Matthew Worwood: Does creativity make learning more engaging, or does engagement create the conditions for creativity? In classrooms, these two ideas are often treated as inseparable. Teachers want students to be engaged, and creativity is often seen as the pathway to get there. But what does the research actually say about this relationship?

Matthew Worwood: In this episode, we’ll explore the connection between creativity and engagement with education researcher Dr. Danah Hendrickson. Hello everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Ward, 

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett. 

Matthew Worwood: This is the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast. 

Cyndi Burnett: On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood: We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity, 

Cyndi Burnett: all with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides. Teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood: So let’s begin. So in this episode, we welcome Dr. Danah Hendrickson, who is associate professor at Arizona State University. Mary Lou’s Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, where her research focuses on creativity, design thinking, and technologies in education. In her work, she explores how educators can cultivate creative learning environments and how digital tools are reshaping teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood: She’s published widely on creativity in education across a range of applications and contexts, and she serves as associate editor for the journal thinking skills and. Danah is also the co-author of Explaining Creativity, a third edition and co-author slash co-editor of several volumes on creativity and education.

Matthew Worwood: She’s passionate about helping others bridge research and practice in ways that support meaningful human-centered learning, and also works really closely with a past guest who we had in the last season, Punya Mishra. Danah, welcome to the show. 

Danah Henrikson: Thank you so much for having me, Cyndi and Matt. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Matthew Worwood: So Danah, you are one of our scholars in the field, and we want to bring you on to talk a little bit about the research and how that connects to practice. We did have a wonderful conversation a few weeks back with Dr. Margie Kovski who spoke about research and what it tells us about creative agency in the classroom.

Matthew Worwood: To keep with that research thread a little bit more, we wondered if you could talk a little bit about what the research says regarding the relationship between creativity and student engagement in the classroom. 

Danah Henrikson: Yeah, absolutely. So I think creative approaches, creative practices in the classroom are one of the most important foundations to actually really getting kids, students, learners of all ages engaged. There’s something really fundamental, I think, in who we are as humans that involves. That there’s something really fundamental in who we are as humans that wants to have opportunities to think in new ways, to be curious, to try new things, to experiment a little bit and to take risks. On the other hand, there’s also the side of us that’s a little bit nervous about trying something new or taking risks for fear of failure for fear of social embarrassment, all of those things.

Danah Henrikson: So when teachers actually. Set up environments for creative learning and really structure classrooms in ways that there’s psychological safety for students, that they’re able to try new things, that they’re able to take intellectual risks, that they’re able to engage in real world learning, that they’re able to express a little bit of themselves.

Danah Henrikson: It really does get people more engaged in more excited about learning. My dissertation study over 12 years ago now focused on research with creative teachers who were , national Teacher of the Year award winners. one of the things that really came out of that was the fact that once their students had opportunities to be creative, to explore a little bit, to be curious, to try new things and kind of even go off script a little bit or get away from some of the more standardized testing kind of.

Danah Henrikson: Focused approaches to learning. They got much more excited about it. They were coming in wanting to try new things and experiment and learn and play in new ways. It takes people a little while to kind of get into that mode of learning, and to understand that they’re safe doing so that if they.

Danah Henrikson: Give a wrong answer or try something new and it fails or doesn’t work, or just looks a little bit different to their peers, that they’re gonna be okay, that it’s safe to try new things. But once they get into that, they’re really excited and engaged and ready to go. And I’ve seen that myself when I’ve done, master’s level teaching with like teacher professional development or helping teachers who are, you know, getting their master’s in education or ed tech kind of set up a classroom environment where people are exploring, playing, trying new things. The teachers themselves are excited and they’re way more engaged in not only what they’re doing, but what their students are doing and how it all kind of comes together.

Danah Henrikson: So I think the research is really clear in that sense that there’s, a strong thread of connection not just correlation, but really causation between exploring creative approaches and doing that in the classroom and getting learners more engaged or more excited in what’s happening. 

So, Dana, you just mentioned you looked at award-winning educators. How many did you follow?

Danah Henrikson: So I did long in-depth interviews, a series of them with 10. So when, when you’re looking at National Teacher of the Year award winners, it’s kind of a finite set. So I spent a lot of time talking with them and learning more about their practices, their habits of mind, their ways of thinking, and just exploring what they do and how they operate.

Cyndi Burnett: So Dina, when you looked at these teachers were they also highly creative? And do you think you can be an uncreative teacher and a great teacher?

Danah Henrikson: The last part is a more difficult part, so I’m gonna start, start right off with the first question. 

