Theory and Practice of Innovation

 

Theme

How is the role of creativity and innovation viewed in education?

 

Overview

We teach critical thinking in school, but not creative thinking; I suggest we blend these into what I call creatical thinking. This week addresses theories and research in the area of imagination, creativity and innovation, particularly in the work of Sir Ken Robinson, Alane Starko, Yong Zhao and others, and about how these subjects are addressed or not addressed in education. We should be particularly interested in this because school graduates become our employees, (and eventually our employers). The skills they bring into our businesses should be of very great interest to us. They also become our neighbors, and those who vote, not just nationally, but locally on issues of local importance to you.

 

Read/View

Start by scanning the Wikipedia article on Creativity. You are looking for trends and items of interest to you. Note how vast this area of inquiry is. Every facet of human activity is concerned with creativity in some way.

 

Then read as many of these articles as time allows. Feel free to scan the others:

• The Uncommon Core: Essential creativity skills and the grammer of new media are missing from the Common Core English Language Arts Standards, by yours truly. (2013). Educational Leadership - Creativity Now! v70, n5, pgs 42-47.

• Can Creativity Be Taught, by August Turak. Forbes, 5/22/2011. This is very focused on creativity in business. I include it here to help shed some light on what we might be teaching in school so that students might be more effective in an entrepreneurial marketplace.

• Doublethink: The Creativity-Testing Conflict, by Y. Zhao. (September 30, 2012).

• Why Creativity Now? A Conversation with Sir Ken Robinson, by Amy Azzam, September 2009 | Volume 67 | Number 1 Teaching for the 21st Century. Pages 22-26.

• The Creativity Crisis by Bronson and Merryman. Newsweek, July 10, 2010.  "For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it."

 

Watch

How Schools Kill Creativity? A TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson. "Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence." It has been viewed 17,560,748 times.

 

Teach Children to Create Jobs, a TED talk by Yong Zhao. From the TED talk site: "Yong Zhao is currently Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE). He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education...Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution."

 

Moodle discussion

What changes would you suggest to our education system to address the development of creativity and innovation skills?

 

Special prep for next week: come up with two questions on your own (not in discussion) about what to do about the issue of creativity in education. Mike Felix will use these two questions to help facilitate the innovation process he uses at AT&T.

 

Additional suggested readings

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

 

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

 

Martinez, S and Stager, G. (2013). Invent to Learn. Torrance, CA: Constructing Modern Knowledge Press.

 

Pfeiffer, S. (2013). Serving the Gifted- Evidence-Based Clinical and Psychoeducational Practice. New York: Routledge.

 

Robinson, K. (2011http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZEZTyxSl3g). Out of Our Minds- Learning to be creative. UK: Capstone Publishing.

Starko, A. (2010). Creativity in the Classroom (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

 

Zhao, Y. (2012). World Class Learners- Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

 

Additional suggested viewings

What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills, by Grant Lichtman. TedxDenver, March 20, 2013

 

Mitch Resnick's Kindergarten Thinking

From Dave's Whiteboard.