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Forget about traditional ways of teaching: creativity is in your heart
Janaina Minelli de OliveiraUniversitat Rovira i Virgili
Eliana Gallardo EcheniqueUniversidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
Mar CamachoUniversitat Rovira i Virgili
E dwa r d A . L o c k h a r t Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Francesc EsteveUniversitat Jaume I
Abstract: This study aimed at coaching, supporting and collaborating with pre-service teacher trainers to help them implement and refine their knowledge and skills of creative learning and tech-nology applied to education. To do so we used a mixed-methods approach with qualitative and quantitative methods to collect and analyze the data. We also evaluated the perceptions of the pre-service teachers and their instructor and analyzed learning evidences. We show that the energy needed to convert educational practice into a more creative experience appears to derive from the humble assumption that teaching can always be improved. We argue that if teachers are to improve their pedagogical practices, they must – at least to some extent – be uncomfortable or unhappy with them. Restructuring pedagogical practices to enable higher education students to experience mo-ments of imagining, creating, playing, sharing and reflecting can greatly improve the motivation of both teachers and pre-service teachers.
IntroductionIn this paper we present a higher education innovative experience in which a course for pre-service teachers
was developed with creative principles. Our aim was to identify the key obstacles and challenges that arise when creativity is incorporated into teaching and learning in a higher education context. By pursuing this objective we hope to contribute to the research agenda on educational creativity proposed by Smith & Smith (2010): i) defining creativity and taking it to children in the classroom; ii) establishing the usefulness of creativity as a central compo-nent of academic growth; and iii) demonstrating the effectiveness of approaches that use creativity, enhance it and encourage it.
CLict (Creative Learning with ICT – reference URV/ICE A29/13 – B04/14) is a teaching innovation project aimed at coaching, supporting and collaborating with pre-service teacher trainers to assist them in imple-menting and refining their knowledge and skills of creative learning and technology applied to education. These are core augmentations of pre-service teaching practices, perspectives and curriculum. In the experience we report in
this paper, the research team and the teacher/research participant restructured the pedagogical practices and organi-zation of the learning activities of the course entitled Coneixement i ús de la llengua estrangera 2 (Knowledge and Use of the Foreign Language 2).
As an innovation group we wanted to make teaching more exciting and encourage the active participation of pre-service teachers by providing them with the conditions in which their own creativity could flourish. The prob-lem we engaged with in this project was associated with the question: “How can we improve the higher education experiences of pre-service teachers by paying greater attention to the role of creativity in learning?”
Theoretical backgroundSome researchers in the field of creative learning indicate that creativity is based on knowledge, the control
of materials and the generation of ideas (DeHaan, 2009; Mishra, Henriksen, & the Deep-Play Research Group, 2012; NACCCE, 1999). Creative education involves a balance between knowledge and the exploration of expres-sive capacities (Mishra, Fahnoe, Henriksen & the Deep-Play Research Group, 2013; Pigrum, 2012). Creative skills can be developed through practice as long as the production process involves creative thinking: making music, writ-ing stories, conducting experiments, and so on (Kress & Bezemer, 2009). The freedom to experiment is essential for promoting learning environments that are rich in creativity. Vygotsky (2004) stated that creativity is present in the process of symbolization; it is part of the human capacity for social semiosis. Every meaning-making practice is po-tentially creative. Creativity is a universal capacity that develops socially but does not bloom under all conditions. Researchers in a pragmatic constructivist paradigm tend to believe that creativity is a social phenomenon that largely depends on the environment (Hunter, Bedell & Mumford, 2007). Darras (2011, p. 90) notes that while creativity "can be motivated, nurtured and developed through appropriate pedagogical practice, it can also be inhibited or bro-ken when the environment is not favorable, socially or emotionally.”
