimes surprising ideas, insights, perspectives, and understandings to oneself and others).

Locating Creative Learning in Schools and Classrooms

Having now explored the question of what makes creative learning creative, we can now turn our attention to locating the factors and conditions that can help support creative learning in schools and classrooms. As illustrated in Fig.  19.1 , there are at least four interrelated components posited as being necessary for creative learning to occur in schools, classrooms, and beyond: students, teachers, academic subject matter, and uncertainty. Creative learning in schools and classrooms occurs at the intersection of these four factors. Further, the classroom, school, and broader sociocultural contexts play an important role in determining whether and how creative learning will be supported and expressed. Each of these factors will be discussed in the sections that follow.

A model. Creative learning at the center, with components of students, academic content, teachers, and uncertainty in 4 overlapping circles, is within concentric squares of classroom, school, and broader socio-cultural context.

Factors involved in creative learning in schools, classrooms, and beyond

The Role of Students in Creative Learning

Students, of course, play a central role in creative learning. At the individual level, students’ idiosyncratic learning histories will influence the kinds of creative insights, ideas, and interpretations they have when engaging with new learning stimuli (Beghetto & Schuh, 2020 ; Schuh, 2017 ). Although a case can be made that subjective and personally meaningful creative insights and experiences are sufficient ends in themselves (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007 ; Runco, 1996 ; Stein, 1953 ), creative learning tends to be situated in well-developed subject areas. Moreover, the goals of most formal educational activities, such as those that occur in schools and classrooms, include making sure that students have developed an accurate or at least a compatible understanding of existing concepts, ideas, and skills (Von Glasersfeld, 2003). Consequently, creative learning in schools—even at the individual level—involves providing students with opportunities to test out and receive feedback on their personal understandings and insights to ensure that what they have learned fits within the broader academic subject area. When this occurs, creative learning at the individual level represents a blend of idiosyncratic and generally agreed upon academic knowledge.

Notably, the idiosyncratic portion of this blend is not merely surplus ideas or insights, but rather has the potential to creatively contribute to the learning and understanding of others. Indeed, the full expression of creative learning extends beyond the individual and also has the opportunity to contribute to the learning and lives of others. At both the individual and social level of creative learning, students’ need to be willing to share, test, and receive feedback on their conceptions, otherwise the full expression of creative learning will be short-circuited. Thus, an important question, at the student level, is what factors might influence students’ willingness to share their ideas with others?

Creativity researchers have identified at least three interrelated student factors that seem to play a role in determining students’ willingness to share their conceptions with others: creative confidence, valuing creativity , and intellectual risk - taking. Creative confidence beliefs refer to a somewhat broad category of creative self-beliefs that pertain to one’s confidence in the ability to think and act creatively (Beghetto & Karwowski, 2017 ). Creative confidence beliefs can range from more situationally and domain-specific beliefs (e.g., I am confident I can creatively solve this particular problem in this particular situation) to more general and global confidence beliefs (e.g., I am confident in my creative ability). Much like other confidence beliefs (Bandura, 2012 ), creative confidence beliefs are likely influenced by a variety of personal (e.g., physiological state), social (e.g., who is present, whether people are being supportive), and situational (e.g., specific nature of the task, including constraints like time and materials) factors. Recent research has indicated that creative confidence beliefs mediate the link between creative potential and creative behaviour (Beghetto, Karwowski, Reiter-Palmon, 2020 ; Karwowski & Beghetto, 2019 ).

In the context of creative learning, this line of work suggests that students need to be confident in their own ideas prior to being willing to share those ideas with others and test out their mini-c ideas. However, valuing creativity and the willingness to take creative risks also appear to play key roles. Valuing creativity refers to whether students view creativity as an important part of their identity and whether they view creative thought and activity as worthwhile endeavours (Karwowski, Lebuda, & Beghetto, 2019 ). Research has indicated that valuing creativity moderates the mediational relationship between creative confidence and creative behaviour (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2019 ).

The same can be said for intellectual risk-taking, which refers to adaptive behaviours that puts a person at risk of making mistakes or failing (Beghetto, 2009 ). Findings from a recent study (Beghetto, Karwowski, Reiter-Palmon, 2020 ) indicate that intellectual risk-taking plays a moderating role between creative confidence and creative behaviour. In this way, even if a student has confidence in their ideas, unless they identify with and view such ideas as worthwhile and are willing to take the risks of sharing those ideas with others, then they are not likely to make a creative contribution to their own and others learning.

Finally, even if students have confidence, value creativity, and are willing to take creative risks, unless they have the opportunities and social supports to do so then they will not be able to realize their creative learning potential. As such, teachers, peers, and others in the social classroom, school, and broader environments are important for bringing such potential to fruition.

The Role of Teachers in Creative Learning

Teachers play a central role in designing and managing the kinds of learning experiences that determine whether creativity will be supported or suppressed in the classroom. Indeed, unless teachers believe that they can support student creativity, have some idea of how to do so, and are willing to try then it is unlikely that students will have systematic opportunities to engage in creative learning (Beghetto, 2017b ; Davies et al., 2013 ; Gralewski & Karawoski, 2018 ; Paek & Sumners, 2019 ). Each of these teacher roles will be discussed in turn.

First, teachers need to believe that they can support student creativity in their classroom. This has less to do with whether or not they value student creativity, as previous research indicates most generally do value creativity, and more about whether teachers have the autonomy, curricular time, and knowledge of how to support student creativity (Mullet, Willerson, Lamb, & Kettler, 2016 ). In many schools and classrooms, the primary aim of education is to support students’ academic learning. If teachers view creativity as being in competition or incompatible with that goal, then they will understandably feel that they should focus their curricular time on meeting academic learning goals, even if they otherwise value and would like to support students’ creative potential (Beghetto, 2013 ). Thus, an important first step in supporting the development of students’ creative potential is for teachers to recognize that supporting creative and academic learning can be compatible goals. When teachers recognize that they can simultaneously support creative and academic learning then they are in a better position to more productively plan for and respond to opportunities for students’ creative expression in their everyday lessons.

Equipped with this recognition, the next step in supporting student creativity is for teachers to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for infusing creativity into their curriculum (Renzulli, 2017 ) so that they can teach for creativity. Teaching for creativity in the K-12 classroom differs from other forms of creativity teaching (e.g., teaching about creativity, teaching with creativity) because it focuses on nurturing student creativity in the context of specific academic subject areas (Beghetto, 2017b ; Jeffrey & Craft, 2004 ). This form of creative teaching thereby requires that teachers have an understanding of pedagogical creativity enhancement knowledge (PCeK), which refers to knowing how to design creative learning experiences that support and cultivate students’ adapted creative attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, and actions in the planning and teaching of subject matter (Beghetto, 2017a ). Teaching for creativity thereby involves designing lessons that provide creative openings and expectations for students to creatively meet learning goals and academic learning criteria. As discussed, this includes requiring students to come up with their own problems to solve, their own ways of solving them, and their own way of demonstrating their understanding of key concepts and skills. Teaching for creativity also includes providing students with honest and supportive feedback to ensure that students are connecting their developing and unique understanding to existing conventions, norms, and ways of knowing in and across various academic domains.

Finally, teachers need to be willing to take the instructional risks necessary to establish and pursue openings in their planned lessons. This is often easier said than done. Indeed, even teachers who otherwise value creativity may worry that establishing openings in their curriculum that require them to pursue unexpected student ideas will result in the lesson drifting too far off-track and into curricular chaos (Kennedy, 2005 ). Indeed, prior research has demonstrated that it is sometimes difficult for teachers to make on-the-fly shifts in their lessons, even when the lesson is not going well (Clark & Yinger, 1977 ). One way that teachers can start opening up their curriculum is to do so in small ways, starting with the way they plan lessons. Lesson unplanning—the process of creating openings in the lesson by replacing predetermined features with to-be-determined aspects (Beghetto, 2017d )—is an example of a small-step approach. A math teacher who asks students to solve a problem in as many ways as they can represent a simple, yet potentially generative form of lesson unplanning. By starting small, teachers can gradually develop their confidence and willingness to establish openings for creative learning in their curriculum while still providing a supportive and structured learning environment. Such small, incremental steps can lead to larger transformations in practice (Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ) and reinforce teachers’ confidence in their ability to support creative learning in their classroom.

The Role of Academic Subject Matter in Creative Learning

Recall that creativity requires a blend of originality and meaningfully meeting criteria or task constraints. If students’ own unique perspectives and interpretations represent the originality component of creativity, then existing academic criteria and domains of knowledge represent the criteria and tasks constraints . Creativity always operates within constraints (Beghetto, 2019a ; Stokes, 2010 ). In the context of creative learning, those constraints typically represent academic learning goals and criteria. Given that most educators already know how to specify learning goals and criteria, they are already half-way to supporting creative learning. The other half requires considering how academic subject matter might be blended with activities that provide students with opportunities to meet those goals and criteria in their own unique and different ways. In most cases, academic learning activities can be thought of as having four components (Beghetto, 2018b ):

The what: What students do in the activity (e.g., the problem to solve, the issue to be addressed, the challenge to be resolved, or the task to be completed).

The how: How students complete the activity (e.g., the procedure used to solve a problem, the approach used to address an issue, the steps followed to resolve a challenge, or the process used to complete a task).

The criteria for success: The criteria used to determine whether students successfully completed the activity (e.g., the goals, guidelines, non-negotiables, or agreed-upon indicators of success).

The outcome: The outcome resulting from engagement with the activity (e.g., the solution to a problem, the products generated from completing a task, the result of resolving an issue or challenge, or any other demonstrated or experienced consequence of engaging in a learning activity).

Educators can use one or more of the above components (i.e., the what, how, criteria, and outcome) to design creative learning activities that blend academic subject matter with opportunities for creative expression. The degrees of freedom for doing so will vary based on the subject area, topics within subject areas, and teachers’ willingness to establish openings in their lessons.

In mathematics, for instance, there typically is one correct answer to solve a problem, whereas other subject areas, such as English Language Arts, offer much more flexibility in the kinds of “answers” or interpretations possible. Yet even with less flexibility in the kinds of originality that can be expressed in a particular subject area, there still remains a multitude of possibilities for creative expression in the kinds of tasks that teachers can offer students. As mentioned earlier, students in math can still demonstrate creative learning in the kinds of problems they design to solve, the various ways they solve them, and even how they demonstrate the outcomes and solutions to those problems.

Finally, teachers can use academic subject matter in at least two different ways to support opportunities for creative learning in their classroom (Beghetto Kaufman, & Baer, 2015 ). The first and most common way is to position subject matter learning as a means to its own end (e.g., we are learning about this technique so that you understand it ). Creativity learning can still operate in this formulation by providing students with opportunities to learn about a topic by meeting goals in unique and different ways, which are still in the service of ultimately understanding the academic subject area. However, the added value in doing so also allows opportunities for students to develop their creative confidence and competence in that particularly subject area.

The second less common, but arguably more powerful, way of positioning academic subject matter in creative learning is as a means to a creative end (e.g., we are learning about this technique so that you can use it to address the complex problem or challenge you and your team identified ). Students who, for instance, developed a project to creatively address the issue of contaminated drinking water in their community would need to learn about water contamination (e.g., how to test for it, how to eradicate contaminates) as part of the process of coming up with a creative solution. In this formulation, both academic subject matter and creative learning opportunities are in the service of attempting to make a creative contribution to the learning and lives of others (Beghetto, 2017c , 2018b ).

The Role of Uncertainty in Creative Learning

Without uncertainty, there is no creative learning. This is because uncertainty establishes the conditions necessary for new thought and action (Beghetto, 2019a ). If students (and teachers) already know what to do and how to do it, then they are rehearsing or reinforcing knowledge and skills. This assertion becomes clearer when we consider it in light of the structure of learning activities. Recall from the previous section, learning activities can be thought of as being comprised of four elements: the what, the how, the criteria for success, and the outcome.

Typically, teachers attempt to remove uncertainty from learning activities by predefining all four aspects of a learning activity. This is understandable as teachers may feel that introducing or allowing for uncertainty to be included in the activity may result curricular chaos, resulting in their own (and their students) frustration and confusion (Kennedy, 2015). Consequently, most teachers learn to plan (or select pre-planned) lessons that provide students with a predetermined problem or task to solve, which has a predetermined process or procedure for solving it, an already established criteria for determining successful performance, and a clearly defined outcome.

Although it is true that students can still learn and develop new and personally meaningful insights when they engage with highly planned lessons, such lessons are “over-planned” with respect to providing curricular space necessary for students to make creative contributions to peers and teachers. Indeed, successful performance on learning tasks in which all the elements are predetermined requires students to do what is expected and how it is expected (Beghetto, 2018a ). Conversely, the full expression of creative learning requires incorporating uncertainty in the form of to-be-determined elements in a lesson. As discussed, this involves providing structured opportunities for students (and teachers) to engage with uncertainty in an otherwise structured and supportive learning environment (Beghetto, 2019a ).

Indeed, teachers still have the professional responsibility to outline the criteria or non-negotiables, monitor student progress, and ensure that they are providing necessary and timely instructional supports. This can be accomplished by allowing students to determine how they meet those criteria. In this way, the role that uncertainty plays in creative learning can be thought of as ranging on a continuum from small openings allowing students to define some element of a learning activity (e.g., the how, what, outcomes) to larger openings where students have much more autonomy in defining elements and even the criteria for success, such as a legacy project whereby they try to make positive and lasting contributions to their schools, communities and beyond.

The Role of Context in Creative Learning

Finally, context also plays a crucial role when it comes to creative learning. Creative learning is always and already situated in sociocultural and historical contexts, which influence and are influenced by students’ unique conceptions of what they are learning and their willingness to share their conceptions with others. As illustrated in Fig. 19.1 , there are at least three permeable contextual settings in which creative learning occurs. The first is the classroom context. Although classrooms and the patterns of interaction that occur within them may appear to be somewhat stable environments, when it comes to supporting creative expression, they can be quite dynamic, variable, and thereby rather unpredictable within and across different settings (Beghetto, 2019b ; Doyle, 2006 ; Gajda et al., 2017 ; Jackson, 1990 ). Indeed, even in classrooms that are characterized as having features and patterns of interaction supportive of creative learning, such patterns may be difficult to sustain over time and even the moment-to-moment supports can be quite variable (Gajda et al., 2017 ).

It is therefore difficult to claim with any level of certainty that a given classroom is “supportive of creativity”; it really depends on what is going on in any given moment. A particular classroom may tend to be more or less supportive across time, however it is the sociodynamic and even material features of a classroom setting that play a key role in determining the kinds and frequency of creative learning openings offered to students (Beghetto, 2017a ).

The same can be said for the school context. The kinds of explicit and tacit supports for creative learning in schools likely play an important role in whether and how teachers and students feel supported in their creative expression (Amabile, 1996 ; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2014 ; Renzulli, 2017 ; Schacter, Thum, & Zifkin, 2006 ). Theoretically speaking, if teachers feel supported by their colleagues and administrators and are actively encouraged to take creative risks, then it seems likely that they would have the confidence and willingness to try. Indeed, this type of social support and modelling can have a cascading influence in and across classrooms and schools (Bandura, 1997 ). Although creativity researchers have theorized and explored the role of context on creative expression (Amabile, 1996 ; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2014 ), research specifically exploring the collective, cascading, and reciprocal effects of school and classroom contexts on creative learning is a promising and needed area of research.

In addition to classroom and school settings, sociocultural theorists in the field of creativity studies (Glăveanu et al., 2020 ) assert that the broader sociocultural influences are not static, unidirectional, or even separate from the people in those contexts, but rather dynamic and co-constitutive processes that influence and are influenced by people in those settings. Along these lines, the kinds of creative learning opportunities and experiences that teachers and students participate in can be thought of as simultaneously being shaped by and helping to shape their particular communities, cultural settings, and broader societies. Consequently, there are times and spaces where creative learning may be more or less valued and supported by the broader sociocultural context. Although some researchers have explored the role of broader societal contexts on creativity (Florida, 2019 ), additional work looking at the more dynamic and reciprocal relationship of creative learning in broader sociocultural and historical contexts is also needed.

Future Directions

Given the dynamic and multifaceted nature of creative learning, researchers interested in examining the various factors involved in creative learning likely would benefit from the development and use of analytic approaches and designs that go beyond single measures or static snapshots to include dynamic (Beghetto & Corazza, 2019 ) and multiple methods (Gajda et al., 2017 ). Such approaches can help researchers better understand the factors at play in supporting the emergence, expression, and sustainability of creative learning in and across various types of school and classroom experiences.

