Creativity as an intrinsic motivator

I have been talking about how learning something new can be a creative experience... we are creating new meaning and insight which gives a sense of achievement, pleasure and is intrinsically motivating. But where does this fit into the whole spectrum of creativity?

Carlisle Bergquist has synthesized the research into creativity by saying we can consider it as four stages:

1. Necessity – a natural learning process of the child – they are not aware they are doing it and it occurs as a natural part of the make-meaning process…. Creating new understandings and insights – often as a response to dealing with difference or anomalies.

2. Analytical – self aware and conscious of the process of creativity. Students are actively and consciously creating products, understandings. Creativity can be developed by processes, ways of thinking and seeing, and metacognitive tools.

3. Synthesizing-innovation – individual opens up to the process and allows - incubation, living the problem, passionate attunement.

4. Connection with larger reality – a transformed consciousness which experiences the creative expression of the world.

and I will add one of my own...

5. the creative transformation or evolution of self - perhaps the ultimate in creative endeavor is to create self.

What might it be like to activate all these aspects of creativity for our students?

In my journalism class I have some students bubbling with energy - on a high from the creative process - the sense of creating a new article, getting the words and the graphics right, expressing what they want to get across in a creative way. When it is going well they seem to be in the flow, in control, and their eyes shine.

But this is only one sort of creativity. My physics students experienced another sort - the make their own meaning and insights kind.

It is interesting that in my PhD studies I am using a research methodology called writing as inquiry. Basically, through the writing process itself, you reflect and through that reflection you make new insights and the writing changes as you change. It is hard keeping the same tone throughout. Yes, writing is creative, not just in the sense of creating a product and expressing something you want to express - it is also learning in the NOW... insight making... and it is also transformative and self creating.

Can I help my journalism students then be creative in not just in creation of a product but also in personal meaning making and insight, perhaps leading to creation of new selves? It is interesting that the higher stages of the journalism syllabus require the student to make clear arguments and to keep their tone all the way throughout an article. These standards are coming from a value system which I think is modernist - authoritarian / monological style of writing - it is what we might value in an essay. It is about marshalling the facts, ordering them to construct the readers understanding. There is no room for emergence, rather one writes after one has already gained the understanding.

Yet postmodern research writing methods have shied away from the academic essay notions - moving to much more emergent, eclectic, self-reflexive, dialogical, open ended, problematic (based around dialectics) genres which take into account the reader's learning and being - enabling them to make their own insights rather than being inexorably drawn into a conclusion. I value these genres. I have experienced the capacity for personal transformation as well as creative insight making and expression. I wonder how I can help my journalism students experience this as well.

And they want to. Bo, my editor already has recognised that the nature of journalistic writing is changing becuase of the advent of blogs - there is an openness in one's ways of writing in this reflective diarying. There is an invitation to the reader to participate... it is becoming more multi-perspective... moving towards open space technology (and that will have to be another post!).

So how can I be using all this to create a fully creative classroom. And wouldn't that be a class that you would love to be in?

Yes, I, the teacher, have such wonderful opportunities to exercise my creativity. When I haven't experienced it for a while I tend to forget how full of energy I get, propelled forward by the excitement of it all... the creative classroom is about me being in the Zone! It is my very own computer game!