What This Means for Instruction

Professional practice reinforced through professional development, such as research and peer reflection, must guide the teaching of the arts (Kindler, 1996). Well-prepared teachers can use the arts as a conscious strategy to develop creativity across various disciplines. Teaching the arts helps students develop habits and skills that will be valuable to them throughout their lives. In addition, learning through the arts reinforces skills that transfer to success in other subjects where creativity is valuable, including the sciences. Students achieve when teachers establish the conditions in which creativity can flourish.

These conditions, such as classroom environments, can be deliberately designed to foster creativity. (Burton, Horowitz, and Abeles, 2000). This redesign should encompass more than the classroom’s physical layout. For example, Eisner (2002) recommends that schools implement culture and curricula that encourage dispositions in addition to skills. This culture would emphasize the exploration and process instead of just the final product.

In teaching creativity, use the following strategies:

• Model techniques such as creativity, metaphor, metacognition and diverse symbol systems in the classroom;
• Encourage students to actively question their own assumptions and those of others;
• Point out that creative thinkers face obstacles, and develop an environment in which students feel safe in taking reasonable risks and making mistakes;
• Design assignments and assessments that call for creative applications and solutions;
• Let each student define his or her one question, problem and hypothesis;
• Provide reward structures to reinforce creative ideas and products;
• Allow both space in the classroom and time in the school day to think creatively;
• Encourage students to tolerate ambiguity and multiple solutions;
• Show students how to accept continuous challenges for future growth (Sternberg, 2003).

In lessons or units in which students must investigate and test hypotheses, teachers should ask students to clearly explain their methods and conclusions (Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, 2001), so that they learn to be thoughtful and metacognitive about their own processes.

For lessons that meet this standard, refer to the following lesson plans on the IMS Web site at http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ODE/IMS/Default.asp?bhcp=1: