creativity and innovation in schools

Fourth in the whole world! Yet the government doesn’t care

Since PISA released its first creative thinking test results last week, there has been a flurry of commentary both formal and informal among educators and education researchers. 

The report, called Creative Minds, Creative Schools, ranks Australia 4th out of a total 81 participating countries, with Singapore topping the list at number 1 in all areas including literacy, numeracy and creative thinking. That’s sweet revenge for the city-state Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak once called ‘uncreative’ .

In the decade since then, Singapore has shown itself to be a leader in both direct instruction and creative innovation, a trend now making global headlines due to PISA. But is Australia listening? And will we similarly be able to pivot from the 2023 juggernaut of ‘return to phonics’ and direct instruction, toward a more nuanced approach to education that incorporates both approaches?

How is this included in the curriculum

Broad findings of the test are widely available, including yesterday’s post here by Kylie Murphy. But the findings have not yet been sufficiently unpacked in relation to the ample amount of Australia-specific empirical data and scholarship already available. There are some familiar findings here: the PISA Executive Summary definition that “indices of imagination and adventurousness, openness to intellect, curiosity, perspective taking and persistence are positively associated with creative thinking performance” is something most ‘creative skills and capacities’ lists and studies (including mine) have identified over years. 

The more pointed question remains: where and how are these indices included in the Australian Curriculum in ways that are actionable by teachers overburdened with literacy, numeracy and a constant prioritising of STEM curriculum?

What’s creativity got to do with it

The PISA Creative Thinking test results not only provide scores in a range of task types, but also correlation against scores in reading, science and mathematics skills. Together, they provide an interesting relational snapshot between what has traditionally been considered ‘core’ content for learners, and creative thinking, now a recognised 21st century skill alongside critical thinking, collaboration and communication. These assessment results show that “academic excellence is not a prerequisite for excellence in creative thinking”. This will come as no surprise to most educators. While some students excel in ‘academic’ ways of thinking and doing, not all do – a difference long documented as a poor indicator of success in work and life.

What we do know – and what PISA results reinforce –  is that test results, including creative thinking here, often correlate to socio-economic status: “Students with higher socio-economic status performed better in creative thinking, with advantaged students scoring around 9.5 points higher than their disadvantaged peers on average across the OECD.” Where is the government attention to these statistics, in the constant rhetoric about falling test scores?

Interestingly though, “the strength of the association between socio-economic status and performance is weaker in creative thinking than it is for mathematics, reading and science,” a powerful rationale for the levelling power of giving more priority to skills and capacities like creative thinking. In Australia and just five other countries, “more than 88% of students demonstrated a baseline level of creative thinking proficiency (Level 3), meaning they can think of appropriate ideas for a range of tasks and begin to suggest original ideas for familiar problems (OECD average 78%)”. That’a result Australia should be proud of and keen to build upon in both social equity respects as well as the increasingly outmoded ATAR obsession.

Different types of creative thinking tasks show different aptitudes

While the rankings show which countries scored highly overall, the test also highlighted variations in types or applications of creativity. These results show what Australian students do well, in our unique creative contexts and cultural orientations. It also provides an opportunity for us to understand how we can make the most of them. The risk, of course, is that the data are used for blunt comparison, a deficit-approach that often drives ‘moral panic’ responses around fear of ‘slipping’ in international rankings, and short-term stop-gap solutions. For the 2022 results, students in Singapore were the most successful across several task types, especially social problem-solving tasks. Students in Korea were the most successful in scientific problem-solving contexts and evaluate and improve ideas tasks. Students in Portugal performed the most successfully in visual expression tasks.

Such results offer an exciting opportunity to reflect as a national education sector on how we might aspire to raising aptitude in multiple tasks, for example, rather than simply ‘beating’ other countries in overall results.

Gender and equity gaps

The report makes a point of how comprehensively those identified as girls outperformed those identified as boys in creative thinking. “In no country or economy did boys outperform girls in creative thinking, with girls scoring 3 points higher in creative thinking on average across the OECD,” and in all type of creative tasks. 

