Creativity In English Schools Waae John Steers

1. © John Steers 2009
Creativity in English schools
Creativity was an item on the United Kingdom education agenda in the 1960s and early 1970s
but then it seemed to disappear from view. Those teaching the arts continued to hold firmly to
the belief that creativity was at the heart of everything they and that it was their exclusive
prerogative in the curriculum (Ross, 1978). Ten years or so ago it reappeared amid increasing
supportive rhetoric to a point where it has now become centre stage on the education and
political agenda.
Of particular interest is the way that creativity permeates the whole of the new English
secondary curriculum, not just in the arts. It is listed as a key concept in seven out of fourteen
statutory subjects as well as featuring in the cross-curriculum dimensions and among the
personal learning and thinking skills. The ‘Creativity and critical thinking’ dimension of the
curriculum includes the statement:
This dimension enables young people to engage with the world around them in
critical and creative ways and to take part in imaginative and purposeful activity
across the entire curriculum. Creativity and critical thinking can unlock young
people’s potential, leading to personal fulfilment, as well as contributing to the
artistic, scientific or technological achievements that help shape and influence
wider society (QCA 2008a).
While this support for creativity is very good news nevertheless problems remain. How can arts
teachers can effectively foster creativity in many of the inflexible, target driven school systems
we have today? They can no longer blame the curriculum but other concerns dominate,
especially assessment where requirements, both real and imagined, often run counter to the
ethos of the curriculum. Teachers’ understanding of the term ‘creativity’ varies enormously –
while creativity is not seen as the sole prerogative of the arts, when they are well taught they
should have a particularly significant role.
Creative students need creative teachers with the confidence to take creative risks. This takes
exceptional commitment and vision in a high stakes education system with its pressures to
conform created by a standardised curriculum, standard assessment tasks, examination targets,
school league tables, constant initiatives to raise standards, intimidating inspection regimes,
scarce resources and very limited subject-based professional development. Taken together
these conditions severely limited the scope for individual teachers to take risks and be
genuinely creative.
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It is often argued that arts teachers are as a matter of course predisposed to creativity – they
need to be in order to keep the curriculum fresh for themselves and young people. However in
a closely monitored education system those who take such risks may be in a minority and there
is a contrary tendency to make teachers adept at finding safe prescriptions for their students to
enable them to satisfy examination assessment criteria. Students may be coached to replicate
safe and reliable projects year after year and the creativity on display is really that of the teacher
who devised the project rather than that of the students.
We should remember that creativity is not an unqualified virtue. It is not just allied with the pursuit
of ideas that are inventive, innovative and imaginative, but also with ideas that may be heretical
or revolutionary. Sadly the innovative and imaginative outcomes of human creativity are just as
likely to be malignant as beneficent. While creativity may be directed to sustainable development,
preventing disease, famine and poverty it may equally be directed at designing weapons of mass
destruction, plotting crimes against humanity, exploiting the vulnerable or encouraging the
profligate use of scarce natural resources for commercial gain. (And, of course, ‘creative
accounting’ may be a root cause of the current economic recession.)
What are the limits on creativity in schools and in the classroom? Should there be any controls
other than those related to common decency and the practicalities of health and safety? Clearly
there are profound ethical, moral and sometimes religious issues that have to be faced in the
creative classroom or studio that can be in conflict with the ethos of many schools – social
institutions that often place a high value on some degree of conformity.
Creative individuals are likely to display a range of characteristics, capacities and abilities that
some teachers find hard to accommodate. For example:
° Tolerance for ambiguity – how often are teachers required to make everything clear-cut,
define precise learning outcomes, eliminating all uncertainty?
° Flexibility and openness to alternative approaches – how is it that school managers and
inspectors place such high value on adherence to schemes of work and detailed,
sometimes minute by minute, lesson plans?
° Playfulness with ideas, materials or processes – how often do teachers insist students
stop ‘messing around’?
° An ability to concentrate and persist, to keep on teasing and worrying away at a problem
rather than seeking premature resolution – how often is there insistence that student
assignments must be handed in on time to meet teachers’ arbitrary deadlines?
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° A willingness to explore unlikely connections and apparently disassociated ideas – how
often are students told ‘get back on task - stop wasting time’.
° The self-awareness and courage to pursue their ideas in the face of considerable
opposition – how often is this interpreted as stubbornness or insubordination?
° Confidence, the self-belief to take intellectual and intuitive risks (perhaps in essence
creative thinking is simply ‘risky thinking’). So why do teachers often advise that it is best
to play safe, stick to established routines, and not to take too many chances?
