Part of Fiona Milligan-Rennie’s workshop back in September looked at Eric Booth’s creative Habits of Mind. As Eric Booth has noted, ‘The metaphor of “habits of mind” is growing in importance throughout education, provoking new pedagogical thinking and practice.’ This month Creative Learning attended a Creative Learning Network workshop led by Paul Collard, from the organisation Creativity, Culture and Education. During this workshop we looked at CCE’s version of creative Habits of Mind and we thought it would be useful to share them here in the run up to both the Aberdeen Learning Festival and the Arts Across Learning Festival.
Based on the work of Claxton et al (2005), Creativity, Culture and Education has identified 5 ‘habits of mind’ as indicators of creativity:
1. Inquisitive: wondering and questioning; exploring and investigating; challenging assumptions.
2. Persistent: tolerating uncertainty; sticking with difficulty; daring to be different.
3. Imaginative: playing with possibilities; making connections; using intuition.
4. Disciplined: crafting and improving; developing techniques; reflecting critically.
5. Collaborative: cooperating appropriately; giving and receiving feedback; sharing the creative ‘product’
There is increasing recognition that students who are encouraged to think creatively and cultivate creative habits of mind are more resilient, more effective learners and have greater ownership over their learning. What do you think? We’d love to hear any examples you have of seeing this in action. Or how might you be using or encouraging the creative habits of mind in your school – or, if you’re an external organisation, when working with school groups visiting you?
There’s an interesting overview of Eric Booth’s Habits of Mind here and if you don’t already know about them you can find out more about CCE here.
