Those passionate about creativity in education are hopeful that the authority of PISA will lend weight to the arguments for creativity in schools in England. Karwowski, M., Jankowska, D. M., Brzeski, A., Czerwonka, M., Gajda, A., Lebuda, I., & Beghetto, R. A. (2020). Delving into creativity and learning. Creativity Research Journal, 32(1), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2020.1712165. Craft, A. (2001). Little c Creativity. Creativity in Education. In: Craft, A. Jeffrey, B. and Liebling, M. (eds.) Creativity and Education. London: Continuum.

Building students’ creativity isn’t just about the warm and fuzzy feelings, though. Going through a creative process is tough, and can build resilience, grit, and tenacity. It’s much easier to follow step-by-step instructions than it is to brainstorm, ideate, and iterate on your own idea. Creative projects can help kids learn to take risks and embrace failure, which is always an important part of the creative process. Robinson, K. (2006). Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.Ted.Com/Talks/Ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity. Kennedy, M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Gajda, A., Beghetto, R. A., & Karwowski, M. (2017). Exploring creative learning in the classroom: A multi-method approach. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 24, 250–267.

Where schools have effective curriculum intent, they are often focused on a strong commitment to developing meaningful learning experiences that help pupils develop their capacity to learn. In England, the Teaching and Learning Toolkit produced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) places metacognition (the act of learning to learn) at the top of its meta-analysis of interventions that impact on pupil progress. For example, this could involve a blend of 5 minute exercises in which pupils have to generate answers/solutions and more complex challenges requiring pupils to collaborate to create an outcome over 20+ minutes. The dilemma for educators is that routine academic knowledge (the skills that are easiest to teach and easiest to test) are exactly the skills that are also easiest to digitise, automate and outsource. However, educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge creatively in novel situations, and about thinking across the boundaries of subject-matter disciplines.” A key event was the publication of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE). Also known as the Robinson Report after its chair, the late Sir Ken Robinson, NACCCE argued that a national strategy for creative and cultural education was essential to the process of providing a motivating education fostering the different talents of all children. NACCCE defined creativity as: The latest Ofsted Education Inspection Framework has a greater emphasis on offering a broad curriculum. School leaders are required to describe the quality of the education they are offering young people in terms of ‘Intent’ (what they are trying to achieve), ‘Implementation’ (how it will be taught and assessed) and ‘Impact’ (the effect on pupils).The conventional teaching methods would be boring for them and they may lose their focus in the midway. Niu, W., & Zhou, Z. (2017). Creativity in mathematics teaching: A Chinese perspective (an update. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Nurturing creativity in the classroom (2nd ed., pp. 86–107). New York: Cambridge University Press. Beghetto, R. (2019b). Creativity in Classrooms. In J. Kaufman & R. Sternberg (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 587–606). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316979839.029. Creativity in an educational context is often thought of in terms of creative subjects such as music, art, and drama. These subjects certainly nurture creativity, but creativity is an integral part of teaching and learning across all subjects. It involves an active curiosity when seeing something for the first time and how we react to it. Sometimes this involves an element of risk-taking, which can be developed in the safe environment of learning.

Mullet, D. R., Willerson, A., Lamb, K. N., & Kettler, T. (2016). Examining teacher perceptions of creativity: A systematic review of the literature. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 21, 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.05.001. The open-ended questions will open them a world of imaginative thinking and they can come up with creative responses. In this post, we will explore the importance of creativity in the education system, the role of creativity in students' emotional development, and the ways in which it can be taught. Open-ended questions and classroom discussions are two popular creative teaching strategies that help students to develop an innovative mindset. Renzulli, J. (2017). Developing creativity across all areas of the curriculum. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Nurturing creativity in the classroom (2nd ed., pp. 23–44). New York: Cambridge University Press.

More Resources for Creative Education

Beghetto, R. A., Karwowski, M., & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2020). Intellectual Risk taking: A moderating link between creative confidence and creative behavior? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000323. Drawing on its research, the Commission has therefore developed a vision for promoting creativity in education. It’s become clearer than ever that we must prioritise teaching for creativity to meet our future needs and to give all children the opportunities theydeserve.