Celebrating the significance of creativity for educations future success

The past two weeks, I have considered some of the consequences of a world where uncertainty and unpredictable change is the norm. These are “postnormal times” as Sardar describes “Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future.” (Sardar, 2010) There once was a predictable pattern to change; things became predictably larger or smaller, more or less frequent, quicker and easier, swung to the left or swung to the right. Now, this is not the case. Change is fundamental, and the solutions which worked for us in the past, such as our reliance on technology, science and due processes for politics and social understandings are no longer adequate.

In response to this, industry is identifying new skill sets which are considered necessary in these times of uncertainty. Skills such as active learning and learning strategies should be the core business of schools. After all, the fundamental business of education systems from the customers perspective is learning. We often get this the wrong way around and focus on what the teacher does and as such, consider the core business of schools to be teaching. This is like a restaurant that focuses on what the chefs do, cooking, and forget about the experience of the customer, which is dining and the practice of being a diner. If schools get it right, our teachers will do excellent teaching that creates the right opportunities for our students to become learners. Our collective ability to learn and by doing so, adapt to changing circumstances through the acquisition of new skills and dispositions is what Edward de Bono refers to as EBNE; Essential But Not Enough.

The capacity to learn new skills in response to rapid changes is EBNE because in doing, we become dependent upon others to identify and solve the emerging problem for us. Learning in a traditional sense relies upon someone else possessing knowledge and skills that we hope to acquire. According to Daniel Wilson, this model works for traditional problems, even quite complicated ones which are the norm in large systems. Someone somewhere will have experienced this problem before, and there is a solution that is proven to work. The challenge is to identify the problem, find the corresponding solution and apply it in ways that are respectful of context.

But uncertainty means that the challenges we confront have not been experienced before. These complex problems combine challenges from the past with new challenges and new contexts. We can not rely on wisdom from elsewhere as the knowledge we require does not yet exist. We are the first to confront the particular challenges, and we are the first with access to the opportunities that come from solving these in ways which are most responsive to modern times. Learning to learn in these times is, therefore, EBNE, but what then do we need.

Creativity becomes the key path towards solutions to the challenges of uncertainty. According to Tim Brown, past CEO of the design innovation company IDEO creativity is the greatest weapon we have against uncertainty.

“One of the greatest weapons that we have against uncertainty is creativity. It’s how we forge something new out of it.” - Tim Brown IDEO

Creativity is what will allow us to look at the world and see opportunity amidst the chaos of uncertainty. Creativity offers us the fresh perspectives we need, guides us towards new questions and allows novel solutions to emerge. Truly successful individuals will be those who see the world as a place to be interpreted through a creative lens. They will seek out fresh perspectives and challenge the status quo. Organisations will empower their creative individuals by enabling collective and participatory creativity where innovative solutions emerge from truly collaborative processes of ideation.

“The problems of today are too big for one person or organisation to solve alone. We need many people bringing a vast diversity of perspectives to begin to think about old challenges in new ways." - Tim Brown IDEO

Commonly, creativity is seen as a disposition which some people possess and others do not. We see it as a process for individuals and point to the works of those we imagine to be creative geniuses as examples of this process in action. Such an individualistic definition of creativity does not serve us well in times of wide-scale uncertainty. In these postnormal times, no individual will possess all of the information necessary to understand fully and subsequently respond to challenges defined by their complex nature. A more collaborative definition of creativity might better serve our purposes.

Inner Circle - Expertise is the path to solving complicated problems

Outer Circle - Emergence is the path to solving complex problems

Source: Daniel Wilson - @danielwilsonPZ

This is what Edward Clapp describes in his book “Participatory Creativity”. In this, creativity is defined as:

“Creativity is a distributed process of idea development that takes place over time and incorporates the contributions of a diverse network of actors, each of whom uniquely participate in the development of ideas in various ways.” - Edward P. Clapp - Participatory Creativity

Such a definition encourages us to see creativity not as the thinking of an individual but as the output of many. Successful organisations will be those that create the conditions which encourage participatory creativity at all levels. The most successful organisations will be those who nurture opportunities for participatory creativity, both internally and externally. Organisations which are closed shops, where ideas are secreted away, where collaboration is curtailed will confront uncertainty through a restrictive lens where alternate possibilities and perspectives remain unseen.

