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European Journal of Education, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2014

DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12090

Nurturing Creativity in Education

Paul Collard & Janet Looney
Introduction
Creativity is widely acknowledged as vital for social and economic innovation and
development as well as for individual well-being. On a personal level, it is about the
desire for self-expression and identity. Martha Nussbaum (2011) argues that
human dignity and progress are rooted in each individuals capabilities, including
those that are central to creativity: being able to use the senses, imagine, think,
and reason, and to have the educational opportunities necessary to realise these
capacities.
Creativity is also core to progress in knowledge societies. Work is increasingly
carried out in non-permanent project-oriented teams, with each member taking on
significant responsibilities. Workers need to regularly adapt to new situations and
new approaches to problem solving. In their personal lives, individuals have more
opportunities to tailor services and products to suit their own needs in ways that
were not possible in societies that emphasised mass production and consumption
of standardised goods, calling on their creative capacities (Miller & Bentley, 2003).
Leaders in the public, private and social sectors are more frequently required to
respond to new strategic challenges. Individuals and societies that embrace creativity and experimentation are more likely to realise the benefits of knowledgeintensive societies (Michalski, 2011).
It is therefore not surprising that, across continents, creativity is a priority for
education and is central to the discourse on 21st century learning. The OECD
emphasises the importance of preparing learners for the unknown: jobs that do not
yet exist, technologies that are yet to be invented, and problems that have not yet
been anticipated (OECD, undated).The OECDs Innovation Strand also includes
a strong emphasis on nurturing creativity in education. The European Reference
Framework on Key Competences identifies creativity as a transversal theme that is
important for the development of basic skills of language, literacy, numeracy and
information and communication technologies (ICT). The EU declared 2009 the
Year of Creativity and Innovation, with a strong focus on the role of culture and
diversity in European society and, in education, on barriers as well as good
practices (Banaji et al., 2010; Cachia et al., 2010). Beyond Europe, ministries and
departments of education in Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan and the US are among the countries that have developed policy initiatives
to support learner creativity (Craft, 2007; the US Presidents Commission on the
Arts and Humanities, 2011; the Ministry of Education website, Singapore,
undated; the Ministry of Education website, Taiwan, undated).
In this article, we explore how a greater focus on creativity changes the dynamics of teaching and learning.We are concerned with how teachers nurture everyday
creativity and how they themselves develop more creative approaches to teaching.
We also explore the themes of closed and open learning, as defined by Miller,
Looney and Siemens (2011). Closed learning refers to learning where the knowledge to be acquired is already well defined and goals are clear. Open learning

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refers to learning where the outcome is unknown. Our approach is informed by

Collards work at Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), which brings together
educators, learners and creative professionals to find new ways to address learning
challenges, and Looneys work on formative assessment, teacher evaluation and
school reform in OECD countries. Drawing on our work in these respective areas,
we explore approaches to teaching and assessment that may better support learner
creativity in both open and closed learning. By focusing on these specific areas we
hope to complement the ongoing and important debate on policy barriers to
creativity in education with examples of effective practices, partnerships and tools.
In the next section, we look briefly at the main concepts in the literature on
creativity in education. We then focus on examples from Collards international
work on creative partnerships between schools and creative professionals which
aim to nurture learner creativity and develop teachers own creative capacities.
These specific examples are followed by a discussion on the role of assessment
how teachers assess learners creative dispositions, the quality of creative processes
and products, and how learners themselves develop skills to evaluate the quality of
their work (assessment competency). Although assessment and the opportunity
to improve are inherent to the creative process, very little attention has been paid
to the assessment of creativity. We conclude the article with recommendations for
school-level strategies and for policy and research to support learner and teacher
creativity.
The Conceptual Framework: Dimensions of Creativity in Education
Much of the scholarly work on creativity has focused on defining its nature and
setting out the contours of the field.Yet, terms such as creativity and innovation
are still not well defined in education policies. In the EU and beyond, there is little
guidance on how to integrate new approaches in teaching and assessment or on the
impact of different approaches on learners creative capacities (Cachia et al., 2010;
Craft, 2001; Ryhammer & Brolin, 1999). In this section, we very briefly set out the
main concepts in the literature on creativity in education the dispositions of
creative individuals and the quality of creative processes and products.
