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M.Blake - 870 Discussion

Here’s a link to all of the articles.


CREATIVITY

All three articles below define creativity differently, including elements/aspects of creative individuals. Which one aligns most with your definition?

Is there a place for creativity in every academic subject?


Sawyer, K. (2015). A call to action: The challenges of creative teaching and learning. Teacher’s College Record, 117(10), 1-34.

“Ultimately, if our goal is more creative education, we must teach content-area knowledge in ways that prepare students to be more creative using that knowledge” (p.13). “In today’s knowledge societies, schools need to teach content knowledge in a way that prepares students to use that knowledge creatively; and, they need to impart thinking skills, 21st century skills, to students. Most schools have not yet become creative learning environments. Most schools continue to be largely based on an instructionist model of teaching and learning” (p.26).

  1. What is your initial response to this?
  2. This article talks a lot about the importance of and suggestions for teaching and fostering creativity within education, but is it (only) educators' responsibility to do so?
  3. Should all educators teach creativity? Foster it?
  4. This article also discusses whether or not creativity can be taught. Interestingly, it does not differentiate between creative thinking and creativity like we discussed last week. Is it possible to teach someone to be creative? What about creative thinking?
  5. What is the relationship between collaboration and creativity? Are there examples of when they bolster each other? Hinder?
  6. Is it possible to assess creative potential? Does this change during a lifespan? Are there other aspects of creativity other than divergent thinking, originality, flexibility, and ideational fluency?

Hosseini, A. & Watt, A. (2010). The effect of a teacher professional development in facilitating students’ creativity. Educational Research and Reviews, 5(8), 432-43.

This study used a creativity-oriented professional development program to increase teacher knowledge of creativity so that they can then apply it to their classrooms. They emphasize the process of creativity and its related skills - like applying creativity to real world contexts - rather than creativity.

  1. Is it possible to train people in creativity so that they can then teach it to others? What flaws do you see in this approach?
  2. What is more important, creativity or creative thinking?
  3. Can creativity be applied in all real world contexts?

Jaeger, G. J. (2016). Preparations for the New: Reaching and Teaching Creativity with Adaptive Technologies. Educational Technology, 56(6), 24-31.

  1. Being open to new experiences is an aspect of creativity. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain.
  2. What role does technology play in teaching and/or fostering creativity?

NEW LITERACIES


Cervetti, G., Damico, J. & Pearson, P. D. (2006) Multiple literacies, new Literacies, and teacher education. Theory Into Practice, 45(4), 378-386.

  1. This article focuses on the role of social and cultural contexts and the social processes relevant to multiple/new literacies as well as the importance of educators viewing literacy in this way (page 380 does a good job of explaining this). It also references assessment and “judgement of capability.” How should teachers assess students’ mastery of multiple/new literacies? How can they assess their own teaching of it?
  2. The authors encourage preservice teachers to embrace multiple/new literacies (their own and students’) over traditional literacy, and provide examples and reasoning for this. Is there a place for traditional literacy? Should this be abandoned in formal education?
  3. If “teacher education has played a conservative role, not in the political sense of being antiliberal but in the sense of conserving or perpetuating the prac-tices of the past” (p.384), then is this an ideal place to implement new pedagogical shifts, or would PD for practicing educators be more effective? This is interesting to look at in relation to Voogt et al.’s section on teacher learning on pages 409-410.

Cope,B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4, 164–195.

  1. What is education’s “role in underwriting equity/ equality” (p.168) and can an emphasis on multiliteracy help bridge the gap?
  2. Teaching multiliteracies requires students to have more power and freedom, but this leads to “layers upon layers of difference” and diversity (p.173). Do you find this to be true?
  3. Respond to this: “Learning is a process of self-re-creation. Cultural dynamism and diversity are the results” (p.184).

Voogt, J., Erstad, O., Dede, C., & Mishra, P. (2013). Challenges to learning and schooling in the digital networked world of the 21st century. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(5), 403-413

  1. Do you agree “that collaboration, communication, digital literacy, citizen-ship, problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and productivity are essential for living in and contributing to our present societies” (p.404)? Are there exceptions to this?
  2. This article looks at 21st century skills/competencies as examples of new literacies. One of these competencies, creativity, is presented as a thinking skill, which differs from other authors, who often approach creativity as an attitude, artistic ability, or process. What are your thoughts on this?
  3. There is a distinction made regarding web literacy between the ability to use tools versus the ability to see the possibilities of a tool and use them for various purposes. With all of the opportunities and tools that come from Web 2.0 (and beyond), why doesn’t every individual possess these literacy skills?
  4. “[A]lthough teachers find 21st century learning important, they do not promote 21st century learning in their instruction” (p.407). Why do you think this is?
  5. I found this interesting based on our Voxer conversation mediated by LeAnne:

From pages 407-408: “Based on their analysis of frameworks describing 21st century competencies Mishra and Kereluik (2011) identified three key areas that need to be addressed in a 21st century curriculum:

  1. Foundational knowledge (or what do we need to know). This includes core content knowledge of the disciplines,information literacy(also sometimes called digital literacy) and cross-disciplinary knowl-edge or synthetic knowledge.
  2. Meta knowledge (or how do we act on this knowl-edge).Included in this were processes such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation
  3. Humanistic Knowledge (what do we value): This form of knowledge offers a vision of the learner’s self and its location in a broader social and global context. These include knowledge of life/job skills, cultural and global competence, and ethical and emo-tional awareness.”

DMU Timestamp: September 03, 2020 08:33





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