The Power of Creativity in Education
By D’mari Creque
When I was growing up in the US Virgin Islands, I had many opportunities to participate in experiences that fostered my creativity. As the child of an early childhood educator and an architect/musician, my parents deeply understood the importance of creativity and made sure to provide me with various avenues to explore my creative interests, including in art and music. Looking back on those formative experiences, I can clearly see the link between exploring my own creativity and developing other skills, including academic skills, and I believe the experiences that were so beneficial to me should be available to all young people.
When I was in school, I used my creative skills to directly support other elements of my education — like creating songs out of study guides to aid in memorization or using artistic techniques to create websites and record videos on scientific studies for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fairs. Given less opportunity and encouragement to develop my creative skills, my educational experience — and the person I am today — would have looked very different.
It’s not just my experience — the infusion of creativity into instruction has been shown to have lasting, positive impact on the educational trajectory of students. The LEGO Foundation’s report series “Creativity Matters” highlights how expanding opportunities for creativity and creative learning in school can help young people develop skills like adaptability, problem solving, and collaboration that are essential, in school and later in life. Providing more comprehensive, engaging learning experiences for every student is the goal of America Forward’s Advancing Whole Learner Education initiative, because we know these opportunities are not evenly distributed.
Despite the evidence about the positive impact of supporting creativity, many current federal education policies do not intentionally set the stage for experiences that foster creativity. Creativity is emphasized in early childhood education, but often not beyond that. Many current assessment systems fail to balance creativity with more traditional metrics of educational success. And in teacher preparation programs, creativity is often not integrated into coursework outside of early childhood programs. The disconnect between research and current practice is stark, and it requires more collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to ensure that creativity can be better integrated in classrooms around the country.
The pending reauthorizations of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) offer federal policymakers an important opportunity to advance policies and include funding for whole-learner focused initiatives that can advance creativity in classroom instruction and develop further evidence about the positive impact of creativity outside of early-learning years.
Under ESSA, funding should be designated to assist states and districts with embedding creativity in instruction, encouraging teacher prep programs to add creativity as a component of high-quality instruction for all students, and providing families with additional information on how creative experiences at home can support the learning and development of their children. Under ESRA, funding should be designated through the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) to examine how creativity affects multiple factors that are used to track student achievement. This additional research can help shape policies and practices that are geared toward specific student groups, such as students with disabilities, and it can also influence the methods that are used to assess students. By embracing these recommendations, the federal government can ensure that schools are prepared to support the whole learner and that research is continuously conducted and updated to highlight the benefits of creativity in education.
The creative experiences I had in school helped me to memorize and retain information, grasp concepts and lessons with a deeper understanding, and realize important achievements later in life. Because I had the opportunity to explore and develop my creativity in school — along with a range of related skills — I have been able to work in multiple industries, study different subject areas, and interact with many people who value my input and use my recommendations to better the lives of the students and others everywhere.
Creativity in education is something that all students should have the opportunity to experience and I, along with the America Forward team, will keep working to ensure that as various pieces of federal legislation are reauthorized and new policies are implemented, more attention is given to creativity as a lever to support all students. With the incorporation of creativity into education policy, we can come one step closer to reaching the overall goal of creating an education system that supports the whole learner in every step of their educational journey.
D’mari Creque is the Senior Associate, Whole Learner at America Forward.