Pedagogy of creativity and creative learning

Abstract

After a brief description and analysis of the concept of creativity in different curriculums (Switzerland, Italy, England, etc.), this paper aims to discuss the issues of creativity as competence/performance/capability through some theoretical frameworks (Boden, 2005; Craft, 2005; Lubart, 2010). The second part is the presentation of kinds of approaches that are applicable to develop the creativity of the students. In fact, Craft (2005) distinguishes three different interventions: 1) creative teaching, 2) teaching for creativity and, 3) creative learning. The first is when a teacher uses different teaching methods that are more imaginative to “make learning more interesting” (Craft, 2005, p. 22). The second, teaching for creativity, is when the teacher intends to develop student’s creativity. Lastly, creative learning is a process where students learn a new topic by means of creativity. “It involves learner in using their imagination and experience to develop learning” (Craft, 2015, p. 23). If the boundaries of these approaches are not exact (teaching for creativity being in the others), this dichotomy helps to distinguish the focus and, in consequence, the finality of the activities. This paper illustrates a possible application of creative learning with a pedagogy of creativity (Puozzo Capron, 2013). Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997, 1999) is the theoretical framework of this pedagogy that considers the interaction of internal personal factors (cognitive, affective and biological), behavioural patterns and environment. Creativity is identified as “the capacity to produce something that is both novel and adapted to the context in which it is conceived” (Lubart, 2010, p. 3). Conceiving and implementing a pedagogy of creativity is consist of planning devices to allow students to construct new knowledge in a creative environment with different tasks constitute a mediating form. This device for creative learning becomes a channel between the knowledge and the student. This paper presents some forms of mediation to facilitate the appropriate learning object. Finally, we describe some results of a longitudinal and qualitative research. The subject is a vocational high school in Aosta Valley in Italy with a class of 16 students studying French as a foreign language. The study was conducted in January to May 2012 and this will continue in February to April 2014. This qualitative research used participant observation as its data collection method (Becker, 2002), questionnaire and psychometric test to assess creativity. The questions of this study aimed to answer were: How do creativity, emotion and cognition work together during a learning activity structured around a creative teaching approach? What are the cognitive, emotional, conative and environmental processes involved? Did a device build on pedagogy of creativity produce a creative learning o break it? In 2012, eight sessions during this time period were divided between two class projects and yielded around 15 hours of recorded video. In 2014, ten sessions are expected with only one project. It will be interesting to analyse the progress of the students.