Can we honestly say that it is a principal aim of arts education actively to foster the creativity of
every child rather than just those who we perceive as being ‘gifted and talented’? Is there a fear
that any relaxation of control will promptly result in anarchy and a total loss of teacher authority?
It is important to stress that creativity is rarely a simple linear process and usually there is
interplay between cognitive and affective processes, with various development phases such as
preparation, generation, incubation and verification being revisited and reviewed – for example
when dead ends seem apparent (Dewulf and Baillie, 1999). This suggests that adequate time is
a key component if the creative spark is to flourish. How can this be accommodated in school
timetables where often, at best, an hour for one of the arts subjects is sandwiched between the
drip feed of an hour of mathematics and an hour of history for week after monotonous week?
There are other preconditions that are equally important for both teachers and students
including a strong atmosphere of mutual trust and affective support – what student is likely to
take creative risks if they think their ideas will be quashed as soon as they begin to form? The
constructive use of probing but sensitive questioning is essential to increase the intellectual
challenge. Students must be allowed to develop a real sense of ownership of the task or
problem and their confidence has to be bolstered by positive feedback.
It has become abundantly clear that the ethos in which creativity can flourish does not always sit
easily alongside nationally prescribed requirements that are found in most school systems.
Nevertheless the good news is that times have been changing fast in the United Kingdom. The
changes were almost imperceptible at first but they now have real momentum and present both
considerable opportunities and major challenges for arts teachers. Developments can be traced
to a government report All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (NACCCE, 1999) that
was published in 1999 and included wide-ranging recommendations for reform of education.
The then prime minister, Tony Blai, asserted ‘Our aim must be to create a nation where the
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creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first
century – where we compete on brains, not brawn’ (NACCCE, 1999, p.6).
A new secondary curriculum (NSC) is currently being phased in England and this is permeated
with references to creativity (QCA, 2008b). Unusually implementation provides top-down
support for bottom-up innovation. Included in the cross-curricular dimensions of the NSC is
‘Creativity and Critical Thinking’. This is intended to help engage students critically and help
them understand what the creative industries are and why are they might be important to them.
It should also help them understand why cultural experiences are relevant to them and how they
can become involved as a spectator, participant or creator. To this end it is suggested they
should learn to:
° think and act creatively, using their imagination to explore the unfamiliar and make
unlikely connections
° think critically, exploring, developing, evaluating and making choices about their own
and others’ ideas
° express and pursue original ideas with purpose and persistence
° take risks, improvise and make the most of the unexpected
° collaborate with other learners through negotiation, modification and compromise
° refine, modify and develop ideas, work, performances or products to ensure they are of
real value (QCA 2008a).
This will require opportunities to:
° engage in creative activities and critical thinking across their curriculum, exploring links
between subjects and wider aspects of learning
° appreciate the full range, potential and impact of the creative industries from arts to
science to technology
° participate in high quality cultural activities as spectators, participants and/or creators
° work with a range of creative individuals, both in and out of the classroom
° demonstrate their creativity by developing ideas, products, work or performances for
real audiences
° encounter the work of others, including theories, literature, art, design, inventions and
discoveries, as sources of inspiration
° discover and pursue particular interests and talents (QCA 2008a).
In February 2008 a new £25 million ‘Find Your Talent’ scheme was announced, part of the
government’s ambition to give all young people in England the chance to experience high
quality arts and culture and currently this is being piloted by ten pathfinder consortia across the
English regions. It was accompanied by a further £110 million investment in the ‘Creative
Partnerships’ scheme – relaunched as an independent organisation ‘Creativity Culture and
Education’ (CCE) in December 2008 – that allows children and young people in schools to work
with creative professionals.
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These initiatives are intended as part of the government’s drive to unlock the creative talent of
all young people. In the longer term the government wants every child to have the chance to
develop their artistic and creative skills and, ultimately, to offer children five hours of high quality
arts and culture a week, in and without the school day. Much of this is driven by ever-increasing
recognition of the importance of the ‘creative industries’ to the British economy. Prime minister
Gordon Brown has written in a government strategy document, ‘In the coming years, the
creative industries will be important not only for our national prosperity but for Britain’s ability to
put culture and creativity at the centre of our national life’ (DCMS, 2008, p.3). The same
strategy document states:
The creative industries must move from the margins to the mainstream of
economic and policy thinking, as we look to create the jobs of the future…
Britain is a creative country and our creative industries are increasingly vital to
the UK. Two million people are employed in creative jobs and the sector
contributes £60 billion a year – 7.3 percent – to the British economy. Over the
past decade, the creative sector has grown at twice the rate of the economy as
a whole and is well placed for continued growth as demand for creative content
– particularly in English – grows (DCMS, 2008, p.6).
