Education, Creativity, Curiosity and Feelings
I found Tepper’s and Kuh’s 2011 “Let’s get serious about cultivating creativity” article quite interesting. He presents 7 core abilities based on existing research that define creativity. Moreover, he stresses that creativity is cultivated through rigorous training and it is not an abstract concept. He mentions that in arts school, creativity is more successfully developed through the curriculum. Fortunately, the National Science Board has been collecting data to track data an improve arts-school education. Ultimately, the authors suggest incorporating the use the methods of arts school in other disciplines.
I agree with W. Gardner Campbell’s article on curiosity as a learning outcome, however what’s begs the question is, how should we do that? In addition, why should we need to trade compliance for curiosity, can’t they both co-exist? Isn’t there a dynamic interrelationship, between curiosity and outcome, in that both of them affect each other?
Finally, Paul Silvia’s piece regarding the knowledge of emotions and how they affect education helped me understand better how feelings (i.e. curiosity, emotions, interest etc) are fundamental in the learning process. It would be interesting to add some of these ideas during a lecture, fostering different type of emotions to help students to learn better.