Nurturing our Future Learners - The Spark that ignites Creativity

June Evans-Caulfield, Head of Teaching and Learning - Middle Years, Caulfield Grammar School, Melbourne, Australia

June Evans-Caulfield is a highly respected educator, IB Workshop Leaders and IB Evaluation Team Leader with a proven track record in International and National Educational programs. She is skilled in Workshop Leadership, Curriculum Design and Secondary Education. June is passionate about running effective educational programs and fostering professional growth.

Connecting Creativity to Constructivist Learning Theory

Constructing and building meaning through real world scenarios and active discovery, is a key to unlocking our superpower- creativity! The ideologies around constructivism and modern educational models, have been developed by several educational influencers. They played a part in the development, thinking and evolution of the links between constructivism, inquiry and concept based approaches, that can unleash a learner’s creative thinking. These now form what might be considered modern educational models. Piaget is often considered the founding father of constructivism, with his ideas around cognitive thinking and intelligence, Dewey's ideas around curiosity, Neil's ideas around personal freedom and choice, and Bruner's ideas around active learning and discovery. These thinkers helped lay a foundational shift in views about how to learn in ways that evoke curiosity and learning that is enduring.

“This learning theory enables educators to set up conditions that nurture deeper thinking through real world situations and solution-based outcomes”

Constructivism at its root is the notion that one constructs knowledge and new understandings through experience and actively learning. The premise is that learners are more connected to learning if it is relatable to us, to our world and the roles we play in it. This theory of learning informs thinking around pedagogical practices that embrace inquiry. It ultimately supports young people to be empowered in the learning process and motivates them to creatively shape how they construct meanings through their prior knowledge and their experiences. We feel as we experience, and this also helps form how we perceive things and therefore how we think about things. This learning theory enables educators to set up conditions that nurture deeper thinking through real world situations and solution-based outcomes. It ignites higher order thinking and unlocks our creative, curious minds. It can reach all learners and may appeal to, and challenge the giftedness within a learner, by enabling them to think outside the box.

The Power of Creativity

Creativity is very powerful and very human and is a human superpower. It can be ignited through inquiry and questioning that enables learners to tap into their curiosity and imagination. It is a major human influencer in shifting our thoughts, creating change and developing new ideas when we provide the right environment to cultivate it. Through exploration and discovery, learners think more deeply and employ higher conceptual levels of thinking. This is a valuable experience for all learners and gives them agency and a voice. It provides the scope for learners to think outside of their comfort zones, allows all learners to flourish in environments that provoke them to think more deeply and can challenge learners who want and need to be challenged.

Transferable ideas and understanding are served through concepts as the amalgamating force, allowing connections to be discovered. This can be encouraged through multiple pedagogical approaches and strategies. This includes designing learning in ways that utilise the ideology of constructivism. It is purposefully designed to allow creative thinking to transpire, for learners to express their ideas which are developed through how they experience and feel things. This can often go beyond the obvious and based on the learners perceptions. This blends perfectly with inquiry that is designed to inspire creativity through discovery. It provides opportunities that solidify the understanding of concepts and content in ways that enable learners to build new understandings through discovering, creating and reflecting to improve and to be innovative in how they think.

Nurturing Ideas through Curiosity and Imagination

Generative AI is challenging educational organisations and educators to think about a possible need to reshape and redefine how we educate. Learners can use it to access, make, build and create at the mere touch of a button. Education, more than ever, needs to encourage learning that ignites curiosity and imagination and allows learners to creatively question and actively problem solve. Learners need to be empowered to think, act and do using their higher order thinking skills. Ideas can be creatively expressed through being curious, exploring and utilising your constructive imagination.

With advancing technology it is vital educators increasingly provide opportunities for the learner to express what they imagine, see, feel and think. Learners can creatively do this by being provided the opportunity to be curious, to explore and to actively inquire. This could be as simple as using materials to make things that express a concept. Digital applications and AI tools being used in ways to support us and help us build new ideas and understandings and apply these to products and outcomes. We should be utilizing technologies to assist us to express ourselves. To use tools that allow us to deliver our ideas and express how we feel through our amazing abilities to think in complex ways. Ultimately, by tapping into a learner's inner creativity, we enable them to think more deeply, to feel and to do more passionately rather than passively take what AI produces.

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