Creative Individuals
Early research on creativity in education focused on identifying learners with high
creative potential. It was assumed that creativity was a fixed trait a sign of
giftedness and it was hoped that its characteristics could be assessed easily so
that exceptional talent could be nurtured from an early age. The widely used
Torrance Tests of Creativity and Divergent Thinking (1966, 1974) and tests
developed by Guilford (1950, 1967, 1973), for example, measured divergent
thinking and ideational fluency i.e. how many different and novel solutions a
learner could generate to address a given problem as elements of the learners
potential. The focus was very firmly on big C creativity, and little thought was
given to teachers roles in nurturing everyday creativity beyond gifted programmes
or arts classes.
Various commentators have criticised these early approaches, noting, for
example, that the number of ideas a person generates and how unique or uncommon they are do not reveal their value or usefulness (Cattell & Butcher, 1968;
Runco, 2001). Rather, the most creative people seem to be those who are able to
arrive at the best solution in the shortest period or with the greatest simplicity.
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Researchers still consider that personal traits, or dispositions, are correlated with
creativity. But they also believe that all individuals can develop capacity for everyday creativity (small c creativity), including divergent thinking and the ability to
generate new ideas or develop skills for creative problem solving over time (Runco
& Albert, 1986). Teachers and parents have an important role to play in nurturing
and, as we highlight later in this article, assessing these creative dispositions. These
include:
Personality variables, such as openness to experiences (Amabile, 1990;
McCrae & Costa, 1987), curiosity, willingness to explore the unknown
(Edwards, 2001) and ability to tolerate ambiguity (Barron, 1969).
Cognitive and affective variables such as effort and persistence (Grant &
Dweck, 2003), the ability to generate a variety of ideas (Atchley, Keeney &
Burgess, 1999; Guilford, 1967; Torrance, 1966, 1972), to question and to
reflect critically, and to synthesise ideas from diverse sources (Sternberg &
Kaufman, 2010).
Creative self-efficacy i.e. belief in ones capacity to address challenges and
to persist, as well as willingness to take intellectual risks are particularly
important (Bandura, 1997). Intrinsic motivation, engagement and intense
focus what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described as flow are also
important.
Active participation in social networks has been identified as important to
enhance creative potential in studies drawing on educational data mining
techniques and self-reported creativity scores (Dawson, Tan & McWilliam,
2011).
For learners, the classroom and home environments, as well as the broader and
social and cultural context, have a clear impact. Amabile (1990) noted that
individuals were more creative in environments that encouraged exploration and
independent work and that valued originality in other words, in settings that
encourage open learning. In turn, teachers are also more likely to focus on
learner creativity and teaching creatively in school and policy environments that
value and support them and encourage innovation and associated risks, and that
allow them to develop their own creative dispositions.
Creative Processes
Research on creative processes overlaps, to some extent, with research on creative
dispositions. But it is also concerned with identifying specific behaviours of creative individuals (e.g. exploratory behaviours, analysis, evaluation, synthesis) and
approaches to problem finding and problem solving in different domains and at
different stages of development.
Disequilibrium may spur creative processes. For example, Timperley and
colleagues (2007) found that learners (including teachers) were most likely to
benefit from creative processes that addressed significant problems or when confronted with new information that challenged their previous conceptions. This
requires that the learner thinks in new ways and makes new connections with prior
knowledge and beliefs. Learners also need to develop the capacity to tolerate
ambiguity and frustration (Albert, 1996).
