In our first post, we provided an overview of Newsweek’s coverage of America’s creativity crisis, which highlighted the crucial need for creativity and innovation in solving real-world problems. We began to explore skills and processes that have been associated with creativity and appreciate how your comments added to the discussion. In this post, we’ll discuss specific learning and creativity theories that provide a foundation for designing media that fosters children’s creativity.

Divergent thinking is our cognitive ability to think outside the box and see things not for what they are, but for what they could be. Imagine a brick – the first things that come to mind might be: Red, Rectangular, Clay, and Building Material. If challenged to think of creative uses for that brick, however, one might look beyond the brick’s aesthetic and symbolism to its base properties (Heavy, Compact, Relatively Impermeable) and determine that a brick could make an excellent paperweight or even an anchor. If a “creative” idea is one that is both novel and practical, then divergent thinking like this is a critical component of creative output.

So where does divergent thinking originate and how can we improve these skills? Many child development experts believe that play may be the answer to both questions. We put children’s play into three categories: games, structured play, and imaginative play. Traditionally, games are computer or rules driven, with little input or creativity from the child. Structured play is common with action figures, dolls, and play sets that have pre-defined narrative and identities. Although kids can make up stories for these characters, the personalities, and storylines often provide a more closed experience. Imaginative play, on the other hand, is most common with blocks, clay, and other flexible objects or toys that rely on the child to create, direct, and act out their own fantasies as producers of creative content, and not just consumers/participants.

Fortunately, over the last few decades, educators and software designers have begun to move away from linear and scripted game experiences towards more open-ended and child-directed software titles that challenge and empower kids’ divergent thinking skills. This new category of games and applications is often referred to as “Constructionist Learning.”

Constructionism is a learning approach inspired by Constructivism, Piaget’s theory that kids learn by creating their own mental models to make sense of the world around them. Seymour Papert, at the MIT Media Lab, expanded this theory by introducing Constructionism, a process by which kids can “learn by doing.” Constructionist Learning tools position users as active creators, designers, and builders of content and knowledge as opposed to passive recipients. Through this creative experience children work in a more iterative way by “debugging” and “modding” their creations, often discovering surprising concepts and solutions.

Why is this so important to creative learning and learning in general? Well, if kids learn best through this iterative design process then Constructionist tools are a powerful way to improve divergent thinking skills. In addition, when combined with the distributive power of the Internet, Constructionist Learning tools offer opportunities for sharing and peer collaboration, known to increase creativity — and learning as well. Coincidentally, the Constructionism 2010 conference begins today.

Other significant theories that support creative problem solving include “design thinking” and “systems thinking.” Spearheaded by organizations such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute and design firms as IDEO, design-thinking has emerged as a process that fosters innovation. It is a multidisciplinary approach that applies tools, such as brainstorming, rapid prototyping and scenario building, to identify problems and craft solutions. System thinking, a central tenet of design thinking, encourages taking a whole system perspective in dealing with an integrated, complex world. Designers consider the relationship between wholes and their parts, identify interactions between all the relevant parts, and understand the consequences of these interactions. A growing number of experts believe systems thinking is crucial in addressing the greatest social and global problems of the 21st century. Game scholars, such as James Paul Gee and Katie Salen, believe that game design and game play may be an effective approach developing this essential skill.

As you can imagine, the theories and processes described above are highly applicable for the design of digital media, both games and kids’ creativity tools. As we think about how to address America’s creativity crisis, we need to consider these different approaches and explore how they might intersect in order to better support children’s creativity at home and at school. In our next post, we’ll discuss the market for promising technology supported creativity tools for kids.

Further Reading:

Logo Programming Language: one of the earliest Constructionist learning tools developed by Seymour Papert at the MIT Media Lab. This work was the impetus for software such as Lego Mindstorms and MicroWorldsEX, as well as MaMaMedia.com, a participatory kids’ site founded by Idit Harel, one of Papert’s previous doctoral student at MIT.

Colleen Macklin and John Sharp have used the Activate! platform to pilot a game design curriculum for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Gamestar Mechanic is a game for middle and high schoolers to learn basic game design skills and is often cited as an example of how game design supports the development of systems thinking.

OpenIDEO, recently launched by IDEO, an open platform for creative thinkers from various disciplines to tackle complex real world problems, such as the childhood obesity crisis to affordable education in India.

Quest to Learn (q2l) school for digital kids (6th-12th gr), grounded in systemic reasoning, critical thinking, and other methodologies for the fostering of design and innovation.