Another seemingly fruitful and important direction for future research on creative learning is to consider it in light of the broader context of positive education. Such efforts can complement existing efforts of researchers in positive education (Kern, Waters, Adler, & White, 2015 ), who have endeavoured to simultaneously examine multiple dimensions involved in the wellbeing of students. Indeed, as discussed, creative learning occurs at the nexus of multiple individual, social, and cultural factors and thereby requires the use of methods and approaches that can examine the interplay among these factors.

In addition, there are a variety of questions that can guide future research on creative learning, including:

How might efforts that focus on understanding and supporting creative learning fit within the broader aims of positive education? How might researchers and educators work together to support such efforts?

What are the most promising intersections among efforts aimed at promoting creative learning and student wellbeing? What are the key complementary areas of overlap and where might there be potential points of tension?

How might researchers across different research traditions in positive education and creativity studies collaborate to develop and explore broader models of wellbeing? What are the best methodological approaches for testing and refining these models? How might such work promote student and teacher wellbeing in and beyond the classroom?

Creative learning represents a potentially important aspect of positive education that can benefit from and contribute to existing research in the field. One way to help realize this potential is for researchers and educators representing a wide array of traditions to work together in an effort to develop an applied understanding of the role creative learning plays in contributing to learn and lives of students in and beyond schools and classrooms.

Creative learning represents a generative and positive educational experience, which not only contributes to the knowledge development of individual students but can also result in creative social contributions to students’ peers, teachers, and beyond. Creative learning thereby represents an important form of positive education that compliments related efforts aimed at building on the strengths that already and always inhere in the interaction among students, teachers, and educational environments. Creative learning also represents an expansion of prototypical learning efforts because it not only focuses on academic learning but also uses it as a vehicle for creative expression and the potential creative contribution to the learning and lives of others. In conclusion, creative learning offers researchers in the fields of creativity studies and positive education an important and complimentary line of inquiry.

This example is based on a popular internet meme of a humorous drawing in response to this question.

Creativity researchers recognize that there are different levels of creative magnitude (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009 ), which ranges from subjectively experienced creativity ( mini - c ) to externally recognized creativity at the everyday or classroom level ( little - c ), the professional or expert level ( Pro - c ), and even legendary contributions that stand the test of time ( Big - C).

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Beghetto, R.A. (2021). Creative Learning in Education. In: Kern, M.L., Wehmeyer, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64537-3_19

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Psych Learning Curve

Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How to Foster Creativity in the Classroom

creative group of education

Posted By: Lauren Cassani Davis December 17, 2018

“Describe the tongue of a woodpecker,” wrote Leonardo Da Vinci on one of his to-do lists, next to sketching cadavers, designing elaborate machines, and stitching costumes. Da Vinci filled over 7,000 notebook pages with questions, doodles, observations, sketches, and calculations. He nurtured creativity as a habit and skill every day—and it paid off. Da Vinci’s work reshaped multiple disciplines, from science, to art, to engineering.

I was intrigued when my co-teacher suggested using “Da Vinci” notebooks in our 2nd grade classroom. The idea was simple: students keep notebooks, independent of any academic subject, where they can try creative exercises and explore personal passions. I ordered a stack of bound notebooks for the occasion.

Within a week, the results astounded me. Whenever a student’s thinking diverged from our lesson objectives, or their question glimmered with the spark of a potential new interest, we sent them to their Da Vinci notebook. “Write it down!”—a refrain chanted countless times a day. One day, we did a “100 questions challenge,” inspired by the book How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael Gelb. The goal: Write 100 questions, in one sitting, about anything . The 2nd graders asked questions like: How does your brain work? Why do we have music? Do tiny people live on atoms? Why am I not a tiger? How do keys open door locks? Why do things have to die? Why did Beethoven write an ode to joy if he was so grumpy? Why aren’t all cars electric?

By the end of the year, the Da Vinci notebooks were gloriously full. One 2nd grader had designed and sketched a fleet of zombie-apocalypse vehicles. Another wrote poem upon poem, practicing techniques she’d learned earlier in the week. Another took insightful notes on her day-to-day observations of our classroom. Despite many trips between home and school, only one child lost their notebook all year—no mean feat for 7-year-olds.

The Da Vinci notebooks weren’t just for students. We teachers kept them too. Joining in on the creative chaos with our students, we logged our own curiosities and passions. As I scribbled poems, sketched the plant on my desk, and recorded questions about who invented the fountain pen, I was re-immersed in the joy of the learning process. I’m convinced the notebook made me a more engaged teacher, especially on challenging days. There’s no way to know with certainty what the effects of these notebooks were. But the creative attitude of Da Vinci began to take root in our classroom—in our students and in us as educators.

Creativity is often paid lip service, but in reality, most schools are currently experiencing a “creativity gap” —with significantly more creative activity occurring outside of school. Numerous psychologists argue that creativity is not just an enrichment or add-on in the classroom: It is a definable, measurable, set of psychological skills that enhance learning and will be necessary in the 21st-century workforce.

Do your students regularly display and develop their creativity while in your classroom? Are you in touch with your own creativity as a teacher?

Here are some steps you can take to reflect—and some strategies you could try.

Why schools need to prioritize creativity

A well-accepted definition of creativity is the generation of a new product that’s both novel and appropriate in a particular scenario. (A product could be an idea, an artwork, an invention, or an assignment in your classroom.) There isn’t just one way for a person to “be creative,” or one set of characteristics that will differentiate “the” creative person. Instead, many experts think of creativity as a set of skills and attitudes that anyone is capable of: tolerating ambiguity, redefining old problems, finding new problems to solve, taking sensible risks, and following an inner passion.

Some researchers distinguish between several stages of creativity. Most people are familiar with “Big-C” creativity: rare ideas of extraordinary people, like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Einstein’s paradigm-shifting theories of theoretical physics. But there are also everyday forms of creativity: “Mini-c” creativity, when a person learns something new and their understanding of the world changes, and “Little-c” creativity, when a person’s life become embedded with everyday creative thoughts and actions.

It may also be instructive to think about what creativity is not:

  • Just for artists, writers, and painters. It’s an attitude and way of problem-solving that applies across domains, from engineering, to biology, to business.
  • Necessarily a result or sign of mental illness. While there may be connections between creativity in individuals with certain disorders, beware anecdotal stories of ear-slicing artists and hot-headed scientists.
  • A fixed trait that only some people possess.
  • The same as IQ. Even students who are not intellectually “gifted” can be highly creative.
  • Beyond measurement. While no single test is perfect, there are many ways to assess (and improve) creativity.

Many experts in psychology and education argue that creativity skills are psychological skills needed for success in school and in the future workforce. As such, schools have a duty to teach them and value them. One 2010 survey found that over 1,500 executives valued creativity as the most crucial business skill in the modern world. In a knowledge economy where rote tasks are can be completed by machines, and almost all information is available with one click, students need to be ready to learn independently, and constantly adapt, innovate, and creatively problem-solve in the workplace.

Creativity also directly enhances learning by increasing motivation , deepening understanding, and promoting joy. Intrinsic motivation is essential to the creative process—and relies on students pursuing meaningful goals. “Create” is at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy for a reason: By noticing broader patterns and connecting material across academic disciplines, creative thinking can facilitate deeper cross-curricular learning. As Alane Jordan Starko points out in the book Creativity in the Classroom, the strategies that support creativity—solving problems, exploring multiple options, and learning inquiry—also support depth of understanding.

Robert Sternberg has argued that creativity can predict college success above and beyond just what we get from standardized test scores: In one study of students taking the GRE, higher scores correlated with higher creativity. Beyond academic achievement, creativity can make learning more fun—leading to joy and positive emotional engagement in students. (Watch out for what Jonathan Plucker, a professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education, calls “Listerine” approach to education—that “serious and boring” is the only way towards productive learning.)

Develop your students’ creativity in the classroom

Creativity requires a safe environment in which to play, exercise autonomy, and take risks. As teachers, it’s up to us to establish this kind of supportive classroom. Here are some suggestions from psychologists and educators for how to develop and nurture your students’ creativity:

  • Create a compassionate, accepting environment. Since being creative requires going out on a limb, students need to trust that they can make a mistake in front of you.
  • Be present with students’ ideas. Have more off-the-cuff conversations with students. Find out what their passion areas are, and build those into your approach.
  • Encourage autonomy. Don’t let yourself be the arbiter of what “good” work is. Instead, give feedback that encourages self-assessment and independence.
  • Re-word assignments to promote creative thinking. Try adding words like “create,” “design,” “invent,” “imagine,” “suppose,” to your assignments. Adding instructions such as “Come up with as many solutions as possible” or “Be creative!” can increase creative performance.
  • Give students direct feedback on their creativity. Lots of students don’t realize how creative they are, or get feedback to help them incorporate “creative” into their self-concept. Explore the idea of “creative competence” alongside the traditional academic competencies in literacy and mathematics. When we evaluate something, we value it! Creating a self-concept that includes creativity.
  • Help students know when it’s appropriate to be creative. For example, help them see the contexts when creativity is more or less helpful—in a low-stakes group project versus a standardized state assessment.
  • Use creative instructional strategies, models, and methods as much as possible in a variety of domains. Model creativity for students in the way you speak and the way you act. For example, you could say “I thought about 3 ways to introduce this lesson. I’m going to show you 2, then you come up with a third,” or show them a personal project you’ve been working on.
  • Channel the creativity impulses in “misbehavior.” For students who are often disturbances, see if you notice any creativity in their behavior. Perhaps that originality could be channeled in other ways?
  • Protect and support your students’ intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation fuels creativity. Several studies have shown that relying on rewards and incentives in the classroom can undermine intrinsic motivation to complete a task—an effect called “overjustification.” To avoid this, Beth Hennessey, a professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, suggests that educators try to limit competitions and comparison with others, focusing instead on self-improvement. Experiment with monitoring students less as they work, and provide opportunities for them to pursue their passion when you can.
  • Make it clear to students that creativity requires effort. The creative process is not a simple “aha” that strikes without warning. Tell students that truly creative people must imagine, and struggle, and re-imagine while working on a project.
  • Explicitly discuss creativity myths and stereotypes with your students. Help them understand what creativity is and is not, and how to recognize it in the world around them.
  • Experiment with activities where students can practice creative thinking. Many teachers have suggestions for creative activities they’ve tried as warm-ups or quick breaks. “ Droodles,” or visual riddles, are simple line drawings that can have a wide range of different interpretations, and can stimulate divergent thinking. “Quickwrites” and “freewrites” can help students to let go of their internal censor. As part of reviewing material, you could have kids use concept cartooning , or draw/design/paint visual metaphors to capture the essence of complex academic information.

Teachers: Develop and nurture your own creativity

As creativity scholars Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire write in their book Wired to Create: “Creativity isn’t just about innovating or making art—it’s about living creatively. We can approach any situation in life with a creative spirit.” Teaching is, through and through, a creative profession.

Teachers who can model creative ways of thinking, playfully engage with content, and express their ideas, will beget creative students. Students need to see teachers who have passions, whether it’s drawing, mathematics, painting, biology, music, politics, or theater. That contagion of passion and positive emotion is a hotbed for creative thought. Creatively fulfilled teachers may also be happier teachers. One study in the Journal of Positive Psychology suggests that engaging in a creative activity—doodling, playing a musical instrument, knitting, designing—just once a day can lead you into a more positive state of mind. This positive state of mind will sustain you, and spread to your students.

Here are some ways teachers can develop and nurture their own creativity:

  • Be aware of your own limiting misconceptions about creativity. Examine your own attitude toward creativity and help yourself grow by thinking about alternative solutions.
  • Experiment with new ways of teaching in the classroom —could you try a new arts integration lesson you’ve always been afraid to try? What about trying a new hands-on STEM investigation?
  • Take a risk to express your creative side. Often, I’ll doodle something on the board as an attention-getter, or to deliver the morning message. Having a meerkat or a dragon telling students to put their backpacks away is much more likely to amuse, plus it’s a chance for me to challenge myself artistically every day.
  • Treat lesson planning as the creative exercise it is. Every day, you face new constraints in the form of the needs and preferences of the specific learners in your classroom. Have you heard your students debating a certain issue during recess or in the hallway? Have you noticed their attention focused on a particular new gadget, fad, or current events issue? Find a way to weave it into a lesson.
  • Develop personal creative rituals. In her classic 1992 book on developing personal creativity, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes about the “artist’s date”: “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.” As Cameron puts it, “the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you pre-plan and defend against all interlopers. … A visit to a great junk store, a solo trip to the beach, an old movie seen alone together, a visit to an aquarium or an art gallery—these cost time, not money. Remember, it is the time commitment that is sacred.”
  • Try meditation practices that encourage creative thought, such as “open-monitoring” meditation. One study found that those who practiced focused-attention meditation performed better on a test of convergent thinking, while those who practiced open-monitoring meditation performed better on a test of divergent thinking.
  • Seek solitude. Spending time in solitude is essential to nourishing your creativity. Set aside some time to be alone, away from the distractions of technology and others who may rely on you.
  • Travel . One study found that cross-cultural experiences can increase measures of creative thinking.
  • Switch up your daily routines. Challenge your conventional ways of thinking by taking a different route to work, listening to a new genre of music, go to a museum and check out a style of art you’re unfamiliar with. Changing your environment and breaking out of habitual thought can shake your mind out of its rut.
  • Embrace ambiguity. You’re probably teaching your students to embrace error, take risks, and learn from failure. See your own teaching as an extension of the same process. Embrace the gray areas, the ambiguities. “Ambiguity tolerance” is a key component of creativity.

Another teacher in my school also used Da Vinci notebooks in his 4th grade classroom, and we eagerly traded stories. As I flipped through his class’s responses to the 100 questions challenge, I saw thoughts like: Why do we sleep? When will the world end? Why are we addicted to candy? How was Morse code invented? Why did we invent schools? How does poison kill you? Why do we love?

One question caught my eye: “Why don’t woodpeckers get brain damage?” I smiled at the creative coincidence. Perhaps Da Vinci wondered the same thing in his notebook centuries ago.

For more tips and resources on bringing creativity into your classroom, see the APA professional development module for teachers, Creativity in the Classroom .

About the author.

creative group of education

Lauren Cassani Davis

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Cultivating creativity in classroom learning

image depicting thinking outside th ebox

Expanding beyond acquisition of knowledge

In today’s knowledge societies, schools need to teach content knowledge in a way that prepares students to use that knowledge creatively; and, they need to impart thinking skills, 21 st  century skills, to students. Most schools have not yet become creative learning environments. There are many challenges ahead for schools that hope to foster creative learning.

Contemporary research suggests that achieving creative learning will require us to transform teaching in all subjects. The learning sciences are providing us with an increasingly rich knowledge base for how to do that (Sawyer, 2012b). Unfortunately, schools today are designed around common-sense assumptions that are opposed to creative learning. The first among these assumptions reduces knowledge to a collection of  facts  about the world and  procedures  for how to solve problems. Facts are statements like “The earth is tilted on its axis by 23.45 degrees,” and procedures are step-by-step instructions like how to do multi-digit addition by carrying to the next column. A second problematic assumption is that the goal of schooling is to get these facts and procedures into the student’s head. People are considered to be educated when they possess a large collection of these facts and procedures. A third assumption guiding traditional learning environments is that teachers know these facts and procedures, and their job is to transmit them to students. It follows that, fourth, simpler facts and procedures should be learned first, followed by progressively more complex facts and procedures. The definitions of “simplicity” and “complexity” and the proper sequencing of material were determined either by teachers, by textbook authors, or by asking expert adults like mathematicians, scientists, or historians—not by studying how children actually learn. A final assumption of non-creative learning environments is that the way to determine the success of schooling is to test students to see how many of these facts and procedures they have acquired.

This traditional vision of schooling is known as  transmission and acquisition  (Rogoff, 1990), the  standard model  of schooling (OECD, 2008), or  instructionism  (Papert, 1993). Instructionism emerged in the industrialized economy of the early 20 th  century. Most schools continue to be largely based on an instructionist model of teaching and learning.

But the world today is much more technologically complex and economically competitive, and instructionism is increasingly failing to educate our students to participate in this new kind of society. Economists and organizational theorists have reached a consensus that today we are living in a knowledge economy, an economy which is built on knowledge work (Bereiter, 2002; Drucker, 1993).

