Creativity and Innovation in Education

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Creativity and Innovation in Education
HERTFORDSHIRE PRIMARY HEADTEACHERS Conference16
October 2003

• Valerie Hannon
• 
  Director Innovation Unit

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A changing public climate...

• More public understanding of the impacts of the
  creative industries
• Prominent creatives increasingly influential
• Amongst them, advocates for a different approach
  to schooling
• Teacher associations aligning in demands around
  balance, creativity, trusting the
  profession

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A changing public climate...

• Understanding the implications of the knowledge
  economy
• Raising the premium on knowledge and skills
• Radical restructuring of other sectors
• Rapidly rising rates of innovation and diffusion

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A changing policy environment

• Creative Partnerships
• "Excellence and Enjoyment"
• Power to Innovate
• Innovation Unit
• QCA Project "Creativity across the Curriculum"
• Leading Edge Partnerships
• Training Schools

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• The democratic definition 
• Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce
  outcomes that are both original and of value

• Multidimensional, but sometimes domain/subject
  specific
• Freedom with control
• Creativity draws from culture the 2 are
  inter-dependent

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• responding to new ideas, unexpected events,
  questioning and challenging
• making connections, seeing relationships (with
  other learning, everyday life)
• looking for fresh challenges, new possibilities
• pursuing a range of possibilities
• sharing their thinking and reflecting
  critically

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• playing with ideas and keeping options open
• representing ideas in a variety of ways
• envisaging what might be
• evaluating effects of ideas and actions
• building on others ideas/ actions, suggesting
  alternatives

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How can schools promote creativity?

Creativity find it, promote it (QCA)

• Provide opportunities for pupils to experience
  and contribute to a stimulating physical
  environment, within and beyond the school
• Manage time, to provide opportunities for pupils
  to explore, concentrate for extended periods,
  reflect, discuss, review
• Value and celebrate pupils creative and
  innovative contributions
• Work collaboratively with creative and innovative
  individuals and groups

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• How can leaders secure a stimulating physical
  environment that promotes students creativity?
• How might schools recognise, value and reward
  pupils creative thinking and behaviour?
• What approaches to organisation and management
  promote creative learning environments?
• How can leaders facilitate students creative
  thinking and behaviour through curriculum
  planning?

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What do we mean by innovation?
the successful exploitation of new ideas

• at least two types of innovation
• Entirely new ideas
• Re-working of an old idea or the transferring and
  embedding of existing ideas in to a new setting

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An alternative definition

• a change that creates a new dimension of
  performance

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Innovation
Creativity
Can be solitary Can be for its own sake Never
imitative Can be playful Consequences of failure
often positive?
Social process Adding value, application
oriented Often transference Always
purposive Consequences of failure?
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the nature of innovation .?

• Incremental Innovation
• Minor modifications to existing product
• Swims with the tide
• Starts with the present and works forward
• School improvement ?

• Radical Innovation
• Significant breakthrough representing major
  shift in design
• Swims against the tide
• Starts with the future and works backwards
• Transformation ?

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or, the nature of innovation .?
The yin/yang of transformation
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The education agenda now whats needed for
transformation?
At the least

• teachers becoming the agents, not the objects, of
  change
• a radical advancement in teacher learning
• teachers having confidence in their freedom to
  innovate

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• transformation cannot be achieved through
  command-and-control directives
• real innovation cannot be planned for or
  produced to order - it creeps up when the time
  and conditions are appropriate
• innovation - both incremental and radical -
  needs to be supported and (in contrast to the
  1960s let a thousand flowers bloom) designed
  and co-ordinated in a coherent and disciplined
  way

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• The paradox about innovation and creativity is
  that to turn your creativity into innovative new
  products, services and offers, you need a system
  to be able to manage that creativity. Without
  structure you simply have the kind of sporadic
  bright ideas which, at best may yield fruit, but
  at worst may actually rock your organisation
  because you have no means of dealing with the
  internal changes that those creative ideas
  demand.

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How much innovation do we need??

• Had schooling advanced at the same rate as
  computers have since 1950, the twelve years of
  compulsory schooling could be accomplished in ten
  minutes for three cents.
• Mann (1992) School Reform in the US

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Inventions have long since reached their limit,
and I see no hope for further development Julius
Frontinus Respected engineer in Rome, 1st century
AD
I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother
Orville that man would not fly for fifty years
Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided
all predictions Wilbur Wright, US Aviation
Pioneer, 1908
"who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Harry M
Warner, Warner Brothers 1927
Computers in the future may perhaps only weigh
1.5 tons Popular mechanics, forecasting
development of computer technology, 1949
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"A key to transformation is for the teaching
profession to establish innovation networks that
capture the spirit and the culture of internet
hackers the passion, the can-do, the collective
sharing" David Hargreaves, Education Epidemic
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The Innovation unit
supporting practitioner-led innovation and
experimentation
modelling interactive exchanges
developing the power of networks
How the Innovation Unit is contributing to
system wide reform
'futures thinking' programme
practitioners co-authoring policy
leading edge programme
'design collaboratives'
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Whats the problem for schools?
LIG
Collaboratives(NHS Styles Others)
EIC
School to School Network
Pathfinders
NCSL Affiliated Networks
Leading Edge Partnership Programme
Collaboration
Network Learning Communities
Collegiates
LEA Networks
Federations
Specialist Schools Trust Network
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Discussion QuestionsINNOVATION and CREATIVITY

• Is the argument that we need more innovation
  warranted?
• How can we link teachers desire for greater
  creativity to this agenda for transformation?
• Do we know how to create disciplined
  innovation?
• What single thing would you like to see the
  Innovation Unit do to support you?