Other blogs in this series:

Transforming Children’s Learning to Address America’s Creativity Crisis

Ann My Thai is the Assistant Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. She is also the lead author of the Center’s report on digital games and children’s health and learning, Game Changer. Andy Russell, a Cooney Center Prizes finalist,  is an educational media designer with a special interest in developing toys and tools that empower kids to express themselves creatively through play. Andy Russell is a Co-Founder of Launchpad Toys and has worked for companies like Hasbro and Sony PlayStation to design playful learning experiences for kids.

Waterloo Labs have designed a system to play Mario only using eye movements. Distinct from previous eye tracking systems such as the EyeWriter that use imaging to detect where you are looking, this program attaches electrodes to your eye muscles to control movement in the Nintendo Entertainment System. 

Check out how they did it

Do video games cause violence behavior in children? Are they ruining their minds? Despite scientific evidence that refutes these assumptions, why does the media still think video games are damaging for kids?

That question was addressed by Scott Steinbergin, tech consultant and founder of GameExec magazine and Game Industry TV, in a great CNN piece a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, check it out:  Why Does the Media Still Think Video Games are Bad for Kids?

In addition, Sarah Jackson, a blogger at MacArthur Foundation’s Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning went a little deeper in her August 4th post.

Are you aware of any findings that were not addressed in these articles?

In today’s difficult job market, which candidate is most appealing, the one who received a perfect SAT score, or the one that can offer the most creative solutions to a complex problem, such as stopping the spread of oil along the Gulf Coast?   The July 10 Newsweek magazine cover story, “The Creativity Crisis” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman, featured new evidence that American creativity has been in significant decline over the past two decades. These findings come at a time when creativity and innovation have become more important than ever for solving real-world challenges and staying competitive in the global economy. In an IBM poll of over 1,500 CEOs, creativity was ranked the #1 leadership competency for successful companies of tomorrow. Other countries in the EU and China have already taken note and are experimenting with school curriculum to prioritize creative skills. Meanwhile the American education system has renewed its focus on more rigorous curriculum standards and national testing in an effort to improve our global competitiveness.  In doing so, are we missing something essential?

Bronson and Merryman suspect the number of hours kids spend watching TV and playing video games are partly to blame for the decline in U.S. creativity, and also point to a dearth of creative activities offered in American schools. However, a number of experts believe that technology-supported tools carry vast potential to provide children with opportunities to learn and create. And with children older than 8 spending an average of about 10.5 hours a day using media outside school, we must meet children where they are in order to convert couch time at home, and seat time at school, into creative learning time.

Defining creativity is still like trying to define art: it is in the eye of the beholder. But if creativity becomes a desired outcome in children’s learning, it will be increasingly important to define what it is, what it looks like, and which practices will best foster its development. Newsweek authors defined creativity as the “production of something original and useful…to be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).” Not surprisingly, teaching and measuring creativity is a difficult endeavor. The level of variation inherent in creative output does not fit neatly into standardized testing and curriculum standards. Additionally, as Bronson and Merryman point out, creative skills have long lived in the arts education silo even though creative skills are essential in all types of learning domains from engineering to language arts. In order for America to compete globally, we need an integrative approach to fostering creativity wherever children learn and play.

The field of research on creativity is beginning to mature. One of the field’s most reliable tools to measure creativity has been Professor E. Paul Torrance’s creativity index. Since 1958, the “Torrance score” or “CQ”, has been used to measure children’s creativity through a series of 25 creative activities. Interestingly and not surprisingly, there is a strong connection to childhood creativity and one’s creative output as an adult. Childhood CQ’s correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment is three times stronger than childhood IQ. A recent analysis of over 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults by researcher Kyung Hee Kim shows that American CQ scores steadily rose until the 1990s, and since then have been trending downward, particularly among elementary-school aged children.

Kim’s research calls attention to the importance of the critical developmental period known as “middle childhood” in children’s overall development as lifelong learners. It is the same period during which many children develop a sense of self and deepen their interests and passions, as well as strengths and limitations, their academic selves begin to take root at this time, and as they compare themselves to their classmates, children who feel inferior experience a major drop in self-esteem and academic performance.   Many children in underserved communities struggle with what academic experts call the “fourth grade reading slump” during this age. Middle childhood is also when children begin to spend an increasing amount of time with digital media such as games, and where many children transition from playing casual games to more sophisticated console games. At the intersection of the creative slump, the reading slump, and the digital explosion, middle childhood should be a prime focus in efforts to reverse America’s creative decline.  High-quality technology-supported learning opportunities should be part of the solution.