The problem is not that creativity is absent in pre-service teacher education but that it is omnipresent, as it is in higher education in general (Jackson, 2006). Creativity is taken for granted and subsumed within analytical ways of thinking that dominate academic discourses, genres and registers. Beghtto (2010) discusses some of the bar-riers that can suppress creativity that are identified in the literature. These include convergent thinking practices, teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about creativity, the motivational environment and the student’s own creativity-related beliefs. As Tosey (2006) points out, there are connotations of ‘creativity’, such as imagination, originality, unortho-doxy and fantasy, that appear in tension with important cultural values of Higher Education about respectability and rigor in knowledge generation, the need for conformity, standardization and accountability. Guiding pre-service teachers in the exploration of their creative potentials “involves using imagination to think in certain ways that move us beyond the known into the unknown” (Jackson, 2006, p. 199). This is how we help them to acquire their own un-derstanding and awareness of their own creativities as part of their professional identity building.
At a fundamental level, the idea of creative learning can be understood as being opposed to traditional edu-cation in which the teachers are the protagonists of the process and control their learners with learning exercises and tests (Sefton-Green, Thomson, Jones & Bresler, 2011). In this paper, we pay special attention to the structure and or-ganization of learning spaces, the activities, the learning outputs, and the interactions between the teacher trainer and the pre-service teachers. We seek to change pedagogical practices and promote creative learning environments.
The creative cycle
Resnick (2007) proposes a spiral that describes a creative cycle that occurs in kindergarten. For the author, the cycle is “a spiraling process in which children imagine what they want to do, create a project based on their ideas, play with their creations, share their ideas and creations with others, reflect on their experiences – all of which leads them to imagine new ideas and new projects”. Other authors in the world of education have developed their own cycles. One example is the ALACT cycle developed by Korthagen (1982, 1985), which was based on a model by Kolb and Fry (1975). Korthagen designed the ALACT cycle to make teachers more aware of the processes used in class. When we compare these two cycles, the first difference we find is that Resnick’s proposal targets learners while Korthagen’s targets teachers. The latter focuses more on the action that occurs in the classroom while the for-mer deals more with the processes the learners experience.
On the other hand, we also find that these two cycles have a couple of things in common. Both have a step that is devoted to reflection or looking back over the action. This implies that an important part of the teaching and
learning processes is thinking back to the process we have followed either as teachers or as students. Another step is devoted to creating. However, while in Resnick’s cycle this is the second step, in Korthagen’s cycle it is the fourth.
Resnick's creative spiral seems easy to apply with younger students (in the kindergarten) but more chal-lenging with older ones. In his article, Resnick reflected that “as students get older, they want and need to work on more advanced projects and learn more advanced concepts [...] they need different types of tools, media, and materi-als”. So if we want to use this spiral to promote creativity amongst higher education students, we need to find projects, concepts, tools, media and materials that will be as engaging, motivating and creative for higher education as the “wooden blocks and finger paint are great for [...] kindergarten”. If we are focusing on the promotion of cre-ative thought, however, we must be aware that “some accounts of ‘creativity’, such as imagination, originality, un-orthodoxy and fantasy, appear in tension with important cultural values in Higher Education about respectability and rigor in knowledge generation; and with needs for conformity, standardization, accountability and risk aversion in our institutions” (Tosey, 2006: 29).
Higher education discourse and genres can be broadly considered social semiotic work that maintains con-vention. As Jackson (2006: 208) states, “we live in a paradoxical world and higher education is full of paradox that seeks to both define and constrain what we do while simultaneously encouraging people to adventure beyond the known”. We chose to apply Resnick’s spiral because it is aimed at the students and the learning process they are go-ing through. Also, by making creation an early stage of the learning processes, we believe that this model allows for risk taking in the semiotic production. Bringing reflection to a later stage of the learning process opens up the possi-bility of student semiotic work being less conditioned by tradition and therefore more open to adventure beyond the known.
Purpose of the studyAs we stated earlier, the purpose of this study is to identify key obstacles and challenges that arise when we
incorporate Resnik (2007)’s creative spiral into teaching and learning in a higher education context.
MethodologyWe used a mixed-methods approach with both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect and analyze
data (Creswell, 2003; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007). We employed the sequential explanatory mixed-methods de-sign, which consists of two distinct phases: an initial phase of qualitative data collection and analysis followed by a phase of quantitative data collection and analysis (Creswell, 2003; Clark, Gutmann & Hanson, 2008). This paper refers to the qualitative aspect of the study. However, the results of the quantitative and qualitative phases were inte-grated during the discussion of the outcomes of the study as a whole and will be addressed in this paper (Creswell, 2003; Clark et al., 2008; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2010).
