Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling: Innovative Training Programs for School Settings

118 Pages·2020·2.272 MB·English

by  Alessandro Antonietti, Paola Pizzingrilli, Chiara Valenti

Enhancing Creativity
Through Story-Telling
Innovative Training
Programs for
School Settings
Edited by
Alessandro Antonietti
Paola Pizzingrilli · Chiara Valenti
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture
Series Editors
Vlad Petre Gla˘veanu
Department of Psychology and Counselling
Webster University Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
Brady Wagoner
Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Both creativity and culture are areas that have experienced a rapid
growth in interest in recent years. Moreover, there is a growing interest
today in understanding creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon and
culture as a transformative, dynamic process. Creativity has traditionally
been considered an exceptional quality that only a few people (truly)
possess, a cognitive or personality trait ‘residing’ inside the mind of the
creative individual. Conversely, culture has often been seen as ‘outside’
the person and described as a set of ‘things’ such as norms, beliefs,
values, objects, and so on. The current literature shows a trend towards
a different understanding, which recognises the psycho-socio-cultural
natureofcreativeexpressionandthecreativequalityofappropriatingand
participating in culture. Our new, interdisciplinary series Palgrave Studies
in Creativity and Culture intends to advance our knowledge of both
creativity and cultural studies from the forefront of theory and research
withintheemergingculturalpsychologyofcreativity,andtheintersection
between psychology, anthropology, sociology, education, business, and
cultural studies. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture is accepting
proposals for monographs, Palgrave Pivots and edited collections that
bring together creativity and culture. The series has a broader focus than
simply the cultural approach to creativity, and is unified by a basic set of
premises about creativity and cultural phenomena.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14640
· ·
Alessandro Antonietti Paola Pizzingrilli
Chiara Valenti
Editors
Enhancing Creativity
Through Story-Telling
Innovative Training Programs for School Settings
Editors
Alessandro Antonietti Paola Pizzingrilli
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
Catholic University of the Sacred Catholic University of the Sacred
Heart Heart
Milan, Italy Milan, Italy
Chiara Valenti
Department of Psychology
Catholic University of the Sacred
Heart
Milan, Italy
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture
ISBN 978-3-030-63012-6 ISBN 978-3-030-63013-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3
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Preface
Sincethe50softhepastcentury,theneedtopromotecreativityinpeople
has been stressed and many attempts have been made to devise methods,
techniquesandprocedurestoenhanceindividualandgroupcreativityand
to test the efficacy of such approaches. Educating creativity became one
of the most salient goals of school instruction. The interest towards the
possibility to foster creativity grew up further and nowadays it is still one
of the eminent topics in education. Why is it still important to try to
stimulate creativity?
It is argued that habitual behaviours and thoughts may not be appro-
priate in a world that changes rapidly and where people have to face new
challenges almost on a daily base. New answers to new questions must
be rapidly found. These responses are expected to be faster and more
adequate from creative individuals. Flexibility and imagination should be
the qualities of the leaders of tomorrow. Hence, schools and companies
are expected to prepare young people to develop those skills. Moreover,
creativity seems to be particularly necessary in times of crisis. Because of
the absence of traditional resources and opportunities, escape routes—
which so far were not prefigured—are needed. Thus, it is hoped that
someone may devise new paths, produce new discoveries, identify new
strategies which can open unexpected horizons and allow persons to face
difficulties and impasses, even where no way out can apparently be seen.
