No matter the level of instruction and expectation, a creative framework for both teaching and learning is important. To that effect, it turns education into a journey of consistent personal and collaborative discovery. In his peer-reviewed article, Creativity, Content, Policy, Samuel Hope provides a list of attributes to a creative environment:
There is a commitment to open-ended work. Within a set of purposes, exploration is primarily pursued for its own sake. The overarching goal is to try.
There is a pursuit of the unknown rather than the known. There is a tendency to let the material shape itself as new thoughts and achievements come into play.
Space of all kinds—time, facilities, and quiet—is plentiful.
There are low consequences for failure. Incentives for problem identification and problem creation are at least as great as incentives for problem-solving.
The people involved have a base of knowledge and skills in at least one thing. This knowledge and skill does not restrain, but rather enables the work.
The nature and pursuit of content drive time instead of time driving content. Practice or work continues as long as is necessary.
There is an understanding of different types of knowledge and ways of thinking and working, and the ability to mix and match these ways to the task at hand. Specific expertise is trusted, valued, and employed liberally.
Creativity has a higher value than technique, technology, or ideology. Otherwise, the limits of the technology, the technical construct, or the ideology limit the creative prospect.
Bureaucratic organization, oversight, and management are kept to a minimum. There is absolute avoidance of the bureaucratic mindset. Structural frameworks are created only to the levels necessary to encompass and support the creative effort.
There is an ability to evaluate moment to moment as the effort proceed and to make adjustments based on the constant evaluation. In other words, evaluation is the servant of the creative goal. Evaluation is also rich, multidimensional, and consistent with the nature of the task.
There is a willingness to wait, an understanding that results often appear spontaneously after many failures, and thus that planning, while important, is not necessarily the primary driver of creative success. There is an understanding that breakthroughs cannot be scheduled.
One way teachers can enact cross-fertilization in the classroom is to ask children to identify their best and worst academic areas. Students can then be asked to come up with project ideas in their weak areas based on ideas borrowed from one of their strongest areas. For example, teachers can explain to students that they can apply their interest in science to social studies by analyzing the scientific aspects of trends in national politics.
Teachers also need to allow students the time to think creatively. Most creative insights do not happen in a rush. People need time to understand a problem and to toss it around. If students are asked to think creatively, they need time to do it well.
Teachers also should instruct and assess for creativity. If teachers give only multiple-choice tests, children quickly learn the type of thinking that teachers value, no matter what they say. If teachers want to encourage creativity, they need to include at least some opportunities for creative thought in assignments and tests. Questions that require factual recall, analytic thinking, and creative thinking should be asked.
Creative efforts also should be rewarded. For example, teachers can assign a project and remind children that they are looking for them to demonstrate their knowledge, analytical and writing skills, and creativity. Teachers should let students know that creativity does not depend on the teacher's agreement with what children write, but rather with ideas they express that represent a synthesis between existing ideas and their own thoughts. Teachers need to care only that the ideas are creative from the student's perspective, not necessarily creative with regard to the state-of-the-art findings in the field. Students may generate an idea that someone else has already had, but if the idea is original to the student, the student has been creative.
Teachers also need to allow mistakes. Buying low and selling high carries a risk. Many ideas are unpopular simply because they are not good. When students make mistakes, teachers should ask them to analyze and discuss these mistakes. Often, mistakes or weak ideas contain the germ of correct answers or good ideas.
Another aspect of teaching children to be creative is teaching them to take responsibility for both successes and failures. Teaching children how to take responsibility means teaching students to (a) understand their creative process, (b) criticize themselves, and (c) take pride in their best creative work. Unfortunately, many teachers and parents look for or allow children to look for, an outside enemy responsible for failures. In practice, people differ widely in the extent to which they take responsibility or the causes and consequences of their actions. Creative People need to take responsibility for themselves and for their ideas.
Teachers also can work to encourage creative collaboration. Creative performance often is viewed as a solitary occupation. We may picture the writer writing alone in a studio, the artist painting in a solitary loft, or the musician practicing endlessly in a small music room. In reality, people often work in groups. Collaboration can spur creativity. Teachers can encourage children to learn by example by collaborating with creative people. Students also need to learn how to imagine things from other viewpoints. An essential aspect of working with other people and getting the most out of collaborative creative activity is to imagine oneself in other people's shoes. Individuals can broaden their perspective by learning to see the world from different points of view.
Teachers and parents should encourage their children to see the importance of understanding, respecting, and responding to other people's points of view. They may do well in school and on tests, but they may never learn how to get along with others or to see things and themselves as others see them. Teachers also need to help students recognize person-environment fit. The very same product that is rewarded as creative in one time or place may be scorned in another.
Samuel Hope provides a number of ideas from the same article to help lead students to practice and thus understand, at an appropriate level, creativity in the classroom. As instructors, we are obliged to practice what we preach, so teachers must understand and be able to do these kinds of things themselves. In addition to this, instructors should be able to demonstrate them in the ways they work with students, specific subject matter, and the things that students create.
Every particular thing, from the smallest to the greatest—fact, reality, condition, machine, technique, work of art, and so on—can be used to make something else. Something else can be something new.
I, personally, can make something else and something new, and I can do this constantly.
To make something else, I need to connect and combine particular things first in my imagination, and then in a project, whether large or small.
The more I know and can do, the more I can connect and combine, and thus, the more new things I am able to make.
If I want to make new things that make sense to or are useful to others, I must be able to communicate using various languages and other frameworks.
The more capability I have with these languages and frameworks, the more creative I can be, and the more my creativity can reach and serve others.
Through constant practice, I am able to imagine connecting and combining things that I learn.
Through constant study and practice, I am able to use what I have imagined as the basis for creating work or a product of some kind.
Through experience, I become more proficient at matching possibilities and capabilities.
The more I learn, the more fluent I become with various languages and frameworks, and the more sophisticated I am in understanding the work of others, the more I can see that many problems have multiple solutions, and the better I am able to deal with complexity.
The greater my comfort with multiple solutions and complexity, the more capable I am in dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty in productive ways.
The more capable I am with all the things mentioned above, the more proficient I am in planning any work that I want to do, particularly in areas where I have the greatest knowledge and skill. I know the necessity of planning to some degree, but I also know the limits of planning. I know that the work can shape itself as it progresses and that the creative work process itself reveals new possibilities and necessities.
In addition, I have also provided a synthesis from the articles shared from this site on ways to enhance creativity.
Source: Hope, S. (2010). Creativity, content, and policy. Arts Education Policy Review, 111(2), 39-47.doi:10.1080/10632910903455736