1.4 Stimulating learners’ creativity and value creation

Entrepreneurial minds are restless in their will to create new or better solutions and outputs. Sometimes this means seeking and testing various ideas, and opening one’s mind to alternative ideas.
The 30 circles challenge is a a nice warm up activity that suits all ages (just remember to give more time to younger students). You can ask your students how many drew a funny face, how many a sun, or ask them if they want to share some ideas that they are particularly proud of. Another follow up from this activity could be to pair the students and ask them to compare their outputs, looking out for similarities and differences.

Have you ever wondered what creativity is and how it may be defined? Dominic Wyse, professor at UCL in the UK, has been working on the topic for several years. In his inaugural professorial lecture in 2014, he explains that originality and value are undeniable features of creativity. Dominic defines creativity as “a person’s ability to create something that is regarded by appropriately qualified people as original and of value” . He considers that teachers are the “qualified people” that are asked to judge the creative outputs and processes of their students.

 In the context of entrepreneurial learning and of this MOOC, we think of creativity as possibility thinking, the “what if?”. We consider that creative processes enable us to generate ideas, and that idea and possibility generation is central for enterprising students (and teachers).

Creativity can be fostered or nurtured. At the same time, it can be stifled or scorned. We would like you to reflect on creativity in the classroom. In discussing this, we would like to apply the Reverse thinking method (which is actually a method for creative idea generation).

As the term ‘reverse thinking’ itself suggests, instead of adopting the logical, normal manner of looking at a challenge you reverse it, and think about opposite ideas. For instance, if I want to find ways to lose weight, I might ask myself the question “how can I put on more kilos?”.

This method for generating ideas is easier and generally more fun. It lowers fear of saying the wrong thing (as you are talking about bad examples) and stimulate wider dialogue. It also allow us to look at things from a different perspective.

How schools (or education) might be discouraging creativity? in this Tricider, ideas are shared.

Boosting a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship in your students - European Schoolnet Academy Mooc