Some tangible steps towards more creative schools

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

Relationships and technical skills: the synthesis and creativity of teaching

I love this whakataukī:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

If we were to paraphrase that for education, perhaps it might say:

'What is the most important thing that causes learning for the learner? 

It is the teacher, It is the teacher, It is the teacher'. 

Professor John Hattie, in his meta study that culminated in 'Visible Learning', states:

Teachers–     who  account  for  about  30%  of  the  variance.  It  is  what  teachers  know,  do,  and  care  about which is very powerful in this learning equation. (Hattie, Page 2).

I'd go as far as to say that a teacher's work can be reduced down to two major components: the ability to build and sustain learning focussed relationships with learners (which by the way I think must include a full kete of behaviour management techniques), and the technical ability to cause learning. In saying that, we have to be careful not to suggest that this is a binary thing i.e. it isn't one or the other. It is BOTH, simultaneously. I would go as far as to suggest that causing learning is a 'synthesis' of the two, a synthesis that I think is unique at every moment. As an act of synthesis, perhaps the act and the art of causing learning is in itself an act of creativity as we combine relationship building and technical mastery in our craft in order to cause learning.

My concern with that notion is that it may be interpreted by too many both in and out of the profession to mean that it is not possible to systematise the process of causing learning, and the corollary that to do so is to stymie this act of creativity. Reference to the work of Dr Kevin Knight, and Lois Chick, of the NZ Graduate School of Education, would show such a view to be the lie that it is.

With reference to the issue of teacher technical skill (perhaps better referred to as pedagogy, a word that I am not that keen on, if I am honest), as teachers we have been (if I may generalise) too poorly equipped by much of our initial teacher education. I know that my own initial teacher education 43 years ago included NOTHING about how to support low level readers. I am not seeing much of that in newer grads either, with the exception of one ITE provider. Therefore it is important that as professional educators we are supported to develop those skills. We are all teachers of literacy. How do we do that?

On the subject of reading for example, you only have to read the paper published in late 2020 by Professor Stuart McNaughton, Chief Education  Scientific Advisor (McNaughton, 2020), on the matter of reading, to see that well-espoused. To simplify his paper down to its simplest form, he states that there is no systematic, coherent, and consistent, approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. Teachers in my opinion simply do not have the necessary skills (again, a huge generalisation, but one that I make on the basis of repeated observation).

Yet we have to 'know stuff' if we are to go about our daily work, and in teaching 'knowing stuff' doesn't just mean knowing about supply and demand diagrams of past participles as much as it means knowing how to cause learning. 

Take Professor Peter O'Connor's Creative Schools Index (well, I refer to it as his, but I know that the index is the result of significant work by a large team, my reference is one of convenience). The index uses eleven dimensions in order to assess levels of creativity in schools, and one of those is Mastery. Learners and teachers need to develop, and to show, mastery of their subject matter as a component part of the act of creation. Reframed, that might be interpreted in this way. Jane Gilbert in her book 'Catching the Knowledge Wave' (Gilbert, 2005) redefined knowledge as knowing stuff, AND doing something with the stuff. Contrary to some claimants at no stage did she say knowing stuff was unimportant. Au contraire!! As I have often said, thinking, and creativity, are higher order skills. However to think, and to create, requires 'stuff' to think about, 'stuff' to create from i.e. you have to 'know stuff' to be able to able to think about it, or to be able to 'create' from it.

To briefly shift the focus to another currently contentious learning area, that applies equally to maths. You have to know about columns and place values, you have to know tables, if you are to think about mathematical problem solving. Similarly you have to know how to support and develop reading in learners if you are to cause learning.

Criticism of teachers sometimes suggests that teachers resist change. I reject that notion. While in my career I have met the occasional teacher for whom that might be true, my over-riding experience is of teachers who essentially say 'I understand what you want to change, and why, but I have no idea what that looks like in my daily work, and so how to do it. Show me and I can change.' I recall that personal revelation and revolution in my own teaching and literacy practice when I attended a number of sessions of what at that time was called the 'Secondary Literacy Programme'. It was game changing for me, because it showed my HOW to support reading development  and required only a limited amount of synthesis on my part to be able to adapt that for learners in my subject area. I was learning how to cause learning.

So when I saw the latest work coming from the Manaiakalani team supporting the teaching of reading I was overjoyed. They have by observation identified specific examples of good practice in how to teach reading and literacy across curriculum levels,  from across the network of Manaiakalani schools, on a series of web pages titled 'Literacy exemplars'. They have brought these together as a series of resources, tagged within our "Learn Create Share' framework, organised in a way that is consistent with our high leverage practices in reading, and made them freely available to teachers. The resources cover the whole range of years and curriculum levels, and an increasing range of the specific subjects that students tend towards in middle and senior secondary school.

What's more (and this is the 'piece de la resistance' for me) they are accumulating video recordings of good practice via the Manaiakalani 'Class On Air' programme, video snippets of good practice, open to all. So teachers can see exactly what it looks and sounds like to employ good pedagogy.

This is the very best of sharing practice. Again at the risk of being highly repetitive, none of us individually knows all the answers, but between us all we quite possibly know most of them. I have seen a number of attempts to do this in the past, at least one sponsored by the Ministry, and one sponsored by my former subject association, but I am not aware of any that have lasted the distance. This is revolutionary. This is a game changer. In our hands we have (in my opinion) the means to liberate teachers and learners. This approach offers teachers the 'what it looks like' answers they crave, it offers the ability to create more consistent and coherent approaches to teaching reading in a more systematic way. It offers a level of creativity to teachers and learners while also supporting that more systematic approach to teaching reading.