“At IDEO, we’ve worked hard to shift our mindset around uncertainty to one of curiosity and excitement. We value embracing ambiguity—finding the opportunity in the grey space between your comfort zone and the next big idea.” - Tim Brown IDEO

This is the ultimate challenge for schools. Teaching our students to be creative participants is vital for their success, but this too is EBNE. Until schools become places that genuinely encourage models of participatory creativity for every member of their community they will remain doomed to repeat the practices from our past and continue to be surprised when the results thusly achieved do not change.

By Nigel Coutts

On the path to creativity

We all understand that creativity is an important skill for the future and we want our students to leave our classrooms with what David & Tom Kelley of IDEO call creative confidence. A quick read of the introductory chapter of any book on the future of the workplace will reveal an emphasis on the importance of creativity for individual and organisational success. As one of the four or alternatively five Cs (the others are critical thinking/reflection, collaboration, communication and often compassion) creativity is part of a skill set that differentiates human capacities from those readily replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. The difficulty with creativity is it is not easy and perhaps thanks to our experience of schooling not a natural attribute of many adults. What creativity needs is a process and/or a structure that allows us to bring our intellect to the development of creative solutions.

While we often refer to the need to think outside the box, as Ewan Macintosh of ‘NoTosh’ points out, we need the box when it provides the just necessary structure to scaffold our thinking. The more creative we need to be the more we need some structure to keep us on track. For educators, there are other reasons to provide a process to scaffold creativity. Asking our students to ‘be more creative’ without some scaffold is a strategy doomed to fail. If our goal is to keep our students within a zone of proximal development as defined by Lev Vygotsky, then we need to provide a scaffold that will take their capacity for creative problem-solving to a level beyond where they currently are and where they can only achieve success with appropriate scaffolding. Further when we seek to assess creativity and offer feedback on what has been achieved and feed-forward on where the learner can go next we need a process against which we can track progress. To only assess the end product will leave the students with little guidance as to how they may enhance their next effort. Without a process, students are left to be continually guessing at how they should approach the next challenge.

Finding this process was the focus of a workshop offered by University of Newcastle, Sydney as part of Vivid Ideas. Led by John Scott participants were introduced to five approaches to creativity which can be readily used with teams to enhance the results of their creative endeavours. Each offers a process that can be applied to a variety of problems and a common language that can be used within teams as they learn together. 

The first invites team members to state and restate the problem. A seemingly simple step but one that encourages a full understanding of the problem and encourages seeing it from alternative perspectives. Restating the problem is an excellent check of understanding and will often reveal a better approach towards a solution. Strategies such as rephrasing the problem using positive instead of negative terms, identifying persuasive or opinionated words or drawing a picture or diagram of the problem were suggested. 

A model of design thinking modified from the IDEO d.School model

Design Thinking was offered as a solution to complex problems where a highly iterative process is useful. Design thinking is becoming increasingly popular in schools and is even being included in state and national curriculums. It is a process which has been explored elsewhere on this site and there are many models which might be adapted to suit an organisation or a particular problem. Perhaps the key understanding is that it is a process which is based on experimentation and rapid prototyping. For it to be successfully embraced by organisations there must be a culture that is tolerant of failure as without this playful ideation and iteration will not occur. 

Read More about Design Thinking

This model of design thinking has been successful with Year Two students

Agile and Lean processes were explored as possible processes. Agile brings a process focused on user stories and a rapid process for responding. Agile is very much problem solving by doing and with each cycle producing a ‘done’ component of the larger solution it allows for rapid progress. Having identified a user story, self-organising teams enter a ‘sprint’ to identify and implement the first part of the solution or response. Individuals opt into what is called a ‘scrum’ which is the core unit of a ‘sprint’ based on their desire to play a part in that part of the solution. Lean is about identifying and removing waste and continuous improvement. By understanding what is there and always looking for ways to improve what is done, teams can develop enhanced products and operations. A key ingredient in ‘Lean’ is respect for the the perspective and problems confronting every stakeholder. Part of the strategy is understanding how processes and systems impact individuals and groups and then taking appropriate actions. 

