The optimal adaptivity corridor and teacher creativity

Last week I attended the annual Manaiakalani Principals' wānanga, always a fantastic event, and the biggest yet. During the morning Dr Rebecca Jesson presented, with her usual array of evidence informed commentary and provocation, one of many aspects of this mahi that I absolutely love. In her presentation. she presented this model of professional growth.

I'd not seen this before, and before it disappeared into distant memory I wanted make sense of it, and contextualise it within my 'creativity' paradigm. What I'm about to say isn't a claim to 'correctness', but me trying to check that I have this right. I may not have!!!

When new teachers first begin, they try to innovate, but don't yet have the sorts of structures and routines that are good practice sufficiently embedded so that their innovation can 'grow wings and fly'. The result is the 'frustrated novice'. 

However the net result of developing the sorts of structures and routines necessary, but not pairing this with innovation or creativity, is the 'expert at routines'.

Professional growth along the 'optimal creativity corridor' occurs when the development of expert routines is paired with growing innovation or creativity.

My first 'reckon' on this is that in teaching (maybe most professions?) most teachers make it as far as the 'expert at routines', they introduce a little innovation or creativity (yes I know that these are technically different things) into their practice. They follow the red arrow on this next diagram.

I would like to suggest that, with an extant workforce, the more desirable path is one where as those routines are embedded, there is a growing amount of innovation and creativity that appears in teacher practice. The red arrows below are my attempt at describing what I think is perhaps the optimal pathway. 

Perhaps in an ideal world new entrants into the profession would simply head straight up the 'optimal adaptive corridor'.  My suspicion however is that this is not as likely in teaching. We enter the profession because we want to help, and once we see that we start  to make a difference, perhaps we become increasingly risk averse, for fear of losing the gains we have started to make. 

After all, innovating, being creative, requires a degree of risk taking (that's why its development is one of our areas of strategic intent at Hornby High School,) and by definition when we take risks there is the possibility of failure. But as I have said to our staff in the past: "you know what? That's okay!!!!".

This 'just enough' student progress paradigm may be the equivalent of the Bounded Rationality Model in decision making, in which we tend to gather what we think is 'just enough' information before making a decision.

(Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/chapter/11-3-understanding-decision-making/ )

I am suggesting that maybe we see ourselves making what we think is just enough of a difference, and we stop innovating at that point. What we want (I reckon) is the 'Creative' model, but notice that this requires that you 'have time to immerse yourself in the issues'.

Anyway, I digress. We have an extant workforce, we have our Manaiakalani kaupapa, at Hornby High School we increasingly see the need, the driver, for creativity, and my contention (unsupported by any evidence) is that these all come together if/when we drive teacher creativity. How do we do this? I have arrived back at my current OCD: what are the deliberate acts of leadership that will create and nurture creativity in our kura? I've already written on a number of those, and here's another one ... the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme.

We do our tauira a huge service when we support and nurture teacher professional creativity, and MIT is an outstanding way to do that, an outstanding vehicle to do that. 

It was a pleasure to sit and listen to presentations from this year's MIT teachers from across the motu. Their mahi was wide ranging and varied, but the commonality was teachers who were prepared to be creative, to try new things. What's more the MIT programme offers time for these teachers to immerse themselves in this stuff, that time to slow down. to engage in Peter O'Connor and Claudia Rozas Gomez' 'Slow Wonder'.

Our Manaiakalani kaupapa, our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, shouldn't just apply to our rangatahi.  These need to be a mindset, a way of being, for everyone in our kura, regardless of their 'formal role'.

I do think most teachers want to indulge their creativity in order to improve things for their learners. I just 'reckon' that we are a very risk averse group of people, because we think the stakes are too high to fail. Problem is the stakes are too high not to try.

Creativity, focus, engagement .. all there for everyone to see

 I have previously written on the idea that you get what you constantly think about. Similarly you see what you constantly look for. Today I wandered through our tech and arts spaces, simply wandering as I love to do. It keeps me connected, chatting with students and staff, and looking at the awesome mahi they are doing. These photos were typical of what I saw. Now you can argue that this is what you'd expect to see in these spaces, and I hope that's true.  It was reassuring to see it, the absolute evidence of creative endeavour, but also to see the level of engagement of the students. The students in the photos below were absolutely typical of what I saw everywhere I walked, as is almost always the case.