Creativity in any given domain also entails deep knowledge and the capacity
to access and structure that knowledge (Feldhusen & Goh, 1995). Indeed,
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structuring knowledge to enable effective learning and spur new insights is a key
pedagogical challenge in the different domains. There is an ongoing and fundamental debate, however, as to whether this should draw on domain-general or
domain-specific knowledge and skills or a mix of both1. In other words, do
creativity and the capacity to structure knowledge in one area (such as music)
transfer to another (such as mathematics) or even within sub-domains (such as
between poetry and short-story writing)? Baer and Kaufman (2005) note the need
for a theory that encompasses both domain-specific and domain-general
approaches,and empirical research on the most effective approaches within and
across domains (see also Lubart & Guignard, 2004; Plucker & Beghetto, 2004).
Creative classrooms are thus student-centred, and as expressed by the popular
maxim, teachers take on the role of guide by the side rather than sage on the
stage. As implied by the research on creative processes cited above, this approach
involves deep domain knowledge, sophisticated pedagogy and openness to the
unexpected. The change in teachers roles and classroom dynamics is potentially
quite profound.
Creative Products
Among experts on creativity, there is fairly wide agreement that creative work
whether of the big C or small c variety is novel, appropriate to the task at
hand, and of high quality as compared to some reference groups. In the arts,
creativity may be found in something that is both original and aesthetically pleasing (Sternberg, Kaufman & Pretz, 2002). (At the same time, it should be noted
that the value placed on originality emerged as a construct only in the 19th century
and is rarely found beyond the West).
For a variety of reasons, relatively little attention has been given to the quality
of creative products in schools. As noted above, there is no widely shared definition
of creativity in education policy or in school curricula (Cachia et al., 2010). Nor
are there any clear reference standards for judging the quality of learners creative
products at different ages and developmental stages. Indeed, in the realm of
creativity, teachers and other creative professionals may resist any approach that
resembles classic assessment of learner attainment (Fryer, 1996; Lucas et al.,
2013). To some extent, this may reflect teachers desire to avoid discouraging
learners self-expression. At the same time, learners receive little guidance on how
they might improve or deepen their work. Neither teachers nor learners are
encouraged to develop their own sense of what counts as high-quality creative
work.
Teaching for Creativity and Teaching Creatively: New Roles for Teachers
In this section, we explore innovative ways of nurturing creativity that support both
open and closed learning. We begin with an exploration of partnerships between
teachers and creative professionals. These often focus on finding ways to address a
specific pedagogical challenge. Of course, creative partnerships are only one of
many possible methods for creative learning and teaching.We believe the approach
is worth highlighting, however, as these partnerships may provide significant new
opportunities for collaboration and professional development, as well as for supporting leaner creativity.
We then turn to questions related to assessment of and for creativity. At its best,
creative teaching focuses on finding new ways to make learning visible, promote
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inquiry, engage learners and nurture their own creativity and stretch their capacity
to develop original and high-quality work. Assessment is integral to this process.
But the question of how to assess creativity is particularly challenging in the
context of education. Should quality always be against the learners own prior
performances? Is it sometimes appropriate to refer to external standards for
creativity? What about assessment of open learning? We consider the need to build
learners own competence to pursue deep lines of inquiry in a given domain, to
assess the quality of their ideas and to refine them as part of the creative process.
Creativity in Teaching: Creative Partnerships
CCEs Creative Partnerships programme places artists in the classroom to assist
teachers in developing their pedagogical practice. While the artists have had some
training to take on their partnership roles, they do not function as teachers in the
classroom. Rather, they encourage teachers to adapt creative methods and processes in their classrooms. They also play an important role as outside observers,
asking teachers why they made certain choices, why learners may have responded
as they did to different exercises, and generally provoking deeper questioning and
new ways of thinking about what is happening and what could happen differently
in the teaching and learning process. Teachers are encouraged to move beyond
their typical roles and routines.We highlight these particular approaches, as they
support open and closed learning for teachers, learners and the creative professionals themselves.