It won't be the whole answer, and of course it won't be any answer at all unless Principals show strong leadership and encourage, support, and nurture, staff as we attempt to embrace the resources and the opportunity that this represents. Effective change always requires strong, positive, moral, leadership.

What would happen if we did the same with maths?

That's not a bad piece of thinking from a day at the Manaiakalani Cluster convenors' day .. a true tāonga!!

References:

Gilbert, J "Catching the knowledge wave",  2005

Hattie, J  "Teachers make a difference, What is the research evidence?', 2003

McNaughton, S  "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise",2020

Creativity, 'Learn Create Share', and reading

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini 

My success is not my own, but from many others

I don't think this is the first time I've made reference to this whakataukī on my blog, and today was another great example of why it is so apt. Today 191 teachers and support staff from across our Uru Mānuka cluster came together to upskill and make progress on the very tough nut of improving student reading. Improving the educational outcomes for our learners, and so improving their lives, is a collective endeavour. It represents the greatest opportunity to have a positive impact on a whole community, and as I have written before, there is very little in the way of answers that we don't have somewhere within our community, within our collective kete of strategies that cause learning.

However today we took a firm grasp of the issue of reading, and spent the day with reading expert Sheena Cameron and her colleague Louise, working together to upskill on how we can do this better. As Einstein is reputed to have said "insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result" (or something like that anyway). Our actions today (and increasingly consistently over the past decade) across Uru Mānuka, show the lie that was the neo liberal right wing reforms to education that tried to tell us that the market would give the best results. Markets work best (if they work at all) on the basis that each one of us is out for ourselves, and be damned to everyone else.

It is just possible (isn't it?) that one of the results of that approach has lead to the observation of Stuart McNaughton (Prime Minister's Education Adviser) in his 2020 paper "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand, What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise" that there is no consistent approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. We are seeing the consequence of that in declining literacy standards across the country.

So where are we at across the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako? We have made great progress on writing. Our students are on average accelerating writing progress at twice national averages. Reading however is accelerating at something less so, so now it's time...  time to focus on reading. This focus began last year, and our teacher only day this year (postponed from March 2021 because of Covid) is a large building block in this work, expanding staff capability to improve reading. It is bigger even than that though, because it offers learners coherence and consistency as they progress on their learning journey through their years at school as the educators use a common or shared language in their work.

At Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School our own focus on writing has been pretty intensive, both at the junior level, and at the senior academic level. This is because we have the belief that great readers don't make great writers, you have to write to learn how to write. However similarly you have to read to improve your reading. 

Several specific reading strategies stood out for me. The first was the development of the skill of inference, the relationship between the author and the reader, the ability of the reader to read into the author's words the connections and meanings that the author intended.

This took me back to my own learning around creative writing (I do a bit of that as a past time, after completing a Massey Uni paper in 2010), where the basic approach is best described as “Show don’t tell” For example, don't tell me 'the sun rose'. Tell me that the 'growing daybreak bathed the landscape in a warm orange light that brought the bare branches of the trees to life'.

You can't write that sort of thing (I think) until you have learned the skill of inference, and that skill is what makes the relationship between the author and the reader so special. There is a cross over between the two. So teaching students the skill of inference might be expected to help them to write more creatively too?

Of quite obvious relevance to our Manaiakalani kaupapa is the reading strategy of activating prior knowledge. This caught my attention as well given the importance of cultural knowledge and the cultural lens that the child brings to the text. Valuing each child's culturl world view is essential to supporting them to make sense of any text. 

The biggest 'aha' moment for me was the discussion of the reading skill of synthesising. 

"Synthesising is when the student merges new information with prior knowledge to form a new idea, perspective, or opinion or to generate insight. Synthesis is an ongoing process. As new knowledge is acquired, it is synthesised with prior knowledge to generate new ideas

Synthesizing is the most complex of the reading strategies. It lies on a continuum of evolving thinking. Synthesizing runs the gamut from taking stock of meaning during reading to achieving new insight.” Stephanie Harvey and Ann Goudvis 'Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding', Stenhouse, Portland, ME, 2000. .. 

The first paragraph could easily be a restatement of our own definition of 'Create' from our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It emphasises the importance of creativity for our learners. Every act of connection is an act of creativity, every time learners create meaning for themselves this is an act of creativity, every time our learners add new knowledge to what they already know this is an act of creativity.

The universality of our pedagogy, and the strength of our moral imperative to improve outcomes for our learners, are drivers so strong that we see teachers every day giving their best, and running at 110% in terms of their energy and their input. You can't do that forever, but you can sustain that for a period of time. It is a testimony to the 190+ educators across our kāhui ako (and across the motu, I reckon) that they do this day in and day out, often in the face of significant headwinds of deprivation, and (increasingly) of helicopter parenting.

The challenge for our staff now is to develop a hunch about what to do next to develop literacy skills, regardless of their curriculum area and specialisation, to think about something that might make a difference, try it, and see what the resulting data says. We are all teachers of literacy.

In the meantime, this is what collaboration looks like. This is the power of clustering schools together. This is what 'system change' looks like, at least for our Uru Mānuka community. It is a privilege to be a part of this group of professionals supporting our great community.