In the knowledge economy, memorization of facts and procedures is not enough for success. Educated graduates need a deep conceptual understanding of complex concepts, and the ability to work with them creatively to generate new ideas, new theories, new products, and new knowledge. They need to be able to critically evaluate what they read, to be able to express themselves clearly both verbally and in writing, and to be able to understand scientific and mathematical thinking. They need to learn integrated and usable knowledge, rather than the sets of compartmentalized and decontextualized facts emphasized by instructionism. They need to be able to take responsibility for their own continuing, life-long learning.

Instructionism is particularly ill-suited to the education of creative professionals who can develop new knowledge and continually further their own understanding; instructionism is an anachronism in the modern innovation economy.

Characteristics of effective learning environments

The research emerging from the new sciences of learning is in direct contrast to instructionism; this research suggests that effective learning occurs in learning environments that share the following characteristics:

An emphasis on deeper conceptual understanding.

Scientific studies of expertise demonstrate that expert knowledge includes facts and procedures, but simply acquiring those facts and procedures does not prepare a person to work creatively with that knowledge. Factual and procedural knowledge is only useful when a person knows which situations to apply it in, and exactly how to modify it for each new situation. Instructionism results in a kind of learning that is very difficult to use outside of the classroom. When students gain a deeper conceptual understanding, they learn facts and procedures in a much more useful and profound way that have much higher likelihood of transferring to real-world settings.

The importance of building on a learner’s prior knowledge.

Learners are not empty vessels waiting to be filled. They come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works; some of them are basically correct, and some of them are misconceptions or naïve conceptions. The best way for children to learn is in an environment that builds on their existing knowledge; if teaching does not engage their prior knowledge, students often learn information just well enough to pass the test, and then revert back to their misconceptions outside of the classroom.

The importance of reflection.

Students learn better when they express their developing knowledge – either through conversation or by creating papers, reports, or other artifacts – and then are provided with opportunities to reflectively analyze their state of knowledge.

In instructionism, creativity is not necessary for learning, because learning is equated with mastery of what is already known. But within the newer understanding of how students learn that is emerging from the learning sciences, the conceptual understanding that underlies creative behavior emerges from environments in which students build their own knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006), through exploratory talk (Mercer, 2000), and sustained argumentation (Andriessen, 2006). The constructivist view emerging from learning sciences research is that learning is always a creative process (Sawyer, 2003a).

Toward embracing and releasing disciplined improvisation

There are many challenges ahead for schools that hope to foster creative learning. Many educational leaders and policy makers have focused on the institutional, administrative, and political challenges that make it difficult for schools to explore more innovative organizational forms. These are  external  forces that make creative teaching and learning difficult. In contrast, I present  internal  forces that make creative teaching and learning difficult.

My research shows that: (1) creative learning requires that students create their own knowledge, a constructivist process that involves  emergence ; (2) creative learning requires  collaborative emergence , with teacher and students working together to build new knowledge; (3) collaborative emergence occurs in the presence of unavoidable tensions that I have called  the teaching paradox ; (4) negotiating the teaching paradox requires that teachers and classrooms engage in  disciplined improvisation ; (5) disciplined improvisation allows for the creative benefits of collaborative emergence, yet guided by teacher practices, curricular structures, and learning goals that guide and aid students in their own process of creative learning.

The effectiveness of disciplined improvisation is not easy to achieve, because it’s inherently a tension between two forces, both of which are necessary and both effective when in combination. I referred to this tension above as “the teaching paradox.”

Embracing the ‘teaching paradox’

The teaching paradox faces all educators who hope to design creative learning environments. Whereas instructionist classrooms are almost completely top down, with no room for emergence or creativity to occur, creative classrooms will be much more bottom up. The creative schools of the future are strongest in teaching what instructionism cannot: Creative learning requires collaborative emergence and creativity on the part of the student.

Creative learning is more effective learning if the process is guided appropriately. The best way to foster creative learning is  not —as many might intuitively assume or often advocate—to allow learners complete freedom to improvise their own path through disciplinary knowledge; it is, rather, to guide them in a process of disciplined improvisation. A caution: Schools are complex organizations with many structures and constraints; these structures serve important functions and cannot simply be abandoned.

Effective creative learning involves teachers and students improvising together, collaboratively, within the structures provided by the curriculum and the teachers. But this collaborative emergence, a bottom up group process, must be guided effectively by (at least) four top-down structures: (1) curriculum, (2) assessments, (3) learning goals, and (4) teacher practices. In too many schools today, these top-down structures are overly constraining, and do not provide room for the disciplined improvisation that results in collaborative emergence. And yet, effective learning environments will always need curricula, assessments, learning goals, and teacher practices.

To transform schools to foster greater creativity in students, these four top-down structures need to change: (1) The curriculum should provide opportunities for multiple learning trajectories that could result from a creative inquiry process; (2) Assessments should incorporate and reward the sort of deeper conceptual understanding that results from creative learning, and they should accommodate potential differences in learning sequence and outcome; (3) Learning goals should explicitly incorporate creative learning. Schools and districts should ensure that the expected learning outcomes do not emphasize breadth over depth; and (4) Teacher professional development should be based in creativity research, and in research in the content areas—for example, science education research that explores the appropriate role of guiding scaffolds in the unavoidably unpredictable and emergent process of creative learning.

Directions for further research

Modifying schools away from instructionism toward disciplined improvisation leads directly to the teaching paradox. Fortunately learning sciences research provides guidance to educators for how to design solutions. Education researchers should work to provide research and practical recommendations for how to teach for creativity. We need research efforts that can help teachers, administrators, and curricular developers negotiate the teaching paradox.

Potential research questions include: What is the optimal balance between scripts, routines, and activities on the one hand, and creative improvisation on the other? What is the best way to educate preservice teachers to prepare them to optimally negotiate the teaching paradox?

Decades of research on constructivism in education have demonstrated that the most effective learning occurs when the learners’ discovery and exploration are guided by scaffolds – structures put in place by the teacher. What is the right degree and type of scaffolds, that result in the most effective creative learning? Answering this question will require substantial research in the content areas, because the appropriate scaffolds will change with the nature of the content knowledge and with the level of the learner.

What is the optimal balance of general creativity education, and domain-specific creative learning?

What role can the arts play in domain general and domain specific creative teaching and learning?

Designed instruction always has a desired learning outcome. The term “curriculum” represents the structures that are designed to ensure that learners reach those learning outcomes – whether textbooks, lists of learning objectives, or lesson plans. What lesson plans and curricula will guide learners in the most optimal way, while allowing space for creative improvisation?

These research questions are becoming increasingly central to the interdisciplinary field known as the learning sciences (Sawyer, 2012b), a group of education researchers that are exploring the fundamentally constructivist observation that effective learning requires the learner to create and recreate their own knowledge. Constructivist learning theory has always presented a challenge to educators: What learning environment can best support learners as they engage in their own creative and constructivist process of learning? In this sense, the teaching paradox is not new; it has always been at the core of attempts to work out the implications of constructivism for teachers and curriculum developers.

Creative learning is the core of all effective learning. The cognitive processes underlying creativity and learning are essentially identical – they both involve the emergence of the new in the mind of the individual. Creative learning environments are those that foster collaborative emergence, improvisational group processes where the outcome cannot be predicted from the individual mental states and goals of the participants, and where all members of the group – teacher and students alike – participate in the unfolding flow of the encounter.

Aspiring to create creative schools

The school of the future will be filled with creative learning environments that result in deeper mastery of content knowledge, and the ability to think and act creatively using that knowledge.

In those creative schools, students learn content knowledge; but in contrast to the superficial learning that results from instructionism, they learn a deeper conceptual understanding that prepares them to go beyond and build new knowledge. They learn collaboratively, in ways that help them externalize their developing understandings and fosters metacognition. They learn to participate in creative activities based on their developing knowledge – how to identify good problems, how to ask good questions, how to gather relevant information, how to propose new solutions and hypotheses, and how to use domain-specific skills to express those ideas and make them a reality.

All schools want students to learn as much as possible, as effectively as possible. To accomplish this goal, schools should be designed based on learning sciences research. This research is beginning to provide suggestions for how to foster creativity in the face of the teaching paradox (e.g., Sawyer, 2011a).

Education researchers and funding agencies should invest more resources in the study of creative teaching and learning. Teacher professional development should build on this research, to help teachers understand how to foster creative learning through disciplined improvisation.

  • Andriessen, J. (2006). Arguing to learn. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.),  Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences  (pp. 443-459). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bereiter, C. (2002).  Education and mind in the knowledge age . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Drucker, P. F. (1993).  Post-capitalist society . New York: HarperBusiness.
  • Mercer, N. (2000).  Words and minds: How we use language to think together . London: Routledge.
  • Papert, S. (1993).  The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer . New York: BasicBooks.
  • Rogoff, B. (1990).  Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context . New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Sawyer, R. K.  (2003). Emergence in creativity and development. In R. K. Sawyer, V. John-Steiner, S. Moran, R. Sternberg, D. H. Feldman, M. Csikszentmihalyi & J. Nakamura (Eds.),  Creativity and development  (pp. 12-60). New York: Oxford.
  • Sawyer, R. K.  (2012). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation (second edition). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Sawyer, R. K.  (2011). What makes good teachers great? The artful balance of structure and improvisation. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.),  Structure and improvisation in creative teaching  (pp. 1-24). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.),  Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences  (pp. 97-115). New York: Cambridge University Press.

April 15, 2018

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School of Education

How to inspire creativity in the classroom, drexel university school of education.

Having the opportunity to create a learning environment that encourages creative thinking, teachers are in a unique position to help students develop one of their most important life skills. Although creativity can seem to be an abstract or even mysterious concept at times, there is a growing science behind infusing classrooms with creativity and the benefits it yields to students in the classroom, as well as later in life. Read to learn more about the importance of creative learning environments and how teachers can learn to nurture creativity in a classroom environment.

What is a Creative Learning Environment?

A creative learning environment is one that encourages students to learn through trial and error, use their imagination, and to think critically to solve problems. By leveraging such learned skills as setting goals, sharing knowledge, and building relationships, a creative learning environment can help students practice and develop their own theories, and ideas, and set them in motion.

Why is it Important to Foster a Creative Learning Environment?

Helping students develop their creative capacities can have both direct and indirect benefits. Rather than feeling penalized or embarrassed for taking chances, students can feel comfortable trying new things and making mistakes inside a creative learning environment. As students are encouraged to pursue creative solutions to a problem, they can learn persistence in the process of continually trying a new approach to solve that problem. Additionally, students can also become better at:

  • Working as a team
  • Solving complex problems
  • Finding new ways to learn

Why Do Students Need to be Creative?

In the modern world, where entire industries are born and die every decade, there’s little doubt that creativity is an increasingly important asset. Creativity is a critical component for the type of divergent thinking necessary for innovation. Expanding their creative capacity can make students more adept at forming original ideas, as well as exercising their critical thinking skills. Creativity is also a life skill, which can help students unlock new avenues in their personal self-expression.

What is the Teacher's Role in Enhancing Creativity?

Controlling the classroom environment where students spend hours each day, teachers have ample opportunities to nurture and cultivate creativity. In practice, that usually means two things: serving as a role model for students, and finding ways to stimulate their creative thinking processes. Although creativity can develop outside of the classroom, teachers play an indispensable role in maintaining and encouraging its continuous development.

How to Promote Creativity Among Students and Foster a Creative Classroom Environment?

There’s no single recipe for developing creativity in students, but there are some simple things you can do to make your classroom a little more creative. Many of the most effective ways to encourage creativity in a classroom environment are simple augmentations to existing practices. Others are as simple as learning to identify opportunities to help students exercise their creativity. Here are a few different ways to help build a creative classroom:

Create a Flexible Classroom Layout

A classroom that provides options for learning can help to unlock a student’s creativity. For example, some students may enjoy reading at their desk, while others may want to sit in a comfy chair in another part of the room. You could also reorganize desks into pods or in a U-shape to make it easier for students to work together on projects. By making the classroom more versatile, can provide students with a creative learning environment.

Create a Library in your Classroom

Creating a classroom library is an excellent way to provide students with easy access to literature to help them fine tune their reading skills and spark creative ideas. A classroom library can also be an important resource for students who may not have books of their own or easy access to a public library. A teacher may choose books for the library that complement the creative learning activities in the class.

Open-Ended Assignments

Allow students to exercise their creative instincts by substituting assignments that have a single correct answer with those that offer multiple ways of discovering a solution.

Seek Alternatives to Rote Memorization

Deprioritize memorization-focused tasks and replace them with tasks that allow students to challenge assumptions. Try rewording assignments to promote creativity by adding phrases like “suppose” or “imagine.”

Exercise Patience

Don’t rush to demonstrate creative solutions for students. Instead, give them time to figure things out on their own.

Work in Groups

Two heads are better than one. Groups tend to find more creative solutions, as well as foster a sense of collaboration. This can provide a low-stakes environment to make students more comfortable exercising their creativity, and also cognizant of each member of the group’s individual strengths and how those strengths can be leveraged to solve a problem in a unique way.

Give Feedback

Giving creative feedback is one of the simpler ways to stimulate creative thinking, which can make it easy to overlook. Students with enormously creative solutions may not realize the value of their creativity unless a teacher articulates why their solutions are so effective. Peer feedback can also be useful and help students recognize the value of their creativity, too. Educators can set the guidelines for how students can offer constructive feedback in ways that will be well-received and helpful to their classmates.

Exercise Your Own Creativity

Teachers are better role models when they possess the qualities they aspire to instill in others. Sometimes building your own creativity is as simple as changing up daily routines, taking small risks, or building your own creative rituals.

Take Advantage of Curiosity

Students have countless curiosities about the world that they’re eager to explore. Leverage their intrinsic motivation to learn by giving them opportunities to choose their own topics while learning and sharing that knowledge with the class.

Teach When Creativity is Most Appropriate

When teaching creativity in early childhood classrooms, students may not understand the context where creativity is most valuable or appropriate. For instance, during the planning stages of a group project vs. during a standardized test. Help students to adapt to different learning styles and methods of communication / knowledge sharing.

Experiment with New Activities

Creative thinking classroom activities can be as simple as asking students to do free-write exercises, allowing them to explore their creativity and analytical skills. A good visual-based alternative is concept cartooning.

Utilize Free Tools

There are many free online tools that educators can access to help create activities for creativity in the classroom. Check out Drexel’s 10 Ways to Develop Creative Lesson Plans  for ideas and inspiration. Online sites like Canva provide templates for worksheets and presentations that are free and easy to use. YouTube is also an excellent resource for videos on creative learning activities that teachers can use in their classes.

Talk to Fellow Educators

Veteran teachers and colleagues are another important resource for creative ideas. They can share ideas on how to promote creativity in the classroom based on their experiences. Fellow teaches can also serve as a sounding board to listen to a teacher’s idea on a creative classroom assignment and provide feedback and advice.

Discover More Ways to Inspire Creativity in Students with Drexel University's School of Education

Creativity is a critical life skill, and teachers can help their students to build it in the classroom and carry those lessons moving forward throughout their lives and careers. The science of creativity in classroom settings is both complex and evolving. If you’re interested in learning more about developing creativity in students, take a moment to learn more about Drexel University School of Education's MS in Creativity and Innovation , MS in Creative Education and Entrepreneurship  and post-bachelor's certificate in Creativity and Innovation  and how you can further your own learning as an educator.

Understanding Creativity

  • Posted June 25, 2020
  • By Emily Boudreau

Teens with laptops and a chalk drawing of lightbulb

Understanding the learning that happens with creative work can often be elusive in any K–12 subject. A new study from Harvard Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Karen Brennan , and researchers Paulina Haduong and Emily Veno, compiles case studies, interviews, and assessment artifacts from 80 computer science teachers across the K–12 space. These data shed new light on how teachers tackle this challenge in an emerging subject area.

“A common refrain we were hearing from teachers was, ‘We’re really excited about doing creative work in the classroom but we’re uncertain about how to assess what kids are learning, and that makes it hard for us to do what we want to do,’” Brennan says. “We wanted to learn from teachers who are supporting and assessing creativity in the classroom, and amplify their work, and celebrate it and show what’s possible as a way of helping other teachers.”

Create a culture that values meaningful assessment for learning — not just grades

As many schools and districts decided to suspend letter grades during the pandemic, teachers need to help students find intrinsic motivation. “It’s a great moment to ask, ‘What would assessment look like without a focus on grades and competition?’” says Veno.

Indeed, the practice of fostering a classroom culture that celebrates student voice, creativity, and exploration isn’t limited to computer science. The practice of being a creative agent in the world extends through all subject areas.

