Enabling Creativity in Learning Environments: Lessons From the CREANOVA Project

Abstract

The paper employs data from a European Union funded project to outline the different contexts and factors that enable creativity and innovation. It suggests that creativity and innovation are supported by flexible work settings, adaptable learning environments, collaborative design processes, determined effort, and liberating innovative relationships. It concludes that learning environments that seek to enable creativity and innovation should encourage collaborative working, offer flexibility for both learners and educators, enable learner-led innovative processes, and recognize that creativity occurs in curriculum areas beyond the creative arts.

Creativity in primary schools: An analysis of a teacher’s attempt to foster childhood creativity within the context of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence

“…Paying closer attention to freedom, we note arguments that too much freedom is problematic when seeking to foster creativity; in particular, it was argued that too much individual freedom may raise barriers to people’s collaboration; hence, building flexible frameworks containing a balance between freedom and structure is considered necessary for stimulating creativity (Davis et al, 2011). The following examples show how creativity was implemented through balancing freedom and structure.…”

“…Instead, this paper aims to answer questions about how the CfE is interpreted and implemented in practice in a single case example, and also about whether the CfE creates an enabling environment for creativity. Enabling environments have been defined as those that: provide flexible supportive frameworks, are well designed aesthetically, are concerned with promoting equity, value diversity, show respect for people’s free thinking, welcome collaboration and eschew rigid rules/hierarchy (Davis et al, 2011).…”

Creativity Promotion in an Excellence Program for Preservice Teacher Candidates

“…of students to help them succeed in modern, globalized economies based on knowledge and innovation” (http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/assessingprogressionincreativeandcriticalthinkingskillsineducation.htm). Fostering creativity in classrooms enhances knowledge growth, develops innovation (Davis, Aruldoss, Mcnair, & Bizas, 2012), and supports problem-based learning (Antink Meyer, 2012). As such, it also prepares pupils for unknown and rapidly changing futures (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012).…”

“…Research concerning teaching and teacher education has documented that creativity may be observed in individual as well as group activities (Davis et al, 2012; Kukner & Orr, 2015). Teachers who work in groups, such as communities of inquiry, develop innovative methods and responses to issues they contend with in their practice (Cochran Smith & Lytle, 2009).…”

“…They already possessed an undergraduate degree from a variety of disciplines, echoing Dunbar’s (1995) findings that the most creative groups were those that included members from different disciplines. In White’s longitudinal study, a group of participants was encouraged to enhance their creativity (Davis et al, 2012; Kukner & Orr, 2015) by developing ethnographic operatic performances, thus exploring ideas and learning in a hands-on manner via performance rather than via discussion and reading. The participants were expected to collaborate, negotiate, and solve problems, leading to the apex—a public opera performance in which they sang arias that told the story of their creativity.…”