Our study was designed to answer the following research questions:(1) Can we follow the creative spiral proposed by Resnick (2007) in pre-service teacher education in an un-
dergraduate context? (2) What key obstacles and challenges arise when we incorporate the creative spiral into teaching and
learning?
SampleThe trainer and research participant is a 34 year-old male with 17 years' teaching experience, 13 of which
have been in the public sector. A university lecturer for four years, he also participated as a member of the research team for this study. This kind of participation is common in this type of educational research (Rogers, Malan-charuvil-Berkes, Mosley & O’Garro-Joseph, 2005). This year his group comprised 15 students (3 males and 12 fe-males) aged between 19 and 30 years old (their average age was roughly 24) enrolled on the degree in Primary Edu-cation. This degree will enable them to teach in primary schools, where children's ages range from 6 to 12. All the students chose to take the Minor in English, a specialization that enables them to teach English to pupils in the above age range.
Data collection
The research was conducted in several stages during the 2013-2014 academic year. During that time the re-search team held periodic meetings to discuss the progress made and any difficulties encountered by the teacher/re-search participant. He initially shared several sessions that he restructured in accordance with Resnick's (2007) cre-ative spiral. After receiving feedback in collaborative sessions with the rest of the team and drawing on the ideas shared at these meetings as well as on a review of the literature and his own experiences, the teacher/research partic-ipant continued to edit the structure of each session.
Coneixement i ús de la llengua estrangera (Knowledge and Use of the Foreign Language) is a course taken during the second year of the Minor. All courses on this Minor adopt an active approach to teaching. All are done through English with content relating to how to teach (especially the English language) better. The students were in-formed that their instructor was taking part in a project on teaching innovation and research. Ethics approval was ob-tained before the study began. Participation was voluntary and 14 of the 15 pre-service teachers gave their consent for their biographical data and learning evidences to be used for the purposes of our research.
The procedures for collecting the information were as follows: a) class observation and recordings; b) field notes; c) in-depth semi-structured interview with the instructor; d) analysis of student teacher learning evidences; and e) an online questionnaire to capture the perceptions of the pre-service teachers regarding the learning environ-ment and activities.
Instruments and data analysis
For this research we drew on three main sources of data.First, an in depth semi-structured interview was held with the teacher/research participant. This lasted 40
minutes and was conducted in English. The interview was recorded, transcribed in detail, and analyzed from a socio-cognitive perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). We identified semantic macro-structures, which may may be defined as the most relevant claims and key topics in the interviewee's responses (Van Dijk, 2009). We used CDA because it allows for the analysis of verbal interactions, which are material communicative events that occur as observable behavior in processes that take place at the cognitive level. On the other hand, we must also acknowledge that, as the outcomes are “readings” of the interview with the teacher/research participant, they are actually interpre-tations rather than the truth.
Second, to capture the perceptions the pre-service teachers had about their experience of implementing the creative spiral, we used an online questionnaire based on work by Code, Clarke-Midura, Zap and Dede (2013) and Nokelainen (2006), who explored the empirical assessment of learning environments and materials. The students were asked to rate the items on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 meant “strongly disagree” and 5 meant “strongly agree”. Of the 14 students who enrolled on the course, 9 responded to the questionnaire.
Finally, we used the elements proposed by Van Leeuwen (2005), which drew on a social semiotics ap-proach, to analyze articulation and interpretational differences in some of the students' learning evidences. In this pa-per we discuss these learning evidences in order to show some of the results obtained by implementing Resnick's (2007) creative spiral that are associated with the use of ICT in undergraduate pre-service teacher education. Stu-dents were asked to “imagine” that Creativity had been kidnapped, to “create” a story using Story Bird, to “play” acting out as story tellers, to “share” their learning evidences on YouTube and, finally, to “reflect” on the different ways they had represented Creativity. In our analysis we focused on: the actions performed by the character Creativ-ity; the actors and (active or passive) roles involved in the story; how Creativity is presented, i.e. how the character is dressed or groomed; when the stories develop; and where the stories take place.
