The Creative Imperative for School Librarians

“I am not creative.” This graduate student’s response to my invitation to think creatively and openly about inquiry started me on an amazing journey that led to my studying creativity at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York City. Along the way I recognized the need for school librarians to thoughtfully consider the complexity and angles of the creative process.

UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY

Too often, the concept of “creativity” is misunderstood. It is consequently important for school librarians to understand the history, foundation, definition, and perspectives of creativity. The Creative Imperative: School Librarians and Teachers Cultivating Curiosity Together does just this and is the first book on this topic for school librarians (Jones and Fling, 2013). Each of the sixteen chapters in this book is written by some of the most influential creativity researchers, scholars, and practitioners. The foreword by Vera John-Steiner, internationally known for her 2006 study on creative collaborations, launches school librarians into their own journeys to understand how to “do” creativity in an educational environment hostile to the very conditions necessary for budding creators—safety, motivating lessons, and ample time to wander.

The starting point for creativity in schools is the school librarian who leads the collaborative effort to establish environments whereby students pose questions, ponder problems, and develop the thinking skills and personal behaviors apparent in creative individuals. This article is based on three questions that helped me focus on my study of creativity. These questions, as well as other aspects of creativity, are discussed in detail in The Creative Imperative: School Librarians and Teachers Cultivating Curiosity Together by the very authors who conducted seminal research that furthered the understanding of creativity.

DEFINING CREATIVITY

The accepted definition of “creativity” is the production of novel and appropriate ideas and works. Creativity is a complex notion, but the word is often bandied about and attributed to all sorts of things that may not be novel and appropriate. Jane Piirto identified seventy-four concepts, processes, and definitions of creativity (2004). Three approaches to understand how creativity is “done” are represented by Graham Wallas’s stage theory, Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach, and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s systems perspective.

The four-stage theory of creativity consists of the following:

• Preparation. A problem is defined. The individual gathers information to increase in-depth understanding of the problem.
• Incubation. Once information is internalized, the unconscious mind is able to think about and reflect on the problem. Whereas the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time, the unconscious mind “acts like a seething cauldron” (Sawyer 2006, 61) that stimulates additional thought, association, and reflection.
• Illumination. The moment of discovery—the light bulb turns on!
• Verification. The creative product is performed or the idea made known to others (Wallas 1926).

The Evolving Systems approach considers the process of creating as purposeful work evolving over long periods of time that benefits from the creator’s insights and relationships, and is conducted in relation to the work of others (Gruber 1989). Creators are collaborative, influenced by the ideas of others, and organize lives and environments to be creative (Gruber 1989).

In Csikszentmihalyi’s system view, creativity is determined by whether change to the domain occurs (1996). Csikszentmihalyi theorized two types of creativity: Big-C and little-c. Big-C creativity leads to domain changing “new scientific findings, new movements in art, new inventions, and new social programs” (Sternberg and Lubart 1999, 3). The lives of many Big-C creators, such as Darwin, Freud, Picasso, and Edison, are often represented in biography collections in school libraries that can act as blueprints for students to study the process of creating. Csikszentmihalyi considered all other creative endeavors as little-c (1996).

Since so few of us will create at the domain changing level, and putting almost everyone in the little-c category does not address purposeful and significant levels of creativity, two additional classifications, Mini-c and Pro-c, have been suggested by Ronald A. Beghetto and James C. Kaufman. This is the “novel and personally meaningful interpretation of experiences, actions, and events” that represents students’ first efforts to address their creative potential: “For instance, a fourth-grade student learning about the planets may have unique and personally meaningful insights about why Pluto should not be considered a planet,” whereas the Pro-C is defined as creative contributions in a professional field (Beghetto and Kaufman 2009, 3). In the domain of school librarianship, Carol Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process, the theoretical framework of student’s information seeking, represents Pro-C creativity. It is at the mini-c level that children are fostered and nurtured to develop the characteristics of creators that could one day lead to domain changing Big-C production, Pro-C endeavors that influence a profession, or little-c transformation of an individual’s immediate environment.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE PEOPLE

