Why Creative Teaching is About Change in the System
Have you ever heard of the participatory framework of creativity?
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome Dr. Michael Hanchett Hanson, a developmental psychologist, author, and leader of the Participatory Creativity Lab. Among many other notable roles, Michael is one of the leading advocates for the participatory framework of creativity, emphasizing the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change.
Listen in to hear Michael break down the participatory framework of creativity and how it can be applied to educational environments and maker spaces. He highlights how the participatory framework of creativity fosters a continual creative process in a child’s day-to-day life and helps students become aware of the creative processes happening in their classroom.
Michael also sheds light on a few ways to support teachers’ creativity, then shares what he learned from writing his new book, “Creativity and Improvised Educations: Case Studies for Understanding Impact and Implications”.
Michael’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
- Think about it as creativity in the service of good education, not education to produce creative people. If people are well educated and deeply engaged in a domain, they will have ideas.
- The combination of formal, traditional education and self-directed learning is different in each case, but both are absolutely necessary.
- Really good education is understanding the deep questions that drive domains of knowledge.
Michael Hanchett Hanson
Guest Bio
Michael is a developmental psychologist; Director of the Masters Concentration in Creativity and Cognition at Teachers College, Columbia University; leader of the Participatory Creativity Lab (www.participatorycreativitylab.org); and a founding board member and Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI).
Michael is one of the leading advocates for the participatory framework of creativity, which emphasizes the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change. He has written on the history of the construct of creativity within psychology; creativity in education; the ideological uses of the construct; ironic thought patterns as a creative heuristic, and creative practices in the construction of the self. His most recent book, “Creativity and Improvised Educations: Case Studies for Understanding Impact and Implications”, looks at case studies of creative work across a variety of domains and what these cases can teach us about the roles of education in lifelong creative development.