The results of the quantitative and qualitative phases were integrated during discussion of the outcomes of the study as a whole (Creswell, 2003; Clark et al., 2008; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2010) from a reflexive research par-adigm. Reflexivity is an important component of CDA for building rigor in educational research from data triangula-tion and the contact between researchers and participants as a valid and accurate representation of reality (Talja, 1999). However, according to Rogers et al. (2005), the CDA approach will never be an objective and neutral science because reflexivity is caught up in a social struggle and because researchers are part of the language practices they are studying.
ResultsOur analysis of the in-depth, semi-structured interview with the teacher/research participant can be repre-
sented by four semantic macro-structures. Below each semantic macro-structure we provide quotes from the teacher/research participant for the sake of transparency on both the textual evidence under review and the basis for the claims made.
MACRO-STRUCTURE 1. Implementing the creative spiral requires effort.“I've had it in mind but it wasn't always easy to embed it into my planning.”“(…) at the beginning you struggle to understand what each step in the spiral is. When you have more ex-
perience it's much easier to identify the different elements.”
We identified the need for planning and continued effort to structure each session as essential elements for promoting creative learning environments. As Pigrum (2012) and Mishra et al. (2013) suggest, structuring learning environments to promote creativity requires knowledge, detailed planning and much reflection.
MACRO-STRUCTURE 2. There is tension between previous planning and innovation.“If a session only had one long activity with the ingredients scattered all around it, fitting the spiral was dif-
ficult (or impossible) even if this planning was at the end of the course …”“I mean, those sessions that were already planned in detail. There's not much you can do about it. The ac-
tivity is what it is and changing it to follow the cycle could spoil it.”“When you have planned so thoroughly and you believe so much in the way you have planned, you're re-
ally there to enjoy your creation.”
We could expect that only teachers with little experience would have difficulty in applying the creative spi-ral. However, our research shows that teachers with more experience and whose sessions are planned in detail may find implementing the creative spiral challenging. Their previous way of planning could be in tension with the new way of structuring their learning activities. As Jackson (2006) suggested, moving beyond the known into the un-known is not easy; nor is it a decision that can be made by inexperienced teachers.
MACRO-STRUCTURE 3. There is an improvement in the learning environment.“I think that, although I really liked the syllabus and planning of the course before the project, this revision
and this having the creativity in mind while reviewing it has made the course much more meaningful, motivating and entertaining both for the students and for me.”
“I was somehow more motivated. I felt better and more engaged. It was like doing the sessions again for the first time and it felt good.”
“About the students, they were really participative and motivated (…). You could see they were enjoying the classes. In fact, that's what they transmitted in the feedbacks and in personal communications…”
The teacher/research participant's perception here is that implementing the creative spiral led to changes for the better in his teaching. His feelings of satisfaction and renewed motivation are clear, as is his perception that his pre-service teachers also enjoyed most of his classes.
MACRO-STRUCTURE 4. Advice is provided for pre-service teacher trainers.“First, they should forget about the traditional ways of teaching ... you cannot foster creativity by following
a textbook and having all your students sitting behind a desk.”“Then they should plan the activities and sessions thoroughly and take into account many factors: the needs
of the students, the differences within the group, the motivations of the learners, what they like … and of course, they should plan activities where the students can imagine, create, play, share, reflect…”
The teacher/research participant not only recommended implementing the creative spiral but he was willing to continue implementing it in the future. He did not seem convinced that the order of the spiral should always be followed but he was certain that ensuring that each of the stages were present while planning the classroom activities generally favored a more creative and productive learning environment.