Product of a 'wearable arts' unit

Similarly 'wearable arts'

Senior students focussed on their visual arts portfolios

Virtual reality and world creation, with our awesome 'Creatives in Schools' teacher Dr Claire Hughes

I've also written before that technical knowledge and skill are an essential precursor to creativity. You have to 'know' stuff before you can engage in higher order thinking, before you can be creative .. here some trigonometry in the engineering workshop. In the 'real world' knowledge isn't silo'd. Bodies of knowledge 'integrate'.

Senior 'Design and Visual Communication' students are required to build architectural models of their designs. Here those models can be seen in development, where the technology of laser cutting has been integrated to give 3D rendering to the design work.

A technology project developed in conjunction with Josh and the ChCh City Libraries team, in which students are designing and building a 60's arcade game and machine (with some funding from GCSN - Greater Christchurch Schools Network .. many thanks GCSN)

The outputs and outcomes for these students are of a very high quality. That's what you get when you focus on creativity. That's what the research evidence says. When students are required to 'create', they are giving form to their learning, they are reinforcing their learning, and by sharing their end products they create the classic design thinking feedback loop that accelerates learning and achievement. This is the very stuff of our Manaiakalani kaupapa, or our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It's also a core tenet of the UDL (Universal design for Learning) framework.

It's not that this stuff doesn't happen elsewhere. It's not that it can't happen elsewhere. It's just that when you make the creativity explicit, when you more deliberate and intentional about using creativity as a 'lever' that you can pull to support learning, you are much more likely to get these outcomes, you are much more likely to get agentic learners, learners who are engaged, learners who are learning!!! 

It's what you get when you have a simple vision grounded in the research on the impact of creativity in education, and it's what you get when you have a dedicated committed staff who understand and share the vision. 'He puna auaha a centre of creative excellence' has power and impact in education.

Creativity, focus and engagement .. all there for everyone to see.

System change and 'Slow Wonder'

At the end of term, teachers typically feel.. well ... bloody exhausted, actually. In a social media post at the end of last term I said this:

After over 40 years in education I have come to learn that the lethargy we feel in that first week after the  end of term, that inability to 'get out of our own way', that insurmountable difficulty we face when attempting to tackle.. well, anything really ... , that inability to do more than sit on the couch and stare blank eyed, is not laziness. It is the consequence of the state of complete and utter exhaustion in the midst of which the brain is saying 'I need to stop, to rest, to let go, to shed the thousand tears I have held back for so long'. At the twilight of my career I still struggle to be gentle on myself.

We push on, however, struggling as I said to be gentle on ourselves. Emerging from that state could perhaps be likened to walking through a dense fog. After a while the morning sun begins to get the better of the fog, visibility increases ever so gradually, and the sunlight manages to break through now and then, bathing the landscape in the beautiful golden glow that is the hope of the new morning.

In the first week of this latest term break I took a couple of hours to read this book just published by Professors Peter O'Connor, and Claudia Rozas Gomez, a book about the place of slowness, taking the time to wonder, to ponder, to gaze into nothingness, to allow the creative brain to just 'be'.

It is the sort of book I'd like to place under my pillow each night as I nod off to sleep, the sort of book I want to hold to my heart before every conversation with a child or a parent. It highlights one of the greatest tensions I have felt over the past six years of principalship, during which time we managed to 're-imagine' Hornby High School as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence'.

I am only too well aware of the 'fact' that to be creative requires amongst other things the time to simply sit, to daydream, to allow the mind to wander and wonder. It requires 'Slow Wonder'. The problem is that our industrial model schooling system leaves neither time nor space for students (or teachers) to do just that. What's more, our initial teacher education (being so outcomes focussed as driven by our Teaching Council) fails to prepare new teachers to be tolerant of this need, let alone to nurture it.

If we accept the notion that society in general needs more creativity, if we accept that nurturing creativity fuels the very things that make us human, if we accept the evidence that creativity supports enhanced wellbeing for learners, if we accept that that is the purpose of education, then it seems odd that as Sir Ken Robinson says we have succeeded in designing and building the best possible system for stamping out creativity.

