Learning to create and creating to learn: An approach to structuring activities in higher education classrooms - Published Friday 3 of February: 2012-02-03

By Sylvia Truman, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, European Business School, Regent’s College London, UK - www.regents.ac.uk

Abstract

In today’s classrooms, the delivery of many lectures and seminars remains tied to rote learning methods. Such delivery methods rely upon the passive absorption of knowledge, and may prove problematic for non-native English speakers. It is suggested here that class lessons and materials can be designed to provide a more engaging learning experience for students, not wholly dependent upon the knowledge transmission model of rote learning. This article presents a framework of creative learning useful as a learning support tool to assist with the design of classroom or other creative learning experiences.

Introduction

Traditional pedagogy concerns itself with the passive absorption of knowledge, which is later tested in examination-based scenarios. The underlying assumption of this approach places expectations upon the student to learn and recall knowledge, embodied through rote teaching methods. Subsequently, students may respond in various ways to meet what they perceive to be the teacher’s expectations (Edwards Mercer, 1987). Contrary to rote learning methods, recent theories suggest learning is a process of trial and error, involving active exploration and participation through which students form their own understanding of experiences by interacting with their environment (Ernest, 1995; Raskin, 2005; Schank, 2002; Tam, 2000; Von Glaserfeld Steffe, 1991). If learning occurs in a context appropriate to the material learned, problems may be avoided. Brown et al (1989) asserted that although learning abstract, de-contextualized concepts in the classroom equips students to pass examinations, they may nevertheless encounter difficulty when applying concepts in authentic practice (Baccarini, 2004). Students for whom English is not their native language may encounter further challenges (Wieczorek Mitr?ga, 2009; Flowerdew Miller, 1992; Hunter, 2011).

Background Motivation: Language and Learning

A number of studies conducted with international students sought if the use of a foreign language for instruction affects teaching and learning. Numerous studies reported international students face difficulties in understanding lectures in English (Morell 2004; Crawford Camiciottoli 2004; Arden-Close, 1993; Othman, 2008). Thompson (1994) suggested the difficulty faced may be owing to the monologic nature of lectures, which can prove problematic for non-native-English speakers, especially when attempting to interpret the semantic relations underlying the words used. Further, Hellekiaer (2010) argued the need to improve the quality of lecturing for students for whom English is not their first language.

Rote learning exacerbates these problems. More recent learning theories have offered more contextualised approaches to learning, specifically through social learning theories arising from constructivism and constructionism. These perspectives suggest the act of learning is both an interactive process (Vosniadou, 1996) and a process in which the individual needs to be personally engaged. It is through personally engaging with the learning process, within relevant contexts that meaningful learning may be imparted.

Background Motivation: Constructivism

In the constructivist approach, important aspects are: a) Learning is contextual (Schank, 1995). b) One needs knowledge to learn - in other words, it is not possible to assimilate new knowledge without possessing a previous knowledge structure. c) Learning is a self-regulated process (Bandura, 1986) as every individual learns at a different rate, depending on his or her prior knowledge and experience. d) According to social constructivist and socio-cultural accounts, learning is viewed as an individual and social activity in which interactions with others and the external environment are conducive to learning.

Students learn by constructing meaning for themselves through active participation within a domain. This approach has a number of advantages. For example, by discussing their experiences with others, shared understandings are often developed between students. Scholars regard constructionism as an educational method based upon constructivist learning theory. Whereas constructivism advocates that knowledge is constructed in the mind of the individual, constructionism extends upon this, suggesting that an effective way to learn is to build something tangible that exists in the real-world. This is thought to enhance the overall learning experience, making it more meaningful to the student. The emphasis of constructionism is the importance of students’ active engagement in personally creating a product, which is meaningful to themselves and others (Papert, 1999).

Background Motivation: learning and creativity

Over the last three decades, theories emphasizing learning as a constructive process have shed light upon creative phenomena. Learning and creativity share a number of similarities. First, learning is social in nature, as people constantly interact with and are influenced by others and their environment (Vygotsky, 1978). Indeed, Vosniadou (1996) describes learning as the outcome of interactions between social agents and their environment. Second, students construct their own meanings through actively participating within a domain. Creativity is also social, and it is widely acknowledged that any creative idea or artefact arises from the relationship between the individual creator, others and the environment. Third, creativity is also situated within a context, which may concern the culture and domain in which the individual is situated. Therefore, interactions with others and the surrounding environment are crucial to both learning and creativity. Two other important aspects shared by learning and creativity are time and previous experience. Learning is not an instantaneous process as significant learning takes time. Time is required to allow students to revisit and reflect upon ideas. By allowing time for reflection, students can form different perspectives of a scenario. Analogical and metaphorical thinking may assist this partially. Time is also important to creativity owing to subconscious processing during the incubation stage (Claxton, 1998). Finally, creativity involves forming multiple perspectives of a situation, implying the inspiration of creative ideas by previous situations and experiences. Similarly, learning takes place when the student can relate new concepts to previous situations and experiences (Schank, 1995; 1999).