The teaching and learning which result from these creative partnerships are
often deceptively simple. For example, in Vetrunges primary school in Kaunas,
Lithuania, the teacher worked with a sound artist to develop a new way to teach
children who were having difficulty with reading and writing. In the early stages of
the project, this creative teaching team encouraged the children to lie on their
classroom floor and listen to different sounds around them, to describe them,
repeat them and then to explore how to express them in writing.The children then
walked around the town visiting the train station and an open market. They were
asked to invent words using letters that reproduced what they heard. They were
even taken to a lecture in Turkish at the local university. None of the children
were Turkish or had ever spoken Turkish, but they were asked to write by using
letters to imitate the sounds of the language. The pupils enjoyed the experience
enormously.They worked hard, concentrated deeply and made significant progress
in their reading and writing.
In another recent project, this time in Karachi, CCE developed a partnership
between teachers in Habib Boys Primary School and a ceramicist to improve the
engagement of a group of 9-year-old boys in reading. The creative professional
began by exploring comic book heroes and comics, but this first effort proved
unsatisfactory, as the boys appeared to have a limited capacity to cooperate in
groups.The teacher and artist then experimented by bringing clay into class and
getting the boys to create their own superheroes, not based on the comic books,
but derived from their own imagination.The physical activity calmed the boys
and greatly improved their capacity to concentrate over an extended period. As a
result, they were able to develop together a story featuring every clay creature
they had created. Following this success, the pupils visited Indus Valley Art
College in Karachi where they were able to see their creatures fired in a kiln and
learn more about the mechanics of ceramics. The positive combination of
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physical activity, the field trip, collaborative story telling and imagination was
then replicated in a more complex project in which the pupils worked with a
professional filmmaker to create a short animated film portraying an incident in
Karachi. The teachers were astonished at the levels of concentration and collaboration the pupils were now able to maintain in the complex work of story boarding the film. They reported long-term improvements in the boys engagement in
learning beyond these workshops.
In a third example at Harrop Fold Secondary School in the UK, creative
professionals working in animation and theatre and teachers focused on improving
the mathematics performance of a disengaged group of 1314-year-olds. The
theatre professional created scenarios in which some of the learners performed,
while other pupils observed and recorded what was happening. One scenario, for
instance, portrayed a group of gangsters drinking shots of Vodka at a bar. Other
pupils used stopwatches to track how quickly these young actors were able to
down the shots. They recorded their findings in animated graphs. Having gained
confidence from this experiment, the teachers and pupils created a much longer
animation to demonstrate the equation that speed equals distance over time. The
learners were entertained and also showed that they had grasped the concept.
Indeed, they began the year as the lowest performing in their cohort, and, by the
end of the year, outperformed learners who had been considered as more able, but
had been taught in a more traditional way.
These lessons in Lithuania, Pakistan and the UK each followed what Thomson
and colleagues (2012) have described as the CCE signature pedagogies, with
teachers making significant changes in their approaches to learning and how they
saw their own roles.These include: work beyond the classroom and school, the use
of the students experiences and work as a teaching and learning resource, the open
expression of emotions, the valuing of collective work, opportunities for open
learning (where the answer is not already known), the use of the body and all the
senses, and engagement with the wider community (see also McLellan et al.,
2012).These and other CCE projects have aimed at nurturing learner creativity
for example, by encouraging learners to develop their own creative dispositions of
observation and listening. They also help to develop learners skills for inquiry,
imagination and quality assessment. They thus combine elements of open and
closed learning for both learners and teachers.
The fundamentally collaborative nature of creative partnerships is vital. Creative professionals can infuse new energy and insights and bring new approaches
and tools to support teaching and learning.They also bring very different points of
view and tend to be curious (an important creative disposition, as noted above),
asking many questions which may seem nave to educators, but are nevertheless
important. Teachers bring domain-specific knowledge, a good understanding of
how to structure content and scaffold learning so that it is at the appropriate level
of challenge for their students.Teachers may also have a good understanding of the
kinds of problem representations (heuristics) that promote learner understanding
and catalyse new insights in their domain (Kaplan & Simon, 1990; Kilpatrick,
Swafford, & Findell, 2001). But more research will be needed to understand the
respective contributions of domain-general and domain-specific knowledge and
skills engendered in these partnerships.
