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Conference
"Promoting Innovation and Creativity: Schools' Response to the Challenges of Future
Societies"
8-10 April 2008, Brdo pri Kranju
WORKSHOP 1: PARTNERSHIP AND NETWORKING FOR CREATIVITY
AND
INNOVATION
 NETWORKING FOR CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
Jadran Lenarčič, J. Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The “volume” of innovation depends on the amount and diversity of knowledge, as
well as on a positive attitude and a stimulating innovation-oriented climate and
culture in society. Nowadays, it is well known that the principal players in this
process are the knowledge triangle and the education triangle, but it is also crucial
to understand the significance of developing and strengthening the bridge between
them. The workshop will try to elaborate the problems in this process and search
for new and more effective directions. Based on concrete examples, for instance,
on how a school can collaborate with an esteemed research institute in order not
only to disseminate but also to create knowledge, the participants will try to
answer a variety of fundamental questions regarding the creation of networks
between the knowledge and education triangles and regarding the role of national
policies and of the subjects involved, such as schools and research organisations.
The diversity of knowledge and perspectives, rather than the depth of knowledge,
forms a platform for new ideas and stimulates creativity, which is, we believe, one
of the basic issues in a modern society and, consequently, in a modern school. Pupils
can be an immense source of creativity if they are placed in a proper and
stimulating environment. Why should an esteemed and internationally recognised
research institute be at all interested in collaborating with a school? To create a
source of future young researchers is only one, and the most obvious, answer. Can
a research institute usefully involve pupils in concrete research projects, and are
pupils able to really contribute with their work and ideas? Even though it is now
clear that schools can no longer pursue their mission in isolation, the question of
what a particular school can gain from such a collaboration also remains to be
answered.
In order to establish an innovation-oriented climate in a school we need to redefine
the processes of learning and teaching. The goal should be to give space to
innovative (design) thinking and to apply research-based learning in the everyday
activities of the school. Such an approach is, unfortunately, still out of step with the
standard learning process in most European schools today, where conformity is
rewarded, together with an iterative repetition of data and information. Doubt,
mistakes, originality, individuality, which are among the most important elements of
scientific work, are usually punished at school. School, as it is seen today, is in its
essence anti-creative. At the same time it contains the most concentrated potential
for creativity, which is inherent in pupils, just waiting to be let loose and refined in
real projects. Networking with a research institute would give pupils chances to get
involved in real projects and, thus, would contribute to stimulating their
inquisitiveness and thirst for new knowledge, while at the same time improving their
confidence in learning and dealing positively with innovation, as well as becoming
more flexible in their thinking.
Opening up the education triangle to the knowledge triangle, and vice versa, may
lead to the effect of fusion, when two different systems, squeezed together,
produce an immense and almost unimaginable number of new synergies. The
questions to be discussed in the workshop are who and how should we initiate and
make possible the process of networking between entities that have such
contrasting missions and modes of operation and what is the relation between the
particular interests of the entities involved as well as the public interest.
The questions to be answered:
- How do we create and strengthen the networks between the education and
knowledge triangles?
- What are the correct proportions for the particular and public interests and
responsibilities?
- Can a network between the education and knowledge triangles be selfsustaining?
 SCHOOL EDUCATION OBJECTIVES, CREATIVITY AND OPEN EDUCATION
SYSTEMS
Janez Justin, Educational Research Institute Ljubljana, Slovenia
There is no doubt that the process of education as we knew it in the second
half of the 20th century no longer satisfies the social, economic and technological
needs of today’s post-industrial societies. Therefore, we should welcome the
educationists’ call for change in the educational process, if only that call were
something new. Instead, the same demand has been made for a long time. It is a
paradox that expressions like 'critical thinking', 'problem solving' and 'creativity'
have been part of the lexicon of educational jargon for at least half a century.
They have functioned as a mantra to which the educationist resorted whenever he
faced the changing society's need for a new sort of learning outcomes.