If participating nations were to use the data to fund “Get More Boys into Creativity” campaigns, as they do with girls in STEM, the utility of a binary gender analysis would be clearer. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t carry through university and workplace trends: A recent analysis of female-identified versus male-identified creative university graduates and early-career employees does not correlate to the strong performance by female-identified 15 year olds. It shows female-identified creatives at both adult stages consistently fall behind their male-identified counterparts.

A welcome measure

Overall, the PISA Creative Thinking test results are a welcome international measure to complement the literacy, numeracy and science tests. Thus far, there has been no comment from government on Australia’s fantastic 4th in the world result – in stark contrast to the ongoing failure narrative of falling test scores. Australian students need to be well-rounded and best prepared for the jobs of the future by the end of their secondary schooling. That’s why our teacher preparation programs at RMIT University’s School of Education, I’m sure like the vast majority of other schools, ensure that all students receive training in all the basics that our new teachers and students need to excel in 21st century life, at the centre of which is creativity. 

Daniel X. Harris is a professor at RMIT and a leading international scholar in creativity, diversity and social change. They were most recently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, DECRA Fellow, RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Primary Research Fellow, and are currently research professor in the School of Education, RMIT University, and Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com.

Yes we can greatly improve the teaching of creativity in Australian schools and yes we can measure it

Creativity is once again front and centre in the call for educating more effective 21stcentury workforces in Australia with the release of David Gonski’s latest review of schooling. It echoes other national reviews in stating that the current industrial age model of school education in Australia must change.

Our national curriculum mandates the development of the general capability of creative and critical thinking. However, achieving this is severely hampered, as the report attests, by inflexible curricula, teaching models that limit differentiation and creativity, and stymied organisational leadership that limits teacher practices and de-incentivises schools as innovative environments.

Today we know that creativity is ubiquitous, that everyone is creative, and that all students deserve the opportunity to develop, learn and maximise their own creative thinking abilities, exploring what leading researchers such as Mark Runco describe as problem-finding and problem-solving. Having progressed through industrial and knowledge economies, we are now propelled into a dynamic creative economy of enormous complexity, interconnectedness and opportunity.

Legendary educational psychologist E. Paul Torrance’s research into intelligence and creativity in school children established clinical links between fluency, flexibility, original thinking and the ability to elaborate on thoughts as markers for creativity. Torrance’s creativity index could predict kids’ creative accomplishments as adults far better than IQ testing.

This is an argument we are still making today through our research at RMIT University’s School of Education, in developing a national Creativity Index that will measure creative skills and capacities alongside literacy and numeracy. Our research also shows an urgent need for a more ecological approach to improving creativity in schools, not just to measuring it. This means approaching schools as ecosystems in which teachers collaborate with other teachers, students and leadership, and teaching and learning is approached interdisciplinarily. It also urges the immediate incorporation of compulsory creativity training in all initial teacher education and professional development across the country.

Today’s creativity research such as the current Australian Research Council-funded study Transforming 21stcentury creativity education in Australasia now focuses on the need to move beyond siloed subject areas or teaching and learning practices, instead developing creative ecologies across school environments, regionally and nationally throughout the sector.

Whilst attention to design thinking and other ‘imported’ solutions grows, we advocate solving the creativity education ‘problem’ from within, with educators ourselves adapting such tools for our own contexts. We believe education reform should be addressed through a holistic systems thinking approach which can incorporate best practice from tools like Stanford University’s famous d-school Design Thinking Bootcamp, but doesn’t stop there.

With support from the Australian Research Council, we are offering new Australian research and practical tools built from the 600+ teachers, principals, and students expressed needs for improving creativity in their classrooms. Large-scale, current and empirical research and tools grown from withinthe Education sector can greatly enhance models like the Victorian State Governments’ Professional Learning Communities model currently offered. The Creative Ecologies Final Report(2016)shares Harris’ Whole School Creativity Audit, Creativity Index, and a Top 10 Creative skills and capacities rubric – practical tools for moving forward at the whole-school level, incorporating creative teaching, learning and collaboration as an integrated and evidence-based answer to Gonski’s most recent call for improving creativity throughout the sector.

