The Role of Motivation

Dan Pink discusses the importance of motivation in creating a creative workforce and how our current system of reward and punishment (carrot and stick) doesn't work in a 21st Century work context, where people are expected to think laterally. The following video is taken from his TED talk:



He illustrates his points with some simple and effective scenarios, however, what is interesting is that when a challenge is presented that requires lateral thinking and variety of possible outcomes, most of us find it a more rewarding experience than being given the building blocks towards a set outcome. In school, when we encourage students to work towards success criteria, it is tempting to give them very clear set parameters and fixed outcomes since it is easier to assess, yet it is this convergent way of thinking that de-motivates many students, especially when replicated across the curriculum. Clearly, we need a balance of different thinking styles that motivate students into realising that their input is valued and critical towards solving solutions and generating ideas.

Divergent Thinking

Another interesting presentation by Ken Robinson at the RSA about how school reduces people's capacity for divergent thinking and how we are born with an innate ability to think laterally. Divergent thinking should be one of the main learning objectives of any task that gets students be be creative and might be something that we all consider when planning and evaluating such activities.

Year 4 'Linking Words, Linking Places' Project

This 4-day thinking project began as a borough wide Literacy project from the LINCCS group (Camden based, now defunkt) in 2010 and the only input we had was the slightly cryptic statement: "Linking Words, Linking Places". I discussed this with my Year 4's - some of whom had already begun to develop more lateral thinking skills. We agreed not to respond literally to the brief - the work that followed aimed to take advantage of the broadness of the remit.

In a single week, through four 60-90 minute lessons we:

• Established that we could interpret 'Linking Places' as subjective memories - places in time
• Shared stories and memories and the language that we associate with them
• Explored language - and how words signify 'things'
• Developed and recorded a formal response to the brief

After the first session I realised that although we were supposed to be rehearsing some work for performance, by far the most fascinating aspect was the process. When I presented unusual linguistic ideas - e.g. George Perec's book A Void - children were not only showing a surprising depth of understanding but they were all highly stimulated and engaged - at different levels they were exploring, and becoming curious about language itself, in isolation and in its typical context.
The video came about by accident - although I do use video frequently. I asked the children if they wanted to perform their pieces live or show a video 'journey' . They chose the latter; although the final 4 minutes is essentially what we would have performed live.
I would like to do more work in which creativity is central to learning...curriculum permitting.

Year 4 hope you enjoy their video,

gx