​Creativity Unleashed: The Amazing Affordance in a Box! What does it tell us about creativity?

Suggested tasks for today:  Reflect: Today, we would like to invite you to reflect on the last four days. What did you find eye-opening and will definitely consider for your practice?

One of my frustrations with Google+ is the way posts get jumbled up and quickly get submerged so it's hard to keep track and make sense of the conversations as a whole. So this is my attempt to synthesise just one part of this week's conversation relating to the first activity when participants were invited to create a box that promoted a particularly inspiring learning or teaching situation they had experienced.

One of the interesting insights I have gained through creating this synthesis is the way it reveals the amazing affordance in a box for creative thinking when it is part of a social learning process to which people want to contribute.  I have compiled the posts that were made together with participants' responses to the posts and invite you to offer your own perspectives on what does this activity tell us about creativity in the context of making a contribution to #creativeHE social learning enterprise?

PLEASE POST ANY OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS YOU HAVE ON #CREATIVEHE

In a previous #creativeHE conversation I posted a story by Helen Buckley called The Little Boy. Its a simple but profound story that shows how a child's creativty might be damaged by the pedagogic practices of a teacher but it also shows how different practices might help restore the childs belief in their own creativity. Its a story that all teachers should read and think about what its significance for  their own teaching and learning contexts. The end to this story is quite sad so I invited participants to provide an alternative that opens up the possibility for this little boy of a more creative and fulfilling future.  The responses were quite uplifiting and I realised that perhaps this is also a story that could be used to encourage students to think and talk about their creativity in their own learning contexts and how it is encouraged or inhibited by teaching practices they encounter. Perhaps then this approach would provide a means of teachers gaining insights and feedback into the effects of their own pedagogic practices on their students creativity.


'The Little Boy' - Helen Buckley
 
Once a little boy went to school.
He was quite a little boy.
And it was quite a big school.
But when the little boy
Found that he could go to his room
By walking right in from the door outside,
He was happy.
And the school did not seem
Quite so big any more.
 
One morning,
When the little boy had been in school a while,
The teacher said:
“Today we are going to make a picture.”
“Good!” thought the little boy.
He liked to make pictures.
He could make all kinds:
Lions and tigers,
Chickens and cows,
Trains and boats –
And he took out his box of crayons
And began to draw.
 
But the teacher said:
“Wait! It is not time to begin!”
And she waited until everyone looked ready.
“Now,” said the teacher,
“We are going to make flowers.”
“Good!” thought the little boy,
He liked to make flowers,
And he began to make beautiful ones
With his pink and orange and blue crayons.
But the teacher said,
“Wait! And I will show you how.”
And she drew a flower on the blackboard.
It was red, with a green stem.
“There,” said the teacher.
“Now you may begin.”
The little boy looked at the teacher’s flower.
Then he looked at his own flower,
He liked his flower better than the teacher’s.
But he did not say this,
He just turned his paper over
And made a flower like the teacher’s.
It was red, with a green stem.
 
On another day,
When the little boy had opened
The door from the outside all by himself,
The teacher said,
“Today we are going to make something with clay.”
“Good!” thought the boy.
He liked clay.
He could make all kinds of things with clay:
Snakes and snowmen,
Elephants and mice,
Cars and trucks –
And he began to pull and pinch
His ball of clay.
 
But the teacher said,
“Wait! And I will show you how.”
And she showed everyone how to make
One deep dish.
“There,” said the teacher.
“Now you may begin.”
The little boy looked at the teacher’s dish
Then he looked at his own.
He liked his dishes better than the teacher’s
But he did not say this,
He just rolled his clay into a big ball again,
And made a dish like the teacher’s.
It was a deep dish.
And pretty soon
The little boy learned to wait
And to watch,
And to make things just like the teacher.
And pretty soon
He didn’t make things of his own anymore.
Then it happened
That the little boy and his family
Moved to another house,
In another city,
And the little boy
Had to go to another school.
This school was even bigger
Than the other one,
And there was no door from the outside
Into his room.
He had to go up some big steps,
And walk down a long hall
To get to his room.
And the very first day
He was there, the teacher said,
“Today we are going to make a picture.”
“Good!” thought the little boy,
And he waited for the teacher
To tell him what to do

But the teacher didn’t say anything.
She just walked around the room.
When she came to the little boy,
She said, “Don’t you want to make a picture?”
“Yes,” said the little boy.
“What are we going to make?”
“I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher.
“How shall I make it?” asked the little boy.
“Why, any way you like,” said the teacher.
“And any colour?” asked the little boy.
“Any colour,” said the teacher,
“If everyone made the same picture,
And used the same colours,
How would I know who made what,
“And which was which?”
“I don’t know,” said the little boy.
And he began to draw a flower.
It was red, with a green stem.
 

The end to this story is quite sad so I invited participants to provide an alternative that opens up the possibility for this little boy of a more creative and fulfilling future.   How would you end the story to achieve this goal?

Alternative Endings provided by #creativeHE participants November 2016

Today's activity was all about exploring play.

We are inviting you to create a playful induction activity that can be used face-to-face or online when a new group of learners comes together. The main purpose is to get to know each other, to open up and lay the foundations of the learning community that is to be formed. The activity should enable the teacher/facilitator to participate.
 