Consider the following description of school education objectives:
»Arguments in terms of the needs and demands of society … emphasize real
problems that face democratic countries here and now, and point out that we cannot
expect to progress nor even to survive unless we develop and draw upon the creative
potentialities of the entire population. This is partly a problem of identifying creative
talent, but it also is one of exploring the nature of productive thinking and of finding
better ways of cultivating it.” (Bloom, 166)
These ideas were produced as part of the effort to classify all the pupil’s
thinking by using such categories as knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,
synthesis and evaluation. The synthesis class was associated with 'creative learning',
'uniqueness', 'new patterns', 'productive thinking', 'problem solving' and 'discoveries'.
All that sounds like today's discussion about how to transcend purely academic
knowledge and instigate creativity in pupils. Surprisingly enough, the text just cited
was published in 1956. But even more surprising is the fact that critics took the text
to express a philosophy which, when implemented, actually kills creativity in schools.
Namely, in a parallel trend measuring and assessment projects were started that
soon culminated in national assessment systems and international student
achievement studies like PISA and TIMSS. It became evident that the interest in
operative objectives and one in assessment systems nurture each other. A clear
picture of what the outcomes should be is relevant only if we have at our disposal
an effective assessment system; on the other hand, if we are to asses the learning
outcomes we must have a clear picture of what, ideally, they should consist of.
Let me resume one of the criticisms directed against the two activities that
are supposed to obstruct creativity:
Meticulously classified education objectives are reduced to some observable
pupils' behaviours and performances. An obsession with operational objectives gives
rise to pre-packaged learning modules enabling quantitative assessment of student
performance. Performance-based evaluation and measurement forces the teachers and
students to make efforts towards mastery of pre-defined knowledge and that
undermines curiosity, imagination, creativity, and criticism. We thus put the pupils on
an intellectual diet.
A second criticism stems from the recognition of the social difference issue:
The lower end objectives – knowledge, comprehension, application – were
meant to be constructed for those whose fate was to become fully functioning
consumers and production workers whereas the higher end objectives – analysis,
synthesis, evaluation – were meant for those who were to become political and
business leaders (future Bill Gates, as today's public imagination would have it).
It is easy to reject this last critical point. Due to radical changes in
technology and organization of work the high-level cognitive skills are in demand
everywhere. More attention should be paid to the first of the two criticisms. Is it true
that in the educational process that is piloted by detailed, meticulously assessed
objectives there is little room for pupil’s creativity, even if some of the objectives
express a demand for it? The question I believe is ill-formed as it is based on a sort
of semantic slippage. Although using the same word we are in fact dealing with
two different phenomena that are both valuable and worth struggling for. Let me
name them creativity A and creativity B (the names will be explained in a minute).
The semantic slippage is a consequence of equating knowledge with information. It
was not only Benjamin Bloom (whose taxonomy of education objectives I cited) who
made the equation half a century ago, many still make it today. But the mind does
not think with data and information, it thinks with concepts that imply points of view
and perspectives. Concepts are units of theories that provide us with versions of the
world. In relation to the so-called information highway someone made the following
observation:
We are awash in data. A little of it is information. A smidgen of this shows up
as knowledge. Combined with ideas, some of that is actually useful.
As soon as we realize that knowledge is composed of concepts and ideas,
not information, we can also realize that school is a specific context where just one
among many possible versions of the world is constructed for the pupils. When
focused on our assessment activities we may overlook this. At school pupils are
presented with academic knowledge, i.e. with a relatively coherent version of the
world. That, of course, is extremely valuable. When making synthesis within that
version of the world pupils can already be creative – in the sense of creativity A.
And assessment systems provide policy makers with precious evidence as to how
effective this cognitive and epistemic context is. Nevertheless, if we limit the school
education to that single context and do not open it to other contexts, we will be left
with closed education systems that really put pupils on an intellectual diet.
So there are other contexts – the social contexts, local communities and
industries, institutions and groups dealing with social and environmental problems,
public services, civil society and movements which, while dealing with the reality,
use different concepts and thus construct different versions of the world. We should
present pupils with concepts and ideas produced in all those contexts that form
society’s networks – they will surely learn how to associate them in new, creative
ways, displaying in this way what I called creativity B.
Several questions remain to be answered:
1.
Should we pursue both types of creativity and if so, what shares
should they have in the education process?
2.
How can we make sure that the creativity B resulting from
associating different contexts does not interfere with the creativity
A that is limited to the academic context?
3.
What strategy should be used in order to establish an open
educational system in which the two types of creativity complement
each other?