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problems, promising only feedback and discussion (no grades) as a result of their efforts. Or we might invite students to engage in new cardiovascular fitness activities, even though they may not feel completely comfortable with them, and then praise them for trying something new, followed by a reflection on the results in order to improve their performance. Fostering creativity means attending to not only what students do but also how they do it in our classrooms. Understanding the qualities of creativity supports our work toward developing these qualities in our learners.
Creativity Across Contexts
For the sake of practicality, teachers may find it helpful to explore the nature of creativity within various content areas. Teachers can develop creativity in every subject area at every grade level—they just have to imagine new ways for learning to emerge. Table 1.1 explores ways to develop creativity within and across content areas.
Table 1.1: Accessing Creativity in Various Content Areas
| Content Area | Ways Teachers Can Develop Student Creativity |
| English Language Arts | ♦ Allow students voice and choice in their work.♦ Use leading questions to help students identify the purpose for and meaning within their work.♦ Have students revise and review their work to enhance, elaborate, refine, and focus.♦ Combine ideas across texts.♦ Let students use varied modalities to enhance their message (for example, images, video, digital tools, sound effects, maps, voice-overs).♦ Invite students to respond to texts in ways that matter to them (for example, choose a song to go with the text, write a letter to a friend, design a commercial). |
| Mathematics | ♦ Engage learners in open-ended, interdisciplinary, and real-world processes.♦ Create problems where the steps are not formulaic and the solutions are not predetermined; reinforce original and flexible approaches.♦ Provide open-ended materials and loose parts (for example, materials like buttons, beads, nuts and bolts).♦ Connect mathematics to real-life applications.♦ Invite students to create problems.♦ Provide mathematics artifacts and invite students to form questions.♦ Engage in complex mathematics talks (exchanges of mathematical ideas and problem-solving strategies). |
| Science | ♦ Engage in experimentation.♦ Seek connections.♦ Invite students into real-life problems and challenges.♦ Generate questions and identify potential errors.♦ Allow students to choose materials, methods for sharing research, and audiences for their work. |
| Social Studies or History | ♦ Challenge students to propose solutions to world challenges.♦ Prompt students to imagine social or political structures under a variety of conditions or variables.♦ Design tools or resources to enhance a need (for example, build a tool to drain a playground puddle or create a resource to support students new to the school).♦ Have students relate personal identity with social realities.♦ Connect the present to the past.♦ Allow students to engage in a variety of artifacts (for example, maps, data) and invite questions. |
| Health Education | ♦ Ask students to craft supports and plans to address health-related challenges.♦ Have students examine relationships (between factors, structures, organizations, and emotions).♦ Explore issues from individual and societal perspectives.♦ Challenge students to propose impacts, solutions, and future concerns. |
| Physical Education | ♦ Encourage students to design new activities, games, or events.♦ Have students craft a plan to achieve a desired outcome.♦ Ask students to propose solutions to fitness-related challenges.♦ Challenge students to invent and organize drills and activities that enhance performance and precision. |
| Arts Education | ♦ Encourage students to express a unique vision or message through artwork.♦ Challenge students to improvise and elaborate.♦ Have students combine elements (notes, tone, line, shape, movement, voice) in personally meaningful ways (a score, a play, a painting, an installation, a dance).♦ Ask students to select or curate components and items.♦ Allow students to engage in a performance as a performer or a viewer. |
| Practical and Applied Arts | ♦ Have students use practical skills to imagine new products, new applications, and new designs.♦ Ask students to apply resources (ingredients, materials) in new and unique ways.♦ Encourage students to curate and make decisions; consider many variables when designing. |
| Foreign Languages | ♦ Ask students to imagine multiple ways to communicate meaning.♦ Instruct students to craft personal messages.♦ Guide students in synthesizing isolated information to generate new meaning.♦ Synthesize a variety of strategies to comprehend meaning. |
| Business and Career Education | ♦ Challenge students to build on the ideas of existing businesses.♦ Have students identify societal needs for development of products.♦ Ask students to collaborate in teams to design business plans.♦ Prompt students to imagine a variety of career options and the requirements for them.♦ Encourage students to invent new careers. |
Source: Sawyer, 2006; Smutny & von Fremd, 2009.
For more in-depth examples of how students might practice creativity in mathematics and English language arts, see figure B.1 (pages 204–208) and figure B.2 (pages 208–212) in appendix B.
Threats to Creativity
In order to develop this kind of organic creativity in our classrooms, teachers need to be aware of those factors that may reduce or even inhibit its development. Table 1.2 captures some of these potential threats to creativity.
Table 1.2: Detailing Threats to Creativity
| Threat | Explanation |
| Right Answers | When the goal is arriving at the correct solution, product, or understanding, the divergent thinking required during creative processes is limited. There is a time for right answers but not when creativity is the goal. |
| Teacher Control | When teachers control the brainstorming, drafting, or revision stages, it stops learner creativity in its tracks. Help-seeking behavior is critical for the teacher-student relationship during times of creativity, but control over the creative process must rest with the learner. Hovering can also inhibit freedom to explore because students may feel overly monitored. |
| Lack of Purpose | When our efforts hold meaning, our motivation and investment are authentic and personal. Tasks that hold little purpose or relevance for students make creative work within those tasks a tremendous challenge for even the most compliant student. |
| High Stakes | When learners believe their teacher will judge or value (including grade) processes and products too early and without time for revision, risk taking and creative approaches might disappear, and the quest for compliance may take over. Premature grading and a focus on competition or comparison can threaten the creative process. |
| External Rewards | Studies demonstrate the devastating effect of external rewards on creative outcomes (Amabile, 1996; Torrance, 1965). The desirable state of flow depends on intrinsic motivation. Even praise can shift the learning away from exploration, toward the search for even more praise. |
| Negative Self-Talk | Student and teacher beliefs about their creative abilities can determine whether students develop creative qualities. Negative self-talk and a belief that only a few possess creativity reflect a fixed mindset (the assumption that abilities are static and cannot be changed in any meaningful way; Dweck, 2006) that yields little creative output. This kind of thinking can also lead to learned helplessness in students, which is not productive. |
| Limited Understanding or Skill | Creativity emerges from skill and understanding. In order to manipulate, imagine, and create, students must first have understanding and skill with which to do so. It is very difficult for students to be creative when they know too little about the realm in which they are working. |
| Tight Timelines | To engage fully in creative processes, students need time to generate ideas,
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