I keep thinking about what it might mean, what it might look like, to have a learning city, and particularly a creative city. You can probably tell that in my own head these two are inextricably entwined, rightly or wrongly.
This means that I keep looking around me for examples of creativity being developed, displayed, and valued, and there seem to be lots of them. Here are a few examples.
There's Kim's 'Creative Trust' (an operation that she has scaled back somewhat to take on a different role in education).
Kim at a recent CPPA meeting, with Nigel Latta
I was walking stridently towards an appointment a week or two ago and happened up this Street art project. I stopped and talked to Graeme, asking him some questions... wow is he an impressive human being. Tino pai to mahi, e hoa!!! The arts making a difference to lives.
There is the Manaiakalani Schools network whose kaupapa is 'learn create share', a kaupapa that tries to build student creative and critical thinking into their learning, all amplified with the affordances of digital technology.
What about the Ōtautahi Christchurch Young Writers' school? Around and growing young writers' talents since1993
Our Ōtautahi Christchurch city libraries network offers plenty of opportunity to develop creative thinking and creative skills with holiday and after school programmes. The Ōtautahi Christchurch central library, Tūranga, and the network of suburban hubs being redeveloped, contain facilities that support creativity.
Their support for creativity looks impressive. When I see a sign like this, I get kind of excited.
On Level 4 of Tūranga
There are communities of creatives, like the Art Box project in Ōtautahi. In their own words:
"Our exciting art space has its origins in the series of major earthquakes that devastated central and eastern areas of Christchurch. Since 2004 this modern, air conditioned, building has been the studio of well known local artist Beverley Frost. However, seismic events caused thoughts to meander and flow. Various artists began to talk about the need for a place where a creative renaissance could flourish following the loss of so many of the city's artistic outlets. The result was Art Box, a Christchurch Gallery where modern works can be viewed in a relaxed and friendly environment."
There is the Ministry of Education 'Creatives in Schools' programme. As Tumuaki of Hornby High School I had the privilege of working with Dr Claire Hughes on such a programme (well two, actually, over two years). The engagement with rangatahi was phenomenal, Claire a prodigious and inspiring talent.
As I said, there are lots of these activities, and with the exception of a city's library network, they are most often small ventures, often just one or two people, making a difference at that point in time with a small group of their fellow human beings.
My wondering is are they having sufficient impact? If not, is this a matter of scale? OR even if they can be scaled sufficiently to have any significant impact? In fact, are such things scaleable at all, or the idea of scaleable creative activities in itself an oxymoron?? If anyone could scale these, you'd think it would be a city's library network.
"Living in a capitalist society, we are forced to pit ourselves against each other in a system we have no choice but to participate in. We are coerced into adapting ourselves and our skills into fitting the role of benefitting capitalist society. And unfortunately, the art world is no exception. While the businessperson and the manufacturer are rewarded, the writer and the artist are suppressed. Unless of course, that art is commodified."
Even Marx had something to say about the role of art in the capitalist society.
Is what we have now 'as good as it gets'? Is the current paradigm of the arts, and creativity more generally, the best we can hope for? Is it pointless to try and grow a whole community as a creative "collective? (Remember that I mean creativity in its broadest sense, not limited to the creative arts only, although definitely incorporating them).
Perhaps the best answer lies in collective action. Maybe it's a bit of the old gestalt psychology - the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If we bring the enormously diverse community ever closer together, we amplify the impact of each organisation. I've quoted Peter Korotkin before. And of course this beautiful whakataukī:
Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi
With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive
What I do believe is that the mahi of an organisation like Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch is essential. Someone needs to bring the diverse community together. 'Learning Days' is one of those things that might just start to make a difference.
Watch out for Learning Days 2024. This is such a promising initiative that might just scale this whole learning city/creative city thing.\
I was sitting in a meeting of the trustees for Ako Ōtautahi-Learning City Christchurch, and we were discussing the revised strategic plan. It's a great document, it reflects some fabulous futures thinking that is the bread and butter of Cheryl and the other trustees, and something that I am only slowly learning.
In the course of the discussion I was brought back to a conversation we had a year or more ago where we talked about the place of curiosity.
I was thinking about this 'provocation': what would you have to do to create a city of curiosity, a place where the population is naturally curious about things? Because if you want a learning city, a city in which learning is 'just the way we are', then you need a city where people generally are just naturally curious
We are more naturally inclined to learn about stuff when we are curious about it, aren't we. People are of course funny things ('eee there's nought so funny as folks'), so not everyone will be curious at all, and then of course people will be curious about as many different things as there are people. I could say that since curiosity is a naturally occurring characteristic, it will be 'normally' distributed across the population. As difficult as I find it to fathom, yes that must mean that there are those who are hardly curious at all.. hmmmm
So ... curiosity, eh? Defined as "a strong desire to know or learn something", I thought 'how did I create a sense of curiosity in a classroom, or across a whole kura'? By asking cool questions - often, creating and sharing a sense of wonderment and awe (a wee tilt to Art Costa's Habits of Mind), connecting connecting connecting and talking talking talking. That meant telling stories, using humour, being well situated in your own humanity, being real, approachable, respectful.. the characteristics of a good teacher, maybe (and suddenly I am also immersed in Dr Kevin Knight's 8People model).
I stumbled upon an interesting article in Forbes titled "Five Ways To Cultivate Curiosity And Tap Into Your Creativity" by Josh Ritchie (Forbes 15.11.22017). Wut? Curiosity AND creativity? Well there's a surprise. Early on Ritchie makes a great statement:
"Curiosity is the core of all creativity -- the drive to do something better, to experiment, to tinker, to create."
And:
"Curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something, and it’s important for any professional because it’s required to both improve your skills and figure out how to fix things that don’t work. Without curiosity, you get people doing the same things the same way because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”"
Ritchie posits that there are five key things we need to do (no surprises, the clue was in the article's title):
Read
Slow down and take your time
Practice asking “why?” and other good questions
Practice saying less (i.e. listen more)
Hang out with a child
Re-read the list. Go on. Got it? How simple is that? How hard could it be? I wondered if we could add to that:
Show how connections can be made between seemingly disparate people and things
The challenge is how we make these things habits across a city?