The research team suggests the following principles from computer science classrooms may help shape assessment culture across grade levels and subject areas.

Solicit different kinds of feedback

Give students the time and space to receive and incorporate feedback. “One thing that’s been highlighted in assessment work is that it is not about the teacher talking to a student in a vacuum,” says Haduong, noting that hearing from peers and outside audience members can help students find meaning and direction as they move forward with their projects.

  • Feedback rubrics help students receive targeted feedback from audience members. Additionally, looking at the rubrics can help the teacher gather data on student work.

Emphasize the process for teachers and students

Finding the appropriate rubric or creating effective project scaffolding is a journey. Indeed, according to Haduong, “we found that many educators had a deep commitment to iteration in their own work.” Successful assessment practices conveyed that spirit to students.

  • Keeping design journals can help students see their work as it progresses and provides documentation for teachers on the student’s process.
  • Consider the message sent by the form and aesthetics of rubrics. One educator decided to use a handwritten assessment to convey that teachers, too, are working on refining their practice.

Scaffold independence

Students need to be able to take ownership of their learning as virtual learning lessens teacher oversight. Students need to look at their own work critically and know when they’ve done their best. Teachers need to guide students in this process and provide scaffolded opportunities for reflection.

  • Have students design their own assessment rubric. Students then develop their own continuum to help independently set expectations for themselves and their work.

Key Takeaways

  • Assessment shouldn’t be limited to the grade a student receives at the end of the semester or a final exam. Rather, it should be part of the classroom culture and it should be continuous, with an emphasis on using assessment not for accountability or extrinsic motivation, but to support student learning.
  • Teachers can help learners see that learning and teaching are iterative processes by being more transparent about their own efforts to reflect and iterate on their practices.
  • Teachers should scaffold opportunities for students to evaluate their own work and develop independence.

Additional Resources

  • Creative Computing curriculum and projects
  • Karen Brennan on helping kids get “unstuck”
  • Usable Knowledge on how assessment can help continue the learning process

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What creativity really is - and why schools need it

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Associate Professor of Psychology and Creative Studies, University of British Columbia

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Liane Gabora's research is supported by a grant (62R06523) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Although educators claim to value creativity , they don’t always prioritize it.

Teachers often have biases against creative students , fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

Why the disconnect between educators’ official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school?

How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated ?

These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. We study the creative process , as well as how ideas evolve over time and across societies. I’ve written almost 200 scholarly papers and book chapters on creativity, and lectured on it worldwide. My research involves both computational models and studies with human participants. I also write fiction, compose music for the piano and do freestyle dance.

What is creativity?

Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Specifically, creativity involves cognitive processes that transform one’s understanding of, or relationship to, the world.

creative group of education

There may be adaptive value to the seemingly mixed messages that teachers send about creativity. Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution. As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.

In biological evolution, the novelty-generating components are genetic mutation and recombination, and the novelty-preserving components include the survival and reproduction of “fit” individuals. In cultural evolution , the novelty-generating component is creativity, and the novelty-preserving components include imitation and other forms of social learning.

It isn’t actually necessary for everyone to be creative for the benefits of creativity to be felt by all. We can reap the rewards of the creative person’s ideas by copying them, buying from them or simply admiring them. Few of us can build a computer or write a symphony, but they are ours to use and enjoy nevertheless.

Inventor or imitator?

There are also drawbacks to creativity . Sure, creative people solve problems, crack jokes, invent stuff; they make the world pretty and interesting and fun. But generating creative ideas is time-consuming. A creative solution to one problem often generates other problems, or has unexpected negative side effects.

Creativity is correlated with rule bending, law breaking, social unrest, aggression, group conflict and dishonesty. Creative people often direct their nurturing energy towards ideas rather than relationships, and may be viewed as aloof, arrogant, competitive, hostile, independent or unfriendly.

creative group of education

Also, if I’m wrapped up in my own creative reverie, I may fail to notice that someone else has already solved the problem I’m working on. In an agent-based computational model of cultural evolution , in which artificial neural network-based agents invent and imitate ideas, the society’s ideas evolve most quickly when there is a good mix of creative “inventors” and conforming “imitators.” Too many creative agents and the collective suffers. They are like holes in the fabric of society, fixated on their own (potentially inferior) ideas, rather than propagating proven effective ideas.

Of course, a computational model of this sort is highly artificial. The results of such simulations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, they suggest an adaptive value to the mixed signals teachers send about creativity. A society thrives when some individuals create and others preserve their best ideas.

This also makes sense given how creative people encode and process information. Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations. Some of these associations will be spurious. On the bright side, some may lead to new ideas that are useful or aesthetically pleasing.

So, there’s a trade-off to peppering the world with creative minds. They may fail to see the forest for the trees but they may produce the next Mona Lisa.

Innovation might keep us afloat

So will society naturally self-organize into creators and conformers? Should we avoid trying to enhance creativity in the classroom?

The answer is: No! The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before. In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels — to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.

This is particularly important now. In our high-stimulation environment, children spend so much time processing new stimuli that there is less time to “go deep” with the stimuli they’ve already encountered. There is less time for thinking about ideas and situations from different perspectives, such that their ideas become more interconnected and their mental models of understanding become more integrated.

This “going deep” process has been modeled computationally using a program called Deep Dream , a variation on the machine learning technique “Deep Learning” and used to generate images such as the ones in the figure below.

creative group of education

The images show how an input is subjected to different kinds of processing at different levels, in the same way that our minds gain a deeper understanding of something by looking at it from different perspectives. It is this kind of deep processing and the resulting integrated webs of understanding that make the crucial connections that lead to important advances and innovations.

Cultivating creativity in the classroom

So the obvious next question is: How can creativity be cultivated in the classroom? It turns out there are lots of ways ! Here are three key ways in which teachers can begin:

Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving .

Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, such as by painting murals that depict biological food chains, or acting out plays about historical events, or writing poems about the cosmos. After all, the world doesn’t come carved up into different subject areas. Our culture tells us these disciplinary boundaries are real and our thinking becomes trapped in them.

Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection. This provides time and space to foster the forging of new connections that is so vital to creativity.

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10 Creative Ways to Better Engage Your Students

Explore more.

  • Classroom Management
  • Student Engagement

S tarting out as a young adjunct instructor, I can painfully recall reading my lesson notes from index cards as my students sat passively with blank stares. Fortunately that didn’t last long, thanks to a mentor observing my class. But I doubt my experience was much different from that of other emerging educators. After all, I had modeled these ineffective teaching practices after my own experiences as a university student.

Today, however, there has been a huge push in higher education to move beyond these passive methods of instruction that lead to less student engagement and low motivation. As Jennifer Stanchfield discovered , “More is learned through exploring and struggling than by being provided the answer.”

It’s harder than ever these days to keep our students’ attention. But I have improved my approach over the past 30 years based on the simple belief that telling is not teaching . Because of this, I am continually exploring interesting and creative ways to engage my students.

I have identified some outstanding techniques, which I will share here, that have helped to enhance my students’ engagement and motivation for learning. Many of these strategies have come from the book Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner by Himmele and Himmele, which has truly transformed my teaching. So let’s get started on transforming yours.

10 Engagement Strategies to Energize and Motivate Your Students

Before we break down specific strategies you can use to enhance participation, it’s important to understand that there are five different types of engagement: social, behavioral, emotional, intellectual, and physical. As teachers, we may organically hit two or three of these engagement types, but some we are likely to miss, especially if we’re not aware of them. I’ve struggled with ideas for how to get my students physically engaged, for example.

Below, I’ve categorized my top engagement strategies by these types to help you address all five. They have been designed for use in university classes and can easily be adapted for any area of study.

WHAT WE’LL COVER: 10 CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES

In this article, Pamela Kramer Ertel breaks down the following engagement strategies to improve student participation and enhance learning retention.

Getting to Know You

Find Someone Who…

Bounce Cards

The Lecture T-Chart

The Ripple Method

Drama, Please!

Whiteboard Splash and Gallery Walk

Inside-Outside Circles

Origami Review Game

Social Engagement: Creating Connections with Students Through Collaboration and Sharing

Social engagement involves social interactions. The key to having effective social engagement is to help students get to know and trust you and other students early in the semester. The following strategies are designed to allow students to make these important connections as they help build a collaborative learning environment of support and trust.

1. Getting to Know You

Prior to the start of a new semester, I email my students a survey to learn more about their interests and preferences. Here are the key questions I ask:

What are your career goals?

How do you learn best?

Share five facts about yourself that will help me get to know you and best meet your needs.

What are your three favorite songs or musicians?

Is there anything else you would like to share that will help me better support your learning?

I also prepare a PowerPoint presentation that I use to introduce myself on the first day of class. I share personal and professional stories and family photos with the hope that my students will feel more connected to me and thus more motivated to open up themselves. I also love sharing stories about my latest connections to the country music stars I meet in Nashville (like that time I got a huge hug from Chris Janson in church).

I then have my students create name tents: They display their names on large, folded index cards to quickly familiarize the class. I also have them use this card to draw or write brief ideas about their interests, which form the basis for how they introduce themselves to their peers.

2. Find Someone Who . . .

I plan first-day-of-class activities that give students simple opportunities to get to know one another in a light-hearted way. For one such activity, I create a template with a nine-space grid in which various criteria are listed. Students must find a different person in the class who meets the criteria listed in each grid space (see Figure 1). For example, “Find someone who is an early riser.”

As they circulate around the room, they must find someone for each grid space and fill in that person’s name. This activity serves as a great icebreaker and helps students learn each other’s names, which is important for helping them feel connected to their peers.

Find Someone Who.. grid

Pamela Kramer Ertel, Harvard Business Publishing Education, 2022.

Figure 1: Find Someone Who... is a great first-day-of-class game that gives students the opportunity to learn more about each other in a fun, light-hearted way.

Behavioral Engagement: Establishing Rules, Routines, and Roles

Behavioral engagement deals with routines and behaviors that help promote learning. It is important to teach the routines and behaviors that you want your students to use to improve the quality of peer discussions and the efficiency of class activities. These strategies also help to create a sense of security as students know what to expect from you.

For example, before my students can enter the classroom, I have them wait until I open the door, as I want to be sure I have the room prepared for the day’s activities. They also know that I will have a daily prompt posted for them to discuss with their peers as they arrive, which is designed to engage them in the lesson topic of the day.

Here are some other strategies for behavioral engagement.

3. Bounce Cards

With the “Bounce Card” strategy , I provide a card for each student that lists key questions or prompts I want them to discuss with a partner or small group. The questions can be generic so that the card can be used to discuss any topic. (For example, “Rephrase what your partner just said,” or, “That’s a great point because . . .”) The questions are designed to help students strengthen their listening skills and deepen their conversations. The prompts require students to extend, rephrase, and ask follow-up questions to their bounce partners, rather than just give a simple answer.

For example, if I ask students to discuss a video clip, they might just say whether they liked it. But using a Bounce Card forces them to dig deeper. You can adapt the questions on the card to suit your educational purposes, but for the students who struggle with conversational skills, this can be a great template for helping them develop more thoughtful responses.

4. The Lecture T-Chart

You may have noticed that sometimes as students take notes, they don’t seem to really be processing what they are learning. The “Lecture T-Chart” consists of a simple template where students record their notes on the left side of a page. Periodically throughout my lecture, I pause and have them use their own words to summarize the key ideas I’ve just presented, which they write on the right side of the template.

This pause-review-summarize process helps to strengthen comprehension and can be extended by having students share their summaries with others to further process the information through social engagement.

Emotional Engagement: Facilitating Joy, Connection, and Memories

Emotional engagement entails creating safe, positive learning experiences for everyone involved. Students will not be open to sharing their thoughts and responses in class if they feel they will be mocked or disrespected by their professor or peers.

One of the ways I create emotional connection is through music. I’ll start each class playing a different student’s favorite song or music video (based on what they told me in that initial survey). They love it and appreciate that I actually read their responses.

Here are some other strategies to emotionally engage your students.

5. The Ripple Method

Himmele and Himmele propose the use of the ripple method : Instead of just calling on students who raise their hand, you “ripple” your questions by first having each student respond individually to the prompt (either in their mind or in writing). They then share their responses with one to three peers before you open up the floor to volunteers willing to share with the whole class. This process ensures that every student has time to think of a response.

For example, I use the ripple method when I ask my students each week to share an “aha moment” from their clinical experiences. This relieves pressure for those students who are less motivated to engage in discussion. The students soon realize that their experiences are just as valid as everyone else’s and that we are all in this together. They also realize that some of their perceived failures in the field become some of their most precious learning experiences.

Intellectual Engagement: Promoting Choice, Challenge, and Curiosity

Intellectual engagement involves curiosity and meaningful explorations. Whenever possible, give students choices in terms of tasks, topics, and strategies for demonstrating their learning. The more relevant and authentic the task, the higher the level of engagement and motivation.

Here are some activities to spur curiosity and meaning.

6. Drama, Please!

Consider using problem solving, role playing, and acting as ways of demonstrating learning. You will need to be specific about your expectations, but the freedom to explore interests and determine a mode of presentation of ideas will be motivating for many students.

In my teacher education class, I have my students roleplay parent-teacher conferences. I preface this by showing a video clip from the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond . While the clip is humorous, it helps the students recognize the vulnerability of parents (and teachers) in these situations, which is an essential understanding when conducting an effective parent-teacher conference.

7. IQ Cards

IQ cards provide an interesting and efficient way for students to share insights about what they have learned, as well as raise questions after a lecture or class activity. Students write an insight (representing the “I” in IQ) on one side of an index card. This insight can be related to something new they learned during that class, or it can be a “so what” statement, indicating how this information can be applied in professional or personal practice.

On the other side of the card, the students write a question (Q) that they have about the information. Typically, I like to have students share their cards with their peers in pairs and then I collect the cards to gather informal assessment data about student learning. This works as an excellent closure activity as it reviews key lesson content and helps me assess whether students are grasping the material.

Physical Engagement: Making Movement Meaningful

Physical engagement involves some type of movement and is an often-neglected engagement strategy in the higher ed classroom. John Ratey , author of Spark (Hatchett, 2008), states that “exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function.” While time and space may be challenges to including physical movement in the classroom, small efforts to engage students physically help to keep them focused and may help change their brains by strengthening neuropathways leading to improved storage and retrieval of information.

While physical engagement can introduce novelty to your class, it’s important to think about the physical and mobile abilities of your students, and to provide accommodations and make room for modifications when necessary.

The following strategies help to engage students in movement connected with their learning.

8. Whiteboard Splash and Gallery Walk

Whiteboard Splash (sometimes known as “chalkboard splash” or “graffiti wall”) involves students responding to a prompt with words or pictures to explain an idea or concept by writing on the whiteboard (or large chart paper).

For example, I might ask my teacher education students, “What are the activities that should be included in the schedule for the first day of school for young children?” or “What are some strategies you can use to reflect on your teaching practice?” Students work individually or in small groups to illustrate their ideas. Then students circulate around the room for a “gallery walk” to view and discuss the displayed information.

To ensure that students don’t passively walk by the work, have them write down the ideas they found new, different, surprising, or worth remembering. Students can then share the results and address additional questions.

9. Inside-Outside Circles

This is one of my students’ favorite strategies for physical movement and social engagement. I have students create two concentric circles where each person is in front of or behind someone in the other circle. The inside circle group is then told to turn and face their outside circle group partner. I provide a prompt for the pairs to discuss (for example, “What are some reasons for student misbehavior?”) and set a time limit for each partner to share a brief response to the question.

Students then take turns listening to their partner’s response. Be sure to set a timer so students know when to end their conversations. Then I have the outside circle group move two places to the left so they are facing a different person. You can provide the same or a different prompt and the process repeats.

To hold students accountable, be sure to circulate and listen to the conversations so you get an idea of their level of understanding and interaction, which you can then use in conducting a closing discussion with the whole group. If space is an issue, consider using the hallway or go outdoors (weather permitting). If you have students with limited mobility, you can conduct this activity with chairs (and wheelchairs) and students can still have rich interactions. Be sure to position any students with mobility limitations in the inner circle so just the students in the outside circle have to move during the activity.

For online classes, assign pairs of students to breakout rooms and give them a short amount of time (one to two minutes) to share their ideas with their partners. Then you can randomly assign them a new partner using a new set of breakout rooms.

10. Origami Review Game

Depending on your age, you may recall playing a game with origami paper creations with questions and answers on them. Partners can take turns telling each other’s fortunes or quizzing each other. I use this often as a content review activity before exams. (You can find directions for the construction and implementation of this game here .)

