Creativity Module 9.2
Teachers and Creativity
Background Information:
Creativity involves a different way of looking at problems and solving them.A student's creativeactivity provides teachers with a different view of their students’ strengths. Creativity also fostersmental growth in students by providing opportunities for trying out new ideas, and new ways ofthinking and problem-solving.Teachers who frequently assign classwork involving creativityaremore likely to observe higher-order cognitive skills e.g., problem solving, critical thinking,and making connections between subjects.Creativity requires two different sets of knowledge:
i. knowledge and skills in a discipline, and
ii. knowledge and skills related to the creative process.
Activities
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1.For creativity to exist, establishing a creative classroom environment is necessary.Students need to feel a sense of psychological safety when being creative. Thus, ensurethat all ideas are listened to and given feedback in a respectful manner
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Foster students’ creative thinking, which involves persistence, discipline, resilience, andcuriosity. Students who are more intellectually curious are open to new experiences.Encourage students to offer multiple paths to a solution as well as coming up with thecorrect answer.
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Support the creative process by having students engage in identifying the REAlproblemusing the Creative Problem Solving Grid shown below within the Assessment section of this module
Assessment
It may be more useful to formatively assess the process the students are going throughrather than the final product, which in this case is identifying the REAL problem. By exploringhow students generated ideas, whether the method of recording ideaswas effective, whether thefinal solutions were practical, and whether they demonstrated curiosity or resilience can oftenbe more useful than merely assessing the final product. It may in fact mean that the finaloutcome for an activity may take into account a combination of the creative process as observedby the teacher, the creative process as experienced and reported by the studentand use of theCreative Problem Solving Grid (CPS)(Reisman & Severino, 2021; Torrance & Reisman,2000). Remember,the CPS grid, shown next, is merely a heuristic (tool) for helping to makea decision.