Broadening conceptions of creativity in the classroom

Over the past decade, we have watched with growing concern as creativity has been squeezed out of many educational arenas. Whether it is the increasingly narrow educational outcomes that policy makers and educational leaders emphasize in their curricular policies and school improvement plans (such as marshaling scarce resources to nudge reading and math scores a fraction of a point higher) or the belief, held by some educators, that the unexpected nature of creativity is nothing more than a distracting tangent, something to be explored “later,” or even a behavior problem – creativity seems to belong on the endangered species list (next to the mantled howler monkey). The severity of this situation is even more pronounced for high-poverty and traditionally “underperforming” schools that have turned to scripted, “teacher-proof” curricula (Sawyer, 2004) in hopes of boosting performance on standardized learning assessments. It is doubtful that without opportunities to also develop creative and divergent thought that such hollow standardization efforts will boost anything – except, perhaps, longstanding educational inequalities experienced by students who attend these “standardized” schools (McNeal, 2000). For once, however, we are addressing people who are committed to creativity in the classroom – not those who consistently find ways to resist it (as we realize they likely would only pick up this book to put it back in the mailbox of the person who misplaced it). We are writing to the reader who has bought, borrowed, or stolen this book because they are interested in the topic.