To devise these solutions, we need a better understanding of the types of activities which foster children’s creativity, which features of their creative process demonstrate learning, and which features of digital media are best suited to deliver those experiences. Without a clear consensus on the skills needed to promote creativity, let’s turn to fields in which creativity is paramount, such as creative services and design firms, for insights. “Design-thinking,” advanced by proponents such as Tim Brown of IDEO, has emerged across many of these professions as a possible well-spring for creativity. It is loosely defined as a multidisciplinary approach that applies tools often used by designers (user observations, brainstorming, rapid prototyping, storytelling, and scenario building), to identify problems and craft solutions.

In response to the IBM CEO survey, the design firm Behance recently posted “The Top 5 Qualities of Productive Creatives (and How to Identify Them)“:

• – Communication skills: Ability to communicate clearly and concisely; capacity to efficiently manage communication channels (email, social media) to collaborate and influence others

• – Pro-Activeness: Ability and willingness to act, take initiative to set an idea in motion

• – Problem-solving skills: Ability to arrive at new solutions by looking beyond obvious or traditional approaches

• – Curiosity: Ability to ask the right questions that lead to solutions

• – Risk-taking: Being open to risk (and thus failure); openness to trying something new

Although they have traditionally been associated with the creative industry, design-thinking and lessons from the creative economy provide sign posts that can help educators and parents address what some observers are calling a “national creativity crisis.” This challenge is undoubtedly intertwined with those we face in teaching basic skills (reading, STEM), and critical “new” skills (such as systems thinking and collaboration). If we are to prepare children to be lifelong learners, we should investigate the potential benefits of applying these professional and pedagogical approaches together.

In my next post, I will consider how creative processes, such as design-thinking, relate to theories of children’s learning with respect to the development of technology-supported creativity activities for kids.

Other blogs in this series:

Learning Across Silos: An Integrated Approach to the Creativity Crisis 

Tech Supported Tools to Foster Kids’ Creativity

Ann My Thai is the Assistant Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. She is also the lead author of the Center’s report on digital games and children’s health and learning, Game Changer. Many thanks to Lori Takeuchi and Benjamin Stokes for their generous help with this post.

In 2006, The Edge published their picks in an article called 50 Books For Everyone In the Game Industry.

What must-have books should be added to this list?

We suggest you explore iCivics, a beautiful new series of Flash games designed to raise civic knowledge and participation. The first game “Do You Have a Right?” is designed for middle-schoolers who get to run their own law firm specializing in constitutional law.

This series was originally envisioned by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who felt there was an urgent need for students to learn about the government before they can actually participate. Justice O’Connor spoke passionately about this project in her keynote at the Games for Change 7th Annual Festival in June, “Now, less than one-fifth of high school seniors can explain how civic participation benefits our democratic system of government. Less than that can say what the purpose of the Declaration of Independence is, and it’s right there in the title! I’m worried. I don’t know about you, but that worries me and that’s how I got involved in this effort to develop some civics education on a free website available to schools all across America, a Website that includes games as part of the teaching process.”

O’Connor went on to say that she was initially skeptical of games, but sees real value for students to learn civics not just by reading, but by doing. At a time when many school districts are actually dropping the subject of government, the state of South Carolina has adopted iCivics in all of its public schools. We look forward to seeing the results of this innovative approach.

The games were designed by Filament Games, in consultation with James Paul Gee, Ph.D, a member of the Cooney Center’s National Advisory Board.

View Justice O’Connor’s Games for Change keynote speech

Read related ACLU blog post

Did you catch Michael H. Levine’s TEDxAtlanta speech back in May? In light of the fact that the event was entitled “Re: Learn” we thought it deserved a second look. In his eighteen minute talk, Michael shares three powerful trends in digital media that are revolutionizing learning. View his speech here.

Michael’s reflections:

The TEDxAtlanta experience was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate how communities can mobilize to translate innovation research, and new designs for learning into action. Convened by the leading design studio in the region, Unboundary, and bringing together over 100 leaders in education, technology, policy, media and design, the session demonstrated the power local leaders have to inspire new thinking and to spread the new ideas that matter most for children in a global and digital age

While you may enjoy this talk, the Center is going to walk the community mobilization walk.   At the Cooney Center’s next leadership forum, that will take place in Los Angeles on March 15-16, 2011, we will be inviting teams of leaders from communities around the country who are ready to develop “breakthrough learning plans” that we hope will be models for the nation.  Let us know if you have great ideas you would like us to help spread.

View Michael’s full speech on innovation in digital learning

Ming Ming Chiu of the University of Buffalo observed informal conversations between parents and children in his recent study, Inequality, family, school, and mathematics achievement: Country and student differences (Social Forces journal).

After examining familial patterns in more than 100,000 students, Chiu showed that communications around current affairs, such as the recent BP oil spill, can help boost math achievement. Through discussion, children develop “mental models of mathematical quantities and processes” which support formal instruction in the classroom, resulting in higher scores.

Read the full press release