Are people born creative or do they become creative? Over the centuries, the notion of creativity has veered between two broad concepts—rationalism and Romanticism. Rationalism depends on reason, knowledge, training, and education. Romanticism states that people are born with certain qualities such as imagination and emotion. Romantics may lean toward an eccentric, sensitive, moody, and introverted temperament. Based on these two concepts, rationalist creators become, but romantic creators are born. In reality, creative individuals are a mix of rational and romantic characteristics and behaviors.

Creative individuals tend to be open and flexible thinkers who are comfortable with ambiguity. They are persistent, hard workers, risk-takers, and lifelong learners who become expert in their chosen field. Inquiry and project-based learning provide students with opportunities to develop the essential characteristic of the creator—”curious delight,” a term to describe the pure delight of learning that leads to meeting one’s creative potential (Starko 2010).

Creative production consists of cognitive factors such as selecting, relating, combining, evaluating, and retaining information that can be taught. Creativity also consists of psychological factors such as flexibility, perseverance, and willingness to take risks. Finally, environmental factors whereby communities and schools value children’s unique personalities by encouraging “coloring outside the lines” and developing creative potential through varied, rich, and diverse learning opportunities also contribute to the creative process. Even though many educators “express strong approval for creativity in theory… in practice, the situation is different” (Cropley 2010, 297). The inherent values of creativity such as novelty, questioning, and dissatisfaction with the status quo may threaten teachers’ self-image and be unwelcomed in the classroom, a condition called the “dark side of creativity” (Cropley 2010, 304).

SCHOOL LIBRARY PROGRAMS AND CREATIVITY

By now, it is readily apparent that creativity is very complex. Even though a ten-step bulleted list does not await school librarians eager to nurture students’ creative potential, there are, nevertheless, useful guidelines. First, fostering children’s creative potential begins with school librarians who care. Caring school librarians create safe and interesting learning environments that allow students to explore, innovate, and question. Caring school librarians realize that learning cannot be rushed. Caring school librarians collaborate and brainstorm with their colleagues to share knowledge of the curriculum, draw upon the experiences of students that become the basis for inquiry, and develop engaging and intrinsically motivating opportunities to learn. Caring school librarians build strong collections that support students’ questions. Caring school librarians are leaders who advocate for the continued development of the school library and its unique place in the learning environment of the school.

A second suggestion for school librarians is to embrace the openness, flexibility, and risk taking of creativity and learn as much as possible about the many aspects of creativity. The references identified at the end of this article as well as the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner are good starting points for school librarians (AASL 2007). Although the focus on the Standards is inquiry, creativity is reflected throughout this document. Characteristics of creative people and their behaviors such as openness, intrinsic motivation, collaboration, problem-finding/posing/solving, knowledge acquisition, perseverance, and divergent thinking are represented as outcomes for students, but these are as important, if not more important, for school librarians who model these behaviors for students.

A third suggestion for school librarians, endeavoring to establish an environment of curious delight, is to encourage students to pose questions and solve problems. The essence of the creative thinking process is problem finding—”the identification and framing of problems” central to the creative thinking process (Starko 2010, 29). Rather than teachers selecting research topics for students, having students identify the problems to be researched is more likely to foster creativity. “Creativity is often associated with the ability to solve problems… But… many significant creative advances result from problem finding, when the problem is not known in advance, but emerges from the process of the work itself” (Sawyer 2006, 183). Problem finding that fuels intrinsic motivation, an essential ingredient of creativity, is a challenge when students are assigned topics and projects and given specific instructions on how to proceed, especially when the message is that there is only one right way. The challenge for school librarians is to influence classroom teachers to assign problem finding inquiry projects that encourage students to joyously explore and innovate even when a “covering the curriculum” attitude often prevails in schools.