The final approach is the use of Edward de Bono’s thinker hats. The 'Six Thinking Hats’ are a common element in classrooms and it was interesting to see this methodology being shared with a mixed audience. It would be interesting to see the hats being worn in the executive suite of a large corporation. Each hat asks the wearer to engage with a different mode of thinking. White hat thinkers are analytical and interested in facts, figures and information. Red hat thinking is about emotion and feeling, the Black hat is critical and full of judgement. Yellow hat thinking is positive and seeks to explain why an idea will work and the benefits it brings. Green hats bring alternatives and Blue hats look at the big picture and bring a reflective, metacognitive approach to the overall process; an understanding of how the creative process is unfolding and what type of thinking it might require more of. The Six Hat process works best when each hat is given a voice and understanding the value that each hat brings to an individual’s or team’s thinking encourages this. It should not be a process of labelling the thinking style most commonly adopted by a team member but a way to bring new thinking modes into their repertoire. 

With an understanding of a set of processes for creativity the team and individual should be better able to approach complex challenges. As mastery of the methods is developed new opportunities can be created by blending elements of one approach with another. Knowing when to break the rules comes with experience and maturity and allows the right approach to be matched to the context. In seeking to maximise the creativity of individuals and teams perhaps the most critical element is a willingness to embrace failure. There is no method guaranteed to produce desirable results the first time but a culture that punishes failure will always limit its creative potential. 

Creativity is a beautiful, messy, chaotic thing

Collaborative creativity is a beautiful thing to see in action. Picture a room full of students engaged by a creative challenge. Groups of children loudly and forcibly stating their opinions. Each offering a different perspective on what might be achieved. A tumultuous free flowing exchange of ideas carried along by the voices of the excited participants. Drawings are exchanged, arguments come and go, gradually consensus is reached and forward progress is made but only for a moment before chaos returns. This is the scene that visitors to Year Six would have found early on Friday morning.

This scene of chaos had its origins in an inspiring presentation by artist, author, musician and educator Boori Pryor. Through his natural style of storytelling, coloured by music and dance Boori brings alive his culture and provides the perfect stimulus for the creative challenge that lies ahead. His story comes to life and he has every student dancing as the telling moves from the orator into the hearts, minds and bodies of his audience. The magic of his style is that he becomes one with the audience and the story becomes their story. With such an inspired beginning to the day it is not surprising that the creative passions of the students are set free.

With their imaginations set free the students confront the challenge of telling a part of the story through collaborative art with vim and vigour. Canvases are provided, paints distributed and with pencils, paper and enthusiastic debate the process of transforming ideas into workable plans begins. Participation is active, visceral, physical and loud. Listening skills are abandoned and chaos rules. Take a step back from the noise and you can see ideas begin to emerge. Each group of ten or twelve students begins to explore what it is they need to achieve and an understanding of the possibilities of the task emerges. The noise starts to come in stops and starts. Leaders begin to emerge and bring order to the mess. Ideas worth further exploration bubble forth while others slip out of the way. From the chaos merges a sense of order. 

Come back an hour later and you find the groups all functioning under a new paradigm. Decisions have been made and the process of transforming rough plans into a finished artwork is well under way. Cooperation is the new norm. Overlapping spaces and patterns of movement allow the artists to create together, alongside and with each other like dancers. The shouting and arguing is replaced with jovial conversations, encouraging observations of another performance and occasional renditions of ABBA classics. This is not the image of school students learning invoked by rows of desks, neat uniforms and teacher sermonising from the front of the room. This is real learning owned by the students and with their teachers as collaborators and facilitators of learning who know when to step out of the way and let things happen. 