Your role is to create eight close-ended questions that have simple (i.e., short) answers so they fit on the game board. (for example, “What type of engagement involves movement?” followed by the answer, “Physical engagement.”) Each pair of students receives an origami paper creation (see Figure 2), and they take turns asking each other questions from the game piece until all the questions have been covered.

Origami Review Game

Figure 2: An example of the Origami Review Game.

Keep It Fresh and Meaningful

Adding these simple but meaningful engagement strategies into my instructional practices has not only helped create a stimulating, joyful learning environment for my students, but it has also made me a more motivated teacher. I teach a three-hour class and the time now passes quickly for everyone.

Simply put: To keep our students motivated, we have to stay motivated. These strategies can help you avoid the rut of doing the same thing all the time. But keep in mind that even a clever idea can become stale if overused, so make sure to mix and match.

Just remember that novelty and fun are additional benefits of students’ cognitive engagement; they are not the main focus of our efforts. So use your class time wisely by choosing meaningful questions and engagement strategies that are related to your learning goals. If you do so, I think you’ll find that your students quickly get on board.

Pamela Kramer Ertel

Pamela Kramer Ertel is an associate professor of education at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She is a former professor and Dean of the College of Education at East Stroudsburg University and a past president of Kappa Delta Pi, the International Honor Society in Education. Her research interests include teacher education, student engagement, trauma-informed schools, and adoption.

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What you need to know about culture and arts education

arts education

Despite the obvious essential linkages between culture and education, they are still not sufficiently integrated into education policies and school curricula in many countries globally. These two fields are often considered as separate policy entities and trajectories. Culture and arts education, the result of the two complementary ecosystems, has the potential to bridge this gap.

UNESCO convened the World Conference on Culture and Arts Education in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates from 13 to 15 February 2024 where the first-ever global framework in this area was adopted. Here is what you need to know about this essential issue. 

Why is culture and arts education essential?

Learners engaged in culture and arts education have better academic and non-academic learning outcomes.  Engagement in various art forms , such as music, dance, and visual arts, can enhance academic achievements, reading skills, creative and critical thinking, agility and collaboration skills. Engagement in such education also correlates with improved attendance, stress reduction, resilience, perseverance, and classroom behaviours.

Culture and arts education expands the essence of learning and makes it fun by going beyond classrooms and traditional educational approaches from lifelong learning, to technical and vocational education and training (TVET).  The theatre stage can be a learning space, NFT art can be a promising career, and indigenous ways of knowing and being can, and should, find their way in the curriculum.

Culture and arts education makes learning meaningful by connecting rural with urban, local with global. It plays a crucial role in valorizing and preserving one’s own culture, heritage and traditions while at the same time reflecting on them in the modern world, in the digital era, understanding everyone’s contribution and uniqueness. 

What are the forms culture and arts education can take?

Culture and arts education encompasses learning about, in and through culture and the arts. Therefore, it can occur across subjects, at all levels of education and in various settings. For example, this process is no longer confined to classrooms: museums, art galleries, libraries and cultural heritage sites are considered equal places of learning, whereas artists, cultural professionals and practitioners play an essential role in transmitting knowledge. Culture and arts education engages learners with built and natural heritage, living expressions, and the cultural and creative industries, promoting intercultural dialogue and linguistic diversity, both online and offline.

By incorporating indigenous knowledge and practices, arts education validates and enlivens diverse cultural perspectives. In Indonesia, school students on Java Island can learn more about their heritage from arts education programmes that familiarize them with the traditional art of shadow puppet storytelling called  wayang kulit , from UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list. 

How can culture and arts education build skills for the future?

Culture and arts education opens up new employment opportunities.  50 million jobs are created by cultural and creative industries worldwide, and more young people are now employed in the sector than in any other economic activity. While not its primary focus,  culture and arts education cultivates skills such as observation, collaboration, and reflection that are conducive to creativity and adaptability, which are increasingly valued in the modern job market. 

It also builds vital socio-emotional skills to thrive in the world of tomorrow. Research shows that such education fosters compassion for others and empathy. It allows learners to introspect, take different perspectives and develop different ways of understanding the world. Participation in arts activities has also been linked to higher civic engagement, social tolerance, and respectful behaviours towards diversity. 

How can culture and arts education contribute to peace and sustainability?

By connecting local with global and fostering dialogue among generations and cultures, culture and arts education can contribute to peaceful, just, inclusive and sustainable societies. It also offers transformative avenues for reimagining ways of living harmoniously with the earth and preserving social cohesion, which is paramount during times of interrelated global challenges, such as social isolation or environmental crises. For example, freely accessible digitized archives of the leading museums helped learners in different parts of the world connect with other cultures and enrich their learning experiences.

How does arts education address socioeconomic disparities in education?

Integrating culture and arts education into education systems  can help bridge the achievement gap between higher and lower-income students. Research indicates that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who engage in arts education demonstrate higher academic performance, graduation rates, and motivation to pursue further education.

Culture and arts education can unveil new opportunities and career paths for learners of all ages. For example, technical and vocational education and training in arts and crafts could be a critical social lift, opening new employment opportunities in the context of persisting social inequalities and crises. For example,  UNESCO’s Transcultura program me awards scholarships to young cultural professionals in 17 countries so that they can gain new skills and pursue careers in cultural and creative industries. 

What is the role of UNESCO?

Since its creation, UNESCO has been championing major forward-looking policy transformation processes in culture and education, reaffirming them as global public goods at the forefront of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Some of the key highlights include the UNESCO  MONDIACULT Conference, initiatives within the  Transforming Education Summit and the revision of  the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.

As a logical next step after the adoption of the 2006 Lisbon Road Map on Arts Education and the 2010 Seoul Agenda, UNESCO convened the  World Conference on Culture and Arts Education to mobilize political commitment around culture and arts education as a powerful lever to transform learning and shape critical skills for future generations. 

As a result of the Conference, UNESCO Member States adopted the new UNESCO Framework on Culture and Arts Education . This guidance document provides a set of principles all stakeholders can follow for shaping and further institutionalizing culture and arts education. It outlines specific goals such education should pursue and concrete dimensions where synergetic links between culture and education should be fostered for the benefit of all learners.

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Creative Education Foundation

About Creative Education Foundation

“the challenges we are facing are without precedent…and we are going to need every ounce of ingenuity, imagination, and creativity to confront these problems.” ~ sir ken robinson  .

Alex Osborn founded the Creative Education Foundation (CEF) in 1954. Alex was one of the original advertising “Mad Men” and the “O” in BBDO. He founded CEF based on the idea that creativity can be learned and developed.

With Sidney J. Parnes, Ph.D., Alex developed the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process and founded the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI). CPSI is the oldest, longest-running global creativity conference that attracts hundreds of attendees from around the globe and across industries.

CEF also runs the Parnes Global Fellowship program, which trains rising leaders in CPS to make positive change in their communities, and awards the Ruth B. Noller Research Grant for cutting edge creativity research. CEF publishes the longest-running academic creativity journal, the Journal of Creative Behavior , and also provides CPS Professional Development Training to teachers, students, and professionals. CEF is a registered, 501-c-3 nonprofit organization.

Our Mission

The mission of the Creative Education Foundation is to spark personal and professional transformation by empowering people with the skill set, tool set, and mindset of deliberate creativity.

Our vision is to unlock the creative genius in everyone. The Creative Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization of leaders in the field of creativity theory and practice. Every day, principles fostered by CEF programs are helping someone, somewhere in the world, develop new products, make business operations run more profitably, restructure organizations and agencies to become more effective and less encumbered, reinvigorate economies, make improvements in our schools, revitalize communities, and replace ineffective methods and systems with new, more workable ones.

We convene businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change.

The Core Values of CEF

  • Creativity is innate; it can be deliberate, studied, taught, and learned.
  • Constructive creativity requires personal integrity, as well as integrity in process, product, and environment.
  • Courageous and respectful communication yields meaning and understanding.
  • We express viewpoints with clarity and self-awareness, ask questions to better understand others’ viewpoints, and listen generously.
  • We trust and use the Creative Problem Solving process in our leadership and program development.
  • Play fosters creativity and connects us to our goals and each other.
  • We achieve quality outcomes by bringing together people of different backgrounds, cultures, perspectives, and thinking processes.
  • Variety and differences require us to remain open-minded, to use debate, and to manage conflict as tools for stronger outcomes.
  • Generosity, awareness of self and others, and ongoing learning are essential characteristics of partners, volunteers, and staff.
  • Service requires high-level personal, interpersonal and organizational goals, exceptional delivery, and achievable commitments.
  • Individual growth and organizational growth go hand-in-hand.
  • Seeking both organizational growth and organizational stability requires fiscal responsibility, efficiency, effective resource management, and teamwork.

Beth Miller

Beth Miller

Executive Director

Beth is a 20+ year nonprofit leader who is passionate about history, education, leadership, and creativity.   As the Executive Director of the Creative Education Foundation (CEF), she has grown and professionalized all contributed and earned revenue streams including the development Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Professional Development training for public school educators and administrators.   Beth and the CEF team are successfully navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and have developed new virtual programs, which have expanded the CEF audience.   Currently, Beth is exploring collaborative partnerships with The Illumination Project, the Center for Policing Equity, and various national Invention Conventions.  

Beth taught writing at Trinity College for 10 years, and who served as Writing Fellow at Quinnipiac University where she taught and assisted with writing program curriculum design. Beth earned her B.A. in Women’s Studies (2000) and her M.A. in American Studies (2003) at Trinity College, graduating with distinction for both degrees; she was also inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.   For her scholarship and community service, Beth received the Ann Petry Book Prize in American Studies, the D.G. Brinton Thompson Prize in United States History, the Samuel S. Fishzohn Award for Civil Rights and Community Service, the Elma H. Martin Book Prize for Student Leadership, and the Tyler Award for Interdisciplinary Studies.  

Beth currently serves as a Trustee of the Ahearn Family Foundation, and recently completed her tenure as a member of the Trinity College National Alumni Association Executive Committee. In 2005, Beth was hired to write “A Life-Giving Spirit:” 75 Years at the Bushnell , which was a history of The Bushnell Memorial Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2017, Beth received an honorary PhD in Arts and Humane Letters from Southern New Hampshire University for her academic and professional achievements.   Her award-winning Senior Seminar Thesis, “Challenging Race and Gender Boundaries in Antebellum America,” about Prudence Crandall was adapted as the play, “An Education in Prudence,” produced by the Open Theater Project in Boston, MA in February 2018.      And, in 2019, Beth was recognized by her alma mater as one of the “50 for the next 50 Years,” which celebrated Trinity’s 50 th anniversary of co-education by honoring 50 professors, alumni, and students as Trinity’s current and future women leaders.

Jamie Robinson

Jamie Robinson

Office Manager

Jamie is the Office Manager and Bookkeeper at the CEF office in Scituate, MA. Her career prior to CEF has been doing bookkeeping for local businesses. Jamie and her husband have two children and live in Marshfield, MA. She is also an avid runner and has completed several marathons, including the Boston Marathon in 2008 and 2015.

Beth Slazak

Beth Slazak

Manager of Education and Events

Beth holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Buffalo in History with a minor in Dance, a Social Studies Certification in Education from Buffalo State, and a Masters of Science in Creative Studies from Buffalo State, has completed a three-year Certified Humor Professional program from the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor and is in the middle of her Masters of Business Administration degree from D’Youville College. Beth has a passion for improv and enjoys studying it at Buffalo ComedySportz and Toronto’s Second City. From teaching at a middle school to adjuncting at a few of the local colleges, her long career in the education world has taught her the value of what dedicated faculty and staff bring to a student’s life. She combines this knowledge with excitement for deliberative problem solving to train people worldwide through the Creative Education Foundation.

Jane Fischer

Jane Fischer

Creativity Trainer

Jane has over 25 years of experience in developing and delivering educational sessions, personal and professional development workshops, and training curriculum. Much of this experience covers her two decades in health education leadership, with 15 of these years in college health promotion and peer education training.

For the past decade, she has worked as a Creative Change Facilitator. Her passion is to help individuals, teams, and organizations arrive at creative solutions to the challenging and ambiguous problems they face, and to do so through improvisational mindsets. Jane’s perspective is greatly shaped by 20 years as a professional improv comedy performer.   She is currently a member of ComedySportz Buffalo and Twisted Sister Act.

Jane holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a minor in Social Work from Ithaca College, a Master of Arts in Health Arts and Sciences from Goddard College, and a Graduate Certificate of Advanced Study in Creativity and Change Leadership from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State. She is certified as a Foursight® facilitator, a facilitator of Lego® Serious Play® Methods & Materials, and a Laugha-Yoga leader. In addition to working with nonprofit organizations, colleges, community organizations, and businesses, she has been honored to deliver keynote presentations and lead interactive workshops at numerous conferences and events.

Roseanne Avella

Roseanne Avella

Flcc Coordinator

Roseanne is a true creative and entrepreneur.    For over 2 decades she has worked to combine her love of creative and business.    She has an eye for detail and a rich understanding of technology.    Bootstrapping multiple businesses after graduating from Ringling College of Art and Design, she has provided creative services to virtually every industry – completing or overseeing nearly every type of graphic design or online/web-based project.

Working for Creative Education Foundation, Roseanne brings her skills to provide creative and expertise to market the Florida Creativity Conference.  

CEF Board of Trustees

Tricia Garwood

Tricia Garwood

Tricia became passionate about the creative process her senior year of high school and has been researching creativity and teaching corporate, educational, and individual clients how to develop and apply creative and innovative techniques ever since. Through her Philadelphia-based consulting business, The Idea Shop, Tricia helps her clients establish a creative culture through individual and corporate coaching, seminars, classes, and facilitating ideation sessions.

She joined the Disney Company in 2001 and is currently leadership development manager at the Disney University, a role in which she works with executives to assess and then design the right learning solution to drive leadership success and optimize business. Tricia also provides consultation to various clients within the company to help them fully tap their creative expertise. Through her research and experience, Tricia has explored the often-stormy relationship between the psychological fundamentals of creativity and the practical components of innovation with their direct applications in business, the arts, and sciences. Tricia has a Masters in human resources from Villanova University in and a doctorate in interdisciplinary leadership from Creighton University where her dissertation focused on collaboration and leadership creative problem solving preferences. Tricia has authored and co-authored a number of publications over the years, most recently a chapter in Emerald Publishing’s “Grassroots Leadership and the Arts for Social Change” entitled Benevolent Subversion: Graffiti, Street Art, and the Emergence of the Anonymous Leader.

Kirk Young

Kirk Young serves as the Vice President of Student Affairs at Jamestown Community College, a position he has held since 2014. Prior to joining JCC, Kirk worked for ten years at Utah Valley University, a large regional university in Utah. Throughout his years working in higher education, he has worked in enrollment, fundraising, and marketing, as well as serving for several years as the director of the Center for the Advancement of Leadership at UVU. Prior to his career in higher education, Kirk worked in sales and management in private industry where much of his work focused on employee development and engagement.

Kirk holds a BA in psychology from Utah Valley University, an MS in sociology from Brigham Young University, and a Ph.D. in leadership studies from Gonzaga University. His master’s studies focused on the social impacts of large-scale mega events, particularly the 2002 Winter Olympics. His doctoral studies focused on the 360-degree assessment as a leadership development tool. His other areas of expertise include transformational leadership, appreciative inquiry, servant-leadership, leadership and creativity, and strengths-based leadership. Kirk is a certified strengths coach with the Gallup organization, and spends some of his time consulting with individuals and teams on strengths-based performance and leadership solutions.

Kirk is the founder of 221b Performance Solutions, a leadership and organizational development firm that works closely with organizations across the country to assess performance, design solutions, and implement strategies for addressing a variety of challenges. In this capacity, Kirk is responsible for helping individuals, teams, and organizations identify and achieve their potential.

Kirk currently lives in Lakewood, NY with his wife, Katie, and their three children.

Mary Wisenski

Mary Wisenski

Mary Wisenski is a CPA and a Director of Assurance & Advisory Services for Fiondella, Milone and LaSaracina LLP (FML). She has more than 17 years of public accounting experience across a variety of industries including manufacturing, bio-technology, software, and consumer goods. She began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers and joined FML in 2004. Mary is responsible for supervising and managing financial statement audits both under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (US GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as well as employee benefit plan audits, and consulting engagements related to Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives for publicly- traded companies. In addition, Mary provides a variety of consulting services to both public and private clients focusing on internal audit services and her diverse industry experience ranges from startup businesses to large multi-national corporations. Her internal control experience includes the identification of significant accounts, the detection of prevent and detect controls within significant processes, and the development and execution of testing strategies for internal control environments. In addition, Mary has significant experience identifying control weaknesses and assisting in the development of process improvement opportunities within an organization’s control environment. Mary’s experience includes performing such work on Connecticut Water Service, Inc., Arvinas, Inc. Twin River Worldwide Holdings, Inc., Stanley Black & Decker, Inc., Delcath Systems, Inc., The Eastern Company, and American Bank Note Holographics, Inc., to name a few.