We could hold out the hope that a city's leadership could and would do that. I well remember the years when we had Vicki Buck as mayor in Ōtautahi. She did many of these things, she challenged orthodoxy and sparked conversations about how we could do things differently (and still does), but if I can generalise, I don't think that's the norm in civic leadership. I read a great piece by Kaila Colbin this morning in which she addressed the issue of engaging civic leaders. The whole piece is worth reading, but here is the essence of the understanding I took from it:
We couldn’t control whether the politicians showed up. That was not our job. Our job was to put on the most extraordinary, the most kick-ass event we possibly could — and let the politicians fight over themselves to get out in front of the parade.
So we stopped bugging them, and focused instead on curation. We got Hugh Nicholson, Christchurch’s Principal Urban Designer. We got Cameron Sinclair, the founder of Architecture for Humanity.
And then — the pièce de résistance — we got Art Agnos, who had been Mayor of San Francisco during the Loma Prieta earthquake.
All of a sudden, the politicians were, in fact, fighting over themselves to get out in front of the parade. They fought over who got to lead the press conference, who got to open the event, who got to introduce Art himself.
My conclusions are these:
A city in which curiosity is 'the way we are', the 'way we do things', will be a city in which creativity thrives and permeates everything
Feeding creativity gives more positive wellbeing, social, and economic outcomes
If we want a 'curious city, and therefore one in which creativity rulz, there's no point in waiting for others to create it, to lead it. There needs to be a guerilla revolution from within
Ako Ōtautahi-Learning City Christchurch is just the organisation to feed, connect, fuel the revolution. 'Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, he toa takitini' – my strength is not as an individual, but as a collective. By joining influencers, by nudging, cajoling, talking talking talking, telling stories, by being 'out there', in the faces of the power brokers, we have to make this idea such an attractive proposition that the response would be 'why the hell wouldn't we? Let us in'.
For civic leaders, I often have a sense of a lack of moral imperative. The only outcomes that seem to be valued are those that can be valued directly, in the short term, with dollars. We have a plague, a pandemic, of short term'ism (and have done for a very long time). I sense that there seems often to be an inability to understand that when people experience higher levels of wellbeing, they are generally economically more productive too.
Surely it's a no brainer to do whatever we can to foster curiosity, and therefore creativity? And anyway, what the heck are civic leaders there for?
Like every other education professional, I've had, or done, my share of professional development/PLD. I've 'done' it, and I've had it 'done to me'. I've had those things I've really wanted to go to, those I knew I needed to go to, and those in which I really had no interest at all, but that someone else had decided I needed to do.
I've previously written about some of the factors I think are necessary for effective change in our kura. But even with the best strategic change management processes, if staff lack the requisite skills the change is doomed to failure.
There will be those who think that the problem lies with teachers. you know the sort .. "bloody lazy teachers", they'll say. Yet I have only rarely in my career met teachers who didn't care, who didn't want the best for their students (yes I have met a couple!!). It's not as if teachers get up in the morning and say to themselves 'Righto, let's go and screw over a few kids today'. Teacher resistance to change is often driven by the view that they know best, based on current knowledge. There are those who say 'well this has worked for the last *** years, so why would I change?'. However, often when presented with information, data, and alternatives, it is possible to change the practice of those teachers. I have often argued that rarely do teachers say 'I'm just not going to change and do what you want me to do'. It's more likely (in my opinion) that they are really saying 'yeah I get it, but I don't know what that would look like in my daily practice', or 'I don't have the skills necessary to do what you are asking'. They are often also saying 'I don't have the time', or 'I'm just bloody well exhausted'. I suspect you need to have been a teacher yourself to understand that. I think that those who have never been in the profession just don't understand.
I love this piece of wisdom which, I suspect, is true for most teachers.
So, what do we know about the best way to undertake PLD? What makes professional learning 'stick'? What gives us best bang for buck, at a time (which is not in the least unusual) when there are never enough dollars to provide all of the PLD we need?
I have seen, and experienced, two very different forms of PLD. There is the PLD that arises from teacher inquiry. Arguably this is the most effective because, if done with sincerity and application and good guidance and support (the 'critical friend' thing), sees each teacher get to the heart of what needs to be done next for the learners in front of them right now. I have said before that inquiry should be 'the way we do things around here'. It is certainly an expectation and a requirement for teacher registration, as it should be. What about the more traditional forms of PLD, those delivered by the 'expert', those that look more like 'courses'? THE most effective model I have ever seen is (sounding like a broken record here, but ...) the Manaiakalani network model which is so profoundly effective it hurts.
For a number of years (sorry, but don't know how many) the Manaiakalani network has run a 'course' called the Digital Fluency Intensive. It aims to create digitally competent teachers who can implement the 'learn, create, share' pedagogy daily in their classrooms.
It goes like this. The kura releases the teacher for one day a week for a term (so that's 9 days). The content itself has been delivered both F2F and online. The teachers are taken through the specific skills, and are then expected to use these in their classes over the following week, reflecting and reporting back on what they have done over that next week. The course does not just focus on skills development but offers a valuable chance to delve into the pedagogy and kaupapa that drives what teachers do in their classes in order to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning. These teachers continue to be supported by the network, and the cluster Education Programme Leader, once the term is over.
It's that simple. Nah seriously, that's it. Hardly rocket science, eh. The kicker in the approach (apart from the incredible levels of skill of all of the facilitators) is the one day a week away from classes to allow the teacher to focus on the skills development. So at current rates (with relief costing $300 ish per day ??) this costs the kura around $3000 per staff member. But the point is that it works. Brilliantly. EVERY teacher I have spoken to who has attended one of these DFI's describes it as THE BEST PLD in their entire career. They are upskilled, supported, and motivated, to change their practice.