The results are amazing. The once blank canvases are wholly transformed into magical renderings of the shared story. Each artwork captures the spirit of each artist who touched it. More than that the students have had an experience of learning that transcends the time allowed to it. They are each subtly changed but the experience and have ricer understandings of their place in the stories that ultimately unite us all. They have risen to new challenges and shown that they are capable of great things when they come together and participate in creative endeavours. 

At the end of the day all involved are exhausted and yet at the same time buoyed up by the positive feelings that flow from what has been achieved. Creativity is hard work. it is messy and times frustrating. It requires an embrace of chaos and is ill served by the structures of traditional schooling. It requires inspiration and is fueled by collaborations. Creativity is often said to be the key to the future. The essentially human attribute that will ensure our utility in a world dominated by automation. It is said to be an essential ingredient in education but it will not be truly learned unless we provide students with opportunities to dive fully into its waters. 

By Nigel Coutts with thanks to Boori Monty Pryor and the Year Six Team @Redlands_School

Learn more about Boori Monty Pryor  -  or access his new film  - for school visits contact Young Australis Workshops

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The right conditions for creativity

According to Ken Robinson schools kill creativity. Since his 2006 TED talk in which he asks ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ many teachers and thinkers have pondered this question and vowed to bring creativity back to their classrooms. Amongst the 21st Century skills that we aim to develop with our students, creativity ranks high and is listed as one of the ‘Four C’s that also include collaboration, critical thinking and communication. Understanding and identifying the barriers to creativity and the conditions which are essential for it to thrive is an important step in the process of ensuring our students leave school with a capacity for creativity at least equal to that which they arrive with.

Perhaps the most essential condition for creativity is permission. Our students need to be given permission to be creative, to experiment and play with ideas. Explicit permission to be creative includes acknowledgement that this process will at times involve silliness, immaturity, mess and mistakes. Not all of the ideas our students pursue will be world changers. Many of their ideas will be dead ends and many will be heading in the wrong direction. When we give our students permission to play with their ideas, to share their most playful ideas we encourage them to retain the youthful creativity that allows them to imagine countless new solutions and options.

A condition for creativity closely linked to permission is acceptance of failure. Einstein puts it well ‘Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new’. The danger is that creativity inherently involves making mistakes and yet so much of the school system is about avoiding mistakes. Assessment and testing is an important part of education but they are a messaging system that acts against creativity. Risk taking is discouraged by assessments where students are more likely to receive positive results by taking a safe route. Generally speaking, in assessments there is a known correct answer even if that correct answer is only known by the teacher. The student’s goal is to present a response that closely matches that correct answer and thus risk taking and creativity are discouraged. Shifting how we think about assessments and their role within learning may allow us to identify where this part of the process is stifling creativity. Reimagining our assessments may allow us to encourage and reward creativity and allow students to achieve the level of success they deserve even when their responses do not match a preconceived image of what a correct response is.

A third condition for creativity is time and it is this that is perhaps most difficult for schools to provide. The creative process is one that is ill served by fixed durations and schedules. It is an iterative process in which ideas sometimes come together quickly and sometimes multiple attempts are required. Unfortunately, most schools are such busy places that time to do something over when it doesn’t work the first time is hard to find. Creativity is a process that can rarely be kept to a distinct timeframe or schedule. Inspiration does not always arrive in the first five to fifteen minutes after commencing a project. Ideas need time to germinate, time to take a walk and let things bubble away, time to sleep on it and see what comes the next day. The time that the creative process requires is difficult to show on a detailed teaching programme and as a result we tend to stick to the times we allocate and move students on to the next task even if the creative potential of the first has not been fully explored.