A framework for creative learning in the classroom

Drawing upon these theoretical insights, a generative framework has been developed that represents a distillation of creativity theory focusing upon education (Truman, 2007). This framework exists as a design support tool to assist with the design of lesson support materials and the design of educational technologies. The framework assists the design of creative educational experiences for the classroom by providing scaffolding for supporting materials in terms of the six white component boxes of the framework (see figure 1). Wallas’s four-stage model of creativity is adaptable as the fundamental basis for this generative framework (Wallas, 1926), with the processes of preparation, generation and evaluation represented laterally across the framework. The vertical dimensions reflect individual (denoted here as personal) and social components of creativity. The social level refers to others, peers and society and personal levels reflect explicit and tacit levels of thinking.

 

With regard to figure 1, the lateral and vertical phases and sub-components of the generative framework are discussed within the following subsections.

Lateral process: the preparation process

The processes of preparation, generation and evaluation are recognised herein as three integral concepts of the creative process, in that, every creative act involves the preparation of ideas, whether in the form of tacit influences drawn from the environment, or conscious preparation for the task. Within this process, at the personal level, an individual will develop a curiosity or a desire to create. Once this desire or need is established, information is consciously accumulated from the external environment and thoughts may be discussed with others on a ‘social’ level, which the individual can reflect upon on a ‘personal’ level (Getzels, 1964). If working in a collaborative setting, group-wide negotiations of the task will also take place. Inevitably, the way in which an individual prepares for the task will be influenced by their experiences, which may be explicit or tacit (Schank, 1995).

Lateral process: the generation process

The generation process of the framework encompasses social and personal design. Within this process ideas are generated which can involve interactions and negotiations between the individual and peers in their environment. Additionally, ideation is assisted partly by a continuous interaction occurring between levels of explicit and tacit thinking (Claxton, 1998). The terminology used in the creativity literature refers to these sub-conscious processes as incubation and illumination, as described above. A number of scholars suggest that influences from the environment at a ‘social’ level can trigger creative ideas to progress from tacit to more explicit thoughts at a ‘personal’ level (Claxton, 1998). Thus, the framework presented here acknowledges both the importance of environmental factors upon the creative process and the importance of allowing time for creative ideas to evolve. This emphasises that although individuals may at times work alone to produce creative ideas and artefacts, interactions, and collaboration with others and the external environment are crucial (Candy Edmonds, 1999). Previous studies concerning the advantages of collaborative learning further support the importance of the environment and interactions with others (Brown et al, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978). This implies that individuals are constantly receiving information from the environment, which may trigger elements of creative thought at the tacit level, which may become conscious explicit realisation. This implies that the environment in which one is situated can stimulate and evoke creativity by igniting a creative idea (Fasko, 2001). Additionally, as creativity involves the formation of multiple perspectives of a domain or scenario influences from the environment may also allow one to shift between differing perspectives leading to the generation of further ideas.

Lateral process: the evaluation process

The evaluation process concerns reviewing early creative ideas through to evaluating the final artefact. The evaluation process may be conducted by the individual at a personal level and by the wider community, and the individual may wish to verify their work with others residing within the community. This may lead to individual and/or societal acceptance of the creative artefact, and in some instances, this may lead the individual to return to earlier processes of the framework, for example for the refinement of an idea. Inevitably, what follows the evaluation process will differ between individuals and scenarios.

Vertical dimensions: the roles of social, personal explicit and personal tacit levels of the framework

The vertical dimensions of the framework reflect the personal and social components of creativity. These dimensions encompass interactions and discourse with others, as well as influences drawn from the environment. The personal level, exclusive to the individual, encompasses explicit and implicit levels of thinking. On the explicit level, an individual consciously prepares for the task, generates ideas and reviews them. Creativity literature supporting the generative framework states that, at the tacit level, influences received from the environment and conscious thought may influence ideation to occur (Sanders, 2001). ‘Ideation’ refers to the formation of ideas, in which thoughts initially defy expression in language (Root-Bernstein Root-Bernstein, 1999). Root-Bernstein Root-Bernstein (1999) state that creative thinking occurs pre-verbally, manifesting itself via emotions, images and intuition. Furthermore, thoughts can only be translated into formal systems of communication such as language and become explicit, when they have sufficiently developed in tacit pre-logical forms (Kaha, 1983) and Claxton (1998) states that time is required to allow for such processing to occur. It is further suggested that the sub-conscious mind can be understood by regarding preparatory materials and information as differing ‘rays’ impinging on a lens or prism. Given time, appropriate rays might be selected and brought to focus, thus forming a new pattern or characteristic (Leytham, 1990) which then brings new perspectives to the conscious mind. Therefore, thoughts may cross the boundary between implicit and explicit ways of knowing. Thus, illumination occurs and one may evaluate creative ideas. Through all of the lateral processes, society plays a crucial role in that an individual constantly receives information from the environment and the society in which they are immersed.

