Teach Secondary 13.7

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alice Guile is a secondary school art teacher thinking at the same time. The upshot of this is that all the possibilities a student might come up with, other than the most obvious, end up being dismissed – which in turn leads to children becoming less good at the paper clip test the older they get, and thus, worse at creative thinking. As an art teacher, I’ve tried to address this issue by designing and teaching a lesson themed around George Land and the paper clip test – which includes actually carrying out the test itself. Generation, repetition I allow children to work alone or in groups, and have completed it with several different age groups. The results I’ve seen so far are largely in keeping with the results of the original study, with younger children tending to perform better. My best group managed to devise nearly 150 alternative uses for a paper clip – though what was interesting about this group was that it contained a neurodiverse child who had autism and ADHD. During the lesson, this student would randomly shout out the craziest suggestions he could think of in an almost hyperactive way, with apparently no regard for whether his ideas were practical or realistic. The group also included a pair of identical twins whose family had recently relocated fromGermany. They not only wrote everything down in a highly focused, diligent way, but also came up with a system for increasing their creative ‘productivity’. When the student with ADHD shouted something along the lines of “ You could post the paper clip to China! ”, the twins would write quotationmarks beneath the words ‘ You could post... ’ on successive lines to indicate repetition, followed by the names of every country they could think of. They then developed this idea over several variations with further ideas, such as ‘ You could give the paperclip to... [insert celebrity’s name]’ or ‘ You could mine for… [insert gemstone here]’ . Via this system, they generated many different ideas in a relatively short space of time. Combined success Studies have shown that the propensity to distraction exhibited by individuals with ADHD can result in them coming up withmore creative ideas. That student of mine lacked the attention span needed to write any of his ideas down, but he was lucky enough to be working alongside two highly organised and efficient students who could. Those students’ organisational skills may have simply been down to their innate personalities. Though having grown up in Germany – a country famed (or perhaps stereotyped) for valuing efficiency and organisation, could their upbringing and prior education have affected the way they approached the task? The paper clip study did show, after all, the extent to which the education we receive can affect the way we think. What my own anecdotal observations seem to show is the power of allowing divergent, creative thinking to take place first, before then being recorded by convergent, organised thinking taking place immediately afterwards. Were it not for the child with ADHD, the twins might have had far fewer ideas to draw upon. Without the twins, the student with ADHDwould have had little evidence to show for his creativity. Together, they were far more successful than any other group. Better than average The activity has prompted me to talk to the students about neurodiversity, and how it can play a role in helping some people to be more creative. The student in question, and then another, chose to explain to the class that they had autism/ ADHD, and presented this as something they were proud of and content to share with their peers. It was an outcome that made me, as their teacher, very happy, considering how some students with learning difficulties may come to view their neurodiversity as a bad thing. We also discussed the importance of being able to have creative ideas within the workplace, such as when thinking up new product ideas. Overall, I’ve been pleased with howmy ‘paper clip creativity test lessons’ have gone, and look forward to doing them again. Not just because they actively encourage students to think more creatively, but also because any neurodiverse students may find themselves faring better at the tasks than average, when they may struggle more than their peers withmany other aspects of school. I would strongly recommend that other teachers, and also parents, perform similar activities of their own. You could potentially attempt the task with any number of other everyday objects, such as a brick or a toothbrush. Do it alongside your children and see who scores highest! Because if we can encourage children to develop their imaginative skills today, then there’s a higher chance of them being able to solve some of the urgent and complex problems of tomorrow… “All the possibilities a student might come upwith,other than themost obvious,end upbeingdismissed” 23 teachwire.net/secondary P E D A G O G Y