Creativity requires choice. A creative process must involve students making choices about what they will do and how they will do it. Too often in schools the creative process is stolen from the students by the teacher who uses their planning time to imagine how their children will be creative. The tasks that the students engage with produce pretty results but all scope for creativity has been planned out of the task before the students get near it. Creativity can not result in a class set of near identical artworks, or stories, or songs or mathematical solutions. For teachers giving students choice can be frightening. Some students may not engage with the desired outcomes. Some students may require resources that were not planned for. Some students may not finish at all and some will produce results that are not as visually pleasing as the teacher had imagined. The question is, are we preparing our students for a future in which creativity is required and valued or for one in which they will be process workers accurately following directions? Undoubtedly choice will be messy, hard to plan for, difficult to assess, complex to schedule and yet the results will reveal more about the students and their learning than tasks planned for them.

Creativity deserves a structure that promotes it and scaffolds its development. Divergent thinking is a wonderful thing but at some point students need to be able to move from many ideas to the one they will bring to fruition. Convergent thinking is an essential part of creativity and it is in this process that students and teachers often struggle. Students have difficulty evaluating their ideas and fine tuning them to one that has the best chance of fulfilling their needs. Teachers are too quick to intervene and make the decision for their students. Utilising a structure such as a ‘Design Thinking’ provides a way of moving forward and experience with the application of such models allows students to identify times where divergent thinking is required and those that require convergence. This process needs to be one that occurs individually and as part of a collaborative process such that students learn to share their ideas with a group and accept when the group makes choices that do not include their ideas.

Creativity needs an audience. Too often students develop their ideas for an audience of one; their teacher. The creative endeavours of our students deserve a larger audience, an audience that will celebrate and critique the results while providing multiple perspectives. Providing a real audience for student creativity lifts the stakes and encourages students to see their efforts as a contribution to something bigger than a class assignment. The risk taking that comes with sharing creative ideas widely can at first be intimidating but students who experience this regularly and from an early age are more likely to embrace this experience and benefit from the rich feedback it provides. Real audiences in today’s connected world can be global and opportunities for dialogue and engagement with a global audience brings new opportunities. Real audiences can and should include experts from the field that students are learning in and these connections may extend learning far beyond the expertise available to students through the classroom.

Creativity is best served by a culture that values it. Ultimately the sum total of our beliefs, attitudes and behaviours will define our cultural valuing of creativity. Encouraging creativity begins with what we say and what we do to support it but the ultimate success of our endeavours will be measured by the degree to which creativity becomes a part of the culture of a school.

Schools, learning, innovation and student futures

For all of us, learning was an innate part of life. It was something we just did, that was as natural to us as breathing. If not for this innate desire to learn and with it the ability to do so, we would never learn to walk, or speak or interact with others.

But at some point learning stops being something we do and becomes more like something that happens to us. Our initial self-drive to learn is replaced by learning as a part of our life that is highly regulated, controlled, monitored and externalised. For some people this compartmentalisation of our lives with learning as a self contained piece that takes place inside of schools results in the belief that it is something we can opt out of. 

Learning becomes the ability to absorb and make use of information and skills that are presented to us in a manner that another person or group of people decides is best. Learning becomes something we do in a specific place and at a specific time, for a set number of years and via a lockstep sequence with a group of peers sharing a common age.

From this model of learning comes a string of consequences. It separates learning from the control of the individual, it places the decision making process about learning priorities into the hands of others and it dictates what is and is not success. It divides us into people who are skilled at learning and those who are not skilled at it according to this model and subsequently for the first time it forces us to evaluate our ability to learn. This assessment of our ability to learn and indeed our ability in general is placed into the hands of others and this assessment of us by others for many plays a critical role in determining our self worth. 

All of this does not stop learning from happening outside this controlled environment. Children continue to play games, to learn from their peers, to discover ideas for themselves, but this model does separate and devalue this learning from the supposedly real learning that occurs in schools. 