Our secondary school system drives students over five or six or seven periods of learning in a day, it shifts focus from one 'subject' to another making a virtue of change and instability. It says that all outcomes must be demonstrable, visible, and of course measurable, otherwise how else will we be able to tell if we are getting 'bang for buck' for the taxpayer's dollar? How else will we know if a teacher is good or not? How else will we know whether or not a teacher is worth her or his salary? 

The question is, how do we redesign a secondary schooling system to allow students and teachers the 'time' for this 'Slow Wonder', this time to daydream, to reflect, to just sit and be?

I think there are multiple attempts across Aotearoa New Zealand at doing just that. Our own mahi has so far been founded upon building stronger relationships between teachers and students, and now creating longer blocks of time in which to undertake the mahi with (in my head, anyway) the time for teachers and learners to simply 'stop', to 'daydream', to reflect. Our own changes do feel a lot like 'tinkering around the edges', and that more self directed exploration time is in order. However I've also worked long enough with adolescents to know that they are a fascinating and unpredictable creature that requires some structure, clear boundaries, and lots of guidance. However you have to start somewhere when trying to change a system.

This is difficult, and I can't help feeling that there are large structural roadblocks in our way. I captured my thinking in this diagram.

Creativity is squeezed between the resourcing models within which we operate, and the collective contract working conditions that exist with the PPTA's collective Agreements.

Before you scream at me, I an at heart a unionist. I was one of those who took to the streets fighting the Education Amendment Bill #2 in the ver early '80's (remember that?), I was one of those who, as Branch secretary, and committed Branch member, fought for the conditions of employment we now have. It is no coincidence that in my diagram, the PPTA contract conditions are on the right hand 'jaw' of the vice, the part that doesn't move. Re-read my opening reflection on the end of term. This probably describes the state of mind and physical health of most teachers a the end of the term. Teachers have little more to give. Our future evolutions can't happen at the expense of teachers.

The answers to creating the space for the 'Slow Wonder' lie in other 'places'. They lie in more generous resourcing of secondary schools. They lie in more flexibility in how resources are used. They DON'T lie in making teachers work harder. Generally speaking, teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand have little if any more to give.

The answers aren't some sort of 'binary' choice. The answers lie in a series of reforms, most of all in my opinion in the resourcing models we have. The answers might also lie in changes to our current contract conditions which seem to suggest a low trust model of teachers. I wonder if this is a result of the 40 years of largely neo-liberal impact on education, and teacher behaviour? The changes to teacher registration for example, adopting a high trust model, have not led to some sort of collapse of the profession., som sort of serious decline in teaching standards and outcomes .... what a surprise. Teachers can be trusted!!!

Of course, I am, not naive enough to think that additional resourcing is just a stroke of the pen away. There are always multiple competing demands for that 'tax payer's dollar'. The question is, what do we value most? How do we think we can have the biggest impact on our communities, on society? How can we best create a human future in which we value and nurture our young people, our future?

Regardless of views on exactly how we engineer changes, we need to find ways of creating that time in secondary education for BOTH students AND teachers to sit, to think, to daydream. We need to value that time without looking for some sort of measurable outcome.  What better way to support our Manaiakalani kaupapa, and our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy?

We need time for 'Slow Wonder', to allow imagination to feed creativity.

Creative convergence

In the middle of term 3 I received a phone call from Jason Marsden, Centre Manager at The Hub, telling me that I was one of four recipients of this year's 'Proud to be' awards for Hornby. The awards, based on community nomination, celebrate individuals who the nominators feel have contributed to the community in their own special ways. The programme, in its fourth year, has been the 'brain child' of Jason and the team at The Hub.

My first response (and that of the other three nominees, I suspect) was very much 'surely not? why me?".

We received an exceptionally generous gift of clothing from fashion stores via The Hub, and strutted the catwalk along with other community members modelling fashion from around The Hub. 

I wrote a poem (you can read it at the end of this post) in which I tried to capture my feelings (and possibly those of each of the three of us). I have met with the other three recipients, also with Lyn and Jason from The Hub team, and Vicki the stylist and 'imaginator extraordinaire' ( I think I've just created a new word, right there). They are all amazing people, and the sense of humility I continue to feel from having been connected with all of them is deep and profound. But I have struggled to 'make sense ' of the award, and the event, since then. 

