Wes Akers

Using the feedback from our literature review, I decided to broaden my focus from students engaging with public and graffiti art to engaging with art in general. My surveys with students reflected this shift in my research and I noticed a trend around creativity emerging from the student surveys. This led me to the article “Promoting Creativity in the Middle Grades Language Arts Classroom” by Katherine E. Batchelor and William P. Bintz.

Batchelor and Bintz (2013) set out to address the following topics in this article.

• definitions of creativity
• importance of creativity
• characteristics and behaviors of creative thinkers
• guiding principles for promoting creativity in middle school language arts classrooms

I was drawn to the section on the importance of creativity because it revealed some benefits to promoting creativity that I am able to connect to my findings since we are also studying the affordances of engaging with art. Some of the benefits Batchelor and Bintz (2013) identify include (page 4):

• being less self-conscious
• experiencing fewer distractions while producing art
• being less concerned with failure
• engaging in reflection and self-feedback
• gaining a sense of accomplishment

Additionally in this section, they present a problem in US education as it relates to creativity that I have seen in another article I’m critiquing. Batchelor and Bintz (2013) claim US education is not providing students with enough opportunities to use their creativity (page 4). They introduce Gallagher’s (2009) study of 1,000 elementary students that found the ratio of skill instruction to creative thinking is 10:1 (page 4) in the classroom observed. Less time spent on creative thinking could suggest fewer opportunities to engage in with art in classrooms. I don’t know with certainty, but I believe this ratio is comparable to the amount of creative thinking students do at ACMS because our instruction is largely skill-based. In teaching English language learners, it is imperative our instruction is skill-based because students need to learn how to use the language in each content area. However, I don’t think students are given enough creative opportunities to apply the skills we are teaching them.

To address this problem, Batchelor and Bintz (2013) introduce four principles of promoting creativity in the classroom using different art mediums and project-based learning. These principles provide teachers and other stakeholders with a framework for integrating creativity.

1. Create a classroom climate that values difference, not sameness
2. Value creativity
3. Active, purposeful, and collaborative learning
4. Use multiple ways of knowing

I feel like this framework pairs well with my research because it gets me thinking about my next steps for making recommendations for further research.