Many have written and spoken about the current education paradigm as being modeled around the needs of the industrial revolution; that schools are modeled after factories with students entering as raw product, teachers performing the routine labour of transferring information and skills and adults leaving at the other end as product ready for the needs of the industry.  It is also well documented that the world we once prepared children for no longer exists. Through a mix of economic forces, changing priorities, technological change and globalisation our children will leave school requiring a different skill set marked by an ability to creatively identify opportunities and develop creative solutions to capitalise on these. In his book ‘Creating Innovators’ Tony Wagner describes the mindset and orientation of an individual prepared for this world. He identifies what is required to be an innovator as ‘some of the qualities of innovators that I now understand as essential such as perseverance, a willingness to experiment, take calculated risks, and tolerate failure, and the capacity for design thinking, in addition to critical thinking.’ These are not skills developed through even the most judicious application of a ‘chalk and talk’ methodology which while less prevalent today remains a common pedagogy. A similar set of skills required of the innovator is offered by Tim Brown CEO of IDEO writing for Harvard Business Review and cited by Tony Wagner, is ‘empathy, integrative thinking (the ability to see all the salient and sometimes contradictory aspects of a problem), optimism, experimentalism and collaboration. Tim states that ‘My experience is that many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right developmentand experiences can unlock.’  Sir Ken Robinson’s often cited comment on creativity and education reveals his beliefs on why there are not more people leaving school equipped with the skills of the innovator: ‘I believe this passionately: that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it’.

Through a series of interviews with successful innovators Tony Wagner describes the forces and people that shaped them and influenced their development. In most cases these influencers fell outside of the normal systems of school and college, educators and mentors described as ‘outliers’ by Tony, educators who despite the system, manage to encourage young innovators to follow their passion and seek out challenges that matter. 

Ian Jukes is another educator calling for change to educational systems. At ‘Edutech’ in Brisbane last year, he described the disappearance from western nations of careers based upon routine cognitive tasks, the traditional office jobs which are so easily relocated to countries with cheap labour. Tony Wagner echoes this ‘A growing number of our good-paying blue-collar and even white-collar jobs are now being done in other countries that have increasingly well-educated and far-less-expensive labour forces’. Ian calls for an educational paradigm through which students develop an ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn and to do so rapidly. Students leave this system not with a pool of knowledge but with what Ian calls ‘Headware skills’ creative skills that are rapidly adaptable and within the control of the individual. Ian calls for educational systems to not just shift teachings to new ideas delivered in the same mode but for a shift in the focus towards providing opportunities for students to become creative problem finders and solvers. As an example a school may identify the emerging App economy and desire to teach students this new skill but this does not mean we teach app design in the same way we taught grammar, the skills needed now will be outmoded by next year or sooner, we need to teach the mindset required for app design; a problem solving, design process with inquiry skills and the ability to quickly learn and unlearn skills to suit the needs of the task.

To meet these challenges and to ensure the learner is at the centre of the learning with a voice and opportunities to self-assess and self-direct, schools need to change focus. Ian describes two sets of skills, short life and long life. Short life skills are the ones that quickly become redundant or outdated. Long life skills are creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving and social intelligence and have value to the individual even as circumstances change. These are the skills schools need to develop but these skills will not develop in a system where the teacher is a content delivery mechanism.

They may be developed in a system that embraces Sugata Mitra’s view of learning as an 'edge of chaos phenomenon'. In this, the individual is provided with opportunities to discover and solve problems that matter but in allowing learners to imagine the problems, the control and organisation loved by too many schools is lost.  Only by understanding that the value of these experiences lies in the life long skills that students will apply and experience and by not focusing on the content lessons missed as a result of the chaos will schools truly prepare their students for the tomorrow that already exists just outside their classrooms. When schools do this, maybe learning will remain an innate and natural part of ones life.

By Nigel Coutts

CREativity in Science and Technology - CREST

Many students will recall their first real science lessons fondly. Recalling the first time they were allowed to use a bunsen burner, the excitement of switching from the orange safety flame to the blue flame, the sense of danger and the thrill of playing with fire in a classroom. The lesson was probably the same for most, 'heat water in a beaker and record its boiling point’. This lesson is probably one of the first almost any student of science does and sadly for too many students of science an indication of what is to come; science by the numbers with little chance for real discovery. But does it have to be this way? 

