Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing learners who generate ideas and can think critically

by Bill Lucas, Ellen Spencer

In Teaching Creative Developing Learners Who Generate Ideas and Can Think Critically,Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer define and demystify the essence of creative thinking, and offer action-oriented and research-informed suggestions as to how it can best be developed in learners. Where once it was enough to know and do things, young people now need more than subject knowledge in order to they need capabilities. Teaching Creative Thinking is the first title in the three-part Pedagogy for a Changing World series, founded upon Lucas and Spencer's philosophy of dispositional teaching a pedagogical approach which aims to cultivate in learners certain dispositions that evidence suggests are going to be valuable to them both at school and in later life. A key capability is creative thinking, and, in 2021, one of the guardians of global comparative standards, PISA, is recognising its importance by making creative thinking the 'innovative assessment domain' to supplement their testing of 15-year-olds' core capabilities in English, maths and science. Creative thinkers are inquisitive, collaborative, imaginative, persistent and disciplined and schools which foster these habits of mind in learners need to be creative in engaging children and young people by embedding creativity into their everyday educational experiences. In this extensive enquiry into the nature and nurture of creative thinking,the authors explore the effectiveness of various pedagogical approaches including problem-based learning, growth mindset, playful experimentation and the classroom as a learning community and provide a wealth of tried-and-tested classroom strategies that will boost learners' critical and creative thinking skills. The book is structured in an easy-to-access format, combining a comprehensive listing of practical ideas to stimulate lesson planning with expert guidance on integrating them into your practice, followed by plenty of inventive suggestions as to how learners' progress can be assessed and tracked along the way by both the pupil and the teacher. The authors then go further to offer exemplars of success by presenting case studies of schools' innovations in adopting these approaches, and dedicate a chapter to dispelling any pressing doubts that teachers may have by exposing the potential pitfalls and offering advice on how to avoid them. Venturing beyond the classroom setting, Teaching Creative Thinkingalso delves into the ways in which a school can work towards the provision of co-curricular experiences such as partnering with a range of external community groups and better engage its leadership team and pupils' parents with the idea of creative thinking in order to support learners with opportunities to grow. The authors offer many examples which will inspire schools to do just this, and collate these ideas into building a framework for learning that equips young people in schools today with the twenty-first century skills and capabilities that will enable them to thrive in the workforce of tomorrow. Replete with research-led insight and ready-to-use strategies, Teaching Creative Thinkingis a powerful call to action and a practical handbook for all teachers and leaders, in both primary and secondary settings, who want to embed a capabilities approach in their schools.

Genres: Teaching

218 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 26, 2017

About the author

Bill Lucas is Professor of Learning and Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL). He founded CRL in 2008, together with Prof. Guy Claxton.

In 2017 Bill was appointed by the OECD as co-chair of the strategic advisory group for the 2021 PISA test of Creative Thinking which will draw on the work of the CRL. Bill is an international adviser to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority in Australia, to Vinnvard in Sweden and to the OECD/CERI research into critical and creative thinking in France. Bill is Director of Learning for the Fellowship Programme of THIS, the new Healthcare Studies Institute at the University of Cambridge.

Bill is known internationally as a speaker on the subjects of learning, change, creativity, healthcare improvement and leadership. He travels extensively to present keynotes, most recently in Sydney, Philadelphia, Helskinki, Qatar, Stockholm, Melbourne, Auckland, Belfast and Dubai. He is a prolific, award-winning writer, and has authored and co-authored over forty books and chapters and many peer-reviewed papers.

With Guy Claxton he is the creator of one of the biggest teacher researcher groups in the world, the Expansive Education Network.

Reviews

[Kate Schwarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The school at which I'm teaching next year required all faculty to read this book over the summer, and it's a good one. Basically, it is an argument to teach dispositions as well as skills and knowledge. The author uses examples from Australia and the UK, very few from the U.S., of schools who are doing this well on a bigger scale. It is nicely broken up roughly 50-50 in theory and practice advice, ideas, and guidance about how to implement the theory in various ways. Very much worth reading!

[Thanos Tsolakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, very helpful for teachers, parents, and any person that wants to find a creative way to teach. It gives a round understanding of the skills required to have as an educator and the different ways students can absorb information.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's surprising to see a book on teaching creativity to take something of a reductionist view of creativity, defining creativity relative to a set of five capabilities. The implication being that if you have these five capabilities then "you to will be creative". It's a bit like "the habits of highly effective people". Having these habits is no guarantee that you'll be creative (or "highly effective").

The book also ignores the inherently contextual nature of creativity: what might be creative in one context (domain, physical situation, social situation, time etc.) might not be seen as creative in another. A more practical definition of creativity might be:

“Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context”*

The book also seems to engage with a lot of the psych literature around pedagogy ("growth mindset"), but ignore much of research into actual creativity.

* Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A., and Dow, G. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potential, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologists, 39, 83-96.