Mary has extensive professional and volunteer experience working with nonprofits. She performed audits for Theater Works, Inc. in Hartford, CT, as well as The Justice Education Center, Inc.. She served on the Board and was the former Treasurer and Co-Chair of Connectikds, Inc., a tutoring and mentoring organization also in Hartford. Mary is interested in CEF’s mission and work as creativity and critical thinking and sees these as critical life skills for one’s career and in life in general. She sees being able to deal with a situation and problem solve using creative thinking is the key to independence and confidence. Though Mary resides in Connecticut, her roots are in Buffalo, NY and she is there several times a year visiting family. She is excited about CEF’s Buffalo connections.

Frank Prince

Frank Prince

Frank is the Founder and President of Unleash Your Mind Consulting, an independent consulting firm focused on creative leadership and innovation since 1990. Frank is an executive consultant to CEO’s and Senior Management teams. Organizations hire Frank to develop strategies that drive results through innovation. He facilitates the creation of long-range strategic plans. Frank also counsels executives on their presentation skills and co-creates presentations with them.

Frank attended his first CPSI in 1984 and it changed his life and career. He has served as a CPSI leader since 1989. He served as an adjunct instructor for the Center for Creative Leadership and as an adjunct professor for George Fox University teaching “Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.” He also taught “The Creative Manager” course at Motorola University. Frank founded One Ball One Village, a nonprofit organization which brings remote villages throughout the world together through building community centers with clean water, sports fields and play supplies.

Frank applies the same creativity, strategic planning and goal achievement processes to his personal life through a passion for riding motorcycles and extreme adventure travel. A few major accomplishments include: winning the Baja 1000 on a motorcycle, racing a sled team in the Iditarod and completing an Antarctic expedition with Cornell University and National Geographic. He always has a new adventure in the works.

Frank lives in Tampa, Florida with his two children and wife Cherri who he met at CPSI in 1999. She also serves as a CPSI leader and is the Head of Growth and Innovation for Seed Strategy.

Judy Bernstein

Judy Bernstein

Board Member

Judy currently serves as Director, Design Thinking Strategy as part of an FCB Health team that uses Creative Problem Solving and Human Centered Design to spark breakthrough thinking and insight-led innovation.  She designs, facilitates, and manages group innovative thinking and insight sessions across a range of brand and organizational needs. Previously, Judy was principal of CBA Full Gallop, an insights and innovation firm that provided qualitative research and facilitation to major manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, Rx, OTC and medical devices. 

She also served the Joint Special Operations University’s Center Design and Innovation as Adjunct Professor of Creative Problem Solving where she had the honor of introducing elite military operatives to the body of knowledge she first encountered at CPSI in 2014. Additionally, she had the pleasure of working as an instructor for the LUMA Institute supporting client teams in developing their ability to apply LUMA’s approach to innovation and problem solving.

Judy holds a MS in Creativity and Change Leadership from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State and a BA in Theater Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Mallory Combemale

Mallory Combemale

Mallory Combemale is a facilitator, entrepreneur and designer of transformative experiences. She is currently a Co-Founder of   Inheritance Project , where she focuses on leading holistic inclusion, leadership development and culture transformation programs for a wide variety of organizations.

Mallory also guides personal healing and transformation, specializing in breathwork, meditation, and trauma-informed approaches to healing. Through   Breath Connection , she empowers individuals with scientifically supported breath practices to improve leadership skills such as emotional intelligence, creativity, collaboration and resilience.

A Singaporean-French-American citizen raised in London, Mallory has always been fascinated with identity and facilitating cross-cultural understanding. She is passionate about empowering leaders with the skills and self-awareness to lead in a diverse, global and uncertain future. Creative problem solving skills are an essential part of this and she is inspired by helping CEF further its educational mission.

Katie Garry

Katie Garry

Katie Garry is a Creative Director at Grey Midwest. During her 15+ year creative advertising career — in agencies and as an entrepreneur — she’s worked with the likes of small-town startups to Fortune 500s in beauty, CPG, fintech, food and beverage, hospitality, among others.  

Katie brings concepts from CPS, Design Thinking and Improv into her work to develop robust visual and verbal storytelling that best communicates the heart of a brand while connecting with the heart and mind of the consumer.

Katie’s perspective to work is through play. She plays with ideas, experiences and challenges until ah-has are uncovered and brains are tuckered out. Katie is someone who grabs attention, but never steals the show. She makes everyone feel seen, amplifies the voices of her team, and serves as a fountain of resources and creativity, asking for nothing in return but to celebrate in the collective success.  

Katie holds an MA in Journalism from the University of Memphis and a dual-BA in Journalism and Organizational Communication from Ohio Northern University, where she served as editor-in-chief of the   Northern Review   and as President of the Delta Zeta sorority. ONU is also where she met her husband, Ryan. They have three young daughters—two who are theatre-minded elementary-schoolers and one toddler who runs the show.    

Nicole Haddad

Nicole Haddad

Nicole Haddad believes wholeheartedly in the power of creativity to fuel innovative thinking. She believes that the key to a thriving culture is confident, courageous individuals and teams who speak up and take risks to reimagine what is possible.

She is the founder of ArtWorks, where she uses creativity to transform the most disengaged, disconnected and burned-out groups into passionate, energetic teams who can tackle their most pressing business challenges with confidence.

As a creative leadership coach and team development facilitator, Haddad helps organizations build thriving cultures through programs that focus on creativity & innovation, cultivating sustainable collaboration, transformative team development, and creative leadership, which help professionals approach problem-solving with a creative mindset so that bigger and better solutions emerge to produce breakthrough results.

Haddad brings over 15 years of experience in advertising, marketing, and creative problem-solving training to students in the form of highly engaging and impactful workshop-style sessions where students learn through purposeful play in a space that encourages tinkering, experimenting, asking thoughtful questions and sharing unique perspectives.

Haddad earned her MBA in marketing and management from SMU. She is a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator and Foursight innovative problem-solving trainer.

Kimberly Hawkins

Kimberly Hawkins

Kimberly   Hawkins   is a Change Management Consultant that specializes in the technology industry.  She has worked as a Human Resources Professional for over 20 years prior to transitioning to the change management discipline. Additionally, she has worked in education as an Adjunct Professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA teaching Human Resources.

Her current interests include understanding how diversity, project management, and creative problem solving can work together to help solve some of the most challenging and complex problems of our times.  She was led to the Creative Problem Solving Institute through her natural curiosity about what she witnessed as disconnect between organization’s promoting creativity but not always supporting cultures that truly support the risk taking and tinkering needed to discover and synergize new ideas.

 She is a Western New York transplant (Albion, New York to be exact) to Atlanta, Georgia.  She is a currently a participant in the year-long Tulsa Remote program sponsored by the Georgie Kaiser Foundation where she lives and works in Tulsa for a year as a remote worker.  She believes the remote workforce is the emerging industry and she is excited to be having this experience and making Tulsa her other home.

She has a undergraduate degree in Sociology and Philosophy from Hamilton College and a Masters in Industrial Labor Relations from Cornell University.  Additional she holds a graduate certificate in project management from Grantham University. She is also on the Board for the East Point Georgia Cultural Enrichment Commission, a graduate of the Atlanta United Way Board Training Program, and a member of the Atlanta Change Management Professional organization.

Erika López

Erika López

Erika is a seasoned sales professional incorporating videogames to the corporate market to improve their training on soft skills. A social person who builds rapport and connects with prospects a clients in a way that impact results when doing business in Latin America, where people buy from people.

Creative problem solver by nature, in the quest of transforming and building awareness on accessibility in all industries from a vision of the world at 4 feet. A quick thinker, embraces the unexpected and likes being challenged. Taking action, getting results and generating enthusiasm are her drivers in all the things she does.

Known by two talents: singing and finding good food.

Liz Monroe-Cook

Liz Monroe-Cook

Liz Monroe-Cook has been a leader at CPSI since 1991. She is a consulting psychologist who began her work as a clinician, but transferred to organizational applications through a qualitative research position at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. She trained moderators at the RIVA Training Institute, and was a frequent presenter and board member at the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QCRA).

Liz has led projects with varied clients including the US Government, corporations, non-profits, professional associations, and institutions of higher learning. She has extensive experience in strategic planning, group idea generation, leadership development, team development, analysis and planning work, and retreats. Her expertise includes an array of deliberate creativity approaches, polarity thinking, communication and relationship skills, emotional intelligence, and group facilitation.

Liz has led many workshops at CPSI, MindCamp Canada, MindCamp Chile, Florida Creativity Weekend, and the Creativity European Association (CREA). In 2008, Liz received the CEF Distinguished Leader Award, and in 2014 the CEF Leadership Service & Commitment Award. She was a Fire and Police Commissioner for six years in the Village of Oak Park, Illinois and served more than four years on the board of directors for the Geneva Foundation, a transitional living and development program for youth 16 to 19. She is currently a Mission Steward for Child’s World America.

At Michigan State University, Liz studied music, history and psychology for her BA in humanities. She earned an MA in counseling and Ph.D. in counseling psychology, also from MSU. She lives in Oak Park (Chicago area) with her husband, Dale, a fellow psychologist. They have two adult children, Brenna and Jonathan.

Melissa St. Clair

Melissa St. Clair

Melissa St. Clair is the Head of Inclusion, Diversity & Equity (ID&E) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for Nuveen, a global investment manager. Melissa has end-to-end responsibility for the strategic planning, delivery, execution and measurement of Nuveen’s International ID&E programming and Corporate Social Responsibility efforts in 22 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Prior to her role at Nuveen, Melissa served as Vice President at TIAA (Nuveen’s parent company), leading the firm’s Inclusion Programming and Innovation and Diversity Strategies team. Prior to her career in ID&E, Melissa managed TIAA’s Contingent Worker Program at TIAA and led the firm’s award-winning and best-in-class Supplier Diversity Program.

Melissa has more than 17 years of experience in communications, staffing and procurement, and diversity-related fields in the financial services industry.

Ms. St. Clair received a bachelor of business administration (B.B.A) in International Business with a French Minor from Texas Tech University.  Melissa serves on the Board of Trustees for the Creative Education Foundation, and the Board of The Sundara Fund, a non-profit whose mission is to empower women and eradicate health and hygiene disparities across the globe. She also co-founded Sundara’s Rise 100 which provides mentorship, seed funding and resources to female entrepreneurs that are building sustainable businesses in low to middle income countries.   Melissa is a founding member of the Women’s Council at Make-A-Wish Metro NY, as well as a wish granter to children with life threatening medical conditions. From 2017-2020, she also served on the steering committee at Lincoln Center Kids which develops musical and artistic performances for neurodiverse audiences, including children with autism and other disabilities.

Melissa is a recipient of the 2020 Women’s eNews “ 21 Leaders for the 21st Century ” award and a Pride Global “ Trailblazing Women” honoree. She is married with two children and resides in London.

Alexander Zorychta

Alexander Zorychta

Alex is obsessed with helping student entrepreneurs find their confidence to take the plunge and help them get to product-market fit. He currently works within Amazon Web Services Startups to help university entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Alex has founded startups in biotech, media, mobile gaming, and social networking, one of which was funded by Y Combinator, and he served as Head of Product for Zealot Interactive. Alex spent most of his career designing and directing student entrepreneurship programming that 4x’d the rate of viable high-growth entrepreneurs at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, using research-backed and relationship-based approaches. Alex has coached thousands of student entrepreneurs 1-on-1 and in workshop formats internationally, the most popular of which has been “Strangers to Best Friends in 45 Minutes” that was first tested at CPSI 2017.

In addition to program design and individual coaching, Alex teaches classes in creativity and entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia. Most recently, he was a full-time faculty member in the McIntire School of Commerce teaching multiple sections of ENTP 1010: Introduction to Entrepreneurship. Before that, he designed and taught STS 3580: Creativity for Invention to undergraduate engineering students based on the rich educational concepts promoted by the Creative Education Foundation, and taught STS 4580/STS 5500: De-Risking Entrepreneurship, a course for both undergraduate and graduate engineering students.

His published work includes “Exploration of Discriminant Validity in Divergent Thinking Tasks: A Meta-Analysis” which explored improvements to the classical ways of measuring creativity, “Harnessing Deliberate Creativity” which was a technical note for business school professors to offer to their MBA students, “Aspiring Entrepreneurs Should Not Major in Entrepreneurship” which made the case for students to supplement with entrepreneurship classes rather than concentrate, and “The Social Mechanism of Supporting Entrepreneurial Projects Beyond the Classroom” which explored using community of practice as the most effective way to endow entrepreneurial mindset.

Alex received his MBA as well as his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia, and is on a hiatus from work toward the M.S. in Creativity and Change Leadership at Buffalo State University.  

CEF’s Lifetime Trustees

Dr. Sidney J. Parnes (1922 – 2013)

Dr. Sidney J. Parnes (1922 – 2013)

Sid Parnes is professor emeritus and founding director of the Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College (1967). Sid met the CEF Founder, Alex Osborn, at the very first CPSI and took the conference content and morphed it into a “How to” conference, piloting this idea in his Creative Retailing Conference in 1956 at the University of Pittsburgh. Impressed with his initiative, Alex recruited Sid to work with him and evolve the model shortly thereafter.

From 1967 to 1984 Sid served as President of the Creative Education Foundation. He was the premier researcher on the development of creative behavior, so much so that he decided to launch The Journal of Creative Behavior (in ’67); the longest running and foremost academic journal dedicated to creativity in the world. He is responsible for assembling the most comprehensive library on creativity with more than 2,400 volumes. Throughout his career, Sid has emphasized two key principles on deliberate creativity. First, creativity is the result of a balance between divergent and convergent thinking and second; everyone can be taught to apply creative behavior in their personal and professional lives.

Gordon A. MacLeod (1926 – 2010)

Retired Partner, Hodgson & Russ LLP

Marion Osborn (1922 – 2008)

Past Secretary, Creative Education Foundation, Inc.

Past Board Chairs / Presidents

Duane wilson.

Chief Operating Officer, Boys and Girls Clubs of St. Joseph’s County

2017 – 2020

Thom Gonyeau

Principal, Mountain View Group

2014 – 2016

Katherine O. Heusner, Ph.D.

2010 – 2014

David Magellan Horth

Senior Designer, Center for Creative Leadership

2004 – 2010

Hedria Lunken

Author, Speaker and Founder of Hedria Consulting

2004 – 2007

John Osborn

2001 – 2004

1997 – 2001

Lyman Randall (1933 – 2009)

1994 – 1997

Dorie A. Shallcross

Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts

Raymond A. Binis

1984 – 1988

Sidney J. Parnes

Co-founder of the International Center for Studies in Creativity

1967 – 1984

Lee Bristol

Former Head of Manufacturing and Advertising, Bristol-Meyers Company

1964 – 1967

Alex F. Osborn (1888 – 1966)

Founder, Creative Education Foundation

1955 – 1964

Trustees Emeriti

Robert f. berner.

Professor Emeritus, University at Buffalo

Louis Gersten (1922 – 2010)

Retired President, Utilo Corporation and Board Member, National Stroke Association

Beatrice Parnes

Doris j. shallcross.

Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts

Paul Torrance, Ph.D. (1915 – 2003)

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  • Life Skills

Creative Conflict Resolving and avoiding conflict in group art projects.

Lesson content.

Putting together a school play, writing a group composition, or creating a class mural can be an incredibly rewarding and fun experience for students.  But with grades at stake, artistic differences, and varying levels of commitment, conflicts between students are par for the course. Here are ten tips to help you avoid and resolve conflicts in creative group projects.

Every individual is important.  

Before a project begins, foster an environment in which students are comfortable expressing themselves. Try this activity: Have students sit in a circle. Hand a ball of string to a student. Ask the students to state their name and an interesting fact about themselves. Then, while holding the end of the string, the student should roll the ball to another student who, in turn, holds the string taut, shares his name and an interesting fact, then rolls the ball to another student. And so on. After everyone has spoken, the students will be linked together by a strong web. Toss an object like a stuffed animal or volleyball into the middle of the web. Just as every single person must hold the string in order to keep the object from falling, every individual's voice is important in a collaborative project.

