The Creative Curriculum


“We learn from our experience … if we reflect upon our experience.” John Dewey


Seymour Papert, Director, Epistemology and Learning Group, MIT advocates that the first thing you have to do is give up the idea of curriculum, where curriculum means that you have to learn ‘this’ on a given day. We need to replace it with a system where you learn ‘this’ when you need it. “We put kids in a position where they are actually using the knowledge that they are getting to understand real life problems and develop novel solutions”. (George Lucas Education Foundation 2001)

The Lifelong Kindergarten – Massachusets Institute of Technology

Getting students creating has been the core work of Mitch Resnick and the Lifelong Kindergarten team at the MIT Media Laboratory. The Creative Thinking Cycle provides the foundation for the products and projects developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten team.


The Lifelong Kindergarten is continually looking at ways to create technologies that support students becoming more creative. The two major pieces of technology that were viewed and discussed on visiting the MIT Media Laboratory were Crickets and Scratch.


Crickets, whose older cousin is the LEGO Mindstorm Kit, allow students in a simple way to gather data from the world around them using sensors and then to create objects that respond to this data collection. In the process of creation, children learn important science and engineering concepts but also engage in the process of making something that was in their imagination become a reality. In this way they are interacting with the Creative Thinking Spiral.


Scratch is simple programming language, based on building block instructions. MIT has developed an online community of Scratch users where students share their creations. Scratch and the Scratch community, from a simplistic perspective, allow students to create online games and presentations. On further examination Scratch is another way technology has allowed students to simply act on their imagination.


In practice the results prove the benefits of embedding creativity into the curriculum. Chris Garrity from the Lifelong Kindergarten, MIT Media Laboratory runs an afternoon Scratch club at Jonas Clarke Middle School, Lexington, Massachusetts. Club member numbers are bursting as students enjoy attending.


Students in the Scratch club are involved in developing their own online game or presentation. Students worked on their own projects but within a framework of collaboration, as they help each other solve challenges they face in their individual projects. The students were all very much engaged in what they were doing but above all else these students were motivated to learn. The students attending the club were motivated to turn up on a Friday afternoon and create.


Upon interviewing a number of the students it became obvious that they had taken control of their learning and were enjoying the experience. Words like ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’ made their way into the conversation and the students were talking about intricate mathematics and variables. These were not students who had a particular gift or interest in maths, but simply average students really wanting to complete their own projects. The reason for such motivation must be put down to the motivating energy which is derived when one is in control of one’s own learning.


Students worked in the Creative Thinking Spiral. They imagined a project and now wanted to create it. They had a personal interest in seeing their project become a reality. Furthermore the fact that they were to post their project to the thriving online Scratch community meant that within themselves they reflected on their final product, setting standards and eliciting feedback from their peers. These students were not learning about the world through a textbook or just by talking about it, instead they were active participants.

King Middle School, Portland, Maine - Expeditions.

At King Middle School all students have a laptop as part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, the details of which will be presented in the Physical Classroom chapter. It is not just laptops in the hands of students that have made a difference to the learning of students at this school. It is what they are doing with these laptops.


Each year teachers plan ‘Expeditions’ for students to be involved in. These expeditions are based on students solving real life problems. Examples of recent expeditions include:


Teachers at the school develop Expeditions collaboratively. Faculties come together to develop cross-curricular units that are more significant for students. Furthermore the units are specific to the context of students at King Middle School. They are not a set of units being pushed at the students or teachers, instead the units take into account the students at the school.


Kings Middle School is an exemplar when it comes to curriculum development for a creative society. The students are using technology to support all their learning. They are involved in rich, open-ended, and most importantly real life ‘Expeditions’. Students are learning to make connections between disciplines in the real world. They are encouraged to take risks and imagine solutions to real life problems and then test their hypotheses.


At King Middle School the line between real life and school life is blurred – what better way to prepare students for the 21st Century than to have them involved as ‘apprentice creator – citizens of the real world’?


There are 24 languages other than English spoken by students attending King Middle School and 60 per cent of students qualify for free lunches - this is as a measure of disadvantage and minority grouping. Since the introduction of expeditionary learning the King Middle School’s results on Maine Standardised Tests have shifted from being in the bottom one third of the state to being in the top one third of the state. This confirms that creative, ‘hands-on’, real and collaborative learning further reinforces standard learning but it also encourages and promotes deeper learning.

River Valley Middle School, New Brunswick, Canada – using multimodal texts

At River Valley Middle School, teachers have immersed themselves in a creative curriculum. They have placed great emphasis on using film and photography to engage students. The teaching staff at River Valley believes that by appealing to and nurturing the creativity in students they will hook them into learning. This practical implementation of a creative curriculum has shown that it is engaging and reconnects students to school in authentic ways.


The culmination of the students’ work is celebrated in an authentic way at an annual student video and photography festival.


