Creativity as an Emergent Property of Complex Educational System

Abstract

The importance of creativity in education has been discussed often in the literature. While there remains no agreed-upon definition of creativity, the psychological literature points to traits of a creative person. These include the ability to think outside the box, make connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and question norms. The literature provides several examples of classroom experiments to help foster creativity in the classroom.In science and mathematics, we can start by getting students to recognize mathematics and the sciences as being creative endeavors. While these attempts are noteworthy, they are not necessarily aligned with instructional practices. In this article, we propose that to promote creative thinking in our classrooms, we need to see our educational system as a complex system or a network of connections between different disciplines. The 20 th century notion that school and college education is rooted in discipline-based reductionism and that learning leads to specialization caters to a few, leaving a large number of students to fail out of the system. The American liberal arts educational model prides itself on giving students a holistic perspective by exposing them to various disciplines. However, merely exposing students to different ideas without having them realize the deep, underlying connections is like expecting interesting dynamics in a collection of disconnected nodes. We propose that the education system is a complex system composed of various nodes, representing different disciplines with the edges representing the flow of unifying ideas between them. Connections between the nodes allow for flow in these paths, resulting in greater opportunity for creativity, which is an emergent property of such a network. The abstract notions discussed above are illustrated by deliberate attempts (ambitious though small) made at the authors' institution to build an educational experience focused on creativity.

A Network Theory Approach to Curriculum Design

“…Therefore, the role of an effective educator lies in effectively highlighting these features and helping students make their own connections [1]. Such a pedagogy, based on a constructivist philosophy of learning, allows students to personalize learning and strive to be 'creative' which essentially amounts to 'meaning making' or generating new meaning out of old ideas [2][3][4].…”

“…They state: "Understanding increases as networks grow and as relationships become strengthened with reinforcing experiences and tighter network structuring". It has also been argued that learning through identification of similarities and differences between alternate representations of the same information can stimulate the construction of useful connections [2]. Therefore it is quite reasonable to think of education at all levels as an "adaptive and self-organizing complex system".…”

“…It is the potential to form their own bridge across different topics that is of significance here, since it relates to creativity:an oft spoken about but understudied phenomenon in higher education. Previous studies on creativity, in mathematics education in particular, have pointed to the importance of making connections as a necessary condition for creativity in the classroom [2,12,13]. The 'lego model' of creativity discussed in [2] argues for personalization of knowledge and connection between different ideas which can result in stability and longevity of understanding.…”

“…Previous studies on creativity, in mathematics education in particular, have pointed to the importance of making connections as a necessary condition for creativity in the classroom [2,12,13]. The 'lego model' of creativity discussed in [2] argues for personalization of knowledge and connection between different ideas which can result in stability and longevity of understanding. The 'connected curriculum' program based in UCL [14] espouses the importance of connections in higher education, highlighting the 'real value' of education, which lies in preparing students for the 'real world' where students must solve complex problems which do not appear under a disciplinary guise.…”