Creativity Under Duress In Education

Creativity Under Duress in Education? introduces a new framework—creativity under duress in education. Leading creativity researchers and educational scholars discuss creative theory and practice from an educational lens that is provocative. Across international contexts, this book combines insights from creativity and educational research; rich illustrations from classrooms, schools, and other professional settings, and practical ideas and strategies for how anyone invested in education can support creative teaching and learning. Readers will encounter diverse perspectives from an international cast of authors exploring cutting-edge ideas for creativity and innovation as a foremost priority for economies in the new millennium. At the same time, they consider forces of authority, control, and constraint that impact creative education and innovation within educational systems, extending to the professions. Educators and those interested in the future of education are vitally important to this conversation around research-based and practical analyses of creativity in and beyond the classroom. Addressed are these major issues: (1) creativity frameworks of theory and action in education, (2) research investigations into creativity and education, and (3) applications of creativity theory in real-world practice. Dynamic, this book presents a bridge between draconian contexts of assessment and explosive creativity in diverse places. A key contribution of the volume is its validation and promotion of creativity and innovation for students, teachers, professors, leaders, employers, policymakers, and others seeking ways to profoundly improve learning and transform education. In tackling the seemingly irreconcilable issues of creativity and accountability in K–12 institutions, higher education, and policy circles, worldwide, this work offers a message that is both cautionary and inspiring. Book editor Carol A. Mullen, PhD, is Professor of Educational Leadership at Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA. A twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar to China (2015) and Canada (2017), she was honored with the 2016 Jay D. Scribner Mentoring Award from the University Council for Educational Administration. She is author of Creativity and Education in China (2017) and co-editor of Education policy perils (2016).

Set against a background of targets, tests and restrictive curriculum content, this book argues the case for creativity in education.

Creativity is a hot topic in education. As such, there is no shortage of insights or suggestions for how teachers might incorporate creativity into their curriculum. Wading through these suggestions can, however, be quite daunting. This is because many of these suggestions imply that teachers need to somehow radically change their approach to teaching, adopt a new curriculum, or add-on to their existing curriculum. Consequently, many teachers feel that such changes are not feasible and may even come at the cost of supporting students’ academic learning. This book provides an alternative. Teachers need not adopt a new curriculum, radically change what they are already doing, or attempt to add more to their already overflowing plate of curricular responsibilities. Rather, teaching for and with creativity is often more about doing what one is already doing, only slightly better. The aim of this book is to help teachers understand how they can make slight changes to their own teaching, which can substantially support the development of students’ creative potential and result in a more creative approach to teaching. The insights and practical suggestions presented in this book represent some of the newest and most promising work being done in the field of creativity studies. This book is unique in that it presents teachers with concrete ideas for how to simultaneously support creativity and learning. A particularly novel feature of this book is that it offers a blend of theoretical insights and vivid classroom examples to illustrate the kinds of opportunities and challenges that teachers face when they attempt to teach for and with creativity. As such, this book will provide teachers, scholars, researchers, and anyone interested in classroom creativity with new directions for future research and educational practice.

Revealing Creativity: Exploration in Transnational Education Cultures explores the recovery and fostering of creativity under educational constraint. This longitudinal global study of diverse education populations in China, Canada, and Australia offers application of the 4-C Creativity Model through experiential activities and exploratory interviews within classrooms and other learning spaces. Transnational in scope, this book describes an original innovative method, process, and tool for addressing obstacles to creativity in educational environments and within the self that constitute a significant challenge to practice. Through an immersive encounter with a validated creativity model, diverse cultural groups were guided to interpret the 4-C classification system and uncover their latent potential as creators. For their own purposes, readers can adapt the dynamic model-as-method process for releasing and revealing creativity within accountability-bound competitive cultures.

Creative Contradictions in Education is a provocative collection of essays by international experts who tackle difficult questions about creativity in education from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The contributors to this volume examine and provide fresh insights into the tensions and contradictions that researchers and educators face when attempting to understand and apply creativity in educational contexts. Creativity in education is surrounded by many contradictions. Teachers generally value creativity, but question the role it can and should play in their classroom. Many educators find themselves feeling caught between the push to promote students’ creative thinking skills and the pull to meet external curricular mandates, increased performance monitoring, and various other curricular constraints. This book brings together leading experts who provide fresh, cross-disciplinary insights into how creative contradictions in education might be addressed. Contributors will draw from existing empirical and theoretical work, but push beyond “what currently is” and comment on future possibilities. This includes challenging the orthodoxy of traditional conceptions of creativity in education or making a case for maintaining particular orthodoxies.

A rounded, comprehensive, guide to issues of practice, pedagogy and policy concerned with creative education.

Creativity has become a buzzword across all disciplines in education and across all phases, from early years through to tertiary education. Although the meaning of creativity can change vastly depending on the global educational setting, it is impossible to ignore the applicability and relevance of creativity as an educational tool, philosophical framework and pedagogical approach. Through case studies of creativity in varying settings and diverse contexts, this collection explores the ground-breaking work undertaken internationally to support, develop and future-proof learners with, and for, creativity. The chapters are centred around a practice based enquiry or other forms of empirical research. This provides the scholarly basis upon which creativity is continuously reconceptualised and redefined in the educational and country-specific context of each study. Contributors from different countries then provide critical, reflective and analytical responses to each chapter. These conversational responses focus further on international education perspectives and provide a dialogue for educators into how methods and approaches can be transferred, translated and contextually mediated for different environments. Through the case studies and responses, Creativity in Education provides practical insights for application in a wide range of educational settings and contexts, such as the use of art exhibitions and object-work, as well as more philosophical approaches to teacher education, leadership for learning and creativity as a universal phenomenon.

Over the last few years, social and emotional skills have been rising on the education policy agenda and in the public debate. Policy makers and education practitioners are seeking ways to complement the focus on academic learning, with attention to social and emotional skill development.

Chapters 1, 6 and 8 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.