It should also be noted that these creative partnerships have included a specific
focus on teacher professional development and have stressed the importance of
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long-term relationships. CCE has found that teachers who are most engaged in the
process and over longer periods of time have reported positive impacts on their
own career and creative development, their interpersonal and leadership skills, and
the way they approach teaching and learning.2 For teachers and creative professionals, these partnerships are a form of open learning. As the outcome is
unknown, they involve a certain level of risk for all concerned. But perhaps because
of this, teachers have also reported that the programme has had a deep impact on
their own creative dispositions and willingness to try new things (Parker, 2013).
Teachers participating in the evaluation of the programme in England (Lamont
et al., 2010) also noted changes in personal values related to creativity, their
willingness to challenge their pedagogical ideals, improvements in their ability to
conceptualise complex problems and to make connections between disparate
areas, etc.
Assessing the Dispositions
While creative partnerships create opportunities to explore innovative approaches
to nurturing creativity and improving learning outcomes, teachers nevertheless
face a variety of barriers to integrating these and other approaches to nurture
creativity. Assessment is perhaps the greatest barrier (Cizek, 2001; Hamilton et al.,
2005). In a review of studies on the impact of high-stakes assessment, Looney
(2009) found that the weight of the evidence pointed to the difficulty of initiating
and/or sustaining innovative approaches to teaching in high-stakes assessment
environments (where the stakes may involve negative consequences such as the
threat of school closure or teacher job loss). Teachers are more likely to narrow
curriculum, focusing on those elements that are more likely to feature in the test.
There is little incentive to nurture learners creativity or to move beyond closed
learning, where answers are already known and can be easily measured by standardised assessments. Cachia and colleagues (2010), in their survey of teachers
across Europe, found that teachers saw assessment as a major issue, either enabling
or acting as a barrier to nurturing creativity (see Box 1).
New approaches to assessing creativity may help to ensure that this transversal
competence is not overwhelmed by the demands and pressures of high stakes
assessments for accountability or even classroom-based assessments that focus on
the learning of facts and figures rather than on capacities for critical thinking and
problem solving. In 2011, CCE and the OECDs Centre for Educational Research
and Innovation commissioned three researchers at the Centre for Real-World
Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester, UK, to develop a tool to track
progression in student creativity across subjects and levels and as appropriate for
their age. The researchers, Lucas, Claxton and Spencer, distilled the research on
creative dispositions and on learner progression to identify five essential habits of
mind: inquisitive, persistent, imaginative, collaborative and disciplined. They also
identified three sub-dispositions within each of these categories and developed a
tool to track the strength, breadth and depth of learner development. The tracking
tool (Box 2) was validated by teachers and learners in two field trials in 12 schools
(Lucas et al., 2013).
As there are no specific reference standards for the dispositions (and there is a
need for more and better research on how creativity develops), each learners
development is tracked against his or her prior performance (this is sometimes
referred to as ipsative assessment).
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Box 1. Barriers to Creativity in Education

In their Europe-wide study, Cachia and colleagues (2010) found several barriers to creative learning and innovative teaching in schools. These included:
Curricula many teachers noted that curricula in their countries do not
provide a clear definition of creativity, nor do they have tools or guidelines as
to how to develop it in their classrooms.
Pedagogy and assessment while teachers express interest in encouraging
creativity, conventional frontal teaching dominates in classrooms, particularly at the secondary level, across the EU-27. Lack of time, overloaded
curricula and an emphasis on traditional approaches to testing and assessment also create barriers.
Teacher training the need to review and reform teacher training and
prepare teachers to integrate more diverse and innovative methods is seen as
key. Teachers also need to be supported to take creative risks within the
constraints of traditional education.
ICT and digital media teachers need more personal and pedagogical
competences with ICT in order to integrate tools and content into teaching
and learning in creative ways.
Educational culture and leadership school leaders, policy makers and
parents need to be involved in the change process.