Students’ work in video and photography projects is then transferred into their learning in other curriculum areas. Teachers have noted that the students are transferring the knowledge and skills they are learning in filmmaking and photography to their other classes e.g. students are producing music videos for their French language class.


Computer Clubhouse – New York & Boston

Two Computer Clubhouses were visited, one in New York and another in Boston. The Computer Clubhouses aim to provide a creative and safe after-school learning environment. They have been strategically placed in order to serve young people from under-served communities. The Clubhouses do not simply provide a place for students to go after school as an alternative to being on the streets, instead the Computer Clubhouses provide adult mentors who help young people explore their own ideas, develop skills and build confidence.


The flagship Computer Clubhouse was established in 1993 by The Computer Museum in collaboration with the MIT Media Laboratory. The Intel Corporation provides funding support.


Walking into a Computer Clubhouse you are greeted by an array of digital portraits on the walls. There are students of a range of ages in the Clubhouse. One group is working in the sound studio cutting a CD, others are writing lyrics and a score for a song, another group is working on developing a computer platform game using Scratch, yet another student is painting a sneaker and is being mentored by a volunteer from Nike.


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Figure 8 - from top. Computer Clubhouse artwork. Sneaker designing. The sound studio.

he Clubhouses are not simply providing a place kids can go and ‘hang out’ after school, they are providing a creative curriculum which students can immerse themselves in. When students first come to the Clubhouse, the director will greet them, introduce them to other students and give them a choice of projects they may like to be involved in. Projects are creative in nature. The focus is not on teaching computer skills but on creativity.


Computer Clubhouses have had a positive impact on students. After interviewing current and past students it was obvious that Computer Clubhouses served to broaden horizons. Computer Clubhouses are bridging the digital divide. One student commented “I never thought I would finish high school and now I am at university. The Clubhouse taught me that is was ok to be creative. It was worth something.”

The Computer School, New York

The Computer School aims to provide students with “the means to develop meaningful projects, the latitude to err and correct, the time to edit and revise, the atmosphere to plan and ruminate, and the support to critique and accept criticism.”


The computer school does this once again by focusing on a creative, interconnected curriculum, where students are involved in cross-curricular projects. The Computer School has successfully used blogs, wikis and various other web 2.0 tools to support student creativity.

Andrew Churches’ Digital Blooms

Andrew Churches, Curriculum Manager Computer Studies and ICT PD Cluster Co-director, Kristin School, Albany Auckland, New Zealand has produced a very practical and extremely useful guide that aligns the creativity level of Blooms to appropriate digital activities. This is extremely useful when developing a creative curriculum. (Churches 2007)

The role of the teacher - characteristics for creative learning


“A turtle makes progress when it sticks its neck out.” Anonymous


"A teacher might be the most positive thing in a child's day.” Gordon Wagner, Jersey Public School, Ontario, Canada.


A pertinent question asked during all school visits was what characteristics are vital in teachers in order to provide students with the greatest success in the 21st century. The numerous principals that were interviewed all came back to a common set of teacher characteristics. Teachers must be:


Above all they must be passionate about teaching and learning and they must be creative, willing to take calculated risks in their practice in order to improve student learning.


Furthermore the best teachers, the ones who have made and will make the greatest impact on their students and give them the greatest chance of success, are the ones who are not only good learners but who see themselves firstly as learners and then as teachers. They are the ones facilitating learning, creating an engaging curriculum and learning alongside their students.


The occupations that our students will undertake in the future have not yet been invented. How are teachers supposed to prepare them for this continually changing and evolving world? The best way is to establish them as lovers of learning with an explicit metacognition of their own learning. If our goal in schools is to raise learners then teachers need to be master learners and students their apprentices.

The Role of School Management in Fostering Creativity



The role of the principal and supervising teachers

In the same way that teachers need to provide a safe environment for their students to take risks in’ and subsequently work creatively, principals and supervising teachers must do the same for their teaching staff.


Gordon Wagner, principal, Jersey Public School, Ontario, Canada explains: “The bar has been raised here because we have given teachers the time to become experts". Wagner, an exemplar in his field, has seen results for students from Jersey Public School steadily improve. This is not only due to the dedication and characteristics of his teachers but also to his own ability in providing them with a safe environment in which to become experts, to get creative with their practice and reflect on quality teaching and learning. Gordon provides clear direction and vision without losing sight of the students.


The community Wagner serves faces the many hurdles presented by a low socio-economic status community. According to Statistics Canada, 30 per cent of the community has not completed high school, poverty rates are significantly higher and more children tend to be identified 'at risk,' compared to any other area in the region. Despite these challenges, good leadership, supporting the efforts of his teachers and nurturing their passion for teaching and learning has resulted in improved results.


King Middle School Principal, Mike McCarthy, who envisioned the school ‘expeditionary learning’ detailed earlier in this document, also related that for schools to get the best out of their students, teachers must be given time to collaborate and contemplate and then create engaging and enriching experiences for students. The principal can make this happen.