Using practical and collaborative approaches like these we believe, can expand user-centred innovation possibilities and have the potential to radically improve Australian education, and more effectively implement the Australian Curriculum’s ‘critical and creativity thinking’ general capability.

Why is this so important?

 Multinational companies such as Adobe are now conducting their own research to stress the need for creative skills and capacities in their recruits. We agree that, while market needs shouldn’t drive education, they play a strong role in determining what gets taught, and how.

Digital technology too is playing an ever-greater role in the how of educational engagements. And we’re not talking about just being able to put an iPad in every learner’s hands, but actually using hybrid reality technologies and emerging digital technology to educationallymeet and extend our own and our students shared creative imaginations. This is not only good education but good business too.  From augmented reality and games development, to immersive world and virtual reality technologies, to smart homes, workplaces and smart cities, creativity and creative ways of thinking are at the forefront of educational needs today.

The dangers of divorcing STEM from arts-based learning

Here in Australia, we dangerously divorce Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education from arts-based inquiry learning, diminishing further opportunities for interdisciplinary, joined-up learning strategies. The worldwide knee-jerk reaction to promoting STEM subjects forges on despite a recent Australian Parliamentary Enquiry outlining that our teachers are placed in STEM teaching situations ill-equipped to deal with this changing role and concept, whilst further acknowledging that interdisciplinary connectivity of utilising arts learningand thinkingin STEAM approaches need to be investigated further.

If governments are going to ensure workforces of the future will be adaptable, creative, and visionary, then they too must adapt to best practice and Australian research, and alter the way they tectonically arbitrate change and coordinate the future visioning of education in this country.

Whilst even countries like the United States have been stalling on creative education innovation, and cutbacks in places like the UK threaten to side-line creativity education once again, our northern neighbours in China,Korea, and Finland are revolutionising the ways they incorporate creativity into their core education, and understand its crucial connectivity to global industry.

Australian chief scientist Dr Finkel in an Education Council Report calls for a reverse in the narrowing trend toward STEM and other ‘baseline’ measures, and opening toward a more contemporary, global skill set. Research is proving that subject interconnection, such as in Finland’s ‘phenomenon teaching’ in secondary schools, Korea’s lead in institutional and industry connectivity, and China’s vision to move significant manufacturing to cheaper labour markets in Africa whist embracing the vision to evolve from a re-creative to a co-creative and entrepreneurial powerhouse, are urgent reminders that Australia needs to change, and change now.

Incorporating Australia-centred, education-adapted design thinking that mindfully intersects with cross disciplinary and creative pedagogies in pre-service teacher education rather than in retrospective and ad-hoc approaches, as well as within professional development plans of our current teaching workforce, can mark significant change forward. And these are changes Australia urgently needs.

 

Read more in Anne Harris’s book Creativity and Education

 

Anne Harris is an ARC Future Fellow, and Vice Chancellor’s Principal Research Fellow (Research Associate Professor) in the School of Education and the Design and Creative Practice ECP at RMIT University. Her research focuses on the intersection of creativity, performance and digital media at both practice and policy levels. She is the creator and editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series Creativity, Education and the Arts, and the ABER co-editor of the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. She is the Director of Creative Agency Research Lab, and for more information on Creative Agency go to: www.creativeresearchhub.com

 

Leon de Bruin is a Research Fellow at RMIT University School of Education and Creative Agency Lab. He is an educator, performer and researcher in creativity, cognition, collaborative learning, creative pedagogies, and improvised music, and also works in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. He is co-editor of the forthcoming Brill Publication: Creativities in Arts Education, Research and Practice: International Perspectives for the Future of Learning and Teaching, and co-author with Anne Harris of Creativity in Education in the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Education.