Cachia et al., 2010
In a more recent survey, 4,000 school and higher education teachers and
parents in Australia, Germany, the US and the UK were asked to identify
their views on the major barriers to creativity in education. Across these
countries, respondents noted a lack of resources (including tools and training), the low value placed on creativity in education settings, and narrow
curricula and high-stakes testing. Misunderstanding of the importance of
creativity in education, the respondents noted, is also key barrier.
Berland (2013)

Teachers involved in the field trials were positive about the tools focus on the
five habits and agreed that it was a useful way of focusing attention on creativity.
At the same time, they expressed their concern that current approaches to structuring lessons did not leave sufficient time or opportunity to put many of the
creative dispositions into practice. Teachers also need training and support and
more opportunities to work together in order to make sense of the terms and the
kind of evidence needed to identify learner progression across the five habits and
more time to develop practices that nurture learners creative dispositions.
The focus on dispositions rather than on pure academic achievement and
giftedness aligns well with the focus on small c creativity. It also implies a very
different approach to teaching and assessment. An extensive body of research
supports the importance of formative and ipsative approaches to assessment focused
on the importance of effort as opposed to innate ability or talent (what Dweck refers
to as a growth mindset3) (see also Black & Wiliam, 1998). Duckworth and
Seligman (2005; see also Duckworth et al., 2007) found that learner persistence
or grit in Duckworths model was a more effective predictor of academic
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performance and longer-term success than IQ. In addition, the quality of and
attention to learners motivation and emotions are important (Gordon & OToole,
forthcoming; Hinton & Fischer, 2010; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).
Assessing Creative Processes and Products
Assessments of creative processes and of products are closely related. First, assessment is in itself a vital part of the creative process, starting with the identification
of a problem and continuing with assessment and re-assessment of the quality of
new ideas and potential solutions, and finally, the resulting creative products. Yet
surprisingly little attention has been given to the assessment of the creative process
or to the quality of learners creative products (particularly in comparison to the
wide range of assessments developed to measure individual learners creative
potential). This is in part due to the lack of a clear definition of creativity. It also
reflects the lack of reference standards for creative products and, importantly,
teachers reluctance to judge learners efforts in this regard. Indeed, much more
attention has been devoted to the creative dispositions and to creative processes
than to the quality of resulting ideas or products.
This is not to say that there are no tools to assess the quality of creative work.
For example, the Consensual Assessment Technique, or CAT (Amabile, 1979,
Box 2. Assessing Creative Habits of Mind

Source: Lucas et al., 2013

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1983) sets out processes for expert and novice judges to rate product creativity in
different domains. This approach is appropriate for summative assessments, particularly when the reliability of judgements is crucial (reliability means that the
assessment could be repeated and produce consistent ratings). Similar product
assessments include the Creative Product Semantic Scale (Besemer, 1998;
Besemer & OQuin, 1999, cited in Plucker & Makel, 2010) and the Student
Product Assessment Form (Reis & Renzulli, 1991).
In classroom settings, the on-the-spot judgement of teachers and learners
prevails. Timely and specific formative feedback can also improve the quality of
learning and of the resulting work.The way in which teachers structure lessons and
guide dialogue and questioning have an important impact on whether and how
learners make connections between ideas and develop new insights. This kind of
dialogue is also important to reveal learner understanding and can help both
teachers and learners to identify areas where new approaches may be needed a
formative approach to assessment and learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Scaffolding i.e. setting challenges for learners at the right level and providing as much
or as little information and guidance as needed can support learners as they
move from novice to more expert levels of performance (Allal, 1999). As noted
above, these approaches require teachers to play very different roles, to have deep
knowledge of the domain they are teaching, and to be open to the unexpected. As
assessment may not be considered as formative until the learning gap has been
addressed, teachers pedagogical problem-solving abilities are vital.
It is also important to support learner autonomy. In the open learning mode, it
is particularly important that teachers and learners be able to evaluate the quality
of their ideas, make adjustments and test them again. Learners may learn to judge
the quality of their work whether working towards a specific learning goal with
clear criteria or testing their hypothesis.
