Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

I have recently been trying to find more about the creative process both in education and in business.  Creativity is gold dust in the world of commerce.  New ideas and new ways of looking at old problems can mean the difference between success and failure, boom or bust.  With the generation of profit being the key driver in (most) commercial creative processes, companies are prepared to speculate to accumulate; both in terms of new ideas and the best creative brains. 

In my experience, and I hope I am wrong, creativity is not viewed in the same light in education.  New ideas are hard pressed to see the light of day and experimentation is not generally (again I emphasise this is only in my experience) seen as a sensible way to progress.  I understand that there are very good reasons for wild, untested, irresponsible experimentation being frowned upon, especially in senior years of secondary when national qualifications prescribe to an extent what must be taught and perhaps how.  However, I believe that there is much scope for advancement of teaching and learning through thinking creatively, teaching thinking skills explicitly and applying creative techniques such as the six thinking hats in primary and early secondary school.

I subcribe to an interesting blog called creativity and innovation driving business in which there is a post catchily titled Five takeaways stimulating Innovation.

They are as follows:

 1. “Give it a try–and quick!” - Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.

2. “Accept that mistakes will be made.” - Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don’t repeat the same mistakes.

3. “Take small steps.” - Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.

4. “Give people the room they need.” - Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time, incentives, job security and room to experiment.

5. “Mechanisms - build that ticking clock!” - How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.
It has just struck me as I have written this blog that Exc-el is a fine example of these principles.  The question I have is how can we transfer this to schools, if indeed we should?  I’d be interested in hearing a counter argument because what I’ve written I know is terribly simplistic, especially bearing in mind the caution which is required when we are dealing with youngsters’ futures. 

Maybe that is the answer in itself, it is such an important endeavour in which we are employed that we are, at times, paralysed by the fear of failure or at least that fear builds a great deal of inertia in to the system.  There are obvious constraints built in at Government and Local Authority level and there is rightly a high degree of accountability.  I think my real concern is that the line between being held accountable and blamed is a fine one.  I know Don has blogged at length on the subject of accountability and the model of “accountability as personal commitment/competence” he espouses is one I concur with.  I wonder how pervasive and how well understood that model of accountability is.  How much room is there in education for error/mistakes, even though some (most?) of our best/deepest learning and creativity is experienced is through making mistakes. 

I don’t know the answers as usual and I’m thinking out loud as I write and it leads me back to something my brother mentioned to me about my previous blog.   He quoted Steven Covey about security coming from a centre based on principles.  If you have clear principles, making decisions and being accountable is much ‘easier’. Clearly defining your ‘principle centre’ is a challenge which faces us all I suppose.