Collaboration 2.0 - I watched Sir Ken Robinson. Now what?

This is the second in a series on collaboration and Professional Learning Communities.

Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk on creativity is the most watched video on that website (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity).  With wisdom and wit, Robinson criticizes schools for over-emphasizing abstract reasoning and minimizing individual student strengths.  It is all well and good to push against a culture of standardization and to reconnect with the diversity of human talent.  Now what?

Robinson defines creativity as the generation of original ideas that have value.  Value is defined by the domain in which the creative act occurs (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).  There is necessary content knowledge that needs to be mastered and necessary skills that need to be developed.  As arts educators, we must equip our students so that they have the requisite technique to create works of value.

What about the generation of original ideas?  I believe we must balance technical training with creativity education.  This is somewhat controversial, as there are researchers who do not believe something like general creativity exists.  I subscribe to the idea that there are general skills that support creativity (Torrance, 1979), and that these skills can be improved through education:

1. Fluency - This is the generation of a large number of ideas.  Fluency is the entire purpose of brainstorming.
2. Originality - This is the infrequency of a solution to a problem.  Obvious or common solutions are by definition unoriginal.
3. Elaboration - This encompasses richness of detail.  This sometimes works at cross-purposes with fluency if introduced too soon in the process.
4. Resistance to premature closure - Openness to possibilities is an important trait of creative people.  We can be taught to keep options open and reserve judgment.

The first question in the PLC process is "What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we want our students to have?"  If Robinson is correct, then we need both general creative skills and content-specific knowledge and abilities.  

Establishing a guaranteed and viable curriculum that delivers these two broad strands of learning is the collaborative work.

Creativity education requires creative thinking.  Building on Jason Fried's assertion that work doesn't happen at work (http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work), I recommend that teachers tackle PLC question #1 individually before coming together to hash out differences in vision.  This is a departure from the process of many PLCs.  However, we need our best thinking applied to this question, and we need to defend against groupthink.

Creativity is critically important in today's world.  Let's strike while the iron is hot, put our creative thinking to good use, and do the work that will ensure that our students get the artistic education they deserve.

References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Torrance, E. (1979). The search for satori and creativity. Great Neck, NY: Creative Education Foundation.