In an article Stephen Shapiro wrote for Control magazine (May 2003), he reported that 1600 five year olds were given a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists, and 98 per cent of the children scored in the ‘highly creative’ range.

These same children were retested five years later and only 30 per cent of the 10 year olds still rated ‘highly creative’. By the age of 15, just 12 per cent were ranked in this category. Similarly, a mere 2 per cent of 200,000 adults over the age 25 who had taken the same test scored in the ‘highly creative’ range.

So how do we as teachers increase the creative ability of this, and future generations, to ensure that creativity continues to grow and not diminish with years of schooling? One way is to accept that we all have the potential to be creative and to recognise that, as children, we were all more creative than we are today. We also need to train our brain to keep looking, even when we have found an answer.

The reason children are so creative is that they look at the world with fresh eyes. They are always collecting dots that they eventually string together. Everything is a new experience. And rarely do kids jump to quick solutions. However, once they start going to school and socialising with other children, they find that a quick solution - a quick fix - will decrease the experience of peer, social and academic pressure.

An important role of the teacher, therefore, is to create opportunities for students and teachers to be innovative and creative through a multitude of experiences, so that different connections can be made at different opportune moments. To paraphrase Steve Jobs (Apple):

'creativity is just having enough dots to connect - connect experiences and synthesize new things. The reason creative people are able to do that is that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people'.

Shapiro has identified ‘four thinking lenses’ that he suggests help innovators collect and connect dots. He suggests try thinking like a pack rat, a matchmaker, a kid, and a contrarian. He challenges us to:

• be a pack rat and collect and hoard every experience for later use. You never know when some randomly stored experience will be the catalyst for breakthrough thinking;
• be a matchmaker. Make connections. Try and find analogies, metaphors, and associations that fit the problem you are looking to solve. Recombine ideas in new ways. If you are redesigning a learning experience, borrow a best practice from a different subject or industry;
• be a kid and not only see things through fresh eyes but learn through play and push the edges of your imagination;
• be a contrarian and turn everything upside down, challenge the norm and start thinking differently.

In the articles that follow, you will read amazing examples of the use of these lenses. Reflect on your own classrooms and the opportunities you allow yourselves and be creative.

Jenny Lewis
CEO, Australian Council for Educational Leaders