Showing posts with label william. Show all posts
Showing posts with label william. Show all posts
Summary of 24 tips for teaching creativity (part 2)
(Go back to 24 Tips for teaching creativity (part 1))
13. Identify Obstacles
To help your students deal with obstacles, remind them of the many creative people whose ideas were initially shunned and help them develop an inner sense of awe of the creative act. You can suggest that they reduce their concern over what others think, but it is tough for students to lessen their dependence on their peers.
14. Teach Self-Responsibility
Teaching students how to take responsibility means teaching students to (1) understand their creative process, (2) criticize themselves, and (3) take pride in their best creative work. Unfortunately, many teachers and parents look for an outside enemy responsible for failures.
15. Promote Self-Regulation
After forming initial creative products and awakening the joy of creating in your students, teach them strategies for self-regulation.
1. List multiple ideas for an assignment, 2. Assess ideas for creativity and pursue one, 3. Defend your choice, 4. Develop plans for completing the assignment, including how and where to find information, and how and when you will finish the project, 5. Keep a daily log of progress, roadblocks, and how you surmounted problems, 6. Participate in daily class discussions regarding progress on the report and physical distractions (e.g., being hungry or tired), 7. Discuss teacher feedback on finished projects, and 8. Assess a classmate's project and review and discuss peer evaluations.
16. Delay Gratification
Students must learn rewards are not always immediate and that there are benefits to delaying gratification. Give your students examples of delayed gratification in your life and in the lives of creative individuals and help them apply these examples to their lives. By working on a task for many weeks or months, a student learns the value of making incremental efforts for long-term gains.
Hard work often does not bring immediate rewards. Children do not immediately become expert baseball players, dancers, musicians, or sculptors. And the reward of becoming an expert seems far away. Children often succumb to the temptations of the moment-watching television or playing video games.
17. Encourage Creative Collaboration
Encourage your students to collaborate with creative people because we all learn by example. Students benefit from seeing the techniques, strategies, and approaches that others use in the creative process.
Finding practical ways to encourage creative performance in groups of students is essential because you cannot work with students one-on-one all of the time. Because life often involves working with others, it is worthwhile to give students the chance to work collaboratively and to make the process of collaboration more creative.
18. Imagine Other Viewpoints
An essential aspect of working with other people and getting the most out of collaborative creative activity is to imagine ourselves in other people's shoes. We broaden our perspective by learning to see the world from a different point of view, and that experience enhances our creative thinking and contributions. Encourage your students to see the importance of understanding, respecting, and responding to other people's points of view. Many bright and potentially creative children never achieve success because they do not develop practical intelligence. They may do well in school and on tests, but they never learn how to get along with others or to see things and themselves as others see them.
19. Recognize Person-Environmental Fit
What is judged as creative is an interaction between a person and the environment. The very same product that is rewarded as creative in one time or place may be scorned in another.
In The Dead Poets' Society, a teacher whom the audience might well judge to be creative is viewed as incompetent by the school's administration. Similar experiences occur many times a day in many settings. There is no absolute standard for what constitutes creative work. The same product or idea may be valued or devalued in different environments. The lesson is that we need to find a setting in which our creative talents and unique contributions are rewarded or we need to modify our environment.
By building a constant appreciation of the importance of person-environment fit, you prepare your students for choosing environments that are conducive to their creative success. Encourage your students to examine environments to help them learn to select and match environments with their skills.
20. Find Excitement
To unleash your students' best creative performances, you must help them find what excites them. Remember that it may not be what really excites you. Helping students find what they really love to do is often hard and frustrating work. Yet, sharing the frustration with them now is better than leaving them later to face it alone. To help students uncover their true interests, ask them to demonstrate a special talent or ability for the class. Explain that it does not matter what they do (within reason), only that they love the activity.
21. Seek Stimulating Environments
To encourage students to develop skills in selecting environments that enhance creativity, choose some environments for the class to explore and help your students connect the environments with the experiences, creative growth, and accomplishment. Show students that creativity is easier with environmental stimulation.
Plan a field trip to a nearby museum, historical building, town hall, or other location with interesting displays and ask your students to generate and examine creative ideas for reports. Get students involved in role-playing.
You cannot reach into every nook of students' lives, nor can you directly control their creative development in the years to come. But give them a lifelong gift by teaching them how to choose creative environments that help ideas flow. Knowing how to choose a creative environment is one of the best long-term strategies for developing creativity.
22. Play to Strengths
Any teacher can help students play to their strengths. All you need is flexibility in assignments and a willingness to help reluctant students determine the nature of their interests and strengths.