Cyndi Burnett: Okay. 

Danah Henrikson: Yes, they were absolutely being creative. What was interesting was that they were engaging with creativity in their personal life as well. That they were all not necessarily the most wildly creative person out there, but they all had active.

Danah Henrikson: Hobbies and interest in whether it was music or the arts or specific subject matters or just things that they were doing that they found really fueled their creative passions. And then in the classroom they were, I think, quite creative. Mm-hmm. And that showed in the work that they’d done and how they won National Teacher of the Year Award.

Danah Henrikson: And I think the very fact of kind of winning that award means that you’re exceptional. That you’re doing something different, that you’re doing something above and beyond. So the very idea of doing something novel and effective kind of lands already with how we divine creativity in the research, that there’s something new, something unique.

Danah Henrikson: It’s not. It’s not the same exact thing that everybody else is doing, and it works well. Creativity isn’t just something that’s new and different. Anything could technically, I guess, be new and different, but it works well. So they were all quite creative. They were doing interesting real world projects. They were combining subject matters.

Danah Henrikson: They were setting up environments where students could take intellectual risks and try new things. But that creativity didn’t mean that they were reinventing the wheel. I think a lot of teachers are already doing. Creative things in small ways that they could amplify and just try something a little different this time or explore new threads or avenues in their practice.

Danah Henrikson: But what was interesting about them was that it was something that they truly valued and saw as key part of their identity, that I am supporting creativity, not only for myself as a teacher, making it more exciting for me, but also for my. Students and that I want them to be able to go out in the world and be creative and try new things.

Danah Henrikson: And that is one thing that I think the literature really also shows is that creative teachers tend to lead towards more creative students. Because if you’re modeling and trying new things or showing them that it’s okay to explore a little bit and make ’em a. Stake. And that’s actually a really important site for learning.

Danah Henrikson: And that’s where a lot of the most powerful learning happens. And the students are gonna know that it’s okay and they’re gonna feel more comfortable and confident and safe in going into be creative and try new things and suggest a new idea or experiment a little bit with something or make things, create things, whether it’s new ideas or artifacts or projects that they’re doing in the classroom.

Danah Henrikson: Whether you can be uncreative and be. A really good teacher. I, that’s a really good question, but. It’s a really hard question because I think to some degree, creativity involves constant growth and constant learning and new things happening, and growing all the time. It doesn’t necessarily mean that people are reinventing the wheel or mm-hmm dramatically trying new things all the time or every day.

Danah Henrikson: But most good teaching people are probably engaging at least some degree of creativity, even if they don’t frame it that way or think of themselves as creative. They’re probably trying new things and evolving and growing their practice, but I do think it’s probably possible. I’m just kind of thinking off the top of my head here, but I do think it’s possible.

Danah Henrikson: I can think of a few teachers that I had along the way in my experience who didn’t necessarily strike me at the time as the most creative, but it was still effective learning happening and I felt comfortable in the classroom and they communicated really clearly. So they certainly weren’t bad teachers by any means, but yeah, it’s a nuanced question.

Matthew Worwood: I just wanna go back to engagement for a moment because a lot of the conversation as is your work and even the work of Cyndi and I are centers around a, creating an environment for student creativity to occur and then to, to Cyndi’s question. If there’s a conversation to be had around, does that require the teacher to also engage a level of creativity as they go about designing that learning experience?

Matthew Worwood: But unpacking what you said at the very beginning in regard to engagement. Engagement itself is a construct that can be perceived in different ways. And I’m just listening to you saying we, when we’re talking about increasing engagement, is it that we are seeing students pursuing things that they’re interested in pursuing?

Matthew Worwood: Generating new questions, being curious about the learning, and to a certain extent, intrinsically motivated to complete the assignment as opposed to doing it because they have to. Is that the type of engagement that we’re talking about? 

Danah Henrikson: Yes, absolutely. So I know that in the engagement is its whole own area of scholarship that has clear constructs and definitions, and those are all really important.

Danah Henrikson: There’s ways to measure it and look at it, but I think for most teachers that I’ve talked to and I’m. Primarily a qualitative researcher. So a lot of times what I’m looking for is how the teacher sees evidence of students being engaged, being excited, being in more involved in their learning showing evidence of, wanting to.

Danah Henrikson: Play, explore, try new things, come up with new ideas. All of the things that you just said Matt are really important parts of that. But I think when I have talked to teachers, they all have their own barometer a little bit of what engagement means. It’s all coming back to the same thing of being more involved, more curious, more excited, more willing to try new things and actually put themselves out there and get deeper into their own learning, but.

