Developing leadership for creative thinking using a teacher learning community

Our students perform extremely well in their GCSE, A-level and IB examinations and go on to study at prestigious universities around the world.  However, we have become increasingly concerned that this focus on high stakes examinations can be to the detriment of wider skill development, skills such as creative thinking, analytical thinking, resilience and curiosity that institutions such as the World Economic Forum have identified as growing in importance for future jobs.  

At Godolphin and Latymer we are keen to gain a more nuanced understanding of how cognitive science, knowledge and skills were intertwined.  To this end, since September 2022, our whole school priorities have been to develop students’ resilience and creativity.

For several years now, a key aspect of embedding our whole school priorities in day to day teaching practice has been through our teacher learning communities, TLCs.  These are based on the model of Wiliam and Leahy and consist of a group of volunteer teachers from across a range of subjects and experiences who meet after school for an hour every half term to discuss a particular aspect of educational research and how it might apply in our context.  An essential part of the process is that at the end of each meeting, teachers set an action plan for a change, often very small, they wish to make in their practice with the expectation that they feed back their findings at the start of the next meeting.  Peer observations within the group are also strongly encouraged.  One of the things I have always found most powerful about the TLCs is the lack of hierarchy; I am learning alongside my colleagues, trying out ideas, asking teachers to observe my lessons and provide me feedback..   

During 2022-23, a colleague and I chaired a TLC entitled ‘Knowledge and Creativity’ which was explicitly designed to delve into the connections between these two areas which are sometimes misrepresented as being diametrically opposed.  In our initial discussions, it became apparent that different teachers had very different conceptions of what creativity meant.  Some thought in terms of being more creative as a teacher, for example, coming up with different activities within lessons which would engage students more in learning, others linked creativity to a creative output whereas others associated creativity with critical thinking and problem solving.  In order to dig into this further, we discussed to what extent these different conceptions of creativity depended on the subject and the way in which knowledge in those subjects is built up over time.  For example, Science and Maths are much more hierarchical i.e. there are certain foundation concepts that must be understood before new material can be introduced whereas Arts and Humanities are more cumulative where the exact sequencing of knowledge is less important.   We felt that within the former, critical thinking and problem solving was more relevant to creativity whereas in the latter, it would be more appropriate to consider the creativity of pupils’ work.  Although this didn’t allow us to reach an exact consensus on a definition of creativity, it did enable us to shift focus away from the activities planned by the teacher to the impact these activities had on pupil learning.    

A turning point in our discussions was when I came across Lucas, Spencer and Stoll’s review on Creative leadership to develop creativity and creative thinking in English schools.  This review drew our attention to the distinction between creativity, creative thinking and teaching for creativity as defined by the Durham Commission on Creativity 2019 report:

Creativity: The capacity to imagine, conceive, express, or make something that was not there before. 

Creative thinking: A process through which knowledge, intuition and skills are applied to imagine, express or make something novel or individual in its contexts. Creative thinking is present in all areas of life. It may appear spontaneous, but it can be underpinned by perseverance, experimentation, critical thinking and collaboration.

Teaching for creativity: Explicitly using pedagogies and practices that cultivate creativity in young people. 

The review also introduced the group to the The Centre for Real-World Learning’s 5-dimensional model of creativity which splits creativity into five habits of mind:  inquisitive, imaginative, disciplined, collaborative and persistent.  These definitions and models helped the group to better understand what creativity meant in different subject contexts and how small changes in our practice might help to cultivate creative thinking in our students.  It was also gratifying to see how the five habits of mind and their corresponding sub-habits showed how creativity was linked to aspects of pedagogy we had been looking at for a number of years.  For example, the importance of giving and receiving feedback, critical reflection (which we saw as being linked to our work on metacognition) and resilience (which we linked to sticking with difficulty and tolerating uncertainty).  Prior to this, many of us felt that the only way to develop creativity was to completely change our teaching practices or even re-write the curriculum; helping teachers to see that they could develop creative thinking by building on things they were already doing was really powerful.  

As a result, we decided to use the five habits of mind as the basis for our 2023-24 TLC, renaming it ‘Developing Creative Thinking’ and fortuitously, in summer 2023, Creative Thinking in Schools: A Leadership Playbook was published.  Having a clear framework for developing creative thinking has increased my confidence in leading in this area and I have also really valued access to a bank of good quality resources to draw on helping us to see practical ways in which changes might be implemented in our classrooms.

One of the first things we did was to consider which habits of mind we felt we demonstrated as individuals which led to some fascinating insights into how these habits of mind manifest themselves in different ways in different areas of our lives.  We then considered which habits we were already promoting in our classrooms and which we could promote further.  As a science teacher, I reflected that my students were usually very disciplined and persistent but that I could do more to promote inquisitiveness.  We all committed to make a small change in our practice and invited each other into our lessons to observe the impact on the students.  I committed to trying a 10 minute planning task with my Year 11 group and it was wonderful to have three colleagues in the room to observe how the students responded to this more open-ended task.  We all found that observing with the five creative habits in mind provided a real focus and reflected that it made for much more fruitful discussions during our next meeting when we shared our findings from the observations.  

The success of our TLCs has always relied on a school culture which supports teacher autonomy and encourages experimentation and reflection. My experiences through running a TLC on creativity has highlighted to me that this is even more important in this area and that as leaders, we need to consider to what extent we are modelling the five creative habits of mind ourselves.  Afterall, we cannot expect to effectively develop creative thinking habits in our students unless we are championing similar characteristics in our teachers.  I might therefore be tempted to add a further definition to those proposed by the Durham Commission on Creativity:

Leadership for creativity:  Providing a school culture that celebrates all aspects of creativity and supports teachers to develop their own creativity.

Reflecting Together

• What misconceptions do you think teachers and students hold about creativity in your school?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a group of mixed subject teachers looking at creativity?

• How might a teacher learning community model be used to develop pedagogical practice within your setting?

• Does our definition of leadership for creativity resonate with your experiences?