23. Grow Creatively
Once we have a major creative idea, it is easy to spend the rest of our career following up on it. It is frightening to contemplate that the next idea may not be as good as the last one, or that success may disappear with the next idea. The result is that we can become complacent and stop being creative. Being creative means stepping outside the boxes that we-and others-have created for ourselves.
24. Proselytize for Creativity
Once you have mastered a few of these techniques to develop creativity and made them part of your daily teaching routine, spread the word. The virtues of teaching your students in order to develop their creativity and your own multiply from reinforcement. Make the difference by telling your colleagues, associates, administrators, principal, school board members, and everyone else how important it is to develop creativity in students.
Use examples of creative student work, particularly from students who are not gifted in traditional academic abilities, to demonstrate the difference it makes to teach for creativity. Describe how every student can be reached with patience and a few techniques for developing creativity. Tell your colleagues that student projects are more interesting once students have experienced explicit creativity training. Richer, funnier, wilder, and generally far more interesting assignments, book reports, and projects make our lives less boring. It is, in fact, a good example of enlightened self-interest for teachers to give students creativity training, because creative students are more motivated and more involved with their schoolwork, and their work becomes more interesting.
References
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Amabile, T .M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath.
Frensch, P.A., & Sternberg, R. J. (1989). Expertise and intelligent thinking: When is it worse to know better? In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Advances in the psychology of human intelligence. Vol. 5. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garcia, J., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). The relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science, 4, 123-124.
Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds. New York: Basic Books.
Gruber, H. E. (1986). The self-construction of the extraordinary. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schank, R. C. (1988). The Creative Attitude: Learning to Ask and Answer the Right Questions. New York: Macmillan.
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A Triarchic theory of human intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Successful intelligence. New York: Plume.
Sternberg, R. J. (in press). A propulsion model of types of creative contributions. Review of General Psychology.
Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: Free Press.
Sternberg, R. J., & Williams, W. M. (1996). How to develop student creativity. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Summary of 24 tips for teaching creativity (part 1)
(The original article can be found in www.cdl.org/resource- library/articles/teaching_creativity.php.)
Here, I extract some main points from R. Sternberg and W.M. Williams’ 24 tips for teaching creativity.
The Investment Theory of Creativity - Buying Low and Selling High
Creative thinkers buy low and sell high. Creative ideas are both novel and valuable. However, when creative ideas are proposed, they often are viewed as useless and even foolish. Because the creative innovator stands up to vested interests and defies the crowd.
From the investment view, the creative person buys low by presenting a unique idea and attempting to convince other people of its value. After convincing others that the idea is valuable, which increases the perceived value of the investment, the creative person sells high by leaving the idea to others and then moving on to another idea.
We routinely witness creativity in young children, but it is hard to find in older children and adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity. We begin to suppress children's natural creativity when we expect them to color within the lines in their coloring books.
Balancing Analytic, Synthetic, and Practical Abilities
Creative work requires applying and balancing three abilities that can all be developed.
Synthetic ability is the ability to generate novel and interesting ideas by making connections between things that others do not think of.
Analytic ability is the critical thinking ability. Without well-developed analytic ability, the creative thinker is as likely to pursue bad ideas as to pursue good ones. The creative individual uses analytic ability to work out the implications of a creative idea and to test it.
Practical ability is the ability to translate theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. The creative person uses practical ability to convince other people that an idea is worthy.
24 Tips
1. Be a good role model for students
Children develop creativity not when you tell them to, but when you show them.
2. Build Self-Efficacy
Help students believe in their own ability to be creative.
3. Question Assumptions
Some creative people question so many things so often that others stop taking them seriously. Everyone has to learn which assumptions are worth questioning and which battles are worth fighting.
Help your students evaluate their questions by discouraging the idea that you ask questions and they simply answer them. Your role is not simply to teach students the facts. Help your students learn how to formulate good questions and how to answer questions.
We all tend to make a mistake by emphasizing the answering and not the asking of questions. The good student is perceived as the one who rapidly furnishes the right answers. We need to teach students how to ask the right questions (good, thought-provoking, and interesting ones) and lessen the emphasis on rote learning.
4. How to Define and Redefine Problems
Promote creative performance by encouraging your students to define and redefine problems and projects. Encourage creative thinking by having students choose their own topics for papers or presentations, choose their own ways of solving problems, and sometimes choose again if they discover that their selection was a mistake. Allow your students to pick their own topics, subject to your approval, on at least one paper each term. Approval ensures that the topic is relevant to the lesson and has a chance of leading to a successful project.
A successful project (1) is appropriate to the course's goals, (2) illustrates a student's mastery of at least some of what has been taught, and (3) can earn a good grade.