Danah Henrikson: It’ll oftentimes look like students being asking more questions, coming in and, maybe a student that previously was putting their head down or just sitting back and withdrawing, getting more involved, raising their hand or jumping in or talking more with peers.

Danah Henrikson: Mm-hmm. I know one of the really creative science teachers that I spoke with mentioned that he could see evidence of all those things in the classroom, but for him it was really exciting. He was like an eighth grade science teacher too. Hear from ninth grade science teachers who came back to him and said, what are you doing?

Danah Henrikson: And because the kids for years, we would see the kids kind of coming and being like, oh, I hate you. I hate science. I don’t wanna do this. And now we’re seeing them after a year of doing all of this exciting modeling and playing and exploring and getting more creative with it.

Danah Henrikson: They’re actually coming in and they’re excited to learn, and now we feel like we need to step it up and do a little bit more of what you are doing. So I think it’s something that is sort of noticed and felt from a lot of teachers in all of those subtle and sometimes really obvious ways where somebody compliments you or a parent or another teacher comes in and says, wow, what are you doing?

Danah Henrikson: These kids are way more excited, . That’s something that you kind of explore and experience yourself as a teacher in the classroom, even though there are some really important scholarly ways of defining and measuring engagement. I think for most practicing teachers, it’s something that they are always looking for and wanting to see.

Danah Henrikson: Is kids excited and more involved to more engaged. 

Cyndi Burnett: So let’s follow up on this engagement piece just a little bit more.

Cyndi Burnett: And Matt, you know what, this is a reminding me of a conversation we had way back in, I believe season one or season two. And just as a reminder, we’re in season 12, of the podcast with Dr. Heather Lyon, who talked about compliance and engagement and how sometimes teachers look at their students and they think because they’re sitting there listening and they’re compliant with the instructions that they’re engaged and that is not the case.

Cyndi Burnett: Would you agree with that statement? 

Danah Henrikson: Absolutely. I think one of the things, especially when I have done more work with in-service and in some cases pre-service teachers, , there’s this. Tendency that teachers have, and probably even more teachers that have been doing it for a while to kind of sometimes assume that if they’re quiet, if they seem to be listening, if they seem focused, that they must be engaged.

Danah Henrikson: And, we used to oftentimes working with in-service teachers when we would teach, talk to them about science, misconceptions that particular, or misconceptions really, that students may have in any subject matter. I don’t know if you all remember a video called a Private Universe that was really popular years ago with teachers and it basically laid out the idea that students are all living in their own kind of world in their head.

Danah Henrikson: They have their own private universe and it. Showed the teacher going through the process of teaching a science lesson about how planets orbit the sun and all of that, and thinking that the students completely understood and they got it and were good to go. And then when the videographers interviewed the students, all these kind of crazy misconceptions were coming out about how like, actually the orbits bend in this weird way.

Danah Henrikson: Planet goes around that and the teacher’s sitting there going, oh my God, I didn’t realize they were, that they had some of these misunderstandings. ’cause they’ve been sitting there,, some of them asking questions, they’ve been quiet, they’ve been listening. And it dug further into how some of those misconceptions happen.

Danah Henrikson: But what it really ask teachers to do is question their assumptions about what students know and what they’re learning and taking away that we all are bringing our own. Private universe of ideas and thoughts into the classroom and that you don’t fully know what’s going on in their head until you get them talking more to each other and to you and engaging in actual project work, hands-on work.

Danah Henrikson: One of the things that I think it helps for teachers to keep in mind is that students all bring into the classroom, into any lesson and into any class, their own, private universe of thoughts and ideas and experiences that they’re carrying around with them and that you really don’t have a way to gauge.

Danah Henrikson: What they’re learning or how engaged they are. If they’re just sitting there quietly looking at you, they could be thinking about other things. They could be coming up with completely off the wall ideas about what you’re trying to teach them. And that’s where I. Engaging in more creative learning where students are demonstrating what they know, doing more hands-on creative, real world projects, talking to themselves, talking with each other, talking to the teacher, that you really start to have a way to get a sense of engagement beyond just quiet compliance.

Matthew Worwood: One, you know, with us having backgrounds and instructional design, we understand the importance of both formative and summative assessments. That’s why we conduct those. ’cause we have to make sure that even if they look like they’re having an amazing time and they’re ticking the box of, oh, this is awesome, that we know that they’re still making progress towards the learning objective.

