Cultivating Creativity and Engaged Learning Environments

AUTHORS

• Kristina M. Park, College of Built Environments, UW Seattle
• Emeritus Professor Iain M. Robertson

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ABSTRACT

Cultivating creativity is a teaching and learning practice that encourages mistake-making, rule-breaking, collaboration, exploration, and the development of fresh perspectives. With pedagogy loosely based on Socratic methodologies and infused with collaborative, inquiry, and reflective learning strategies, cultivating creativity invites participants to unbind themselves and think anew. Courses utilizing the cultivation of creativity are rooted in case studies and literature but focus on igniting the creative mind to think beyond the status quo. This approach liberates us to tackle unsolved and complex issues like climate change and social inequities with little fear of being wrong and full empowerment to embrace the role of an engaged learner. An example exercise entitled “City Building and the Language of Culture” encourages students to work in teams to build a city with abstract physical elements. Students construct, conversate, and discuss complex urban issues through play and with few instructional constraints. This exercise, like all creative exercises, requires post-assignment student reflections. In one response, a student reflected, “If the rest of the world is anything like me, we all too often shut down ideas and thoughts just because we don’t think they are right. If everyone were to give those thoughts time to develop and become something real, great things could come from them…” Cultivating Creativity’s methodologies are thoughtfully captured in the newly released book by the late Emeritus Professor Iain Robertson, Robertson, I. M. (2022). Cultivating Creativity. New Village Press. Kristina Park, UW Lecturer, and the book’s Production Editor, will present the book’s ideas and experiences implementing these strategies in her online and in-person courses.

SUMMARY

RESEARCH QUESTION

How to better engage the creative mind?

RESEARCH METHODS / SCHOLARLY BASIS

Observational/Reflective teaching experiences.

RESULTS

Cultivating Creativity can increase creativity learning possibilities both within and beyond the classroom.

APPLICATION

Teaching, Problem Solving and Life-long learning skills.