SCHOOL EDUCATION OBJECTIVES, CREATIVITY AND OPEN EDUCATION SYSTEMS

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SCHOOL EDUCATION OBJECTIVES, CREATIVITY AND OPEN
EDUCATION SYSTEMS

• Janez Justin

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The educationists permanent call for change in
the educational process

• The content of that call
• productive thinking
• critical thinking
• problem solving
• creativity etc.

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A 1950s description of school education
objectives

• Arguments in terms of the needs and demands of
  society point out that we cannot expect to
  progress unless we develop the creative
  potentialities of the entire population. This is
  partly a problem of identifying creative talent,
  but it also is one of exploring the nature of
  productive thinking and of finding better ways of
  cultivating it. (Bloom, 1956)

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A classification of the pupils thinking

• 1. knowledge
• 2. comprehension
• 3. application
• 4. analysis
• 5. synthesis
• 6. evaluation

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The fifth class synthesis

• Synthesis is associated with
• creative thinking
• uniqueness
• new patterns
• productive thinking
• problem solving
• discoveries

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An equation

• Interest in operational objectives interest in
  assessement systems

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The first criticism

• 1. An obsession with operational objectives gives
  rise to pre-packaged learning modules enabling
  quantitative assessment of student performance.
• 2. The teachers and students make efforts towards
  mastery of pre-defined knowledge.
• 3. This undermines curiosity, imagination,
  creativity, and criticism. We thus put the pupils
  on an intellectual diet.

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The second criticism

• 1.The lower end objectives knowledge,
  comprehension, application are meant for those
  whose fate is to become fully functioning
  consumers and production workers.
• 2.The higher end objectives analysis,
  synthesis, evaluation are meant for those who
  are to become political and business leaders.

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A question, an answer

• A question
• Is it true that in the educational process that
  is piloted by detailed, meticulously assessed
  objectives there is little room for pupils
  creativity?
• An answer
• The question is ill-formed. It is based on a sort
  of semantic slippage. We are in fact dealing with
  two different types of creativity.

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A false equationknowledge information

• We are awash in data. A little of it is
  information. A smidgen of this shows up as
  knowledge. Combined with ideas, some of that is
  actually useful.

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The thinking process

• The mind does not think with data and
  information, it thinks with concepts that imply
  points of view and perspectives.
• Concepts are units of theories that provide us
  with versions of the world.

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The school and other contexts

• The school is a specific context where just one
  among many possible versions of the world is
  constructed for the pupils.
• In other contexts local communities and
  industries, public services etc. different
  concepts circulate, establishing sometimes
  different perspectives and creating different
  versions of the world.

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The two types of creativity

• The creativity A
• Pupils make synthesis within a single context
  (i.e. school) and single version of the world
• The creativity B
• Pupils make synthesis while dealing with several
  contexts and versions of the world

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Questions that remain to be answered

• Should we pursue both types of creativity, and if
  so, what shares should they have in the education
  process?
• How can we make sure that the creativity B
  resulting from association of different contexts
  does not interfere with the creativity A that is
  limited to the academic context?
• What strategy should be used in order to
  establish an open education system in which the
  two types of creativity complement each other?