Creativity in Classroom Settings: Multiple Paths are the Rule not the Exception

Abstract

This theoretical paper is driven by the question, “What does creativity look like in classroom settings?” It is motivated by my past experiences as a teacher: my stories and my students’ stories as we struggled together within a restricted classroom environment to create enough space for our creativity to emerge and flourish. I suggest seven metaphors that can be used to describe creativity as it may apply to classroom contexts: overcoming obstacles, or creative desperation, divergent thinking, or thinking outside the box, assembling things in new ways, route-finding, expanding possibilities, collaborative emergence, and birthing, or originating.