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Operationalizing the Teaching of Creativity
We have included a focus on encouraging students to develop their creativity by designing learning products that reflect Daniel Pink’s six design elements. Pink’s elements, we believe, offer an effective way to begin to operationalize the teaching of creativity. To create these learning products may well require new literacies as students integrate technology tools to produce their learning products.
Project-Based Learning (PBL) is updated in this model with a strong focus on the creative/innovative process. Teachers introduce students to Daniel Pink’s creative senses or aptitudes (A Whole, New Mind, 2005) and encourage students to reflect on their use of these senses by including them in the project rubric to use in team and/or individual conferences. This diagram represents the creative process needed to succeed with this PBL, “ starting in the center “ content knowledge or what’s inside the box, the creative senses or light blubs (note eco-friendly ones), then the arrows to indicate that what has been created has been shared with a wider audience, and finally that everything fits inside a system or circle and there is an evaluation that includes all involved. A key point of the evaluation is that not only process and product are evaluated but also the impact or contribution of the students’ work. 
Pink identifies six creative senses or aptitudes that complement inquiry and project-based learning in an interdisciplinary, environmentally-focused way.
Pink’s workbook, described by legendary business entrepreneur Tom Peters as “a miracle” (Reynolds, 2007) provides an elegantly simple model for creativity. Pink’s model includes six senses that are critical for success in this new Conceptual age.
- Design: to create what goes beyond function to reflect beauty and emotional appeal.
- Story: to create with not only facts but a compelling narrative.
- Symphony: to create by seeing the big picture.
- Empathy: to create in a way that reflects not only logic but understanding of relationships.
- Play: to use humor in the creative process.
- Meaning: to create with purpose, to make an impact (Pink, 2007, pp. 65-67).
Story and meaning are two qualities or senses that we have noted in our discussion of virtual field trips and the desires of the National Estuarine Education Survey respondents to teach in a way that helps students connect authentically at a local and global level. Design is becoming increasingly important in the work of the scientist to communicate his/her work to a broader audience. Symphony is all about integrating data from all senses and disciplines in an interdependent approach to problem-solving. Empathy brings a sense of humanity to the important work of science. Pink defines play as using humor to work together, and Seymour Papert has coined the term “hard play” or the intellectual and emotional satisfaction that come with meeting challenges and enjoying the process.
The use of the E-Live Sample backpacks can be both hands-on and minds-on -- both conditions necessary if a student is to engage in science as an active process (National Science Education Standards) and they offer great promise for being the kind of curriculum supplementary activity that science teachers in the National Estuarine Education survey indicated they wanted - active, engaging activities that focus on a topic that is relevant to the world and their local communities, and that help students understand human impact on the environment and develop into responsible citizens who can make a difference about important global issues.
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Last Updated on: 06-24-2011
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