In making sense of it all, I thought about my conversations with Jason. With a physics degree under his belt he was drawn into promotions and retail management (as you do, apparently). He is a creative person, sharing with me some of his personal journey as a craft metal worker and blacksmith, and his more recent work in designing, and taking to market, an amazing wrist watch stand. Jason combines that with an astute business sense, and a strong moral imperative to 'do the right thing' for people.

Jason taking to the catwalk himself at the 2022 'Proud to be' show.

I was also mindful of conversations with Lyn and Vicki too, professionals who engage their 'creative muscle' daily in their mahi. It took me back to my own time in previous lives in which the development of creative promotions solutions was part and parcel of our daily mahi. Creative thinking often had to be 'to the fore'.

Where did all of this leave me? It left me thinking about the underlying need for creativity in our lives, about the power of creativity to impact positively on people, and also about what the possibilities might be when we connect creatively within and across the different parts of our lives, and across sectors of the community.

I am trying to understand the synergies that might exist for joint action between a community kura and its local shopping centre (or local business more generally) that might better support creativity. I have seen many initiatives tried and failed in the past. Mentors from local businesses, requests for funding for student activities, such things generally with a small impact which fades to nothing rather quickly once the individual who initiated the idea has moved on. I seem to have stumbled across these thoughts:

• The connections we do make need to be authentic and I suspect rather more spontaneous and situational. 
• There is unlikely to be much that applies universally across kura and communities, but rather will depend on the strengths and inclinations of each community and its members
• Despite that, I 'reckon' that creativity is a great basis on which to forge connections

This is the creative convergence to which I was referring in the title to this post.

Of course this all depends on there being people in your community who value creativity. In our case Jason is one such person - he values and practices it (and as I have said, he acts with a strong sense of moral purpose). Interesting isn't it that he should have around him others who similarly are creative by nature and habit. What a coincidence!! (sarcasm circuits switched on, yes). Of COURSE it's no coincidence. Jason gathers around himself people who similarly value creativity, who practice it in their daily lives. The existence of a 'creatives' programme at The Hub is NO coincidence. This builds vibrant communities, this builds communities that flourish and thrive, communities filled with individuals who support one another, individuals who are prepared to take risks.  I used the word 'thrive', and I used it deliberately and intentionally. THAT is our ultimate purpose surely. Profits, educational attainment, whatever the short term outcome, the capacity, the opportunity, to thrive is THE most important thing (I reckon!!). Isn't that why societies exist?

Our vision for our kāhui ako cluster is ""Inspiring Futures: Collaborating for Hauora & Success".  When we discuss hauora we use the terms flourishing and thriving, referring as we do the Selligman 'PERMA' model as our guide, within the context of Te Whare Tapa Whā.

I am currently reading the latest book by Professor Peter O'Connor and Claudia Rozas Gōmez 'Slow Wonder', and these words resonated:

Perhaps what frightens so many about the imagination is that it might be no more than an invisible tincture with enormous power to bring about elemental change. Perhaps it is the essence of the magnus opus, the great work that ancient alchemists understood could heal the sick and transform the searcher into a perfect philosopher. We might then understand the imagination as the elixir of life, the powder that keeps us as wise as children, that makes us live beyond our death in the art we make. For the imagination lifts us out of the everyday and turns the greyness of life a golden hue. Is the imagination, then, the means by which we might achieve life’s purpose, as Paolo Freire suggests, of becoming more fully human? James Hillman writes:

We must start, as [the alchemist] Benedictus Figulus says, in the caelum, the sky-blue firmament over our heads, the mind already in the blue of heaven, imagination opened. The blue caelum of imagination gives to the opus a rock- hard standpoint from above downward, just as firm and solid as literal physical reality. A sapphire stone already at the beginning.6 

Creativity is one of life's forces. It makes us human.  

 

How much more empathetic, how much kinder, would we be as a society if we acknowledged the power of creativity, if in action we showed that we truly valued creativity, if we nurtured creativity in whatever shape of form it exists in each of us (because it surely does)?

And so we come full circle to our Hornby High school Manaiakalani kaupapa (Learn, Create, Share) and our kura vision 'he puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence'. We are not about being ordinary, about 

supporting and sustaining the status quo. We are about being extraordinary, about getting back to the essence of our 'being', our purpose, about school, system, and societal, change. 

Lofty ideals, at a time when we need them!! I WANT to boil the ocean. 

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The poem (imagine this with a Sam Hunt voice):