Asecondsetofreasonsthatjustifytheattentionthatschoolsshouldpay
to creativity is as follows. Often parents, teachers and principals complain
v
vi PREFACE
of poverty of ideas that students show. They complain that behaviours
are conformist and that judgements are aligned to the common way of
thinkingandfeeling,withoutanypersonalreflection.Educatingcreativity
isproposedasanantidotetothissituation.Itaimstostimulateapersonal
processing of the environmental stimuli so to overcome existing models
and to explore new possibilities. Creativity challenges the individual,
who is asked to ground his/her life on him/herself—on his/her beliefs,
desires, dreams—and get to create something that can then be shared
with others, starting from an internal and original source. Creativity asks
personstoexposeandexpressthemselvesstartingfromwhatcharacterises
anddistinguishesthem.Thehopeisthatgivingtheindividualtheoppor-
tunity to explain his/her way of seeing, thinking and acting can help
him/her to become aware of his/her potential, so to be an active agent,
but not just a passive observer, of his/her world. This should hopefully
be a way to gain autonomy, independence and security in life.
A third reason supporting the need to promote creativity refers to the
linkbetweencreativityandwell-being.Itiswellknownthatcreativeabil-
ities are a powerful resource for resilience, i.e. the ability to cope with
challengingsituations,evendramatic,sotonotonlyovercomethem,but
changing them in opportunities for development and learning. Environ-
mental or historical circumstances of deprivation, or even more simply
limitations or stressful situations, stimulate the ability to devise creative
remedies and expedients or to reinterpret the current condition in a new
way to succeed despite the external adversities. The perception of being
abletocopewithheavysituationsandbeingabletoplayanactiveroleis,
inaproactiveandnotjustreactiveperspective,acomponentofsubjective
well-being.Thisisaccompaniedbyperceptionofcontrol,senseofagency,
autonomy, adequate self-efficacy and self-esteem, which are aspects that
creativitypromotes.Inaddition,wemustnotforgetthemotivatingforce
that a creativity process requires—as well as the sensations of pleasure
andsatisfactionorfulfilmentthatexertingcreativityproduces—arefurther
aspects which increase well-being.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that creative skills are generally
more enhanced in children and adolescents affected by some neurodevel-
opmental disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Atten-
tion Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or dyslexia (Cancer &
Antonietti, 2019; Cancer, Manzoli, & Antonietti, 2016; Manzoli &
Antonietti, 2016). As a consequence, such skills might be appreci-
ated and stressed to support the self-representation of students with
PREFACE vii
those disorders (and also the representation that parents and educa-
tors have of the students in question) by leading them to recognise
that, despite the deficits associated to the disorder, they have some
potentialities. Further, it is possible to engage them in creative activ-
ities, where they should excel, to motivate them. Rehabilitation activ-
ities can become more interesting for them if presented in a creative
way as well. Cultivating the creative aptitude of these students can
result also in providing them strategies they can apply to address school
works in non-standard manners, which match the way they process
stimuli and reason, so to circumvent the difficulties produced by the
disorder.
Two main approaches can be followed in order to lead people to
learn to be creative (Parnes & Harding, 1972). The first approach orig-
inates from suggestions provided by active pedagogies and, more specif-
ically, by the learning-through-discovery movement. The main purpose
is to arrange learning settings to induce individuals to express personal
ideas, to freely imagine unusual situations, to look for new and not
obvious solutions to problems. Usually no specific materials are devised
for these aims; Educators are generally invited to modify traditional ways
of managing learning activities by paying attention to their attitudes and
communication styles, so to create a climate which facilitates learners’
expressivity and ideational fluency (Barron, 1968). The second approach
consists in employing sets of exercises useful for stimulating creative ways
of thinking. For instance, learners are asked to devise several manners to
useagiventool,tofigureoutpossibleendsofanuncompletedtaleandto
find alternative linguistic expressions for the situations described. Funny
games, curious experiments and practical trials are employed to stimu-
latecreativity,sometimesthroughthemanipulationofconcretematerials,
graphical signs and visual patterns.
Six main questionable assumptions seem to be shared by many of the
past attempt to enhance people’s creativity:
1.Creativity consists of a unique mental mechanism. Thus, people can
betrainedinsuchasinglemechanism.Forinstance,asinglecreative
technique like brainstorming (Osborn, 1957)—one of the well-
known creativity techniques, focused on the free, abundant produc-
tion of bizarre ideas in order to promote innovation-—is proposed
as a general approach for developing creative ideas and skills.