Summary and Conclusions

Mindful of the problems faced in the classroom by students from rote delivery of learning materials and for whom English is not their native language, this paper demonstrates a method by which the classroom experience can be better designed for students. By appropriating aspects of learning and creativity theory within the classroom, students can more actively engage in their own learning and participate in collaborative settings. This may assist with removing barriers causal of lessons delivered through a second language and students can explore pedagogic concept for themselves. This paper has addressed this issue by presenting a framework for creative learning. Specifically, the framework provides a contemporary perspective on the creative process by incorporating social learning theory, in particular constructivism. The framework exists as a design support tool for educators, teachers and designers of educational technologies alike in the preparation and design of learning materials. This paper has outlined the motivation behind the framework and demonstrated how the framework can be instantiated for use in educational settings.

References:

Arden-Close, C (1993) Language Problems in Science Lectures to Non-Native Speakers. English for Specific Purposes, v12 n3 p251-61.

Baccarini, D (2004) The implementation of authentic activities for learning: A case study. Proceedings of the 13th Annual Teaching Learning Forum. 9-10 February. Perth: Murdoch University, Australia.

Bandura, A (1986) Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs; NJ Prentice Hall.

Brown, Collins Duguid (1989) Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher. January – February. pp 32-43

Candy, L Edmonds, E.A (1999) Introducing creativity to Cognition. Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Creativity and Cognition. Loughborough, UK. pp 3-6.

Claxton (1998) Hare Brain Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When you Think Less. London. Fourth Estate Limited.

Crawford Camiciottoli, B. 2004. Non-verbal communication in intercultural

lectures. In Academic discourse, genre and small corpora. Bondi, M.

Gavioli, L. Silver, M. (eds). Rome: Officina edizioni:35-51.

Edwards, D Mercer, N (1987) Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. London. Metheuen.

Ernest, P (1995) The One and the Many: Constructivism in Education. New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Fasko (2001) Education and Creativity. Creativity Research Journal. Vol 13. Nos. 3 4. pp 317 – 327

Flowerdew, J Miller, L (1992) Student Perceptions, Problems and Strategies in Second Language Lecture Comprehension. RELC Journal Vol27. No. 1. pp 23 – 46.

Getzels, J.W (1964) Creative Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Instruction. In E.R. Hilgard (Ed), Theories of Learning and Instruction. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Hellekiaer, G. O (2010) Assessing Lecture Comprehension in English-Medium Higher Education: A Survey. Proceedings of the European Educational Research Association Conference.

Hunter, T (2011) The Empathic Structuring of Lectures for International Students: The Nolandese Lecture Experience. Higher Education Academy. [online]. Available from:http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/internationalisation/Nolandese_lecture

Kaha, N (1983) The creative mind: form and process. Journal of Creative Behaviour. 17. pp 84 – 94

Leytham, G (1990) Managing Creativity. Norfolk; Peter Francis Publishers.

Morell, T. (2004) Interactive lecture discourse for university EFL students. English for specific purposes 23:325-338.

Othman, Z (2008) The academic lectures of native English speakers: its complexities. MALIM: Jurnal Pengajian Umum Asia Tenggara, 9 . pp. 125-138.

Papert, S (1999) The Century’s Greatest Minds: Papert on Piaget. Time Magazine. p 105. 29th March 1999.

Raskin, J. D (2005) Constructivism in psychology: personal construct psychology, radical constructivism and social constructivism. American Communication Journal. 3, 5.

Root-Berstein, R Root-Berstein, M (1999) Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. New York; Houghton-Mifflin.

Sanders, E.B (2001) Collective creativity. LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education. No 4.

Schank, R (2002) Designing World Class E-Learning. New York. McGraw-Hill.

Schank, R (1999) Dynamic Memory Revisited. Cambridge; MA. Cambridge University Press.

Schank, R (1995) What we Learn when we Learn by Doing. Technical Report No. 60. Institute of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Illinois.

Tam, M (2000) Constructivism, instructional design and technology: implications for transforming distance learning. Educational Technology Society. 3, 2. pp 50-60

Thompson, S. (1994) Aspects of cohesion in monologue. Journal of applied

linguistic 15:58-75.

Truman, S (2007) Designing Educational Software Inline with the Creative Learning Process: Just how Important is the Preparation Phase? Volume 2 Proceedings of the 21st BCS HCI Group Conference HCI 2007. 3rd – 7th September 2007. Lancaster University.

Von Glaserfeld, E Steffe, L (1991) Conceptual models in educational research and practice. The Journal of Educational Thought. 25, 2. pp 91 – 103.

Vosniadou, S (1996) Towards a Revised Cognitive Psychology for New Advances in Learning and Instruction. Learning and Instruction. Vol. 6. No. 2. pp 95 – 109

Vygotsky, L. S (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Massachusetts. Harvard University Press.

Wallas (1926) The Art of Thought. London; Johnathan Cape [republished in 1931].

Wieczorek, A Mitrega, M (2009) Problems of Teaching in a Multi Cultural Environment. Conference on Higher Education and Research.

The PDF version of the article is available above

Anglohigher®

Volume 4, Issue 1, Winter 2012, AngloHigher® The Magazine of Global English Speaking Higher Education™, ISSN 2041-8469 (Online)

Copyright © 2009-12 by Panethnic Limited, All Rights Reserved.

Related Articles