At last! Creative Teaching exclusive of the Fuzz

Researchers and educators tell us why creative teaching is not as complex as it’s thought to be.

Over the last two decades, Researchers have observed over 5,000 teaching professionals and analyzed countless student feedback responses to try to understand the behavioral patterns of high- and low-scoring teachers.

Through this process, he has developed a better understanding of the things that teachers do that can result in a student feeling bored and frustrated or interested and engaged. This has led to the development of the creative teaching framework, a practical, research-based approach which demonstrates what creative teaching looks, sounds and “feels” like.

A lot of Fuzz, A lot of bits and pieces

The idea and desire for creative teaching is nothing new. There is, however, a limited consensus on what “creative teaching” means and a lack of practical models that can help teachers develop such competence.

This has lead to two major problems: too much “Fuzz” obscuring the definition of what creative teaching is and too much “stuff” being written about how to put it into practice. As a result, teachers are so bombarded with everything from learning styles to habits of mind that it is easy to forget what creative teaching really is about.

Becoming a creative teacher is not simply about abandoning traditional methods such as lectures and worksheets and replacing these with more active projects or problem-based learning approaches. For example, teachers can choose to use ‘creative thinking tools’ in the classroom but actually be very uncreative in the way they make use of them.

According to researchers, creative teachers are able to weave together effective and engaging strategies – using a range of methods, activities and resources as building blocks. To do this well, teachers must understand “good pedagogy” and be able to apply core principles of learning in their lesson design.

Many teachers, however, still violate core principles of learning by overstretching attention spans and creating cognitive overload – a psychologist term for too much information too quickly. Also, they fail to recognize that motivational strategies are just as important as content selection.

Creative teachers, by their very nature, are not limited to any paradigm of psychology or education. Researchers disagree with the idea that teachers have moved from the ‘sage-on-the-stage’ to the ‘guide-on-the-side’. This is dangerous nonsense!” he exclaims. “Creative teachers are whatever the learning situation requires.”

Keeping it Trouble-free: Getting into SHAPE

So how can teachers develop their creative teaching competence? Researchers believe that teachers can improve their creative teaching by building on five important resources, summarized by the acronym SHAPE:

•         Stories told to provide context, understanding and emotional anchors

•         Humour used to achieve rapport and provide novelty

•         Activities provided to integrate, apply and consolidate learning

•         Presentation style to provide clarity and influence student attention and beliefs

•         Examples used to illustrate facts, concepts, principles and procedures

Based on classroom observations, interviews with teachers and student feedback responses, Researchers found that teachers who students perceive as creative were those who were able to effectively combine different aspects of SHAPE in their teaching.

What creative teachers do, in a nutshell, is the ability to simplify and motivate. They are able to take difficult concepts and principles and weave them into a classroom experience that connects in the most simple and meaningful form to students. This is creative teaching in its most advanced form.

At the same time, the framework also “demystifies” creativity and demonstrates creative teaching as something that can be developed and improved. “All of this is empirical and can be demonstrated,”. “It’s not a load of Fuzzy words about being passionate or promoting independent learning. It’s totally behavioral and you can learn to do it.”

Researchers believe that those who choose to teach creatively will see the results of their hard work.

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