5. Encourage Idea Generation
Once the problem is defined or redefined, it is time for students to generate ideas and solutions. The environment for generating ideas must be relatively free of criticism. The students may acknowledge that some ideas are better or worse, but you must not be harsh or critical. Aim to identify and encourage any creative aspects of the ideas presented and suggest new approaches to any ideas that are simply uncreative. Praise your students for generating many ideas, regardless of whether some are silly or unrelated, while encouraging them to identify and develop their best ideas into high-quality projects.
6. Cross-Fertilize Ideas
Teaching students to cross-fertilize draws on their skills, interests, and abilities, regardless of the subject. For example, if your students are having trouble understanding math, you might ask them to draft test questions related to their special interests-ask the baseball fan to devise geometry problems based on the game. The context may spur creative ideas because the student finds the topic (baseball) enjoyable and it may counteract some of the anxiety caused by geometry. Cross-fertilization motivates students who aren't interested in subjects taught in the abstract.
7. Allow Time for Creative Thinking
Most creative insights, however, do not happen in a rush (Gruber, 1986). We need time to understand a problem and to toss it around. If you stuff questions into your tests or give your students more homework than they can complete, then you are not allowing them time to think creatively.
8. Instruct and Assess Creatively
If you want to encourage creativity, you need to include at least some opportunities for creative thought in assignments and tests. Ask questions that require factual recall, analytic thinking, and creative thinking. For example, students might be asked to learn about a law, analyze the law, and then think about how the law might be improved.
9. Reward Creative Ideas and Products
Reward creative efforts. For example, assign a project and remind students that you are looking for them to demonstrate their knowledge, analytical and writing skills, and creativity. Let them know that creativity does not depend on your agreement with what they write, only that they express ideas that represent a synthesis between existing ideas and their own thoughts. You need to care only that the ideas are creative from the students' perspectives, not necessarily creative with regard to the state of the art. Students may generate an idea that someone else has already had.
10. Encourage Sensible Risks
Defying the crowd means risking the crowd's wrath. Creative people take sensible risks and produce ideas that others ultimately admire and respect as trend setting. In taking these risks, creative people sometimes make mistakes, fail, and fall flat on their faces. Helping students to develop a sense of how to assess risks.
Given the learning opportunities that derive from taking risks and the achievement that learning makes possible, why are so few children willing to take risks in school? The reason is that perfect test scores and papers receive praise; failure may mean extra work. Failure to attain a certain academic standard is perceived as a lack of ability and motivation rather than as reflecting a desire to grow. Teachers advocate playing it safe when they give assignments without choices and allow only particular answers to questions.
11. Allow Mistakes
Mistakes allowed others to profit from the ideas and go beyond the earlier ideas. However, schools are often unforgiving of mistakes.
When your students make mistakes, ask them to analyze and discuss these mistakes. Often, mistakes or weak ideas contain the germ of correct answers or good ideas. In Japan, teachers spend entire class periods asking children to analyze the mistakes in their mathematical thinking. For the teacher who wants to make a difference, exploring mistakes can be a learning and growing opportunity.
12. Tolerate Ambiguity
Tolerating ambiguity is uncomfortable. When a student has almost the right topic for a paper or almost the right science project, it's tempting to accept the near miss. To help students become creative, encourage them to accept and extend the period in which their ideas do not quite converge. Ultimately, they may come up with better ideas.
(continue on 24 Tips for teaching creativity (part 2))
Here, I extract some main points from R. Sternberg and W.M. Williams’ 24 tips for teaching creativity.
The Investment Theory of Creativity - Buying Low and Selling High
Creative thinkers buy low and sell high. Creative ideas are both novel and valuable. However, when creative ideas are proposed, they often are viewed as useless and even foolish. Because the creative innovator stands up to vested interests and defies the crowd.
From the investment view, the creative person buys low by presenting a unique idea and attempting to convince other people of its value. After convincing others that the idea is valuable, which increases the perceived value of the investment, the creative person sells high by leaving the idea to others and then moving on to another idea.
We routinely witness creativity in young children, but it is hard to find in older children and adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity. We begin to suppress children's natural creativity when we expect them to color within the lines in their coloring books.
Balancing Analytic, Synthetic, and Practical Abilities
Creative work requires applying and balancing three abilities that can all be developed.
Synthetic ability is the ability to generate novel and interesting ideas by making connections between things that others do not think of.
Analytic ability is the critical thinking ability. Without well-developed analytic ability, the creative thinker is as likely to pursue bad ideas as to pursue good ones. The creative individual uses analytic ability to work out the implications of a creative idea and to test it.
Practical ability is the ability to translate theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. The creative person uses practical ability to convince other people that an idea is worthy.
24 Tips
1. Be a good role model for students
Children develop creativity not when you tell them to, but when you show them.