Looney (in Miller et al., 2011) suggests that assessment should be seen as a
competence for both teachers and learners. The term competence refers to the
ability to call up both cognitive and non-cognitive capacities in new and unfamiliar
situations. Learning in both open and closed systems requires that teachers and
learners define what, how, with whom and why they learn and are able to provide
or respond to feedback.
Runco (2006) has suggested that creativity in problem solving may be judged
on the basis of the effectiveness of the resulting work. While judgements of the
quality of creative products is to some degree subjective, both teachers and learners
can refine their own judgements through observation and exposure to many
different creative professionals in given domains. As with the assessment of creative
dispositions, a process of sense making is vital. A deeper understanding of why and
how different creative works succeed is vital for both teachers and learners as they
develop their own creative identities. Indeed, if young people are to improve the
quality of their creative work, they will need an honest critical assessment. Too
much attention to the creative process itself may also deflect from efforts to
improve the quality of the outcome. As the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Michael Boyd, remarked at a 2007 CCE/RSC seminar on
measuring creativity, There is no point my standing in front of an audience on first
night describing the quality of the creative process that generated the show. The
audience is only interested in the quality of the performance. Indeed, one of the
paradoxes of creative processes is that they are no guarantee of quality products.
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Here again, the approach to assessment is vital. In the most effective classroombased formative assessments, teachers focus on the quality of the learners work
rather than on their ego, even in the form of praise. Teachers or the learners peers
may make specific suggestions for improvement, following clear criteria (OECD,
2005a). Certainly, the lack of standards or the subjectivity of judgements regarding
creative processes and products particularly in situations where learning is more
open may make some teachers uneasy. However, teachers and learners may
co-construct an understanding of what works and what does not work well for any
given creative product and thereby refine their assessment competences.
Recommendations on School Level Support for Creativity
Teachers will not be able to integrate creative teaching methods or nurture creativity in their regular practice without the support of their school leaders and peers.
Indeed, introducing new methods particularly methods that represent a significant departure from regular practice is a risky endeavour for them.
If schools are to support creativity, they will need to:
Support teachers to take risks While an axiom of innovation, it nevertheless
bears repeating, particularly in policy environments that leave little room for
potential failures: teachers need permission to take risks. High-functioning
schools challenge teachers, allow plenty of flexibility, and create a free flow
between the school, families, communities and workplaces. They encourage
teachers to be curious, imaginative and open, while also challenging them to
improve students well-being and attainment.
Ensure that teachers have the necessary feedback and support to improve
practice Increasingly, education systems measure school and teacher quality
through student performance on large-scale assessments, whilst teachers in
many systems report that their classroom practices are not evaluated systematically or that evaluators are not trained (OECD, 2005b, 2009). Nevertheless,
teachers indicate that they appreciate feedback from school leaders. Moreover,
feedback focused on areas for improvement, followed by effective professional
development can have a positive impact on student attainment.
Encourage collaboration among school leaders, teachers and creative professionals Teacher collaboration can have a strong impact on teacher learning
and student attainment (Jackson & Bruegmann, 2009; Seashore Louis et al.,
2010). The CCE experience points to positive impact of collaboration with
professionals beyond the school. This could extend to creative professionals
working in technical areas, as well as artists.The main point is that schools need
to be more permeable be open to the broader community if they are to
also encourage learners to be curious and open to new experiences.
Directions for Policy and Research
Ultimately, integrating creativity in teaching and learning will require profound
changes in policy and practice. Policies will need to place a higher value on
creativity, supporting both open and closed learning. Priorities for policy and
research include:
Developing clearer definitions of creativity in education. While most education
stakeholders believe that creativity is important across subject areas (and not
just the arts) (Cachia et al., 2010) and that all learners are capable of being
creative, there is still very little clarity beyond this. More research on creativity
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in different domains and on how to balance structured lessons and opportunities for open exploration is also needed.
