Shaking off old timetabling structures will to be one of the most significant challenges our schools face in becoming more creative organisations.
On the one hand, schools are developing incredible curriculum opportunities and learning spaces for students to think and work creatively. Also, on the other hand timetabling of a student’s day remains very similar to what it was like 10, 20, even 30 years ago. I am sure you remember the tone of your school bell telling you to stop thinking and move on to your next lesson.
Many of the working norms of timetabling have not changed in line with new thinking about learning and creativity. Constructs such as time have merely lingered as part of the school experience.
The basic grammar of schooling, like the shape of classrooms, has remained remarkably stable over the decades. Little has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms, splinter knowledge into ‘subjects’ and award grades and ‘credits’ as evidence of learning. (Hoffstetter 2013)
“Changes in Mass Schooling:‘school Form’and ‘grammar of Schooling’as Reagents.” European Educational Research Journal 12.2 (2013): 166-175.
Hofstetter, Rita, and Bernard Schneuwly.
It would seem that some of those lingering structures might be getting in the way.
I am not proposing students spend their time with open agendas and no structure, lolling around being “creative”. We can strike a balance in school timetables between the standard lesson block structure and uninterrupted time to become more deeply immersed in creative learning.
Schools understand the need for their students to be creative, but that might mean only on a Thursday afternoon in a 50 minute period. This flies in the face of what we know about creativity.
In the recent Netflix original documentary, The Defiant Ones, Dr Dre the rap artist, producer and entrepreneur points out:
You never know when you’re going to be inspired and what’s going to inspire you. You can’t put a time limit on creativity.
Dr Dre
Unfortunately, I don’t have a beach-side recording studio to retreat to, but I can relate to how I get immersed in creative work. I am sure you will also have experienced when ideas come to you at different times. How might we adjust the learning environment to reduce the barriers to this type of immersive creative work?
The blocks to being creative are deeply connected to the time we have available to us. According to James Adams in his acclaimed book Conceptual Blockbusting, we face a range of emotional blocks to the creative process.
These behaviours and habits stultify our creative endeavours, and they are accurate in education as well as business.
- A fear to make mistakes, to fail, to risk.
- Preference for judging ideas rather than generating them.
- No tolerance for ambiguity or chaos.
- A lack of challenge – not engaging enough.
- Excessive zeal – too much speed, pace and haste.
- An inability to relax and to incubate ideas.
As school leaders, we have to overcome these blocks to nurture conditions for children to be actively creative little souls and provide an environment for innovative learning and teaching design.
What might these conditions include? What principles can we use to guide us? I recently re-discovered this lovely essay on creativity by Issac Asimov, in which he offers some thoughts on creating the conditions for others to generate ideas:
- Daring cross-connection
- Free of responsibility
- Thoroughly relaxed
- Deep knowledge
- Discussing something of interest
- Being by nature unconventional
Organising a timetable that functions efficiently and also embraces Asimov’s conditions, providing the appropriate time and pace for our students to be genuinely creative is a complicated issue. It will be one of the most significant hurdles for our schools to overcome and is a vital component of contemporary learning design. However, changing the way we organise time might be the key to unlocking the ideal conditions for creativity in schools.