We shall now turn to the perceptions of the pre-service teachers regarding their experience of implementing the creative spiral. The perception of the teacher/research participant regarding the active participation of the pre-service teachers in the sessions was confirmed (see table 1). Most students agreed or strongly agreed that the course presented information in a suitable format that was easy to understand. They felt a strong sense of responsibility and control over their learning process. They felt that they had to draw on previous knowledge to perform the activities and that they learned more by doing the activities in this class than the exercises and tests used in other classes. They experienced many situations in which they had to solve problems and make their own decisions about how to solve them. They also perceived the feedback provided to them as motivating. The internal consistency of the whole scale is α = 0.86, which is above the acceptable level of α > 0.70 (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2006).
Item M SD
1. This course presented information in a format that made it easy to under-stand.
4.77 0.44
2. This course presented material in a way that was suitable for me. 4.33 0.50
3. When I worked on this course, I felt that I held the responsibility for my own learning.
4.44 0.72
4. When I was doing this course, I felt that I controlled what it did. 4.11 0.78
5. I used my prior knowledge when I was doing this course. 4.22 0.80
6. I learned more by taking the activities on this course than by completing ex-ercises and tests on another course.
4.77 0.60
7. This course required me to know something that had already been taught to me.
4.11 0.92
8. On this course I had lots of chances to solve problems. 4.00 0.81
9. This course gave me motivating feedback. 4.11 0.78
10. This course provided me with immediate feedback on my activities. 3.88 1.16
11. I was allowed to make mistakes on this course. 3.66 0.86
12. On this course I could make my own decisions about how to solve a prob-lem.
4.22 0.66
13. I could make a choice about something on this course and change my mind later.
3.55 0.88
14. I got so immersed on this course that I forgot what was going on around me.
4.33 1.11
15. When doing this course I lost track of time. 3.77 1.30
16. To do this course I had to think and come up with my own solutions. 4.11 0.92
Table 1: The perception of the teacher/research participant regarding the active participation of the pre-ser-vice teachers in the sessions
These data give empirical evidence to statements by authors such as Davies et al. (2013), Ferrari et al. (2009) and Yeh, Yeh and Chen (2012), who claim that creative learning is based on learner empowerment and learner centeredness. However, although students rated most items in the questionnaire well, items 10, 11, 13 and 15 deserve attention. Item 10 indicates that the students felt that the time lag between the completion of the activities and the provision of the feedback could be improved. Items 11 and 13 relate, respectively, to making mistakes and being able to change one's mind on previous choices. We found that the students perceived that the learning environ-ment was not very open to provisional or alternative solutions to the problems set by the teacher. Finally, item 15 shows that the students’ experience of the course was somewhat diverse. This was the item with the highest standard deviation, which indicates the wide diversity in the students’ answers: 2 of the 9 respondents rated this item with 2 (thus expressing disagreement with the statement); 2 rated it with a 3; 1 with a 4 (thus expressing agreement with the statement); and 4 strongly agreed that they lost track of time when taking the course. If we understand “losing track of time” as implying some sense of enjoyment, we could say that although the students believed the course content and format were highly suitable and that the overall experience was positive, their judgments regarding pleasure and satisfaction were far from unanimous.
We shall now turn to the analysis of the pre-service teachers’ learning evidences: audiovisual stories in-vented by the students, designed through Story Bird, recorded on video with a voice over, and shared on YouTube. The links to each story are given below. Interestingly, the students' representations of creativity seemed very diverse at first but after looking closely at their semiotic elements, we find that they shared certain characteristics. The stu-dents formed four groups in order to create their learning results while implementing the creative spiral in the ses-sion entitled “The kidnapping of creativity”. Before commenting on their stories' shared characteristics, we will first present the interpretational elements of each one.
Creativity as a kingShort descriptionCreativity is a king who one day wakes up in a different bed and realizes he has been kidnapped. His peo-
ple are sad while he is away but the king is able to escape by his own means and bring happiness back to his people.Actors and rolesThe king has an active role and is able to escape by himself. The people in the village have a more passive
role and feel sad when the king is away. They take action by holding a meeting to discuss what to do. However, be-fore they can do anything, the king returns.
TimeOnce upon a time…SpacesA fairytale kingdomAvailable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQqI5w4-Dhc
Creativity as a little girl with braidsShort descriptionCreativity is a little girl who is kidnapped by a musician who is unable to compose songs. Creativity helps
him compose the best song ever and then the musician realizes that she must be set free so that everybody can enjoy his music.
