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Creativity in maths education
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- Anglia Ruskin University (ARU)
Creativity in maths education
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The purpose and value of creativity in primary maths educationThe word creativity is difficult to define. To ‘create’ means to bring into the world something
new that does not already exist or is significantly different to the previous. The first thing
that comes to mind when trying to define creativity is being artistic and good at painting
though, the Oxford dictionary (2014) defines creativity as ‘The use of imagination or
originals ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work’. This proposes that creativity
comes from the imagination, which could mean that for every person creativity is something
different. Another definition of creativity is ‘An imaginative activity fashioned so as to yield
an outcome that is of value as well as original’ (NACCCE, 1999. PP29). This confirms the
universal idea of creativity is being or doing something original; that has not been done
before. In this essay I will be outlining the value of creativity in general and how it can be
used to support children’s development. I will specifically be relating the importance of
creativity to maths education, debating both the challenges and advantages related to
teaching and developing creativity within the curriculum.
Creativity is not only difficult to define, but it is also hard to pinpoint how it actually affects a
person’s way of thinking. Researchers admit that we do not know how to fully explain the
creative power of the brain (Sternberg, 1999) which means that creative potential is
immeasurable, and there is no way of telling where creativity begins and ends. Craft (2000,
2003) directs her research towards solving this problem by developing scalable, creativity
focused platform for institutional development. However Ken Robinson argues that
creativity does not need to be assessed on the basis of how creative a person is overall, but
if you do want to judge the level of creativity and imaginativeness a person is using then you
have to do so within the framework of a specific task or subject (Azzam, 2009). This means,
for example, you can’t measure a person’s originality unless you set them a task in which
they are required to come up with an original idea. Too much focus is put into researching
what creativity is and how to inject it into existing assessable subjects, rather than giving it
its own platform to flourish.
According to Ken Robinson (2000) creativity can be seen within a set of core skills needed to
enhance future productivity and as a form of cultural capital needed for useful participation
in the wider society. He suggests creativity is extremely valuable skill needed in later life for
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, managing the problems and challenges associated with the unpredictable future economic
and social world. This is widely agreed upon and means that the matter of how to insert a
new culture of creativity is becoming extremely important within early education
(McWilliam, Tan & Dawson. 2010). The National Curriculum in England (2013, p5-6) states
“The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge
that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought
and said; and helps produce a student’s appreciation of human creativity and achievement.”
Suggesting that in terms of education the challenge for schools and social institutions is
clear - the focus of education must be on creating people who are capable of thinking and
doing new things, not simply repeating what past generations have done, securing a
sustainable future for the new generations to come (Fisher, 2004).
As well as the value of creativity on society as a whole, it also supports the healthy
development of individual children’s learning. According to the National Curriculum
Handbook for Primary and Secondary teachers (1999) Creative thinking skills enables pupils
to; generate and extend ideas, suggest hypotheses, apply imagination and look for
alternative innovative outcomes within their daily lives. Children learn to be creative by
applying knowledge to their pre-existing schema (Piaget 1936), the primary building blocks
of learning, where new information is shape and stored. For example a child may already
know a way of solving a certain sum in maths, so with the help of a teacher guiding them to
think about the problem in an innovative way, they will create new schema from the same
situation and be able to solve future equations in alternative ways. This also relates to
Vygotsky (1978) Zone of Proximal development e.g., the child can solve the problem on
their own, but with the extra bit of help from another they will be able to achieve so much
more than before (McLeod, 2009). Teaching students to be creative from a young age
encourages them to be flexible, open to change, able to adapt to new ways of doing things,
and resourceful in overcoming obstacles.
While the significance of creativity for future work forces has been widely recognised, the
specific teaching and educational processes that are meant to foster the use of creativity
within the schools are much less informed (Fisher, 2004). One of the problems with
creativity in the curriculum is the difference between the phrases teaching for creativity and
creative teaching, acknowledged by the NACCCE report (1999), which recognised that
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