2. Build Self-Efficacy
Help students believe in their own ability to be creative.
3. Question Assumptions
Some creative people question so many things so often that others stop taking them seriously. Everyone has to learn which assumptions are worth questioning and which battles are worth fighting.
Help your students evaluate their questions by discouraging the idea that you ask questions and they simply answer them. Your role is not simply to teach students the facts. Help your students learn how to formulate good questions and how to answer questions.
We all tend to make a mistake by emphasizing the answering and not the asking of questions. The good student is perceived as the one who rapidly furnishes the right answers. We need to teach students how to ask the right questions (good, thought-provoking, and interesting ones) and lessen the emphasis on rote learning.
4. How to Define and Redefine Problems
Promote creative performance by encouraging your students to define and redefine problems and projects. Encourage creative thinking by having students choose their own topics for papers or presentations, choose their own ways of solving problems, and sometimes choose again if they discover that their selection was a mistake. Allow your students to pick their own topics, subject to your approval, on at least one paper each term. Approval ensures that the topic is relevant to the lesson and has a chance of leading to a successful project.
A successful project (1) is appropriate to the course's goals, (2) illustrates a student's mastery of at least some of what has been taught, and (3) can earn a good grade.
5. Encourage Idea Generation
Once the problem is defined or redefined, it is time for students to generate ideas and solutions. The environment for generating ideas must be relatively free of criticism. The students may acknowledge that some ideas are better or worse, but you must not be harsh or critical. Aim to identify and encourage any creative aspects of the ideas presented and suggest new approaches to any ideas that are simply uncreative. Praise your students for generating many ideas, regardless of whether some are silly or unrelated, while encouraging them to identify and develop their best ideas into high-quality projects.
6. Cross-Fertilize Ideas
Teaching students to cross-fertilize draws on their skills, interests, and abilities, regardless of the subject. For example, if your students are having trouble understanding math, you might ask them to draft test questions related to their special interests-ask the baseball fan to devise geometry problems based on the game. The context may spur creative ideas because the student finds the topic (baseball) enjoyable and it may counteract some of the anxiety caused by geometry. Cross-fertilization motivates students who aren't interested in subjects taught in the abstract.
7. Allow Time for Creative Thinking
Most creative insights, however, do not happen in a rush (Gruber, 1986). We need time to understand a problem and to toss it around. If you stuff questions into your tests or give your students more homework than they can complete, then you are not allowing them time to think creatively.
8. Instruct and Assess Creatively
If you want to encourage creativity, you need to include at least some opportunities for creative thought in assignments and tests. Ask questions that require factual recall, analytic thinking, and creative thinking. For example, students might be asked to learn about a law, analyze the law, and then think about how the law might be improved.
9. Reward Creative Ideas and Products
Reward creative efforts. For example, assign a project and remind students that you are looking for them to demonstrate their knowledge, analytical and writing skills, and creativity. Let them know that creativity does not depend on your agreement with what they write, only that they express ideas that represent a synthesis between existing ideas and their own thoughts. You need to care only that the ideas are creative from the students' perspectives, not necessarily creative with regard to the state of the art. Students may generate an idea that someone else has already had.
10. Encourage Sensible Risks
Defying the crowd means risking the crowd's wrath. Creative people take sensible risks and produce ideas that others ultimately admire and respect as trend setting. In taking these risks, creative people sometimes make mistakes, fail, and fall flat on their faces. Helping students to develop a sense of how to assess risks.
Given the learning opportunities that derive from taking risks and the achievement that learning makes possible, why are so few children willing to take risks in school? The reason is that perfect test scores and papers receive praise; failure may mean extra work. Failure to attain a certain academic standard is perceived as a lack of ability and motivation rather than as reflecting a desire to grow. Teachers advocate playing it safe when they give assignments without choices and allow only particular answers to questions.
11. Allow Mistakes
Mistakes allowed others to profit from the ideas and go beyond the earlier ideas. However, schools are often unforgiving of mistakes.
When your students make mistakes, ask them to analyze and discuss these mistakes. Often, mistakes or weak ideas contain the germ of correct answers or good ideas. In Japan, teachers spend entire class periods asking children to analyze the mistakes in their mathematical thinking. For the teacher who wants to make a difference, exploring mistakes can be a learning and growing opportunity.
12. Tolerate Ambiguity
Tolerating ambiguity is uncomfortable. When a student has almost the right topic for a paper or almost the right science project, it's tempting to accept the near miss. To help students become creative, encourage them to accept and extend the period in which their ideas do not quite converge. Ultimately, they may come up with better ideas.
(continue on 24 Tips for teaching creativity (part 2))
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