And.. yes there's more. The Manaikalani network has now employed specialists to distill the best in reading and maths teaching practices, and is using the same model to upskill teachers in the teaching of reading, and mathematics. It just takes time, time that money has to buy, because you can't do this stuff in the evenings after you have got home from an exhausting day teaching, attending staff meetings, running sports practices, and ... oh yes that parent meeting for the school trip, and then used the first half of your evening to mark the student work that you have brought home with you.
And... this creates those internal experts and change agents that Dr Kevin Knight talks about for sustainable change in kura. Each person who completes this DFI (or the equivalent in reading or maths or...) is an internal expert committed to this kaupapa, able and willing to sustain the changes in practice that our learners need.
And.. this is all evidence informed, the outcomes tracked with rigorous data collection and analysis undertaken by data specialists employed by MET, AND overseen by the academic team from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre, University of Auckland.
We KNOW how to do this stuff. We DON'T need no politicians telling us how to improve outcomes. We don't need no charter schools.
We need to be able to give teachers time, and we need the sorts of course that work exactly like the DFI. For goodness sakes, it's NOT rocket science. Is anyone listening?
I've been contemplating how we could do better at school improvement in Aotearoa NZ. That train of thought tends to take me down the 'well of despair'. It seems to be fraught.
In case you missed the memo, I am a confirmed believer in the benefits of embedding creativity in all schools. Remember: that doesn't just mean the creative arts, although it does include them. I believe in the benefits of creativity in all areas of the curriculum, and in all aspects of school operation. I had the privilege of working with a Head of Maths who pioneered a 'creative maths' week. It can happen in every learning area.
And of course I really like the Manaiakalani concept of creativity that sits at the centre of the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy.
Is it ever possible for a Tumuaki to ensure that the vision she/he has led is sustained once they leave? In this thought piece I want to focus the issue of sustainable change management. Once change has begun, how do you ensure that there is continuity? What are the obstacles to embedding change? How do you ensure that change endures? Short answer.. I don't have the answers.. here though is a slightly longer answer to a little of that kōrero.
This overview informs a lot of what it takes to lead, and where necessary to create and embed change that benefits learners. Be present, be a leader of learning alongside your team, put your money and resources (well the school's money and resources) where your mouth is, manage the environment around everything to do with student to staff behaviour. Detail matters!!! Staff and students pay attention to what you do, not what you say. They will quickly spot hypocrisy when you say one thing and do another, and they will watch where you spend your time, because that is what signals more clearly than anything what you think is important. And leaders have to constantly articulate what they want, what they think is important.
The Knoster model is a useful tool for considering the essential elements of change, and perhaps how to recognise what is missing.
For example, when we lead change we have to ask if our team members have the skill set to implement what we want. If they don't we need to give them that skillset. Otherwise we get an anxiety response.
I do however feel that there are other subtleties at play. One is ego. I fear that all too often new principals feel the need to change simply because it's their show. To adapt an old saying, they may well be saying 'it IS my circus, these ARE my monkeys'. The problem here is that they forget the need to be kaitiaki of what has gone before, to respect the achievements of their predecessors. Things evolve, the world changes. Nothing stays still. I get that. But I have often seen those situations where an incoming Principal feels the need to make rapid, often ill-considered, changes .. and just for the sake of saying 'I'm here, this IS my circus'.
Yes our individual and inevitable biases play a part. We all carry with us our own 'confirmation bias'. We think, if my current evidence, and opinion, support a different way of doing things, then we are quite likely to ignore evidence to the contrary, we are likely to persist with our current paradigm, ignoring that evidence that does not support our paradigm. With incoming Principals this may take the form of 'this worked in my last school, so that's what we'll do here'.
I was talking with Dr Kevin Knight, NZ Graduate School of Education. He observed that getting external facilitators in to support change is useful, but has minimal impact unless at least one internal staff member is completely onboard, in the school all the time, and continues to act as a change champion, once the external facilitation has finished. Ouch!!!
This all leads me to consider the work that continues to go on across the Manaiakalani network. Each Manaiakalani cluster employs an EPL (Education Programme Leader), someone who works alongside staff to develop skills, and to be the voice of coherence and consistency with the kaupapa, to be the change champion within schools. I asked Kevin if he thought that counted. He noted that the person has to be 'internal'. So the EPL? He said, do you invite the EPL to the staff Christmas function? If so, then yes. What a great 'acid test'.
I asked Dorothy Burt whether or not she thought that creativity was well embedded across schools in the network, and if not why not. Her response was (as always) insightful. Amongst other comments she said:
"The key drivers for delivering TMP are regularly ‘cherry picked’ by school leaders: • In class facilitation • Staff Meeting delivered by a Manaiakalani staff member once a term • The Digital Fluency Intensive - all staff participate over time • School Leaders and Principal hui on a regular basis, including annual attendance at the Wānanga • Participation in the Research and Development content"
Given that schools are self managing, one cannot mandate change for school leaders, one cannot insist on adherence 'chapter and verse' to any initiatives. A shame when Dorothy also made this comment:
"We do know that where our programme is most faithfully adhered to and social circumstances are settled we see this and we know how to get there."
As I said, evidence that is contrary to our paradigm is often rejected. Yet gathering evidence, and taking action, lies at the heart of the inquiry cycle that is expected of every teacher, every SLT member, every Tumuaki, in the country.
The key questions are:
What am I doing?
Why that way?
What difference is it making?
How do I know?
This is powerful stuff and it ought to be taking place with every individual teacher, and with SL team members and Tumuaki, creating positive change at the micro level. I am a fan of the current ERO model (will it survive the latest political dogma?) that supports capability building in whole school inquiry.
What then happens if you have this happening across kāhui ako or larger groups of schools? Again my 'gold standard' is the Manaiakalani network which runs the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme in which it resources selected teachers from across the network to engage in the inquiry cycle. The difference is that their findings are shared across the whole network. This is evidence based, and means that effective strategies are shared across the 130 kura currently in the network. MIT helps to create more 'change champions' within each school, again helping to build sustainability within each kura.
