In this article we want you to explore a novel way to foster each student’s sense of belonging by nurturing their creativity and connection.
Connection, caring, and creativity happened early in humankind’s history. Scientists believe that strong connections within small groups helped fuel an evolutionary cascade of creativity that generated humankind’s finest successes, as well as some of our epic failures. As the human species connected socially, our brain became more intensely wired to care for others. The more we cared, the more we imagined ways of creating things beyond our limited personal or even selfish experience and perspective. That foray into the experience, feelings and perspective of others produced within the brain a higher order emotion which we now call empathy.
Empathy can be a transformative force. When creatively practiced, the ability to clearly see and define the needs of others is the primary driver of meaningful ingenuity and innovation in our society today. As humans bind their success and wellbeing to those around them, a sense of belonging may flourish. In a group, a sense of belonging is an individual feeling with a collective advantage—affirming one’s sense of value, creativity, purpose, and agency. It can even affirm one’s sense of autonomy within that collective. It is easy to see how this evolutionary cycle is reciprocal. The greater the connection, the stronger the level of caring, and the more likely empathy is practiced.
In the mind of humans, it is the presence of connection, caring, and empathy where the practice of creativity becomes invigorated and made purposeful. As important as creativity is to the suite of connection, caring, and belonging, Elkonhon Goldberg in his book, Creativity1, argues that there is no central seat in the brain for this essential mindset and skill. Creativity is a neural symphony that involves many of the brain’s regions working together—including what we now know to be the misleadingly named default mode network.2 How the brain processes creative thinking is important to teachers and students alike. Connection, caring, and empathy require exposure to the questions, circumstances, perspectives, and problems that potentially activate that deep emotion—and to support their students’ creative thinking, teachers must be intentional about making sure these opportunities exist. In addition, teachers should include practices that both encourage and enhance creativity and the resulting ingenuity. Here are three important practices that teachers could include:
- Empathetic Conversations
Creativity is not born of perfection, but practice. From an evolutionary perspective, the habit of creativity is most powerful when that mindset is centered around human problems, needs and challenges. Fluency with a process to solve problems is a compass for empathy. Problem solving provides an action orientation for empathy. For design to meet someone else’s needs, we must get out of our own personal and sometimes limited vision in order “to see and to feel” another’s experience and perspective. Human-centered experiences in the classroom possess the potential to confront one’s personal ideas and frameworks by sending those ideas through the reality of another’s life and circumstances. By connecting students to real people and authentic problems, the potential for creative success is set. Here are some strategies you could use to have empathetic conversations in your classroom:
- Lean in to the conversation and be totally present. Don’t take notes while the person is talking. Listen. Express emotion. Pause if the person expresses emotion.
- Acknowledge the emotion that is present in the conversation. Verbalize your feelings, “I am trying to imagine how that must feel.” Don’t be afraid to ask, “How did that make you feel?”
- Listen and encourage. Guide but don’t unnecessarily lead the conversation. Let the interviewee tell you what they need to tell you.
- Let the person’s answers lead the discussion. For example, if someone says, “The children have no place to go and to play,” follow with the question, “Can you tell me about one child in particular?”
For more strategies to embed empathic conversations in your class, see this guide from the St. Andrew’s D!Lab.
DLab_Empathic-Design-Empathic-Conversations.pdf
- Driving Questions
If creativity has a fulcrum, it pivots on the mindset of inquiry. And the fuel of inquiry is driving questions.
A perpetual obstacle to learning can be seen in the daily routine of some classrooms. Students learn about the past, and recreate the past, but rarely engage or solve meaningful problems that exist in the present or in humankind’s imagined futures. Creativity thrives at the intersection of the known and the new—at that important intersection of a problem and a hundred different possibilities. This is the thinking process that driving questions sets up.
Known as Creative Problem Solving (CPS), inquiry driven design thrives on metacognition—using our prior knowledge and experiences to help us address the current situation we are facing or the future we are imagining. As Shirley Larkin points out in her book Metacognition in Education, “during the Creative Problem Solving process, metacognitive regulation is important to help adapt learner’s strategies… and the consideration of divergent and convergent problem solving.”3 CPS is how we respond to our driving questions.
Capturing that intersection of possibilities and solutions in the classroom space is essential, and it all begins with asking a very good driving question. Driving questions shape the mind’s ability to create. Mindsight, that important capacity to imagine something new, is fueled by the power of questioning. Questions become the starting point for the powerful process of creative thinking. Here are some interesting driving questions you could use or adapt when you are working with your students to creatively solve problems:
- What do I notice when I think of this solution?
- What is another way to solve this problem?
- If I knew I wouldn’t fail, what might I try?
- What part of this solution do I not understand yet?
- Why did I pick this solution from my other choices?
- Whose perspective have I not included in my solution?
- Space to Solve Problems for Purpose and on Purpose
Many schools that I visit have produced large and impressive maker spaces. However, what many schools lack is the purpose for that maker space. Instead of the space emerging from a philosophy of creativity and problem solving, or a connection to the broader community that the school is part of, the space emerges from a set of machines. “Making stuff “does not serve to broaden connection, meaning and empathy. It does not serve to help create a sense of belonging. Maker spaces should be the place where students’ creativity is paired with deep content, relevant skills, innovative finesse, and empathic reality, so that those skills can be aimed at all levels of problems that emerge from a wide range of people’s lived experiences.
Think of this as the rebirth of purpose, where connection, caring and empathy are aimed at other people and the needs they face. Students at all levels can and should create.
Creative expression is the soul of identity; creative expression is part of what makes us human. Creativity can be learnt by anyone, and should be taught to everyone.4 Creative expression, in which students have to apply their knowledge and skills to new contexts, can also help students learn. “Teaching students how and when to apply metacognitive strategies during the creative process… a process extended in time, helps students use their creative abilities in different dimensions of the learning process”3 Schools sometimes expect students to exist in the world of past ideas, as if there is no future to create. Instead, schools should be intentional about creating space to solve problems—problems grounded in empathy and inquiry to which each student can bringe their developing identity. Creating space for problem solving and creative classroom experiences should be one of our goals as educators.
As a simple way to make space for creativity and problem solving in your class, try out some D!Lab creativity exercises at:
DLab_Creativity-Counts-Cultivating-Your-Creativity.pdf
Conclusion
Creativity is the act of decoding new futures. As humans, evolution of our sense of empathy channeled our feeling of belonging because it allowed us to see landscapes we couldn’t otherwise see. Throughout human history, individual ingenuity and creative autonomy have led to collective advances—and continue to do so. Creating for the benefit of ourselves and others is part of what makes us us. When schools are a place where this happens, belonging is more likely to flourish.
Charles James is Design Thinking Research Lead at the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning as well as a science teacher and Director of the D!Lab at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School.
1Goldberg, E. (2018). Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation. Oxford University Press.
2Shofty, B., Gonen, T., Bergmann, E. et al. (2022). The default network is causally linked to creative thinking. Mol Psychiatry 27, 1848–1854.
3Larkin, S. (2023). Metacognition and Education: Future Trends. Routledge.
4American Psychological Association, Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education. (2015). Top 20 principles from psychology for preK–12 teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/schools/cpse/top-twenty-principles.pdf
Other works consulted:
Romero, M. and Kalmpourtzis, G. (2023) Metacognition and self-regulated learning in a manipulative robotic problem solving task. In Larkin, S., Metacognition and Education: Future Trends. (105-123). Routledge..
Preiss, D. and Carmona, B. (2023). Understanding the role of mind wandering and mindfulness in creativity. In Larkin, S., Metacognition and Education: Future Trends. (7-27). Routledge).