There were some fantastic posts describing a range of activities all of which were engaging and looked like fun. Most of the contributions were about enabling students to share something about themselves - not surprisingly given it was an induction scenario. One post in particular by Karen Tuzylak talked about a scavenger hunt.. 'With our first years I set up a scavenger hunt around Crewe, this was to help them bond but also to help them to know the area. It is so much fun and after this the students had shared stories from their adventure'

This post triggered a very memorable experience while working at SCEPTrE in 2009 we used a similar approach as part of a professional Experiential Learning Academy. We called it the 'Guildford Edventure' and it was designed by friend and colleague Russ Law. It was not so much an induction or first time meeting of a group but located as an integral part of a two day immersive experience. Its purpose was to enable people who had not met before to get to know each other from doing something together so that they became a sort of team with shared understandings, purposes, goals and lived experiences through which they developed shared meanings that could later be reflected upon.

At the time Russ was developing the idea of explorativity - the orientation we have to explore places and things that are unknown to us. We wanted to provide participants with the opportunity to experience being explorative in a physical context and environment that was unfamiliar, with people they did not know, with a challenge they had never encountered before. We wanted them to think about how they felt with all this unfamiliarity while trying to accomplish tasks and challenges that had been set. I spent many weekends designing and testing my edventure which I conceived as a team-based explorative stroll through Guildford, solving riddles, performing tasks and reflecting on the experience.
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The Guide he prepared is attached to this post and the basic idea for an educational edventure (edventure) can be adapted to any town or landscape. Participants were organised into groups of 4. They were provided with a map of Guildford town centre, briefed on the nature of the edventure and then given their edventure Guide.
 
The collective experience unfolded over the course of a couple of hours. I acted as an observer with a video camera and recorded some of the things participants did as we tracked or encountered each group.

​Participants 'wandered with intent' or explorative purpose around Guildford, found their way from the graveyard on the hill, via the river Wey and the High Street to a pub or restaurant of their choice, discovering all sorts of things along the way. They solved riddles and answered questions, they paused to apply reflective questioning techniques learned earlier to apprehend their experiences more deeply. They were challenged to undertake some individual and group activities that they would not normally try, such as busking for passers-by before visiting a pub, trying a drink they’d never had before, and having an evening meal together choosing something they had not eaten before.  Each group had its own pocket video camera, mobile phones and camera to record their experiences and insights and participants were encouraged, through the activities in the Guide, to be aware of the effects of their individual and collective experience on their emotions. Through these shared experiences and wanderings, something remarkable happened: people who had not known each other before became friends and worked as a team to solve puzzles, perform challenges and reflect on their experiences.
 
On the second day of Experiential Academy participants created their own digital stories describing their experiences and each team presented its own unique experience and shared the learning that had been gained through their edventure. By the end of the two day experience most participants claimed to have discovered aspects of themselves (and of others), that were life-changing, and that they would never forget, not least because they would apply their learning and new knowledge in the future. This was a powerful lesson for participants and facilitators on the educational value and potential in the practice of combining play and exploration in the service of being ‘explorative’ and for a bunch of people to learn to work together to achieve goals that they invested with meaning.

I am wondering how we would characterise such pedagogic practice where the teacher creates a scaffold for the edventure but gets out of the way while the social learning takes place but returns to help participants reflect on the experience and their learning to help them create further meaning. Sage on the stage, guide on the side and meddler in the middle does not really capture this sort of pedagogic practice.

Sources
Sadly all the videos we made of the Experiential Academy have been lost as SCEPTrE's YouTube channel has been deleted and all the content lost.. Something that causes me great pain as it was an amazing archive and legacy. You can find out about Russ Laws concept of explorativity in Lifewide Magazine LWM#18 January 2017 or visit Experiential Academy

Russ Law's Guidford Adventure Guide

​Activity 1 invited reflections on an inspiring experience - if inspiring means to make you feel that you want to do something and believe that you can do it - then my experience achieved this goal.

On the train on the way home I formed an idea (an idea that I had not had before that had grown through this process) about how I might collaborate with Osama and his colleagues in a way that I hoped would be mutually beneficial. I put my idea in an email and sent it to them. I'm waiting to hear their response but the point is that the experience enabled me to see new affordance in the relationships and situations and I acted on the affordance which is an indicator of an effective teaching and learning process. If my idea leads to collaboration then for sure it will result in considerable affordance for creativity.
​
This reflective exercise has helped me see the involvement of a pedagogy in this type of professional scenario.

My experience was not at all box like but I can use an open box as a framework to map some of the features and dimensions of a rich ecology for learning and creativity facilitated by OK but co-created by everyone who was involved, and Carl Rogers' concept of creativity as an emergent phenomenon seems to fit quite well my experience.

SOURCES
1 McWilliam, E. L. (2009) Teaching for creativity : from sage to guide to meddler. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 29(3). pp. 281-293. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/32389/1/c32389.pdf
2  Giles, D.L. and McCarty, C. (2016) Creating meaningful learning spaces through phenomenological strategies. In L.S. Watts & P. Blessinger, (eds) Creative Learning in Higher Education: International Perspectives and Approaches. New York, United States of America: Routledge, 65-80.

You can read my interview with Osama in the January update of Creative Academic Magazine to be published Jan 25th 2017
http://www.creativeacademic.uk/magazine.html