And then, what if you could take recordings of teachers implementing their inquiry informed best practice and share THAT across your network? That is the Manaiakalani 'Class on Air' programme, a large and ever growing resource bank of recordings of teachers' practice.
Now, THAT is leveraging inquiry to improve outcomes for learners, provided of course that it permeates down and impacts teacher practice at the individual teacher level. This is 'holy grail' type stuff, and it is the stuff of real change .... PROVIDED Tumuaki believe it is important, and provided they continually say in a loud voice that they think it is important, in which case their teams will also believe it is import
The secret is to embed inquiry into the school culture, to arrive at that point where inquiry is simply 'the way we do things here'.
Why is this so hard for teachers? We have a best practice model that I'll share in a further post.
In response to a local authority comment on social media about the impending installation of a piece of public art recently, there was the inevitable 'what are you wasting rate payer money for?' response. It included the also inevitable 'go fix some potholes' reference too. I'm a fan of public art, and for no other reason that I have liked them, I have been accumulating photos on my 'phone when I have seen cool examples around Ōtautahi. I've also noted and captured a few examples from Ōtepōti, and Oamaru. Here are a few examples. In the selection is also an example from a 'private' restaurant space too .. art, it seems, can be found all over the place. I've left these photos to the end of this post so as to not intrude too far in my comments. So what?
Having led a kura for seven years, one in which we embedded the vision 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence', and one of a network of over 130 kura across Aotearoa New Zealand (the Manaiakalani network) for which the underlying pedagogy is 'learn create share', you'd hope that I had a little more reason for such things than simply 'it seemed like a good idea at the time'. And I have.
There is the work of Professor Peter O'Connor here in Aotearoa (University of Auckland) on creativity in schools to lead the way in my thinking. In what for me as a reader and educational practitioner was a ground breaking paper 'Replanting creativity in post normal times' Peter and his colleagues spelt out the case for creativity in education, covering off wellbeing and learning benefits for all.
And now I am in the process of reading the book 'Your Brain on Art' by Magsamen and Ross (2023).
Now to some degree the book feels a little like some of the 'pop psychology' that has run through our educational discourse for the past few decades, but I am reliably assured that there is some very good stuff in there. It's one of those books that I 'want to believe', hence my question to an academic colleague about its reliability. The book gives repeated evidence of the impact of the creative arts on our wellbeing, on who we are, on pain relief, on dealing with trauma, coping with the inevitable 'end of life, on learning. The evidence is substantial. I've been aware of the therapeutic impact of creativity on our wellbeing for some time, and here it is spelt out with what, with my non academic background, seems to be solid research and practitioner evidence.
Consider this:
HEART ('Healing and Education through the Arts') has collected data over the years to assess how the arts support our wellbeing, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Their research has shown that self expression, communication, concentration, and emotional regulation vastly improve in the program. When HEART is in a school, attendance goes up, and learning metrics improve. Most important, interest in learning improves, which is perhaps the greatest gift you can give a person: the curiosity and excitement to learn. Children develop a future forward mindset. In some of the most marginalised communities, children dare to dream about what their lives might become. And because they are emotionally agile, they are open and eager." (page 87)
Now consider this: what if schools across entire communities emphasised the arts more? (The authors are at great pains, by the way, to talk about arts AND science, not arts OR science). What if entire communities were nudged, nurtured, encouraged, resourced, to support involvement in the creative arts? What if from the youngest age groups cities saw the creative arts as a part of their preventative health investment and infrastructure, not just the money spent on treatment and palliative care, on ambulances at the bottom of those so many cliffs?
For the Manaiakalani schools network creativity is central to their work (bearing in mind that when they use the word 'create' in their pedagogy is has a much broader meaning).
I saw the impact of that focus on engagement, and outcomes, over the years across the network.
I am now a trustee on the Ako Ōtautahi-Learning City Christchurch trust. Their vision is:
"Ako Ōtautahi Learning City Christchurch champions learning as a way to transform lives, communities and organisations."
What if they were successful in connecting across our city's vulnerable groups, in building the trust and confidence of those vulnerable groups, in building connection with our creative communities and opportunities, such that our most vulnerable are enabled to be their best selves, giving to their communities just some of their enormous untapped potential, to live their best lives? What if that reach covered the many cultures that co-exist within our communities, and what if that reach enabled us all to participate in a truly bi-cultural community where we are all our best selves, comfortable in who we are, in where we came from? What if we celebrated creativity for what it is: one of the things that makes us profoundly human?
I am brought back yet again to this wonderful whakataukī:
Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi
With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive
There is a great quote in the lines of Robin Williams' character in the movie 'Dead Poets Society' in which he says:
"We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."
A city that values and nurtures creativity: what sort of city would that be to live in?
Here are just some of the fabulous examples of public art I referred to at the start.
I continue to have an abiding interest in what leadership might need to look like if we are to build and sustain kura that nurture and grow more creative young people for our society. I need no further convincing of the 'why'. Many of the arguments are well summarised in the paper I've cited before - 'Replanting creativity during post normal times" (https://www.teritotoi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Replanting-Creativity-during-post-normal-times_FINAL-2021.pdf)
Susnea and Tataro give us an economic 'why':
"By comparing the Forbes list of most powerful brands
(http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/ ), and the list of most innovative companies
according to Boston Consulting Group (http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/09/27/is-
apple-the-worlds-most-innovative-company-still/), as shown in Table 1, two things become obvious:
first that there is a strong correlation between the capacity of the companies to generate (and
absorb) innovation, and their economic power, and on the other hand, that there is a large
disparity between the USA and the rest of the world in this direction.This conclusion is almost a literal transcription of an idea formulated 10 years ago by
Hargreaves7: ìwe live in a knowledge economy, a knowledge society. Knowledge economies
are stimulated and driven by creativity and ingenuity. Knowledge society schools have to
create these qualities, otherwise their people and their nations will be left behind."