2.Trainees are like a tabula rasa, that is, before being instructed they
knowvirtuallynothingabouthowtobecreative;Theyaremeantas
viii PREFACE
havingnoideasoropinionsaboutcreativestrategiesandarenotable
to control them. All this has to be “imprinted” into their allegedly
“empty” minds.
3.Even though trainees are instructed with non-ecologically valid
materials (such as puzzles, riddles and so on), the training
programmes can succeed in prompting the subsequent spontaneous
transfer of creative strategies to everyday situations.
4.The development of creative thinking can be induced by simply
asking trainees to perform a specific mental operation a given
numberoftimes.Inotherwords,gettingsomepracticeinexecuting
an operation should be sufficient to allow people to learn it.
5.Creativityisonlyamatterofcognitiveprocesses.Therefore,trainees
must be taught only to activate particular kinds of cognitive oper-
ations, without any reference to the complex interaction of these
operations with other cognitive processes, emotion, motivation and
the context.
6.Creativity can be promoted as a general ability, without making
reference to specific domains.
Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that the traditional
programmes designed to stimulate creativity often failed to reach their
goals. In fact, ordinary situations where creative thinking is needed
are usually complex situations that involve multiple mental operations.
Furthermore,ineverydaylifeexplicithintstoemploytherelevantstrategy
are seldom given, so that individuals need to be able to identify by
themselves the specific features of the situation in question and choose
the appropriate way to deal with it. Finally, individuals must not only
know how to think creatively, but also must want, namely, be inclined
or motivated to process situations creatively. These remarks stressed the
need for a different approach to promote creativity. More precisely,
various components have to be identified in creativity; More attention
to common reasoning and to complex real-life situations is required; The
role of metacognition in the acquisition of new competencies has to be
highlighted.
On these grounds, in order to produce in trainees a stable aptitude
to think and behave creatively in extra-training contexts, it seems that
educational tools should:
PREFACE ix
1.Developanintegratedstructureofvariousmentalmechanisms,each
playingaroleinaparticularkindofsituationorinaparticularphase
of the creative process;
2.Usematerialsthatmimicreal-lifesituationsor,atleast,helptrainees
to recognise the relationship between the training tasks and such
situations;
3.Consider individuals’ spontaneous beliefs and tendencies towards
creative thinking and begin teaching from their naïve creative
competencies, with the hope of changing spontaneous beliefs,
tendencies and strategies by means of an internal restructuring
process;
4.Show a metacognitive sensibility, that is, train learners not only to
perform creative strategies, but also to control their execution (for
instance, to select the strategy to be applied and to monitor its
application);
5.Encourage a creative attitude, e.g. encourage learners to accept the
risks and discomforts that creativity involves, to avoid the tendency
to stick to familiar responses and to look for novelty.
Variousattemptstointegratecognitive,emotionalandpersonalityaspects
of thinking have been made (Antonietti, Colombo & Memmert, 2013).
A constructivist point of view—aimed at substituting the spontaneous
beliefsandtendenciesofanindividualwithnewandevolvedstrategiesby
meansofaninternalrestructuringprocess—issharedbymanycontempo-
rary creativity programmes. The features of current training materials are
in agreement with the issues discussed previously. First, they induce indi-
viduals to learn a set of reasoning strategies that can result in a creative
way of thinking. Further, they make people aware of the strategies they
employ, of their relevance, of their benefits and costs. In other words,
the programmes should stimulate a metacognitive attitude. They also try
toencourageautonomyinthemanagementofthinkingstrategies.More-
over,thecriticalsituationswherelearnersaretrainedtobecreativearereal
situationsorhaveobviouscounterpartsinreallife.Finally,theapplication
of a given thinking technique is linked to the development of a corre-
sponding attitude, such as to be open to the experience, to recognise the
emotional states, to look for novelty or to accept contradictions.
Experimental investigations carried out to test the validity of such
training materials generally showed that a larger increase of creativity