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What is creativity? And what is Experimental learning’s part?
A literature Review of Embracing Our Creativity: a key ingredient of great teaching. By Scott Meikle
I have been applying to internships and jobs over the last few months and 90% of the job descriptions call for an applicant to be creative. What does this mean and has my schooling prepared me to be this? I read an article on what creativity is and how to foster creativity in school that could help me answer the questions probed above.
Scott Meikle is a teacher who teaches in a way that encourages student creativity by starting with the teachers’ themself embracing their own creativity. He views creativity as the act of solving problems that cannot be answered simply, or even in one way. It requires adaptability and flexibility of thought as you learn to recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities. Meikle feels that a learning environment that embraces unpredictability and encourages seeing old problems in new ways is essential for solving problems in increasingly complex world—and it is not being addressed today. He feels that experiential learning is necessary to encourage creativity, learning from direct experience while having an active physical or mental engagement to the material. Students should not be a reciprocal that is filled with information, but should be self-directed and part of the learning process. They should find information themselves, lead discussions, and learn in a way that suits them while the teacher acts as a guide, mentor, or consultant to the educational process. The teacher should be passionate and interested by the material, and the students will follow. By not seeing creativity as artistic, but in broader terms, every student can benefit from an education that encourages students to rely on themselves not just the teacher.
Using Scott Meikle’s interpretation of creativity in school, I think my education has not encouraged this type of thinking most of the time. I think I have fostered my own creativity thinking outside of school, and at levels of higher education, which will prepare me for jobs, and problems I occur in the upcoming years. I will never be able to tell how different my skills would be if my education how been formed around the ideas that were outlined in this article.
When I arrived at college the hardest part for me was the classes in which there were no right answers to questions. I had 12 years of education in which I was graded on a rubric and rubrics were suddenly gone. I felt overwhelmed, and found myself many times sitting for hours debating on how to start a project. Assignments didn’t suggest how long a piece should be and sometimes didn’t even suggest what they should be on. I had to reteach myself creativity. I have the skills to come up with answers and projects that my professors like to see, but it is out of my comfort zone to have to create for myself. I wasn’t used to being able to use my brain to think about what I want to do for an assignment and having control over the work, I was used to spewing out work that I knew would impress whoever is grading my work. Just a few weeks ago I was given an assignment to create a one slide PowerPoint responding to the question ‘What is the Value in land, and how do we leverage and sustain the value derived from land.’ I read those words fifteen times, not having any clue what they meant and what I was supposed to do with them. I emailed my professor and with no response I had to create a presentation with no understanding of what was expected. I created a graph using data on land use, threw in some pictures, and a few words. Walking to class I felt uneasy as I felt I had misinterpreted the assignment, only to find out that the reason our professor gave the assignment was to show how differently the class thinks. She didn’t answer my email on purpose—she wanted to ‘throw us in the deep end’ and see what we could create on our own. She graded us on effort and presentation, not on if the information was what she wanted or not. How could she have? There is no one answer to the question she gave. This is creativity in school. Our class solved a problem in the best way we could and got to see each other’s and talk about why they are so different from one another. I learned about different value that could be found in land—as well as myself. I am competent of using my own thoughts to create work. I also realized how important this is for my future. No boss is going to tell me exactly what to create. You have to dive into work and see what your knowledge and skills will allow you to produce. I also began to ponder my education up to this point. Why have I never been able to use my own thoughts to produce work? It doesn’t seem right.
-Larissa
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