And it's worth reminding ourselves of what we mean by creativity, and also how it differs from innovation.
"Creativity is typically centered around original thought and knowledge, which unleashes potential and is an integral part of idea generation. Innovation, on the other hand, is used to turn the creative idea that you come up with into a viable solution." (https://online.stanford.edu/creativity-and-innovation-management, accessed 12.10.2023)
In an article by James C. Kaufman & Ronald A. Beghetto (2013) I came across this framework which helps to unpack this very large idea.
Kaufman & Beghetto
Susnea and Tataru make the point that creative thinking and the development of creativity require deep knowledge, or subject knowledge, with their enhanced model of creativity in education.
Susnea & Tataru
This all connects really nicely with the Manaiakalani 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy.
For students in the Manaiakalani kura generally, much of their 'create' will be what Kaufman and Beghetto call 'Mini-c'. It also reinforces the point that creativity (regardless of the level) happens when we also have rich knowledge and skills.
But I think this begs the question of whether or not you can teach for creativity, or what kaiako might be doing if they are to sustain creative growth and creative thinking for our rangatahi.
Susnea and Tataru begin their piece with the fairly definitive statement that it most definitely can:
"Thus, creativity training appears beneficial for a variety of people, not just
elementary school students or the unusually gifted. Taken as a whole, these observations lead
to a relatively unambiguous conclusion: Creativity training works."
They list the following inhibitors to creativity in schools:
"In summary, the main factors that act as inhibitors of creativity in the educational process are (see also Cachia, and Craft):
· The prescriptive environment of the school;
· The curriculum oriented towards quantity rather than quality of the information;
· The lack of consensus regarding the definition and the model of mental processes
associated with creativity;
· A certain confusion of values: teachers frequently perceive some behaviours or
personality traits specific to creative students (e.g. stubbornness, hyperactivity,
argumentiveness, and independence) as misbehaviors.
· Teachers are not trained to foster creativity of students: though most of them claim they encourage students to be creative, they simply donít know how to do this;
· The lack of quality educational content for teaching creativity. Teachers and students are equally in need of such materials;
· The lack of simple and easy to use instruments for the assessment of creativity;
· The lack of IT&C tools to support teaching for creativity."
They also identify factors in the environment that could promote creativity.
"Davies et al. count the following positive factors: · Flexible use of time and space; · availability of appropriate materials; · working outside the classroom/school; · playful or games-bases approaches with a degree of learner autonomy; · respectful relationships between teachers and learners; · opportunities for peer collaboration; · partnerships with outside agencies; · awareness of learners needs, and non-prescriptive planning. Other researchers indicate a variety of other factors that can influence creativity in school: · Moods and emotions ; · Pattern recognition and visual thinking; · Organizational and institutional influences; · Teamwork; · Some cultural factors; · The ability to use certain heuristics, e.g. TRIZ. And, last but not least, an essential factor that could dramatically impact the future of teaching for creativity is the use of ICT in education (Ala-Mutka, Loveless, Jahnke, Roschelle, Thompson). "
They conclude with a list of possible actions that we might take:
"By analyzing the factors that influence in both positive and negative directions the education for creativity, the following action directions for fostering creativity through education become obvious:
Eliminate the factors that inhibit creativity. The responsibility for this lies with the decision makers at the European, national, and organizational level, and to a certain degree with the teachers, who should contribute to the creation of a less-prescriptive educational environment. In this category of measures, we count: the reform of the curriculum, defining and promoting a respectable social status for the teachers, which includes decent salarization, increasing the autonomy of the public schools, etc.
Attract teachers in CPD (Continuous Professional Development ) courses to help
them understand the psychological mechanisms involved in creativity.
Develop educational content specially aimed for the education for creativity. This
includes both courses for teachers, and specific courses for students designed to
improve their creative thinking skills, and help them acquire certain specific
heuristics.
Develop solutions based on IT&C to promote creative problem solving in education.
Develop simple and easy to use IT&C tools for the assessment of creativity.
Ala-Mutka et al33. extend the responsibility from teachers to policymakers, researchers, and other practitioners, who should engage in developing a common vision of
future learning for innovation, as a tool to guide their joint effort. "
Ala-Mutka, Punie, and Redecker, in their 2008 paper primarily focussed on helping learners to understand when it's right to be creative, and when it's not, also make this point:
"Support innovative organizations
• Open and networked institutions. Policies should encourage institutions to embrace the networking opportunities available. By opening their learning materials (open educational resources), institutions can attract learners and also support informal learning outside institutions. Networking between institutions can enrich the curricula provided for students and transfer subject-related knowledge between practitioners. Institutions should promote collaborative networks between teachers, researchers, and professional networks, in order to support the emergence and sharing of learning innovations."
Innovation is to be embraced and supported, so if we can network organisations, and build communities of shared practice, we are more likely to see greater student success, and enhanced creativity. That odes assume however that those communities are able to build environments that all (whether principals or front line teachers) feel safe, feel valued, in sharing their practice.
The Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa is an independent piece of work that addresses several of these suggestions.
The pedagogy leans heavily on a strong ICT base in order to 'magnify' the impact of the pedagogy. Significant resources are put into the support of 'Education Programme Leaders' for each cluster, the job of whom is to up skill teachers in both the pedagogy and ICT skills generally. In that work is included the enhancement of teacher understanding of the drivers behind creativity. EPLs generally run one staff meeting a term in each participating kura, the focus shifting term by term between learn, create, and share. (It should be noted that once a cluster has moved on from the initial 'Outreach' programme, it has to fund the funding itself to employ its EPL, a significant drain on resources, and one often met with the support of a local Trust that seeks the necessary funding. The trustees that do this mahi are indeed heroes!).