Matthew Worwood: So there’s definitely something, that’s what I was saying about the really early on, about the creative piece and what is engagement because. We know within the definition there’s appropriateness, there’s usefulness. And so whatever it is that we’re doing to engage the students, we have to make sure that the, there’s the value proposition of that experience is that it’s leading to a learning objective.

Matthew Worwood: And likewise, I think this less of it. But we would sometimes see the kind of, immersive virtual world type experiences kicking in. And students might look really engaged ’cause they’re interacting with the learning experience that feels and looks like a video game and they’re loving it, but they’re off wandering totally away from what the learning objective is.

Matthew Worwood: And that’s not necessarily leading to that, that learning objective. So here’s what I’m just wondering to bring everything together. What kind of comes first is it a case that if you can get students engaged, then you can go and bring about a highly creative activity that leads to that learning objective.

Matthew Worwood: Or is it actually that the creative learning experience is what brings about the engagement? 

Danah Henrikson: I think it’s a really good question and an important one that isn’t necessarily either or. It’s both and you can come at it from either direction where if you can get students a little bit more engaged by whatever.

Danah Henrikson: Means you’re using in the classroom, whether they’re actually more involved in hands-on projects or whatever you’re doing to engage them, that’s a nice space and an opening for introducing more creative tasks and getting them more involved. But I think oftentimes creative. Opportunities for learning creative tasks, creative thinking is a great way to actually bring them into engagement because it’s asking them to bring a little more of themselves to it, to create something, to ask new questions, to think in ways that are a little bit different, and that naturally tends to pull people in and engage them.

Danah Henrikson: It’s sort of a bi-directional relationship there where engagement can fuel opportunities for creativity, but creative opportunities really are powerful for fueling engagement. 

Cyndi Burnett: I love that.

Cyndi Burnett: So Danah, to what extent does technology and society support or hinder engagement? 

Danah Henrikson: Oh, that is a complicated question and I think it can do either or both. And it’s having effects either way on us all the time. Often subtle effects that we don’t realize. Mm-hmm. So we obviously hear teachers talk a lot about the fact that, kids have their.

Danah Henrikson: Phones out, they’re more engaged in social media. Our attention is divided. We live in an attention economy where a lot of the new technologies and apps and all of that out there are constantly competing for our attention. And attention is a priority in whenever you’re engaging kids or students at many age and learning.

Danah Henrikson: So it can definitely be a hindrance in that sense, but used thoughtfully, it can really draw people in and get them engaged. Mm-hmm. I think technology isn’t necessarily. A positive or a negative. It’s kind of a neutral, which is dependent on how you use it and how teachers and students are engaging with it.

Danah Henrikson: So, I’m things like generative ai. , They, have all kinds of opportunities for people to create new content and to explore and to come up with ideas and get involved in kind of a back and forth as long as people have the opportunity to bring some of themselves to it, to ask critical questions, to not just passively engage whatever Claude or Chat GBT or any one of a thousand tools that are out there.

Danah Henrikson: Give you the danger though is that. It can also, especially for novice learners or people who aren’t as aware of the negative effects of it, it can also become a way to short circuit learning where you type a prompt, you get an answer, or you type a prompt, you get a poem. So it is a double-edged sword there, and it is a challenging new space that I think everybody is navigating together and figuring out.

Danah Henrikson: So yeah, it’s a, that’s the one thing that I think is often a key takeaway for people when they’re learning about. As teachers, technology and how to use it in the classroom that it’s not. Instinctively a solution to everything. And it’s not always necessarily a negative. It’s really about the ecosystem that it lives within and how you’re using it for any particular task.

Danah Henrikson: Are you thinking about the affordances of the technology? What can this do? It helps students visualize new ideas or models. Can it help students tweak and craft their creative work as long as their voice is part of a poem or an essay? Mm-hmm. , Or is it something that the design of the assignment allows for them just to.

Danah Henrikson: Type a prompt, get an answer. So I think it’s really challenging us to think heavily about the design of the tasks and assessments and all of the things that we’re giving students. And nobody has a really clear answer on that. But if as teachers we’re grappling with that and really trying to think through, what am I asking people to do?

Danah Henrikson: How can they be using this technology? What are the. Affordances of the technology in terms of what does it allow us to do and where are the possible, danger zones, then we’re better positioned to factor that all in and design tasks or assessments that are really helpful for students with technology.

Danah Henrikson: But yeah, it’s a really complex, interesting area. 

