Eric Booth
In response to Mark Slavkin’s post…in the great gamble of arts learning, I see the issues your blog post raises, and raise you one.
Along with Mark, I not only challenge us to make sure we can walk our talk, and actually deliver the results we claim, but I think even our talk is problematic.
As Mark points out, we make a number of claims about the learning benefits we deliver to kids and to those who leave schooling and enter the workforce–benefits like “creativity.” I observe that we don’t even know what we really mean with keywords we use. I have encountered very few arts educators who can give a good answer to this question: Tell me which specific skills of creativity you develop in young people, and how you are sure of your claim?
Few can even name the few key skills they prioritize, or present clear evidence of skill development, apart from some excellent individual cases they tend to cite.
Some years ago, I was able to facilitate a National Arts Policy Roundtable retreat, which included business leaders who were more demanding of arts education than we usually get to hear.
The key message I took away from them could be stated like this:
Most people in business think “creativity” is a fluffy indefinite word, yet more hokum from the touchy-feely-artsy set. Indeed most business people do not want new employees arriving with the expectation that they can be creative all over the place. What we want are innovations, and hard-working employees who can recognize and deliver on the unusual occasion in which their creative input is valuable. If you can identify for me the key skills within creativity that produce successful employees in my real setting, and produce innovations that work for my company, and can show me the data that affirms you can reliably develop those key skills, I will become your biggest supporter. Til then, it sounds like fluff to me.
We can’t even name the key skills of creativity that we train, no less demonstrate that we reliably develop such skills.
Many arts educators believe it is wrong to even think that way about our work. (I disagree. I think we do indeed develop those skills, and could name them and demonstrate the ways we develop them, with only modest adjustments to our practice.)
And this issue pertains to “careers,” the subject of this blog salon, because we have to make sure we are delivering the creativity Mark mentions to our most dedicated students. Yes, arts-track students in high school do seem to be “more creative” in general to my eye than non-arts graduates.
I do meet a lot of creativity in good students of all interest areas, which makes me wonder if the arts really are delivering something distinctively potent. I even find research that affirms parts of this assertion that the arts are unusually powerful in developing creative capacity. But even if we are succeeding in developing creative capacity effectively, few can articulate what it is we are doing, or what those skills are.
How can we change the status quo if we can’t make a clear, well-founded statement about a core claim?
Because I hate leaving an argument in a discouraging place, here is something any of us, all of us, could do.
Identify the top three skills of creativity that matter to you in your work with career-track students. Not 10 or 23 skills, but the most essential two or three skills. Post them on the wall of your office, and keep your eye on them in all the work you do. Get to know their place in the work you do, and slightly raise the intention and awareness around them for you and your students–so they know that you value them most.
And one year from now, add a very simple and non-intrusive documentation-and-assessment practice that illuminates the ways in which your students are getting better at those skills over time. That’s it. That simple.
If a significant number of our colleagues did that, five years from now we would be having a very different conversation among ourselves and with those outside our “club–including the business people who want us to enhance the careers of their best new workers, but don’t currently believe we do, except in atypical cases.
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While you and Mark raise some excellent questions, I wonder if the context from which the questions are raised might limit our success in answering them? If this can be seen as an exploration, I’d like to take the next go at it.
I believe that when we try to convince ourselves and business with ‘nothing but the facts’, we are neglecting a truth of which most of us are aware: like life itself, the arts contain values that are indeed indefinable by any intellectually-dominated discussion. What’s worse is that by trying to fit within those confines, we are dumbing ourselves down.
This, for me, was one of the most frustrating aspects of working for an arts education community program for almost 20 years. Simply by positioning myself on that intellectually dominated ground I had to bypass those very qualities that make the arts so incredibly powerful!
All because I knew they would smile knowingly and shake their heads. I’ve since found it’s best not to even waste my breath in that arena, because there is indeed a science to this (or can be), but one they rarely understand. What kind of science? Non-intellectual. Feeling. Aesthetic. Soulful. Meaningful. Joyful. Oh, joyful! Now there’s something our society needs more of. And how do you measure that? Don’t listen to business, because most will tell you that if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.
Which brings me to my final point, which is that we at Merge have developed an evaluation software that measures qualities that are indeed illusive to define by specifically looking at the skills necessary to achieve those qualities (skills such as ability to concentrate, level of motivation, self-confidence to suceed … ability to listen to teacher and follow directions … respect of equipment and materials, willingness to try new steps, freedom of expression, etc.).
This tool was developed over decades of personal inquiry by our Artistic Director – a process that I think is the height of creativity but heck, how would you define that?