At the time that I stepped back from Principalship, the Manaiakalani Education Trust was leading work to build effective and sustainable teacher practice in the teaching of reading and maths, with the appointment of well qualified leads in both of these areas. This work supplements the work that has already taken place to build good writing practice, work that sees learners in Manaiakalani schools make progress in their writing at twice national averages (when those students had been in the Manaiakalani environment for three or more years). The fact that teachers are generally deficient in much of this speaks to the work that does (or doesn't) go on in initial teacher education.
All of the Manaiakalani kaupapa is driven by a commitment to shared practice, to identifying what works and spreading the word. Whether it be 'Class on Air', or the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme, their colective;ly developed and implemented Cybersmart programme or the Digital Fluency Intensive, the work of those involved ticks so many of the boxes that could enhance creativity for learners in our kura.
And.. ALL of this requires consistent, committed, focussed, leadership from Principals, leadership that is unrelenting in its messaging, unrelenting in that focus on creativity, leadership and everything that is required to see it through.
This still leaves the issue of curriculum reform, and I am not convinced that our reform in Aotearoa meets these needs. It does well to ensure kaupapa Māori is increasingly embedded, as is the teaching of New Zealand histories. A shift to the political right will in my opinion further remove us from the necessary focus on creativity, with it's nineteenth century view that 'an hour a day of reading, writing, and 'rithmetic;' will solve all of our educational woes. That doesn't mean I think these things are unimportant. It is an insult to teachers to suggest that such practices don't already go on. It does in my opinion presage a return to a system that privileged pakeha middle and upper class learners, thus depriving us as a society of so much richness and talent that, by virtue of race, culture, and impoverished means, is condemned to lie undiscovered, undeveloped. Our society is the poorer for this.
References
Kirsti Ala-Mutka, Yves Punie, and Christine Redecker (2008) "ICT for Learning, Innovation and Creativity" Policy Brief for European Commission Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies
James C. Kaufman & Ronald A. Beghetto (2013) "In Praise of Clark Kent: Creative Metacognition and the Importance of Teaching Kids When (Not) to Be Creative", Roeper Review, 35:3, 155-165, DOI: 10.1080/ 02783193.2013.799413
Ioan Susnea and Alexandru Tataru (2014) "Fostering Creativity Through Education: Key Factors, And Action Directions", Research and Science Today No. 1(7)/2014
'Manaiakalani 2023' https://www.manaiakalani.org/home last accessed 13.10.2023
“Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization.”
So apparently said Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist and geographer who lived from 1842 to 1921.
Perhaps a better way to express this might be with this whakataukī:
Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi
With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive
While cooperation ("the action or process of working together to the same end") and collaboration ("the action of working with someone to produce something") are subtly different things, it seems reasonable to conflate them to some degree when thinking the education landscape. Learning in formal institutions has in some places at some times evolved towards cooperation and collaboration. Most significantly, I've spoken to a number of tertiary academics who all say that their work is most often the result of collaboration, rarely is it the result of 'solo effort'. In our system however we seem to be deep into the paradigm that learning is an individualistic thing, one where we are assessed on our solo efforts, and our specific knowledge at a specific point in time. Our system goes through a fascinating transformation from cooperation and collaboration in the primary sector, to this individualistic approach at secondary and early tertiary, and then shifts back to the cooperative and collaborative approach at the more advanced tertiary level. There is no doubt that each of us benefits form direct instruction, and individual attention. There are many skills we need to acquire, and much knowledge that we need. 'Knowing stuff' is important, despite claims that this is the 'Google-able' age where with so much knowledge at our fingertips, we don't need to remember anything anymore.
I do believe that there is a consensus amongst educators that effective learning generally occurs when we are able to make connections with existing knowledge, and when we see that learning as relevant to the real world around us.
Engineering this in the secondary school environment is often seen as risky, fraught, and difficult to do, yet it's not only the key to deep learning, but also what we all most naturally do. It is made difficult because of the silo'd nature of knowledge and delivery in schools, and the silos in teaching/learning at tertiary level. The silo'd approach seems to be justified by the need to promote deep deep knowledge, and the view that learning is primarily basically content delivery.
This seems to fit in with the western tradition, possibly driven by the eighteenth century writings of Adam Smith on the benefits of specialisation. We have applied a market-led philosophy to learning.
Now don't get me wrong, I am very keen for my doctor, my dentist, that woman that designs the new road bridge, to have deep deep knowledge of their subject area. This sort of specialisation is great when we get to the sharp end of the training of doctors and engineers.
But this system hasn't always worked for some people. I suggest that it hasn't worked well for most. It was fine in our industrial era society when we needed to identify those who might be suitable for management, so that we could separate them out from the 'drones', the workers, who simply needed to turn up to work every day and undertake the same repetitive tasks hour after mindless hour.
Our new 'post modern' era however doesn't need this so much anymore. We need a society that maximises the benefits to society of all human potential. We need to harness the creative and critical capacities of everyone. Not only does this have economic benefit for us all, but it also offers quality of life benefits for everyone.
Why critical and creative thinking? Our world is besieged by problems of a type and scale that we have not faced before. There's an old wisdom that says that you can't solve the problems of today with the thinking that created them in the first place.
We are however locked into this paradigm of learning, believing it is best. What if it's not? What if we already knew of a better way? What if we understood that formal school learning is only one small part of our learning journey? What if we valued people sufficiently well that we sought to allow them to maximise their own life potential, no matter what that looked like? What of we believed that we could do better?
Maya Angelou is quoted as saying “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”
What if we already know better? What if we understood that learning happens everywhere, all the time? What if we understood that the co-existence of multiple generations in our society presents us with an opportunity to accelerate learning by recognising the intergenerational nature of learning, in exactly the same way the Māori recognised this with their wānanga which were an essential part of their society pre-colonisation?
In their broadest sense, learning systems are a collaborative endeavour, not a competitive one, So ...
What if we added to the school system with a coherent, connected, holistic, system of 'just in time', 'any where, any time' learning that harnessed the power of the multiple generations that co-exist in society?