Matthew Worwood: And I think the just to try and bring everything together. If you’ve designed a learning experience where students are fully immersed and engaged in that learning experience, then my gut feeling is that they’re more likely to use the technology to support that learning as opposed to shortcut it.

Matthew Worwood: Similarly. 

Danah Henrikson: Absolutely. 

Matthew Worwood: Yeah. , We might, similarly, we might be in a situation where we could use the technology as a tool for engagement, but then we have to be very mindful that we’re, we are designing that experience in a way that we are making sure that learning objective is still being met and isn’t being taken over by the engagement that comes about because of the technology.

Danah Henrikson: Absolutely. And that’s where I often say teaching is an active design because you’re really factoring in multiple things that you’re working with, multiple materials, what the purpose is, how people are gonna use it, and engage with it. And there’s not a single solution. There’s multiple entry points, and you’re navigating all of those and holding them.

Danah Henrikson: In attention. There’s always a needle to thread there with technology, but there’s a lot of amazing opportunities to think about what it can do for us and what it allows us to do that we couldn’t do if we didn’t have that tool. But it’s always a challenge. 

Cyndi Burnett: Well, Danah, our time is almost up, but before we go, I would love for you to answer a question that we’ve been asking all of our guests in the last few seasons, which is, what was your most creative educational experience and why, and what impact did it have on you?

Danah Henrikson: Yeah, okay. That’s a great question, and I think. There are so many across the years, wonderful learning experiences, creative learning experiences. And I don’t know if this is necessarily the most creative one, but it’s the first one that came to mind as maybe the most powerful ’cause It was to me, a new idea that was introduced.

Danah Henrikson: But I remember in sixth grade, having a class in readings conference and a language arts class that was very different from elementary school reading English classes, all that kind of thing. And the thing that really stuck with me, one, we had a lot of autonomy and choice in the books that we read, as well as some required readings.

Danah Henrikson: And the teacher really engaged us deeply in thinking about to the degree that you can with sixth graders interrogating the texts. But there was one big idea that stuck with me that. I just loved and was really powerful and made me excited to go in and do those courses every day. Was the idea of metaphor and figurative language and that there’s often getting hidden meanings or meanings that are at least not at the surface level in the text that you can explore that something of a book in.

Danah Henrikson: In a story or a particular symbol in a story might have a lot of different meanings that isn’t what the author is actually using it for at the surface level. That idea. It sounds simple, but it kind of blew my mind as a sixth grader and I took that away. And the from there on out anytime there’s an opportunity to interrogate a text, to really think more deeply about what’s going on, that’s under the surface, whether it was in, a political systems class or whether it was in another language arts class that really just stuck with me throughout the years.

Danah Henrikson: And I bring this back around really quickly to, an experience I had talking to one of those National Teacher of the Year award winners who said that he thinks about. The learning that he’s doing with his students as like a tree, a metaphor of a tree, where the leaves are, the facts, the information, all of the little things that may change, or knowledge that may s.

Danah Henrikson: Fall away over time, or they may gain new knowledge. And the trunk of the tree is how they approach learning and the bigger ways that they engage creatively as people and ask hard questions, critical thinking. And the branches are like the big ideas within any subject matter and that he just is okay with the fact as a teacher.

Danah Henrikson: The facts that not the pieces, individual pieces of knowledge are gonna fall away, come and go. But that if he’s helping students learn how to approach thinking and learning in new ways, and that there’s something big away, and that they’re coming away with a few big ideas about the subject matter, that’s the main goal.

Danah Henrikson: Not having them memorize a lot of stuff, but that they come away with a solid. You know, trunk of the tree and branches place and over the seasons, that will all change, but they’ll have those. So that reminded me of taking away that big idea in sixth grade of metaphor, figurative language, deeper meanings and texts and that you have to think critically and interrogate whatever’s in front of you.

Matthew Worwood: Love it. Well, Danah, thank you so much for joining us on this interview. We’re really grateful that we were able to get it scheduled for our listeners, we invite you to identify one moment in your classroom where students.

Matthew Worwood: Typically disengage and disengage in the way that we discussed on the show. And then we want you to challenge yourself to redesign just that moment to increase engagement based on again, what we shared in today’s episode. And if you’re looking for more ideas to fuel that kind of shift, we invite you to visit our collection on our website, creativity and The Art of Teaching.

Matthew Worwood: You can find that by visiting the website fueling creativity podcast.com. My name’s Dr. Matthew. We. 

Cyndi Burnett: And my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett. This episode was produced by Cyndi Burnett and Matthew War. Our podcast assistant is Ann Fernando, and our editor is she Ahmed.