Cooperate for first-rate art.  

Show students that beautiful works can be created when everyone shares their unique skills and ideas. Amira Westenburger, School Counselor at Rockledge Elementary in Bowie, Maryland, groups students in teams of four for this excellent activity: While playing music, have each group member sit at the corners of a piece of butcher paper. Invite them to draw anything they wish. When the music ends, students must stop drawing and move clockwise to the next corner of the butcher paper. When the music starts again, students must add on to their peer's drawing. After each student has drawn on each corner, students will see first-hand how cooperation can create unique art.

Be a taskmaster. 

Avoid conflict by ensuring everyone involved knows exactly what is expected of them from the get-go. Try drawing up student agreements that list how each student will participate and cooperate. If you find that some students aren't pulling their weight, remind them of their decisions and promises. You could also involve the whole group in creating checklists of tasks for each person. Turn these checklists into rubrics and you can easily assess each student's performance.

Peers can be taskmasters, too.  

Before embarking on a project, tell students they will be filling out rubrics that assess whether each member of the group did their share of the workload. If students know that their peers will be keeping an eye on their performance, slackers often step up to the plate.

Listen first, second, and always.  

Teach students to respect each other by carefully listening. If a student is angry and is expressing his anger to his peers in an excited way, remind his peers to listen to his words rather than watch his body language. This ensures that students listen to a viewpoint rather than react to their peer's anger. If there's a heated conflict, avoid unnecessary arguments by telling students to count to ten before saying anything. In those ten seconds, students should be thinking about what they want to say and how they want to say it. This way, students can catch themselves before blaming or attacking another.

Act it out.  

It is often difficult for students to be objective about a conflict, so it is helpful for them to hear others describe the situation. Lillian Hasko, Dance teacher in Silver Spring, MD, suggests that students involved in a conflict should explain their view of the conflict to another student who will represent them as their "actor." The actor will work with students to represent each side fairly. The conflict is then presented to the class or larger group, who will offer suggestions for a resolution. When all suggestions have been shared, students in the conflict can provide additional suggestions before deciding on the best solution.

Role-play real-life conflicts.  

When students have different cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds, a wide variety of perspectives is the norm. If students take the time to examine conflicts that occur outside of the school community, they can learn to develop empathy for others' perspectives. In Dr. Robert McCarthy's American Civilization class at the Key School in Annapolis, MD, students are asked to role-play leading figures in Supreme Court cases, including the plaintiff and defendant, lawyers, and the nine Supreme Court justices. Before the "trial," students must conduct considerable research to gain a sense of the cultural, religious, and socioeconomic background of the person they are role-playing.

Two heads can be better than one.  

One of the most common conflicts among students is learning how to negotiate. When two students both have brilliant—but different—ideas about how a work should look or sound, help them see that both ideas might be able to exist together. For example, if one student believes that a costume should be made of tulle and another prefers a shiny fabric, perhaps the costume can include both fabrics, and would, as a result, have more texture and variety.

Exercise your mediating muscles.  

Ideally, students will work out conflicts on their own. Students can also be trained to act as peer mediators. But in more complicated scenarios, a mediator can provide a much-needed neutral viewpoint. Help alleviate conflict of opinions by meeting with the parties involved. Have each side write down their viewpoint, including reasons why their viewpoint would lead to successful results. Then have them critique their own ideas, including whether their ideas are logistically possible. Invite each side to share their opinions, then help them decide what would be best to attain the main goals of the project.

Who gets to use the markers first?  

Students must learn to respect each other's opinions at a very early age. In kindergarten, students are tasked with keeping their frustrations in check if they are not given their first choice. It is important to encourage students to voice their opinions and learn to bend or negotiate when their opinions are countered. Whether deciding who gets to use the markers first or which screenplay will be chosen for a high school play, persuade students to express their ideas and encourage their peers to challenge them.

Conflict resolution is a life lesson. Teach students that voicing their opinions—as well as negotiation and compromise—are indispensable skills in the real world, whether in the field of the arts and humanities or the sphere of business and politics.

Kennedy Center Logo

Theresa Sotto 

Joanna McKee

December 9, 2019

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creative group of education

15 minute read

Russian Federation

Secondary education.

Prior to the Revolution of 1917, the prototypes of modern secondary schools were gymnasiums and lyceums. The first gymnasiums opened in the early 1700s, with Russian as the language of instruction. These were followed by other secondary schools, which were affiliated with the Moscow (1755) and Kazan (1758) Universities. The lyceums introduced at the beginning of the nineteenth century were a combination of primary and secondary schools. The legislation of 1864 established two types of gymnasiums: classical and real. The curricula of the former included ancient history and classical languages, whereas the latter gave preference to sciences. The Charter of 1871 declared classical gymnasiums the only type of educational institutions representing complete secondary education. Only in 1912 did the graduates of real gymnasiums acquire the right to apply to universities.

The October Revolution (1917) declared the schools to be unified, labor, and polytechnic. As a result, general education in secondary schools was combined with vocational training. Strong emphasis was also made on the indoctrination courses expected to propagate Communist ideology. The regulation of 1934 established two types of secondary general education: incomplete seven-year and complete ten-year education. The law of 1959 extended the length of study in complete secondary schools to eleven years, but in 1966 it was cut back to ten years.

The socioeconomic crisis of the 1980s endangered the state of Russian secondary education: its uniformity, lack of educational choice, and social apathy alienated students from the school. The reform of 1984 declared a number of goals to enhance the quality of education, but the state failed to realize most of them. The decision to lower the school age from seven to six years once again extended complete education to a total of eleven years. In the early 1990s, schools acquired the right to choose curricula and textbooks, to diversify the teaching process and introduce different profiles of education.

Primary and secondary level grades are usually located in the same building and are regarded as one school. Nevertheless, there is a major difference between the levels: if in primary grades most of the classes are taught by the same teacher, on the secondary level there is a different teacher for each subject. Students are transferred from primary to secondary school as a class of about thirty, who continue on together as a group. One of the subject teachers is appointed their klassny rukovoditel (academic director) in order to give them guidance, watch their progress, provide leadership for extracurricular and recreational activities, and keep in touch with the parents. Parent-teacher conferences called "parents meetings" are devoted to the students' achievements, discipline, and organizational issues. They also elect representatives to the school parent committee, which assists the teachers and administration.

The academic year in all the schools begins on September 1, which is celebrated as the Day of Knowledge, and continued until the end of May, exclusive of the examination period. The year is divided into quarters. Students go to school five or six days a week (depending on the decision of the school administration) and have up to 36 lessons per week. Classes last 40 to 45 minutes. The intervals between them are from 5 to 25 minutes long, and there is no additional lunch break. Since most of the school buildings cannot accommodate all the students at once, schools usually operate on a shift schedule.

The subjects in the curricula are grouped into seven areas of knowledge: languages and literature (includes Russian, as well as other native and foreign languages; the number of hours allotted for the Russian language can be different and depends on the linguistic situation in the area, as well as peculiarities of a particular school); mathematics (includes algebra, geometry, logic, statistics); sciences (includes physics, chemistry, biology); society (includes Russian and world history, law, foundations of modern civilization, world economics, international relations, and sociology); art (includes fine arts, music, world culture, and courses reflecting the cultural peculiarities of the region where the school is located); labor (includes labor education, professional training, and technical drawing); and physical training.

The number of hours in each area is subdivided into the federal, regional, and school components. The curricula comprise an invariable part, which is mandatory for all the schools, and a variable part, within which schools are free to make decisions of their own. The programs also provide for individual consultations, electives and optional courses, which are often taught by invited university professors, actors, artists, or people of other professions. For the last thirty years the number of subjects at schools have doubled. It can be as high as seventeen to twenty, therefore the schedule of classes is different every day of the week.

Though computer literacy instruction is part of the programs, it is ineffective because in most of the schools the equipment is outdated or nonexistent. The lessons of physical training take place in the gym or on the sports grounds. Due to the lack of adequate equipment and poor organization, sports activities are not very popular with Russian students. Insufficient state financing compels schools to look for sponsors and seek additional funds to improve their facilities. Some innovative schools also work in close conjunction with universities, local libraries, museums, and industrial enterprises.

Students in grades five to eight are evaluated at the end of each quarter, and students in grades ten to eleven twice a year (after the second and the fourth quarter). All secondary school students receive a cumulative grade in each subject at the end of the academic year. Officially the grading is based on a four-point scale: five, excellent; four, good; three, fair; and two, poor (failure). Grade one (very poor) is usually an emotional response to unsatisfactory performance and is used as a disciplinary measure. Students are promoted to the next grade on the basis of academic achievement during the year and the results of the annual examinations (oral or written) in Russian and mathematics (obligatory for all) and one or more subjects of their own choice. Those who fail in two or more disciplines either repeat the year or are transferred to a class of compensatory education. Students with a failing grade in one subject are allowed to go on to the next grade, but they have to complete their work on the subject. People who are unable to cope with a particular level cannot go on to the next one. Excellent students of grades five to eight are exempt from examinations. However, everybody is required to take exams after grade nine, because it is the final year of basic (incomplete) secondary school. After it some students go on to secondary professional schools; others continue with grades ten and eleven.

The examinations for the Certificate of Secondary Education, also called a "maturity certificate," conclude the eleventh grade. They are prepared by the federal authorities and strictly monitored. The school can offer five or seven exams, which always include an essay on Russian literature and a written test in mathematics. Other subjects can be chosen by the student. Those who get all excellent grades for the last four semesters and the final examinations are awarded a gold medal. Students with a maximum of two good grades (all the others being excellent) receive a silver medal. The medals significantly improve their chances to be admitted to a competitive higher educational institution.

The democratization of the school system, greater flexibility in curricula development, and encouragement of innovations have opened up the way for numerous experiments at the secondary school level. In 1998-1999, alongside with regular secondary schools, the network included 2,547 lyceums and gymnasiums with 1,700,000 students. The old terms have acquired a new meaning. The word "lyceum" has come to denote an innovative secondary school with a specialization in a particular area (e.g., mathematics, law, ecology, pedagogy), which is attached to a higher educational institution. "Gymnasium" is a nontraditional humanitarian school with a comprehensive program and the study of at least two foreign languages. To be granted the status of a lyceum or gymnasium, schools are expected to prove that they have highly qualified teachers, advanced programs, and adequate facilities. Among the first institutions to receive this status were the schools with intensive foreign language programs, which had been established under Khrushchev (the 1960s) and had gained popularity for producing nearly bilingual graduates. Though officially these schools are expected to enroll all the children of eligible age from the local community, the entry there is becoming more and more competitive.

The schools for the gifted and talented, which work in conjunction with theaters and conservatories, provide advanced training in ballet, music, and performing arts. Children with outstanding abilities for mathematics, biology, physics, and other sciences selected during nationwide competitions ( Olympiads ) are enrolled in specialized educational establishments, which are affiliated with universities and serve as laboratory schools or experimental grounds.

Those who decide to combine work with parallel secondary education can study at part-time evening schools. Due to the low quality of instruction and the inability to compete with daytime institutions, enrollment in such schools is steadily decreasing. Boarding schools, which in the late 1950s were seen as the Communist school of the future, now predominantly accommodate orphans, children deprived of proper parental care, and students from remote rural areas, who do not have a regular private school in their locality. In 1998-1999 the number of children in boarding schools and orphanages was more than 96,000. Most of such schools, as well as children's homes, are poorly financed and maintained. Their existence is a struggle for survival, rather than a strive for innovation.

The state also operates special facilities, which provide secondary education for the blind or partially sighted, deaf or partially hearing students, individuals with speech defects, and other health problems. The educational process in such schools is adjusted to the students' special needs and trains them in skills, which can be useful in their adult life. Alcoholism, crime and other social problems account for the growing number of institutions for mentally retarded and physically handicapped children, as well as closed correctional establishments for juvenile delinquents.

A school is headed by the Director who is personally responsible for the general management of the school life. As the main administrator, the Director deals with the educational process, staffing, the financial state of the school, the maintenance of its facilities, as well as food and security. Deputy directors ( zavuchi ) take care of particular areas of work (curricula, schedules, extracurricular activities, etc.). The highest organ of school self-government is the pedsovet (pedagogical council), which deals with fundamental aspects of the school life. It is chaired by the Director and includes all the deputy directors and educational staff. The Pedsovet adopts the school Charter ( Ustav ), defines the organizational structure of the school administration, makes decisions about educational programs, choice of curricula, forms and methods of teaching, approves the students' final grades, cooperates with the parents committee, educational institutions, and NGOs.

In the situation when schools have to deal with numerous economic difficulties, it has become vitally important to preserve and support the educational network, especially in the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. Due to insufficient financing, only 46.3 percent of schools have the necessary facilities; and one third of the buildings need repairs. There is no construction of new educational establishments occurring in rural areas. Many schools are overcrowded, 32 percent of them have to work in two or three shifts.

Due to low social and territorial mobility of students and teachers, people living in different parts of the country do not have equal access to high-quality programs. It is necessary to improve and diversify the content of education, develop new methods, technologies, curricula, and textbooks. Another aim is to make various forms of education accessible for the gifted and talented students living in remote areas. The transition to a market economy requires paying more attention to professional orientation and programs for individuals who combine their education with work.

The principle of continuity between different stages of schooling is declared, but not truly implemented. The number of secondary school graduates, who can enter higher educational institutions without additional training (private tutoring), is steadily decreasing. Serious efforts have to be made to bridge the gap between the content of secondary and higher education. In order to support students from rural schools (68.9 percent of the total number), it is essential to intensify professional guidance, organize specialized classes, and search for other forms of cooperation between VUZs and rural schools. The introduction of unified state examinations is expected to make the admission to higher educational institutions more objective.

One of the long-term goals is a gradual transmission to a 12-year secondary education (4-6-2 model), which involves the development of new curricula, alleviates the students' work load, and allows for the individual choice of subjects according to the students interests and abilities. The reform is preceded by a period of experimentation: beginning in 2001, five educational institutions in every region are working along the lines of the new program. By 2015 the reform will embrace ninety percent of all the students.

The development of specialized professional education in Russia was strongly encouraged by Peter the Great and started with the opening of the Artillery School (1701), Medical School (1707), Engineering School (1709), Navy Academy (1715), and other institutions. By 1914-1915 there were more than 400 professional schools with 54,000 students, who were trained to work in construction, industry, transportation, medicine, and agriculture. During the first years after the October Revolution the Soviet government, which made special emphasis on vocational training, established 450 new institutions called technicums.

In the 1930s the network continued to grow; the night and correspondence departments were opened for those who combined studies with work. During the Second World War the vocational training system prepared 340,000 workers and specialists. When adults were recruited into the Army, teenage graduates replaced them in factory shops. By the late 1940s there were 4,000 vocational schools and technicums with 1,007,700 students. After three more decades of steady growth, the enrollment figures became stabilized and in the 1990s started decreasing (4,611,000 students in 1980, 4,231,000 in 1990).

Vocational institutions were subordinated to the republic, regional, and local administrative organs in order to meet the needs of particular territories. New types of schools (professional colleges and lyceums) combined general and vocational training with the purpose to improve the students' economic, legal, and industrial competence. By 1998-1999 there were 2,649 state and municipal secondary professional schools with 2,052,000 students.

The system encompasses two levels of education. The initial level comprises professional technical schools (PTU) and centers of continuing professional education, which train skilled workers and paraprofessionals for blue-collar jobs. The course lasts from one to two years for professional training only, and three to four years if it is combined with general secondary education.

The types of schools at the secondary professional level include: technicums (or polytechnicums ) (independent institutions, which predominantly train middle-level technicians, lower managers, shop foremen for industry, transport, construction, and agriculture); uchilishcha (schools, which prepare specialists for non-production spheres, including preprimary and primary school teachers, nurses, circus performers, and librarians); and colleges (secondary specialized institutions, which can be either independent or function as structural divisions of a university, institute, or academy).

Other types of vocational institutions are farmers' schools, commercial schools, and specialized schools aimed at the social rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents. Organizationally, all the schools are subdivided into state, municipal, and non-state institutions. In order to acquire a legal status, they have to be accredited by the state. The prerequisite for admission is basic (nine-year) or complete (eleven-year) secondary education. Prospective students have to take entrance examinations, which in some cases can be substituted by an interview. Preference in admission to free education is given to applicants who are getting professional training for the first time, as well as those who are referred to the institution by employment agencies.

