Helping Children to be Creative

If this statement is true it would appear to present a dilemma to those involved in the formal education of children – surely one aim of education is to ignite and then fan the spark of creativity but with large class sizes and targets to reach, few teachers and teaching assistants would feel they had the luxury of encouraging children to ‘waste time’.

Cognitive scientists observing creative behaviour have identified 4 stages in the process:

The preparation stage of hard work and study is not often acknowledged but is a vital foundation for the flashes of illumination to follow.

‘It’s when you give up, go away and do something else. It turns out that this isn’t skiving, rather it is when your unconscious brain does its work’ writes Lindsey Winship in TES.

Psychologist Peter Lovatt found that higher scores were gained in the ability to think laterally after subjects engaged in a dance session.

Other research in which jazz musicians were asked to improvise whilst their brain activity was monitored using an MRI scanner showed an increase in activity in the area of the brain associated with self-expression, alongside a marked decrease in activity in the part of the brain associated with self-monitoring, judging and correcting.

Neuro scientist Mark Beeman found that showing a clip of Robin Williams stand-up comedy boosted the success rate of solving insight puzzles by 20%.

Psychologist Dr Isen found that those who had just watched a session of T.V. bloopers were more able to find creative solutions to a problem than those who had watched a film about maths.

The lack of focus allows the cortex to relax and tune into associations produced in the right hemisphere of the brain responsible for divergent or lateral thinking.

The challenge for those working with children is to create an environment where they can shed their inhibitions and feel free to experiment with self-expression.

Trust in the process of creativity would give the educator the confidence to allow the child to lose focus for a while, knowing that this leads to increased productivity.

My husband has kept and reared chickens from childhood and regularly buys hatching eggs (eggs produced by chickens kept alongside a cockerel). I could fry them and they would be like any other fried egg but the magic happens when he puts them in an incubator and leaves them in gentle heat and mild moisture for 3 weeks.

You could look at those eggs every day and be completely oblivious to any change or growth. About halfway through the incubation period he does what he calls ‘candling the eggs’ using a special torch which when shone into the egg in a darkened room, illuminates the contents of the egg, showing the developing chick inside. This peek into an otherwise secret world never fails to cause excitement and wonder in family and guests alike. I couldn’t help but be reminded of this phenomena when reading of the creative journey.