We've been talking a lot in the past two days in previous forums about reforming education, improving education outputs, matching skills to the job, and so on. And we always come back to the issue of teachers. I think this is where it all starts, and this is where we have to focus. This comes at a time where most countries around the world, or most regions, are struggling with lack of teachers. We have predictions for large numbers of teachers required in the future. There's teacher shortages. We talk of quality, and we talk of the teacher's motivation. So this is a tough time for the profession, I would say. And as Wendy said, we don't have systems yet to pull in the top talent.
Empowering Teachers for Creativity [Debate WISE 2014]
Source-synced transcript for the compressed reading. Spans keep the original chronology, timestamps, and audit trail behind the public interpretation.
I think the problem right now that we face in education isn't one of resources. It's one of mindset. So the solution, if you want to bring creativity back into the classroom, if you want to encourage creativity, we have to change the mindset of... of schools. Do we want to produce workers, or do we want to produce human beings? And there's a difference. Human beings have three fundamental spiritual needs that they need to learn, they need to love, and they need to create. And these needs are just as important for their survival as the physical needs of water, food, and shelter. So I feel that nowadays, the discussion is always on strategies and techniques. But it's not on mindset. And I feel that the real solution, it doesn't require innovation, it requires a revolution in thinking. And so we need to bring back into the classroom, into schools, the sort of like motivation to create human beings.
To help inspire our children to be the creative best.
In a system where you have about 20 million pupils out of school, where you have less than 45 % in the secondary school, is creativity a luxury? I think that's the issue you're trying to raise. Does creativity occur in our classrooms in Africa? Not by design, probably by accident. The teacher sees creativity or a creative student as a very restless one that disrupts his class. Of course, it challenges the teacher's knowledge. I mean, these days, the students know more than the teachers. And so a teacher will feel threatened by that. In the African culture, creativity happens. We don't compartmentalize learning in the traditional system. So children, as they begin to grow, tries to create things on their own. So it's not that it's not there in the system, but it is not recognized and it has not been institutionalized. And we need to look into how to balance that. We need to bring this up into the system.
We seem to have a system that hardwired itself. And we're all afraid. The parents are afraid. The teacher. There's a lot of fear. And we're hardwired into a system we all believe is not working.
Systems don't focus sufficiently on teacher collaboration, even though we know that teacher collaboration is the one thing that improves learning more than anything else. And finally, when teachers do get training, too much of that training focuses on improving their knowledge rather than actually changing their habits in the classroom. So what's the result of all this? We know that too many teachers are leaving the profession burnt out. We know that this culture, this dominant paradigm, means that teachers are not making the most of the huge opportunities offered by new technologies. And we also know that the coming generation who crave creativity in their workplace are being turned off teaching as a profession. Think of one person you know, possibly a graduate, who's thinking about whether or not to teach at the moment. What will turn them on? What will help them to make that decision? To join the profession rather than to go into another profession?
And we think creativity is central to that.
The first challenge in the teaching staff was attitudinal. Have the desire to learn and to want to change the way we thought and the way we did things. And we have dedicated a lot of time to this. And we continue to do so. Sharing. The vision. And making teachers the stakeholders in this vision. Creating the need for change. And achieving an open and flexible attitude among the teacher staff. And hand in hand this attitude comes the training. And changes in the curriculum, the methodology and the assessment have been achieved by means of a great deal of teaching. Training, teaching. This training has to be put into practice to be reflected upon jointly and then become enhanced in practice. And it is not until it becomes a habit that we are ready to widen it with new knowledge and new practices to reach this point of sustainability in the project.
We need to encourage a disciplined creativity amongst teachers. So that teachers aren't just left to their own devices but they need to think about how they are informed by and generating the best possible evidence for new approaches to teaching. And we think at the RSA the best way to do this is to begin to think about reimagining teachers as designers. And as designers of curriculum, as designers of assessment, designers of relationships and learning experiences. Design thinking enables you to give creative solutions to real problems and dilemmas. Always focused on the end user and always aware of the constraints. Design thinking at its best is a really good combination of analytical and intuitive thinking. And it will enable teachers to be real authors of their own pedagogies rather than just recipients of ring bound rules or downloading top tips on a Sunday evening. It will really enable them to become the authors of their own pedagogies.
If you want to encourage creativity, creativity is a response to need. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. Students are creative because they see social problems and they respond to it. Teachers and students should be active collaborators to help the community. And that's where creativity comes from. Creative should not be the goal, it should be a means. And if you let teachers and students work together to respond to social problems, creativity happens naturally, organically. Because as human beings, that's what defines us.
Obedience generates discipline. But trust generates autonomy. And then autonomy in turn generates creativity. And you need a kind of a safety net to help the teachers be designers of experiences like protocols, like peer feedback, like coaching, like working with teachers. Working in teaching teams. And then you can get more and more good results.
I think that the first step we need to implement is more openness, flexibility, and fluidity in the school system. Why can't parents come into the classroom and teach to students? Why can't we have teachers become students?
In many of the schools, many of the colleges of education, what we do is teacher training, not teacher education. And governments don't spend more time training or providing extra teacher development for them outside the school system. And I think that's something we must look at. We have, even as a government, and I can give you an example, moved towards tinkering with the curriculum in schools. Now, we had, I don't know how many of you are familiar with a software called Minecraft. In my state, we decided to gather students to look at that Minecraft and use it as a way of developing an open space in conjunction with UN Habitat. Believe it or not, in two days, 26 children between the ages, I mean, young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 mastered Minecraft. And they were able to design so many things. We now discuss with the architecture department of our polytechnic. And they
say, wow, it means that we can reduce training architects from three years to just one and a half years or less. So this is how you can begin to change the system.
If we want to create a profession, a teaching profession, it is one that has to be very, very research literate. So that it can really understand the evidence that is presented to them about what works within classrooms. But then not just do it. Not just doing what works. But constantly asking the question, what might work in my context with my young people? There are thousands, probably millions of teachers who at this moment in classrooms are not just following protocols and not just following instructions. But are really going the extra mile to be creative for their students. And my starting point is to honor and celebrate their work.