The length of study at schools, which offer an mixture of professional and general education, is from three to four years. The state standards, adopted in 1992 and 1996, introduced a completely new approach to the structuring of the permanent and variable parts of the curricula. They include the federal, national, and regional components. The federal component defines the obligatory minimum content of educational programs, maximum workload, and the required level of student training. In their turn, the national and regional components reflect the specific needs of a particular locality and ethnic group. The standards have to be reviewed at least once every ten years. The new arrangement allows for adjustments, which take into consideration the peculiarities of the natural environment, climate, and the demand for certain skills and occupations. It aims at training specialists of wider profiles, who would have more professional mobility and adaptability to the changing social conditions. The mandatory minimum in the curriculum provides for the equivalency of training on all the territory of Russia.

The curricula, built along the lines of the state standards, include practical and theoretical courses. The annual number of hours can be from 4,418 to 5,744. Approximately one-third of them are devoted to general education (710 to 800 hours for humanitarian subjects, 500 to 680 hours for sciences, and 263 to 435 hours for electives and optional courses). In technical schools special emphasis is made on the basics of technology, economics, law, organization of production, intensive work methods, and use of new equipment. In addition to traditional topics, students get acquainted with new trends in commerce, management, marketing, auditing, and computer science. The educational process consists of lectures, tutorials, laboratory work, consultations, tests, excursions, simulation games, and practical training. The weekly study load is 36 to 38 hours. Students are organized in groups of 25 to 30 students (12 to 15 students for complex specialties). An academic director or a master of production training, attached to each group, is responsible for developing the students' vocational skills. Practical training usually takes place at the school shops or corresponding enterprises. At some schools the course culminates in the defense of a final paper called a diploma project.

Vocational schools are administered by a council representing all categories of employees, students, and other interested parties (enterprises, organizations, or parents). The council is chaired by the Director, who is responsible for the educational process, the school's financial state, the students' health and security, and recreational activities. In 1998-1999 there were 123,200 teachers employed in the network of secondary professional education. Most of them were graduates of industrial pedagogical institutes, higher, and specialized secondary institutions.

Educators are trying to find a rational correlation of theoretical and practical knowledge—a calculated balance of creative thinking and professional skills. In order to intensify the professional, social, and territorial mobility of specialists and make them more competitive on the job market, it is necessary to extend and combine the existing specialties and advance the quality of education. The educational tendencies encompass competitive enrollment; diversified curricula; financial reform of the network; cooperation of the state, businesses, trade unions, and educational institutions; and attraction of investments into the sphere of vocational training.

Additional topics

  • Russian Federation - Higher Education
  • Russian Federation - Preprimary Primary Education

Education - Free Encyclopedia Search Engine Global Education Reference Russian Federation - History Background, Constitutional Legal Foundations, Educational System—overview, Preprimary Primary Education, Secondary Education

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10 Creative Group Activities for Students to Build Classroom Engagement for Middle & High School

creative group of education

Do you remember when you were in elementary school and every day consisted of playing games, doing arts and crafts, and taking naps?! Yeah, those were the days. While education evolves as students grow older, we believe creativity and game time should remain a priority in the classroom!

That is why we have come up with 50 group activities for students that you can use in your classroom to build creativity and collaboration. This blog will only cover 10, but will hopefully inspire you to check out some of our project-based learning materials that will take your class to the next level!

What Can You Expect to Learn from this Blog:

Unleashing the power of creativity in the classroom.

Creativity is a vital skill that should be nurtured and celebrated in the classroom. While the traditional focus on academic knowledge and standardized testing has its place, fostering creativity has become increasingly essential in preparing students for the complex challenges of real life as we know it. Here are 5 skills we believe students can gain from exploring their creative side…

creative group of education

  • Cultivating critical thinking

Allowing students to explore, question, and analyze ideas beyond the boundaries of conventional thought, encourages them to consider alternative solutions, consider multiple perspectives, and evaluate information critically. When students have the opportunity to apply their knowledge in creative and fun ways, they begin to develop a more agile and inquisitive mind that keeps them excited about learning!

creative group of education

  • Enhancing self-expression and confidence 

Creative thinking provides a platform for students to express themselves freely, nurturing their self-confidence and individuality. Students are able to develop a sense of pride and ownership over their work when given the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, experiment with new ideas, and think outside the box. This process empowers students to become active participants in their own education, allowing their voices to be heard and ideas to flourish. 

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  • Developing collaboration and communication skills

Collaboration is a cornerstone of success in the modern world, and creativity plays a pivotal role in fostering effective teamwork. Through group projects, creative problem-solving, and hands-on learning, students learn to communicate their thoughts, listen actively to others, and build upon collective ideas. This collaborative environment encourages empathy, cooperation, compromise, and the development of essential social skills that are crucial for future personal and professional endeavors. 

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  • Encouraging adaptability and resilience

The ability to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world is paramount. Students already have a fair amount of experience with adaptability after living through the pandemic, but it’s important to continue cultivating this mindset in the classroom. This will equip students with the necessary skills to embrace uncertainty, navigate challenges, and find innovative solutions. These qualities build a strong foundation for lifelong learning so that students feel prepared to tackle obstacles in every area of their life.

creative group of education

  • Promoting holistic development

Creativity nurtures a well-rounded education by integrating arts, humanities, and sciences. It encourages students to explore various subjects from diverse perspectives, building a holistic understanding of the world. Incorporating creative initiatives into different disciplines helps students appreciate the interplay between logic and imagination, leading to a more comprehensive and enriching learning experience.

Building creativity into your daily curriculum doesn’t have to be challenging or a ton of work for you! There are so many ways to implement fun and engaging activities for your students that remind them of the importance of finding joy in their work. There are even creative tools that students can use to help with studying and retention!

Check some of these ideas out…

10 Group Activities For Students

Quick, 5-15min activities to fill the gaps in your day!

#1: Build a tower from scratch 

creative group of education

In a group, students must look for anything they can find to build a tower from scratch. They will have 10 minutes to build the tallest tower possible. The group with the tallest, most stable tower wins!

Materials: Blocks, cards, pencils, empty boxes, and anything that students can use to build the tower.

#2: Bingo, studying edition 

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Players start with a grid filled with answers and they cover up spaces as the corresponding item is called from the Bingo "caller." The questions and answers on the Bingo card are all related to whatever concepts are being discussed in class at the time. In order to win the game, players must be able to answer each Bingo question that is pulled correctly. Winners must make a complete line going vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. 

Materials: Bingo cards, construction paper, printing paper, expo markers for bingo marking, plastic paper slips

#3: Peg Board Matching game 

creative group of education

This matching activity allows students to familiarize themselves with companies & the problem they solve by placing rubber bands in the correct pegs. The concepts can also be switched out for whatever is being taught in the classroom, and used as a study tool! 

Materials: Cardboard, rubber bands, push pins, writing utensils, paper, glue, marker

Mid-length activities that will likely take less than 30min!

#4: Entrepreneur/Business Jeporady, studying edition

creative group of education

Set up a Jeopardy board with questions about various concepts that are being learned in class to test students' knowledge and prepare them for upcoming tests and projects in a fun and engaging way! 

Materials: Paper, writing tools, & prizes OR use Google Slides or Canva for presentation templates

#5: Create a unique product

creative group of education

Give students 20 minutes or less to create a product out of random items in the classroom (tissue boxes, paper clips, etc), OR draw it on paper, OR design it using a digital design platform like Canva. This product should serve a specific function that solves some kind of problem they see in their life. 

Materials: Rubber bands, tissue boxes, napkins, notebook paper, paper towel rolls, computer, cardstock, pencils, etc. 

#6: Blind artist activity (can be related to class concepts or be random)

creative group of education

Pair students & place them in a position back-to-back. One will hold a picture & describe what the picture is, whereas the other student will have to draw an image according to the description. The picture and description can be related to a class concept to be used as a study tool, or be completely random and just be used as a fun way for students to express their artistic side. 

Materials: Paper, pencil, paint, markers, etc. 

Longer activities that will take up 30min or more! 

#7: Create an advertisement 

creative group of education

With a group, students will create an advertisement for a product or service idea that they have been working on, or build off of an existing brand! It could be anything from a commercial video, to a billboard ad, or a social media campaign.

Materials: Recording devices, editing devices, design platforms, computer 

#8: Educational movie day (link to blog) 

creative group of education

If you're looking for a break and want to have a movie day that is still educational and engaging for your students, check out our blog post  "10 Fun Entrepreneur Movies & TV Shows to Watch with Your Students "

Materials: Internet access, screen/ projector for playing

#9: The Envelope Please  

creative group of education

Have students write 10 facts about themselves on paper & place them into their own envelopes that will be shuffled & read aloud to the group. The other players will guess the identity of the envelope in hand. 

Another way to use this activity is by placing various descriptions and definitions of educational concepts into the envelope to be used as a study tool! As they are read aloud, students have to guess which ideas relate to specific concepts.

Materials: Envelopes, papers, pens

#10: 2 Truths and a Lie, studying edition

creative group of education

A game that helps your students practice True or False questions as a study tool! By having them brainstorm three "facts" about concepts they are learning — two of the facts will be true, and one will be a lie. Students will be able to test their knowledge by figuring out which concept isn’t true. 

Materials: none needed

In an era that demands innovation, adaptability, and critical thinking, creativity emerges as a vital skill that must be cultivated in the classroom. B y embracing creativity, YOU can unlock the full potential of your students, empowering them to become lifelong learners, confident individuals, and active contributors to society . It is through creativity that students develop the skills needed to shape the world and address the challenges of tomorrow. So let us help you embrace creativity in education, igniting young minds and paving the way for a brighter and more imaginative future.

If you want even more projects, check out our weekly project newsletter for teachers !

Get Full Projects for Your Students!

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IMAGES

  1. 9 Creative Teaching Ideas That Will Improve Student Learning Outcomes

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  2. Cultivating the Culture of Creativity

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  3. Group of Little Kids Working on Project with Teacher during Creative

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  4. Cooperative Learning: Making Group Work Productive

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  5. World Center for Creative Education

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  6. Human Resource

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COMMENTS

  1. Creative Group of Education Company Profile & Overview

    The overall rating of Creative Group of Education is 3.0, with Career growth being rated at the top and given a rating of 5.0. However, Company culture is rated the lowest at 1.0. To know first hand how is it like to work at Creative Group of Education read detailed reviews by job profile, department and location in the reviews section.

  2. Creative Learning in Education

    Within the context of schools and classrooms, the process of creative learning can range from smaller scale contributions to one's own and others' learning (e.g., a student sharing a unique way of thinking about a math problem) to larger scale and lasting contributions that benefit the learning and lives of people in and beyond the walls of the classroom (e.g., a group of students develop ...

  3. Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How to Foster Creativity in

    Help students know when it's appropriate to be creative. For example, help them see the contexts when creativity is more or less helpful—in a low-stakes group project versus a standardized state assessment. Use creative instructional strategies, models, and methods as much as possible in a variety of domains. Model creativity for students ...

  4. Cultivating creativity in classroom learning

    The Edge. Sawyer describes in his research that: (1) creative learning requires that students create their own knowledge, a constructivist process that involves emergence; (2) creative learning requires collaborative emergence, with teacher and students working together to build new knowledge; (3) collaborative emergence occurs in the presence ...

  5. How to Inspire Creativity in the Classroom

    For instance, during the planning stages of a group project vs. during a standardized test. Help students to adapt to different learning styles and methods of communication / knowledge sharing. ... MS in Creative Education and Entrepreneurship and post-bachelor's certificate in Creativity and Innovation and how you can further your own learning ...

  6. Full article: Teaching creatively and teaching for creativity

    Abstract. The distinction and relationship between teaching creatively and teaching for creativity identified in the report from the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (Citation NACCCE, 1999), is examined by focusing on empirical research from an early years school, known for its creative approach.The examination uses four characteristics of creativity and pedagogy ...

  7. What Is Creativity in Education? A Qualitative Study of International

    Timothy J. Patston was the inaugural Coordinator of Creativity and Innovation at Geelong Grammar School, founding the Centre For Creative Education. He is a Senior Adjunct at the Centre For Change and Complexity in Learning, University of South Australia, and a Senior Fellow of the Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne.

  8. Understanding Creativity

    Understanding the learning that happens with creative work can often be elusive in any K-12 subject. A new study from Harvard Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Karen Brennan, and researchers Paulina Haduong and Emily Veno, compiles case studies, interviews, and assessment artifacts from 80 computer science teachers across the K-12 space.

  9. What creativity really is

    Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations.

  10. Teaching Creatively in Higher Education: The Roles of Personal

    The interviews were semi-structured and the interview guide was developed using relevant literature and revolved around the overall research theme: (a) perceptions of creative teaching, and (b) other factors influencing creative teaching practices in higher education. Each focus group had a moderator and an observer who asked follow-up questions.

  11. Creative group of education...

    Creative group of education passionately believe that the nation's future lies in the hands of the teachers, who shape kids into better citizens and...

  12. Collaborative creativity among education professionals in a co-design

    1. Introduction. Creative collaboration is increasingly recognized as essential in 21st-century education for both students and their teachers (Baruah & Paulus, 2019; Robinson, 2015; Sawyer, 2015, 2021).However, most existing studies on collaborative creativity in educational contexts have focused on students' creative teamwork and/or collaborative learning environments.

  13. Human Resource

    View Human Resource - Creative Group of Education's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Human Resource - has 1 job listed on their profile. See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover Human Resource -'s connections and jobs at similar companies.

  14. 10 Creative Ways to Better Engage Your Students

    8. Whiteboard Splash and Gallery Walk. Whiteboard Splash (sometimes known as "chalkboard splash" or "graffiti wall") involves students responding to a prompt with words or pictures to explain an idea or concept by writing on the whiteboard (or large chart paper).

  15. What you need to know about culture and arts education

    Learners engaged in culture and arts education have better academic and non-academic learning outcomes. Engagement in various art forms, such as music, dance, and visual arts, can enhance academic achievements, reading skills, creative and critical thinking, agility and collaboration skills.Engagement in such education also correlates with improved attendance, stress reduction, resilience ...

  16. PDF Engaging the Adult Learner Generational Mix

    higher education today, Baby Boomers, born between 1943 and 1960; Generation-X, born between 1960 and 1980; and the most recent generation, Millennia, born between 1981 - 2002 (Goldman & Schmalz, 2006). Each of these generations brings with it a special set of characteristics that tend to influence learning preferencesWhile the .

  17. About

    The Creative Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization of leaders in the field of creativity theory and practice. ... professional associations, and institutions of higher learning. She has extensive experience in strategic planning, group idea generation, leadership development, team development, analysis and ...

  18. Pyotr Franzevich Lesgaft

    For Pyotr Franzevich Lesgaft — biologist, anatomist, educationalist and social reformer — was not only the founder of the modern system of physical education in tsarist Russia; it was he more than anyone else who made the most lasting impression on contemporary Soviet physical education. His seminal role is attested to in his own land today ...

  19. Creative Conflict

    Creative Conflict. Resolving and avoiding conflict in group art projects. Putting together a school play, writing a group composition, or creating a class mural can be an incredibly rewarding and fun experience for students. But with grades at stake, artistic differences, and varying levels of commitment, conflicts between students are par for ...

  20. Who are Brookes Education Group?

    Brookes Education Group (BEG) was created by a small group of experienced educators, school owners in 2015 in response to an exponential demand for the development of new international schools around the world. That group which has school leaders from Canada, the US, China and the UK became the board of BEG.

  21. Creative Group Economics

    The Creative Group Economics Internship Program is a comprehensive and inclusive initiative catering to students from diverse educational backgrounds. Our goal is to bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world application, fostering a dynamic learning environment that prepares participants for the challenges and opportunities that ...

  22. Russian Federation

    The socioeconomic crisis of the 1980s endangered the state of Russian secondary education: its uniformity, lack of educational choice, and social apathy alienated students from the school. The reform of 1984 declared a number of goals to enhance the quality of education, but the state failed to realize most of them.

  23. York Creative Education Group

    Crochet Workshops focusing on Well-Being, Team Building, DEI Initiatives, and STEAM education for organizations, educational institutions, youth programs, civic groups, and other business entities. A unique Creative Education experience.

  24. 10 Creative Group Activities For Students To Build Classroom ...

    Yeah, those were the days. While education evolves as students grow older, we believe creativity and game time should remain a priority in ... Through group projects, creative problem-solving, and hands-on learning, students learn to communicate their thoughts, listen actively to others, and build upon collective ideas. This collaborative ...