Rethinking curricula. Across countries, teachers complain that curricula are
overcrowded and that they have little choice but to rush through subjects in
order to make sure that they have covered all the prescribed territory. There are
few opportunities to work in an interdisciplinary fashion or to learn beyond the
school grounds. Curricula developers and teachers need to make courageous
decisions regarding what to cut, what to keep and how to encourage teachers to
nurture creativity within and across domains. There is little sense in rushing
through subjects if learners have not understood core concepts or had a chance
to make connections or develop new insights whether in open or closed
learning situations.
Supporting research to gather more empirical evidence on effective approaches
to nurturing creativity in and beyond classrooms. This research should explore
the impact of different methods on student attainment and personal development. Several of the projects developed through CCE and other programmes
suggest that creativity may actually improve the effectiveness of teaching and
learning (or learning productivity), with learners achieving better outcomes
than their peers who learn with more typical methods, and in less time.
Research in this area could help to raise greater interest in the importance of
creativity among practitioners and policy makers.
Exploring new approaches to assessment. New and varied measurements of and
for creativity are needed. The Creative Dispositions assessment tool, which
places great emphasis on the development of learners character traits and not
just on their academic attainment, has had a successful first pilot phase and is
being disseminated more widely. The tool represents a paradigm shift in assessment.We want, at the same time, to emphasise the importance of assessment of
the quality of learners creative products. While we do not recommend that
education systems develop detailed reference standards for creativity, they can
nevertheless provide better guideposts and exemplars on what counts as creativity for learners of different ages and working in or across different domains.
Teachers and learners alike need to build their competences to judge the quality
of work and what they can do to develop their creative capacities further and
take on new challenges.

Paul Collard, Creativity, Culture and Education, 20 Portland Terrace, Jesmond,

Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1QQ, United Kingdom, paul.collard@cceengland.org
Janet Looney, European Institute of Education and Social Policy, c/o ESCP Europe 81
ave de la Rpublique, 75543 Paris cedex 11, France, looney@eiesp.org
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Stphan Vincent-Lancrin of the OECD and Gbor
Halsz of the EJE Editorial Board for their comments on an earlier draft of this
article.
NOTES
1. Winner and colleagues (2013) conducted a review of the literature on arts
education and academic attainment for the OECD. They found that empirical

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360 European Journal of Education, Part I

evidence in this field was limited, possibly due to the limited ways in which
creativity has been measured (e.g. Torrance Tests of Creativity on divergent
thinking, as referenced above). Several studies show that learning in the arts
(dance, music, visual arts and theatre) is correlated with better academic
performance, but these studies do not demonstrate any clear causal links.They
also note that some of the difficulties in measurement may be due to the fact
that any subject can be taught in a way that encourages or discourages learner
creativity.
2. Lamont et al. (2010) in their evaluation of Creative Partnerships, which
was implemented across England from 2002 to 2011, found substantial
evidence of positive impacts on teachers personal and professional
development:
personal teachers reported greater enthusiasm for their work, their
own creative development, confidence, values, and their own learning;
interpersonal and leadership improved skills for collaboration with
peers as well as with creative professionals;
teaching and learning changes in values, increased use of language
related to creativity, new views on student learning, new classroom
practices and skills to support childrens creativity, and new approaches
to curriculum;
career impacts in this area were less common, but significant for those
with greater or more sustained involvement.
Most teachers in the evaluation felt that Creative Partnerships had a greater
impact on their professional development than other initiatives. Reasons
included: opportunities to develop and use new skills, opportunities to work
with external partners, and improvements in the learning environment. Creative Partnerships were felt to provide a sustained, whole-school approach to
professional development.
3. Dweck (2006) found that individuals with a growth mindset (in other words,
with high self-efficacy) were more likely to succeed over time than those with
a fixed mindset. Dweck and colleagues tested this proposition with hundreds
of adolescent learners.The learners were all given a baseline nonverbal IQ test.
Following the test, some were praised for their ability and others were praised
for their effort. The researchers found that the learners who were praised for
ability, when given a choice, were less interested in participating in more
challenging tasks. By contrast, 90% of learners who had been praised for effort
preferred the more challenging task.
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