Mary-Helen,
The tool you are using at Merge, developed by your Artistic Director may well be the wave of the future. I agree that we will never “convince” doubters that arts learning has value by quantitative measures–as my post on Tuesday argued, the “frame” is one of the arts being peripheral enrichment, so no amount of data, no matter how compelling, poured into that frame will change what people believe. However, if we can change the frame of the dialogue, as you propose, to fundamental learning skills–attention, listening, following directions, taking prudent risks, etc–and then demonstrate clearly that the arts are particularly powerful ways of developing those skills, we have a whole different dialogue. Bravo to the work at Merge.
Eric
This post (as well as Mark Slavkin’s from 9/12/11) resonated deeply.
In 2010 I presented a professional development workshop for educators in the state of NJ, during the annual NJEA convention. The rationale behind the workshop was this: the artistic mind is emblematic of innovation and problem solving in action–constant observation, reflection and imagination always with the intention of producing something novel.
Fortunately, researchers are beginning to provide the evidence and descriptive language that will make it easier for the arts community to identify and describe key skills with greater specificity.
Last week, Keith Sawyer, author of ‘Group Genius’ posted about a his long-term research study which will document art and design education: http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/cultivating-creativity/
And, in 2010 Johns Hopkins released ‘Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain’ which is a remarkable resource.
There is a wealth of research growing, but in the interest of brevity I’ve limited my examples to these two! In relative terms, isn’t the cultural sector just beginning to formalize and codify the functions of artmaking which are cognitive and skills-based? Artmaking is primordial and universal, but research which studies artmaking is somewhat nascent.
Louise Stevens describes the “Creativity Innovation Partnership” here: http://artsmarket.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/creating-an-economy-of-creativity/
I remain optimistic that growing research will help educators/business leaders/policymakers/arts advocates/leaders in the cultural sector understand the finer details of this partnership.
As the world rapidly changes it increasingly demands creative expression:
http://thecreativepractice.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/why-creative-expression/
I look forward to following this thread!
Kira,
Thank for your post, affirming, with juicy affirming examples, the rising tide of connection between what we know from learning in and around the arts and the widening energy around “creativity.” The research is already wide, and is deepening. We are at the point where we need to start synthesizing the existing data, and targeting next generations of research that will deepen the understandings. Kira, thank you for continuing to put the word out widely.
I always remember the statement by the great 20th Century physicist David Bohm: Any time you see seeming polarities, look for the greater truth that contains them both. Indeed we are looking for and finding the greater truths that contain both the heart of the “separate” domains of creativity and arts learning.
Creativity is definitely not fluffy.
It can be defined, identified and developed.
I have spent that last 8 years researching exactly how to do this!
Creativity in business is about developing ideas for the purpose of solving problems and exploiting opportunities.
To assess and develop creativity we can focus on 4 primary areas – Idea Generation, Personality, Motivation and Confidence.
Each of the 4 areas can be further subdivided. For example, Idea Generation consists of Fluency, Originality, Incubation and Illumination.
We have developed a range of psychometric creativity tools for this purpose – http://www.e-metrixx.com
After initial diagnosis of creative style using the psychometric, strengths can be recognised and leveraged, whilst development areas can be addressed.
This research and the new tools that have resulted are a direct result of the synthesis of 70 years of academic and practitioner creativity research.
Perhaps this model is the greater truth that links arts and science?
Underlining what Kira implied, there is research out there on creativity and innovation. Howard Gardner draws on this research in his excellent book “Five Minds for the Future.” In it, he references his frequent collaborator Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the distinction between creativity and innovation. To broadly paraphrase, to be innovative, a creative idea needs to have practical/real implications for a discipline (or a culture). The arts can learn a lot from the cognitive sciences — and vice versa!
Mark, thanks for your comment. I know a little about your work in discriminating elements and capacities in creativity, as well as developing and measuring them. Your work is indeed a fine example of science not just linking with, but fostering the understanding, development and application of creative skills. The field of arts education would do well to experiment with your views and tools. I think we could be far more focused, intentional and effective, in the way we develop transferable creative skills within artistic careers.
And yes, Linda, I agree that the utility of a creative idea is a crucial distinction. I used to collect (as a perverse hobby) definitions of creativity I came across. I stopped gathering at around 65. And the Csikszentmihalyi element of practicability and utility-with-value was among the most consistent elements in the definitions.
Dear Eric,
First of all, let me state that I am proudly guilty of a great deal of fluffheadery. I prefer it, really. My head is less rigid, it’s light and buoyant, and it doesn’t hurt anyone when it hurls itself about.
I think one of the best (and easier) measurements of creativity is the ability to move through divergent thinking into convergent thinking. That is my favorite trait of the artist. We see multiple solutions in any problem, but we must make decisions. Creativity has a simple definition on my computer’s dictionary. (I like the literary approach of denotation and connotation.) It’s “the use of the imagination or original ideas.” I place emphasis on the word “use.” To find the innovation, you have to go through a whole lot of ideas, but then you have to make a decision.
Even fluffheads like me have to make decisions eventually if we’re going to continue to be artists.