Conclusions
The challenge is how to make this all happen. Establishing/facilitating/supporting/encouraging
creativity in schools is not a straightforward matter of introducing appropriate ‘top down’ policies
or legislation: it requires a paradigm shift in the thinking of many teachers and school senior
management teams. The issues that need to be resolved include:
1. How can we ensure that the opportunities on offer have a broad range that will
motivate more students and enable them to see the relevance of the arts to their
lives?
2. Too many students (and their parents and senior management) fail to understand the
importance of art and design education and the huge range of opportunities it presents
not least for potential employment. How can we increase the take up for the arts
subjects when they become optional in the curriculum and how can we attract those
more able students who are often directed to ‘more challenging academic subjects’?
3. Another aspect of inclusion is the gender imbalance between those opting for arts
subjects – it is evident in the United Kingdom for example that fewer boys opt for the
subject than girls and when they do so they do less well. How should this issue be
addressed?
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4. The challenge is to encourage genuinely creative teaching, creative learning
environments, creative curriculum design and fostering creativity in young people rather
than simply achieving high levels of attainment in examinations that are primarily a
consequence of teacher prescription and often uninspiring teaching to the test with
learners locked in a passive, largely uncreative, role. How can this be done?
5. Are we absolutely clear about what we want to achieve through arts education and how,
ideally, arts education should be organised? Can we develop schemes of work for
students that have real purpose, significant content and relevant meaning?
6. The arts too often operate in a curriculum ghetto – how do we encourage more teachers
to look for links for learning across the whole curriculum so as to broaden understanding
and enrich learning?
7. How do we prevent the arts continue being side-lined by many in senior management in
schools, other staff, students and their parents? How do we ensure that they recognise
its importance not least in relation to preparing for students for a world of work where the
creative industries play a major part in the knowledge economy of many countries?
Undoubtedly economic arguments can be used to advocate a stronger place in the
curriculum for the arts but how can we ensure that the rhetoric is matched by some
necessary change in practice?
8. If we want to provide substantial quality creative and cultural activity every week for
every child how do we encourage schools to develop purposeful and genuine
partnerships with an extensive range of individuals, organisations and institutions?
9. Assessment in the arts is a matter of informed judgement rather than the application of
fallible standardised criteria often used to derive often spurious data about standards;
objectivity in arts judgements can be reliably based on the comparative and experiential
knowledge of the assessors, on connoisseurship, rather than limited verbal description.
How do we ensure that assessment in the arts is really ‘fit for purpose’?
10. Arts teachers need the autonomy and the opportunity to develop a localised curriculum
that meets the specific needs of their students. How do we ensure teachers, through
both their initial teacher education and continuing professional development
opportunities, become creative and reflective practitioners capable of thinking through
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clearly what they want to achieve, the content and approaches that will best suit their
particular students?
In summary, the challenge to education, including arts education, is to make it much more
relevant to the needs and interests of today’s young people and society more generally. The
reward will be better motivated, better behaved, higher achieving students. It is said that it is
attitude and not aptitude that causes most failure. Varying the rhythm of the school day – and
the school year – making the most of differing learning environments and enriching learning
through exploration of cross-curricular dimensions can all play their part in ensuring that
students’ experience of the arts in school is relevant, purposeful and enjoyable.
John Steers
Notes and references
I have written more fully on this subject elsewhere – see Steers, J (2009) ‘Creativity: Delusions,
Reality, Opportunities and Challenges’, International Journal of Art of Art & Design Education,
Volume 28, No. 2, Wiley Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 126-138.
DCMS (2008) Creative Britain: New Talents for a New Economy– a strategy document for the
Creative Industries accessed on 1 May 2008 at
http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Publications/archive_2008/cepPub-new-
talents.htm
Dewulf, S & Baillie, C (1999) How to foster Creativity, DfEE, London.
NACCCE (1999) All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture & Education. DfEE: London.
QCA (2008a) Creativity and Critical Thinking accessed on 1st April 2009 at
http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/uploads/Dimensions_creativity_and_critical_thinking_tcm8-
14474.pdf?return=/key-stages-3-and-4/cross-curriculum-
dimensions/creativitycriticalthinking/index.aspx%3Freturn%3D/key-stages-3-and-4/cross-curriculum-
dimensions/index.aspx#false
QCA (2008b) National Curriculum accessed on 2nd May 2008 at http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/
Ross, M (1978) The Creative Arts, London: Heinemann Educational Books.
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