One of the goals of CREST, a programme managed by CSIRO aims to encourage an innovative approach to science. The goal is to reward students who engage in open ended science investigation and to provide a range of resources that enable their learning. At its advanced level CREST aims to "Advanced CREST enables students to experience the exciting world of scientific research and technological development through a structured program that supports them in choosing, organising and undertaking their own open-ended experimental science or technology project.” This is a very different scenario to that presented in the boiling water experiment.

It is worth considering the levels of complexity and opportunity for inquiry that exists across a range of science lessons. At the most simple level is our boiling water experiment, an example of a 'guided explanation' lesson. In this style of lesson the student is guided by the teacher, they are provided with the equipment and the steps they take to complete the experiment. In this guided explanation nothing new is discovered, in most cases the desired result of the experiment is already known by the teacher and in most cases the students. Assuming the students follow the instructions the results will be expected and each group will present identical results. This sort of lesson might play a role in providing practice with lab routines and procedures for documenting an experiment but resembles real science as much as colour by numbers represents artistic expression. Consider Blooms' Taxonomy and you see that in this case students may require their memories but little else. In fact as the instructions are probably displayed on the board or in a handout students are not even required to remember the details. How many science lessons are of this type? Maybe the experiment is a little more complex, maybe it requires the use of expensive even complex lab equipment and numerous chemicals but does it require students to much with their brains other than follow a recipe?

It is not just science where this highly controlled model of learning can be found. I recall my time in Year Eight and the excitement of moving from Woodwork to Metal Work. The class was presented with the problem of keeping the classroom tidy and the need for dustpans. Over the coming weeks we fashioned from sheets of raw steel dustpans that were works of beauty and all exactly the same. Years later my eldest step-son entered Year Eight and although at a different school he too produced a metal dustpan. I don’t have the dust pan I made, I don’t have the one made by eldest but I do have the one produced my youngest step-son four years later. Each one is for all intents and purposes exactly the same. I have seen similar projects in many schools and have even seen schools celebrate their technological advancement by having the students construct this same dustpan with the help of a laser cutter, surely we can not be too far from having them 3D printed. 

Grant Wiggins writing for te@chthough deals with this problem in an article titled 'Experiential Learning: Just Because It’s Hands-On Doesn’t Mean It’s Minds-On’. Grant asks students three questions that reveal the level to which they are cognitively engaged with the task at hand; What are you doing? Why are you doing it? and What does this help you do that’s important? How many students if asked these questions would reply that they are following the steps indicated and that they need to follow the steps to complete the task? Grant’s full article is worth reading and can be found on his blog, ‘Granted, and. . .'

The next level is a little more challenging and is possibly the first step towards open ended scientific inquiry. In this 'guided discovery’ model students are presented with a question and given some idea of how to proceed with an experiment. The teacher has an idea of what the experiment will look like and provides appropriate materials but does not describe the steps. The students have a degree of freedom although it is most likely freedom to guess at what the teacher wants anyway they like. In this model the results between groups or individual students are likely to differ and the discussion at the conclusion can offer opportunities for students to compare their methods to others. In terms of Blooms’ this model has students at least understanding the question, applying skills and knowledge to a slightly new situation and possibly even analysing the results.

A simple example of ‘guided discovery’ was shared with a group of scientists and teachers at a recent CSIRO ‘Scientists in Schools’ event. In this example participants were asked to determine which brand of paper towel was best. Participants formed groups and were provided with four types of paper towel, a plastic plate, an eye dropper, a plastic cup, a small measuring cylinder, a ruler and a stop watch. The task was to use what was on offer to determine with evidence and on a scale from 1 to 4 which paper towel was best. The range of options for testing were not huge and yet when sharing each groups efforts after an appropriate time of experimentation differences were visible. The discussion at the conclusion revealed that some thinking had occurred and problems encountered and overcome. An initial idea for a test method might prove unsuitable and the method was changed, suggestions for future experiments with different equipment were offered. Although n group had broken new ground and each worked within the scope of instructors initial conception for the lesson there was evidence of thinking at Blooms levels of evaluation and maybe the fleet ingest signs of creativity. 