What would happen if we made the multiple learning opportunities more visible to all, if we made sure that the connections between the learning opportunities and those who create them led to the widening of the scope, the availability of and access to the learning opportunities that are available to us?
What if we had a society in which, as a member, you had no doubt whatsoever that learning is 'the thing', that learning opportunities are everywhere, that your life can be enhanced by learning in whatever way, shape, form, or context that might be?
What of we finally really valued indigenous knowledge, where indigenous knowledge took its rightful place alongside our western traditions, where we got the best of both worlds rather than writing off indigenous knowledge as superstition?
I almost hesitate to use the word, but is this what true 'democratisation' of education might look like?
I have tried to capture my understanding of the visionary work of Dr Cheryl Doig who conceived of Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch (AO-LCC). Cheryl describes AO-LCC as 'a bloody good idea', and as I talk to her over a long black (the first of the day for both of us) I see someone committed to trying to re-imagine the future in a way that addresses inequity. She clearly has a heart for those who have not been able to speak for themselves. Cheryl describes herself as a 'futurist', and refers me to an article which she says captures much of what she believes and feels. The piece is written by Frank Spencer (no, not that Frank Spencer) who "founded Kedge — a global foresight, innovation, and strategic design firm which pioneered". The article can be found in full here. In the article Spencer says:
“The Official Future” tells us to “think exponentially, act incrementally,” beckoning us to utilize foresight in service of the ever-expanding present systems of quantifying, micro-analyzing, extracting, consuming, and automating. This way of futuring is at the heart of Epistemic Uncertainty. “The Emergent Future” instead challenges us to “think transformationally, act transitionally” to manifest futures-empowered landscapes of care, empathy, reconciliation, and love in our organizations, governments, and social entities, allowing us to align with much healthier expressions of our biological, psychological, and sacred experiences. Of course, this is not in line with the value proposition of our present systems, and most would deem such futures improbable at best and frivolous at worst. Nevertheless, challenges to long-held assumptions take place when individuals dive deeper and deeper into anticipatory imagination and provocation, and this opens the door to transformative realities that profoundly change the perspective of the foresight practitioner. Consequently, the possibility of these new worlds become an internal experience that can no longer be ignored. This is the future thinker’s dilemma.
The phrase “think transformationally, act transitionally” echoes again and again and again in Cheryl's words, and in my mind as I walk away from our meeting, and as I sit and try to make sense of this. So too in my mind is her description of AO-LCC's work in terms of what she calls 'social capital theory'. She tells me that there are three main components to this:
Bonding - building connections within communities
Bridging - building connections between communities, and
Lifting - working with those who have the influence, to make a difference
Here is a link to an additional piece on the difference between bonding and bridging social capital, and some additional in depth reading on the wider field of social capital theory. I love this stuff, it's big, bold, 'ballsy' (what Ewan MacIntosh describes in the context of BHAGs - Big Hairy Audacious Goals), and it looks to ways and means of changing the system. I find the lyrics to Leonard Cohen's song 'First we take Manhattan' running through my mind.
Having read all of this so far you might still feel obliged to ask why. Why do we need to do this? My career in education has shown me again and again and again how much human potential goes unrealised, wasted, thrown on the scrap people along with the people within whom it resides. Often is fails to thrive because of social issues, substance abuse, social disconnection, the 'poverty trap', this is a complex issue which there is no one cause (just as there is no one answer, no silver bullet).
And there's the economic argument too. Failure to optimise participation in education (not just formal education) regardless of age, stage, or format, increases the gap between rich and poor. If you are rich you might well say you don't care. However OECD economic research suggests that the wider that gap, the poorer performing is the economy. If we allow the gap between rich and poor to widen too much, the wealth of the rich suffers as does the 'wealth' of the poor. This report from the OECD spells it out. Not all of the econometric evidence is that conclusive (IMF research offers other perspectives), but this seems to be enough to 'hang my hat on'.
So, "Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch" - connector, visionary, revolutionary, hopefully a change agent that brings together the influencers in our city to highlight the learning opportunities that are available, and to enhance those opportunities through cooperation and collaboration, because after all - the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If we can do this, how much richer would our world be, how much richer if we saw the results of that lost potential, that creativity, harnessed in a way that enriched not only the lives of those involved but those around them? All it requires is that we shine the spotlight on the benefits of cooperation and collaboration, that we understand that there is a balance between acting in our individual interest, and acting in the collective interest, that we support and sustain each other. There is a place for both, and as I walk away from my meeting with Cheryl I can't help but go back to my own philosophical position in which in our current 21st century society we have swayed way too far towards a belief in the benefits of self self self and lost sight of the fact that human success is a collective endeavour.
As Kropotkin said: “Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization.”
And the final word must be this whakataukī:
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini
My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, it was not individual
Despite, or perhaps because of, my commerce background (both theoretical and practical) I am very wary of taking business practice and trying to apply it to educational leadership, organisation, or practice. I do not believe that the competitive market model has served schools and our young people well.
With that mind-set I read this recent article from McKinsey and Co on creativity and business. I continue to believe that we need more creativity in schools, that we need our young people to be more creative. My specific interest still lies in those leadership practices that give us more creative schools i.e. what specific, deliberate, and intentional, acts do we need to see from Tumuaki, senior leaders, HoDs.. in fact all teachers and school staff, that will make schools more creative places for our rangatahi, places that nurture creativity amongst rangatahi and kaiako alike?
The acknowledgement from McKinsey and Co about the importance of creativity to business awas, I thought, a god start.
As obvious as it may sound, creativity and innovation need to be business priorities. Even more important, a company needs to execute on those priorities in its daily practices. This can be difficult, given the relentless pressures on business leaders to hit quarterly financial targets.
It is however the few lines in the article that look at specific leadership practices that caught my eye:
In companies within the top ACS quartile, senior executives serve as role models for creativity and innovation. They don’t simply encourage their people to pursue those objectives—they see themselves as personally on the hook to deliver creativity and innovation.