Actors and rolesCreativity has an active role. She travels around the world, visiting people. She also agrees to help the mu-
sician compose a song and explains to him why she must be free. The musician has an active role. He kidnaps Cre-ativity and then asks her for help.
TimeOnce upon a time…SpacesThe worldAvailable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXeE7v9F4OQ
Creativity as a jelly pet monsterShort description
Paul is a kid who has an unusual friend: Creativity. Paul’s teachers and mother tell him not to waste time on silly things, so Creativity shrinks until it almost disappears. When the kid realizes what is happening, he takes care of Creativity and they are all happy again.
Actors and rolesCreativity is crazy, imaginative and outgoing. It is shiny and happy when Paul is not under pressure from
his teachers and mom; and it is sad and scared when Paul is told not to do silly things like inventing a different end to a story. Creativity has an active role and is able to change its appearance and live different adventures every day. Creativity can hear from Paul’s mind and has feelings. Paul asks questions at school. When Creativity disappears, he looks everywhere for it. Paul tries to convince Creativity that he needs it. Paul’s teacher and mom have active roles too. They tell him not to waste time.
TimeOnce upon a time…SpacesPaul’s home and schoolAvailable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBDnlr_DCyw
Creativity as a feelingShort descriptionClarice is a teacher who comes to work at a school where students cannot think freely, dance or laugh.
Clarice teaches the students unusual things like facing their fears or that nobody can take their imagination away be-cause creativity is in their hearts.
Actors and rolesThe students have a passive role before Clarice arrives at their school. They are not allowed to dance, sing,
draw or laugh. All they can do is to listen and repeat. They are bored and their school is dark. They have turned their brains off. When Clarice comes to the school, the students become active. They learn things instead of just being taught by Clarice. They can express their feelings and be happier. They realize that nobody can steal their imagina-tion. Clarice loves to see the children enjoying themselves but she does not really do anything in the story. The only action associated with this character is her arrival at the school. Once she appears, all the actions are performed by the students.
TimeOnce…SpacesA town and a school in the town.Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXRjHitZw1I
We found some interesting shared items in the stories created by the students, e.g. creativity being associ-ated with positive feelings and a sense of enjoyment. In the first story people feel sad when the king is away and happy when he is back; in the second story people would not be able to enjoy the musician’s song if Creativity were kept in captivity; in the third story, when Paul is under pressure and not allowed to do things his own way, his friend Creativity shrinks; in the last story, creativity is a feeling itself that is present when the students can take action in their learning. In these stories the association of creativity with positive feelings may be related to the sense of en-joyment the students were feeling during the sessions structured around the creative spiral. During the course no for-mal discussion was held on what creativity was or what type of environment was more favorable for promoting cre-ativity.
Most actors in the stories have active roles. The exceptions are the people in the first story and the students in the final story before Clarice arrived at their school. In both cases, creativity was somehow missing. In the first story the king had been kidnapped and in the story of Clarice the students did not yet know that creativity was in their hearts. In the absence of creativity, the actors become more passive and sad. In all four stories, the presence of creativity is associated with verbs of action and positive feelings of happiness. Creativity itself does things (like es-caping, traveling and changing its shape) or causes people to do things (like dancing, laughing, acting and enjoying songs and their lives).
We would like to highlight a difference between the story about Clarice and the first three stories. The story about Clarice is a meta-representation practice. In this semiotic resource, the pre-service teachers were reflecting – without being directed to do so – on how creativity relates to teaching, i.e. their future field of professional practice.
At the beginning they depict a scene in which teaching is very conventional and there is no time for play or imagina-tion. In this first part of the story, there is darkness, the students are sad, and there is a marked hierarchical differ-ence between the students and the teachers: the teachers tell the students what they can and cannot do and so the stu-dents switch off their brains. The story then describes images of positive feelings, new learning and of overcoming fear when the students, guided by their new teacher, realize that creativity is in their hearts. Again, no formal in-struction was given during the course sessions on the fact that creativity is a human capacity that flourishes under certain conditions. However, this group of pre-service teachers was able to produce a semiotic resource whose aim is not really to tell children a story but to tell their teacher and other teachers what they think education should be about and how creativity generates a learning atmosphere where kids play the leading roles in their learning, where learning is fun, and where teachers love their job.