The next level is where it for most teachers it gets scary and for the students it gets most exciting; Open ended scientific exploration. At its extreme there is no question, no answer, no methodology, no list of required equipment. In CREST this is the ‘Advanced Level’, in the real world this is scientific discovery. Although a lovely idea and something to encourage students towards this ‘Advanced’ level is not for every lesson, somewhere between ‘guided discovery’ and completely open exploration lies the sweet spot for the typical science class. The realities of meeting the demands of a syllabus will mean at least a degree of focus will need to be provided to the questions generated and explored. 

Considering an example, students in Stage Three study in NSW as part of the new Science syllabus might be investigating rapid changes at the earths surface. In a class aiming for an open ended inquiry students will be encouraged to participate in the initial question forming stage of this inquiry before moving on to developing ideas to explore through experimentation and research before drawing conclusions and possibly suggesting plans for action. Although the topic is dictated by the syllabus it is still possible to allow the students to play a significant part in designing an experimental methodology to investigate the relevant phenomenon. By playing a part in the process of generating questions the students are able to develop a deeper understanding of the scientific method from beginning to end and in doing so develop the skills they will use when planning entirely independent research and experimentation.

An essential element of this approach is the inclusion of elements of creativity. Students are not following a prescribed methodology or locating answers to a set of questions but actively engaging in a process of evaluating what is important and creating ways of gathering data and ultimately solving problems. One goal of the exploration of rapid changes at the earth surface might be to develop building methods that are resistant to the forces discovered during the exploration phases. Alternatively students might decide to focus on detection methods or the identification of areas most susceptible to rapid changes. In each case the results should be unique and illustrate the creative input of the students as they engage in a scientific inquiry. 

Turning to an ‘open ended technology’ task we could reimagine our tried and tested dustpan project. Now instead of providing the students with the plans and materials for a dustpan we present the students with a problem; ‘How can we keep the workshop clean?’ This might not be the most important technological challenge faced by humanity but posed in this way the students can approach the task in a wide range of ways. Some might even chose to construct a dustpan, others might decide the problem lies in the choice of materials used in the workshop and replace them all with a biodegrading plastic that breaks down to a harmless gas when exposed to sunlight.

Janet Ivey in her TEDx Talk describes 'AWE (Art, Wonder and Experiential) Inspired Science'. In this inspiring talk Janet outlines how creativity plays an important role in scientific exploration. Anyone who doubts that creativity is essential for scientific inquiry, who has forgotten that in the times of Leonard Da Vinci art and science were one needs to watch this talk. The key message here is that by incorporating art, dance and music into a science lessons sends a message that creativity is an essential part of science and forces students to bring their whole self to their lessons. Janet makes a powerful case for encouraging students to wonder and out of that to ask big questions that might have scientific and technological answers. AWE is the essential ingredient for creating students enthused and passionate about what they experience and imagine.

Sarah Wagstaff is a senior at Saint George’s School and presents a TEDx talk on how she discovered her potential for creativity in science. Fuelled by her passion for science and a quest for creativity Sarah discovers that the answer to her needs was in front of her all the time. With access to a Scanning Electron Microscope Sarah undertakes a scientific investigation into the wings of bees. In this TEDx Talk she presents the results of her study and describes the process of inquiry that went into her work. What is clear is that Sarah’s learning journey would not have been possible without the opportunity to explore beyond the script of a traditional ‘guided explanation’ lesson. Sarah’s advice is ‘be lost in your passion so much that you find creativity’.

For schools looking at ways of incorporating creativity into their science and technology teaching CREST offers a useful pathway. With options suitable for primary students through to upper senior and with a focus on building skills and mindsets required for open ended exploration linked to personal passions there is bound to be the right challenge for any student. The programme is supported by well developed resources with a structured program that ultimately supports advanced participants in choosing, organising and undertaking their own open-ended experimental science or technology project. Details about the programme can be found online at CREST - CREativity in Science and Technology.

by Nigel Coutts