In addition, almost 60 percent of companies in the top ACS quartile self-identify as industry shapers or innovation leaders versus slightly more than one-third of their peers. In the most creative firms, a strong narrative has permeated the enterprise: people inside the organization believe in what the company is trying to do and that they can help to achieve it.
And this next statement I think supports the view that this focus spans all levels of the organisation, from front facing customer service right through to governance:
This commitment is reflected in a mind-set that prioritizes creativity and innovation. Thirty percent of the firms in the ACS top quartile discuss creativity and innovation at more than half of their board meetings versus only 20 percent of peer firms.
I don't think there is in fact anything here that is rocket science. There are generalisable lessons that apply whether in business or education (that makes a change, eh) .
More creative schools will come about when leadership and governance value creativity
We will have more creative schools when leaders and Board members both 'talk the talk' and 'walk the talk' i.e. when they keep talking up the value of creativity, challenging colleagues to imagine what this all looks like, and when they act in ways that show that they believe this
“The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued. So it’s much more about creating climates. I think it’s a big shift for a lot of people.”
– Sir Ken Robinson
This diagram took my eye:
There is far more in this one article alone that deserves unpacking, but that's enough for now.
Better schools won't come about when we test learners more relentlessly. Better schools will come about when we focus on what really matters, not the measuring but the thinking, the acting, the doing. It would be hard to disagree with the views Bali Haque expressed in this recent article.
So my challenge to all school leaders is this: what will you do each week, each day, each hour, that makes it clear to all that you value creativity? What will you do to "create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued." ?
And if you don't accept the belief that creativity is important, what will it take to convince you?
A piece of life wisdom: surround yourself with people brighter than yourself. And I have. One such group is the trustees of the Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch trust.
Source: https://learningcitychristchurch.nz/
This week I attended a meeting at which the Trust brought together some of the contributors to the 2023 'Learning Days' in something of a look back and look forward exercise: 'what worked, and what do we want to be doing in 2024?'.
The 2023 Learning Days were held under the 'umbrella concept' of 'Kōtuituia Weaving Curiosity'. I love that idea of a city in which we value, feed, and nurture, curiosity (using the word curiosity in preference to the word 'learning' which comes with a veritable truckload of baggage for many). I've written on this previously.
The talk this week centred around taking a new central idea, 'gamification', and weaving its threads into a 2024 Learning Days event.
If you are not sure what gamification is, I have placed the Wikipedia definition at the end of this post for reference.
Gamification is a powerful educational strategy, and perhaps more importantly a powerful developmental strategy for business and organisations generally. I suspect (opinion alert!!) that it has however proved damnably difficult to 'realise', to actually implement, particularly in a business context, but in almost any context.
I see the potential of gamification in a different way (and an entirely predictable one if you have read any of my other thinking on this blog). In the same way that there was talk in our long lost war on drugs about 'gateway drugs', so too could gamification be a 'gateway to creativity'.
I am a huge fan of the concept of creative cities, although as always I mean creative in ways that go well beyond the creative arts. To me, creative cities are places where creative problem solving is 'how we do things around. here'. So I am imagining:
a festival in which gamification is used to enthuse, to inspire, and to engage, a wide range of people in a wide range of new things.
a massive game design contest that engages young people in particular in game design and creation.
the creative potential of our most vulnerable unleashed
gamification in all of its guises, both digital and analogue
... and perhaps most importantly:
gamification as a tool to build creativity and creative problem solving at a community wide level.
Perhaps this is creativity by stealth. I am drawn to a story I heard many decades ago a t ban Art galleries and Museums' Association conference when I was heavily involved in the world of museums and art galleries. James Mack (then Director of the Dowse Art Gallery in the Hutt, related a story of his time at the Suter Gallery in Nelson. He was running a showing of a film of "The Lord of the lies', hosted in the galleries amongst the art works on show. This was in those days when you played movies from reels of celluloid, using a projector (no Youtube back then). group he described as 'punk rockers' came to see the movie. At the half time break, when it was time to change reels, the punk rockers got up (as you did) and began walking around the gallery. They began talking about the art hanging on the walls. James laid down a defiant challenge: 'how many of you can claim to have had a group of punk rockers in your gallery critically analysing art?" I loved that story. James' message was 'it doesn't matter how you get 'em in, just get 'em in'. Education by stealth, creativity by stealth.
I also come back to some of my earlier thinking.. where I said:
An even bigger question in my head is, what happens if we are deliberate and intentional about nurturing the 11 dimensions of the Creative Schools Index across a city?
The CAST team research indicates that nurturing and growing creativity in schools supports wellbeing and academic outcomes. Could it do the equivalent across a city?
How do you identify 'points of curiosity' in a city context?
Is a better focus for that the idea that we deliberately and intentionally create 'points of curiosity' across a city?
Is this a way of addressing inequity in the ways in which we create those points of curiosity in different parts of a city that target those most likely to suffer from. those inequities?
What could that look like?
Who does it?
How do they do that?
Creativity needs to be nurtured, front and centre, in our schools. So too it needs to be nurtured, front and centre, in our businesses, amongst our civic leaders, our NGOs .. everywhere. It needs to be 'how we do things around here', it needs to be embedded in our city culture. If gamification is one way to do that, I say let's start playing.. NOW!!
Gamification:
Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users.[1] This is generally accomplished through the application of game-design elements and game principles (dynamics and mechanics) in non-game contexts.[2][3]
Gamification is part of persuasive system design, and it commonly employs game design elements[4][2][5][6][3] to improve user engagement,[7][8][9] organizational productivity,[10] flow,[11][12][13] learning,[14][15] crowdsourcing,[16] knowledge retention,[17] employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use, usefulness of systems,[13][18][19] physical exercise,[20] traffic violations,[21] voter apathy,[22][23] public attitudes about alternative energy,[24] and more. A collection of research on gamification shows that a majority of studies on gamification find it has positive effects on individuals.[5] However, individual and contextual differences exist.[25]
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