This analysis of the pre-service teachers’ learning evidences brings to light aspects that are beyond self-per-ceptions on the students’ engagement and sense of control. Through their semiotic productions we can see that they have made unforeseen connections and generated new, appropriate ideas – just as Ferrari et al. (2009) suggest cre-ative learning should lead one to. We could say that all the groups were involved in forms of learning that led to new understanding and that at least the group that produced the meta-cognitive story about Clarice, in line with the sug-gestion of Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka and Punie (2010), provided clear evidence of a new awareness.
Finally, to answer to our first research question, we could say that the creative spiral proposed by Resnick (2007) can be implemented in an undergraduate context if suitable tools are chosen and careful planning is made. With regard to the obstacles and challenges that arise when the creative spiral is incorporated into teaching and learning, we have identified the tension that is created between the activities that are intended to respond to the vari-ous spiral stages and the previously planned course structure. Changing the structure of previously planned sessions in order to incorporate new elements, or sometimes simply changing the order of the activities in the classroom, may be felt by some teachers as a step into the unknown. However, if creative learning is to be promoted among pre-ser-vice teachers, their trainers must also use their imagination to think in ways that will move them beyond the known into the unknown (Jackson, 2006).
ConclusionsStructuring the learning environments of pre-service teachers to enable them to develop their own creativity
means more than giving them free time, asking them to produce artwork, or letting them use technology. Teacher trainers need to do their part by structuring pedagogical practice to break the routine of formal education. Breaking inertia is not easy but it is essential if we wish to promote creative processes in teaching. The main difficulty we have identified with the implementation of the creative spiral is the tension caused by readapting previously planned sessions (e.g. changing the order of activities or adding new ones). Even in the framework of a project designed to improve teaching practices, it may not be easy for teachers with a lot of experience to give up a scheme that is con-sidered good enough. A certain feeling of nonconformity, or at least a desire to improve processes, must exist to make teachers lessen their loyalty to previous planning. In other words, if the teacher is totally content with the ses-sions he or she has planned, it will be very difficult to create the space for improvement. Innovation comes with a belief that pedagogical practices can be changed for the better even when the teacher believes they are already work-ing well and producing positive results. We have learned that in order to improve an aspect of their pedagogical practice, teachers must, at least to some extent, be uncomfortable, discontent or unhappy with it. Pedagogical prac-tices can only be improved in a context in which some form of discontent exists. On the other hand, if teachers be-lieve they are doing well, there is limited scope for pedagogical improvement.
As our data have shown, implementing change is hard work. Providing the suitable conditions for creative learning requires planning and engagement. Having the energy to change educational practices into more creative experiences seems to be rooted in the humble assumption that our teaching can always be improved. Despite the hard work, all the evidence we have presented in this paper shows that implementing the creative spiral or just bear-ing it in mind to renew a previously created program can greatly improve the motivation of both the trainers and their pre-service teachers. Our analysis of some of the learning results also reveals that, even without any formal in-struction on the importance of creativity in learning, using a creative approach to structure the training sessions of pre-service teachers has positive effects on how they perceive the impact of creativity on their professional practice.
When our teacher/research participant said “Forget about the traditional ways of teaching”, he was indeed saying that engaging pre-service teachers in meaningful learning means much more than simply transmitting knowl-
edge. We must move beyond that. Our teacher/research participant surely did so through the innovation experience reported here since creativity was clearly associated with positive feelings and it was also identified as a positive feeling in some of the learning results of his pre-service teachers. Finally, we do not have to look too far for creativ-ity to restructure our teaching: as some of our pre-service teachers have reminded us, “creativity is in your heart”.
AcknowledgmentsThis work is supported by the Institut de Ciències de l’Educació of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili [A29/13
– B04/14].
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