Pedagogy

Defining Creativity and its Role in Education
Throughout time, the concept of creativity and its application has been highly debated among artists and philosophers.  Historically, the focus on the study about creativity shifts with the changing era.  It was not until the earlier parts of the 20th century that a major shift was achieved from a theoretical to an empirical study of creativity.   According to Craft (2005, p. 18), this was largely due to the establishment of the four major traditions  psychoanalytic, cognitive, behaviorist and humanist.

At present there have been various definitions and interpretations of creativity depending on how it is approached by the theorists.  Nolan (2004) distinguishes between three types of creativity creative thinking, creative behavior and creative action.  Creative thinking is the generation of new ideas, concepts, wishes, goals, new perceptions of problems (Craft, 2005, p. 20).  Creative behavior refers to habits and ways that aids in facilitating the creative process.  Creative action involves new ways of doing things.  In the field of education, the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) (1999, p. 30) has provided a working definition for creativity as the imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value.  A point of interaction can be found in these definitions and that is imagination remains key to thinking about creativity because it is continually regarded as a source of challenge to rules and conventions, as a way of recombining different aspects of tradition and knowledge in their previous arrangements, and perhaps most importantly, as a means to move beyond existing horizons of experience (Negus  Pickering 2004, p. 9).

Creativity in education is borne out of the challenge to rise above traditional education and find innovative ways to address the demands of the fast changing world.  What such a world requires from extra-economic organisations like schools and universities is the production of subjects who can fit its new forms, and who are in this sense creative (Jone 2009, p. 57).  Through strategies and techniques, teachers must facilitate the understanding of the creative processes so students gain control of these.  The National Curriculum website (1999) explains that teaching creatively means employing multiple strategies to activate higher order cognitive processes.  It means throwing open-ended questions among students establishing a safe environment for students to take risks, explore ideas and respond creatively allowing students to reflect and concentrate to activate imagination provide opportunities for students to take the lead and let them witness that teachers can be learners too and structure activities for collaborative and cooperative work.  All these strategies improve the students sense of self-esteem, fulfillment and motivation which consequently affects achievement and nurtures their spirit of lifelong learning.

The Role of Creativity in Motivation
The earliest theory of motivation is captured through the term drive reduction by Murray (1938).  Motivation was defined in terms of the press, i.e. the urge, to release the tension and satisfy the needs (Williams  Burden 1997, p. 113). In 1964, Atkinson reformulated this theory in his achievement motivation theory by stating that people have different needs for achievement and success and these have implications in their learning histories.  At around the same time, Donald Hebb (1960s) introduced an alternative view suggesting that human and animals strive towards a level of optimum arousal which serves as their primary motivation.  In the field of language learning however, theorists and researchers have found that integrative motivation plays a significant role in second language learning.  Integrative motivation explains that individuals are motivated to learn when they have developed the desire to integrate or identify themselves with the language and thus, nurturing a positive attitude towards the learning situation.   In a related theory, Gardners (2000) socio-educational model highlights the interaction of individual differences, external factors, the context for learning the language and perceived outcomes as basis for the individuals motivation.  In contemporary times however, cognitive theory of motivation is the widely accepted and broadly researched perspective.

Individuals acquire different motivational styles depending on how they attribute the causes of success and failure.  Bernard Weiners (1986) attributional theory of motivation states that motivation is a function of past performance and how an individual attributes the outcome (successful or not).  According to this theory, individuals who attribute success due to internal and personal characteristics are more motivated and likely to perform better.  Implied therefore in this statement is the need for learners to establish their goals independently.  Rollet (1987) coined the term effort-avoidance motivation to describe the behavior of people who were motivated not to work to achieve goals that were set for them by others (Williams  Burden 1997, p. 132).

The attunement strategy is an approach to motivate students who are low in motivation and decreasing in performance.  The teacher negotiates and works with the student in setting goals, identifying tasks and defining how goals can be achieved.  Through this, learners take ownership for their learning and are awarded control for reaching their goals.  For these less motivated students teachers must find creative, rather than controlling ways, of increasing their engagement and interest.  The creative teaching strategies presented in the first section of this paper address these goals of motivating the students.  The approaches will allow the teacher to experiment on the different theories of motivation for teaching foreign languages.

Burden and Williams (1997, p. 117) discussed whether or not the languages learned are second language or foreign language significantly impacts motivation.  For languages, such as Spanish and French, it may be helpful for teachers to consider the context of where they are teaching as well as the cultural background of the students.  Having established that motivation to learn a foreign language is clearly an interaction of personal goals, social influences and cultural context, teachers must be able to address the interplay of these factors in lesson planning.  Furthermore, adopting a creative teaching approach will facilitate the employment of strategies that will nurture self-directed learning and continuous motivation for foreign language acquisition.

The UK Secondary National Curriculum and the Impact of Creativity
The implementation of a UK National Curriculum has been received with conflicting views.  As expressed by Maisuria (2005, p. 141), the creative dimension in the national curriculum is constantly threatened by government interference and directives.  Furthermore, the plethora of centralised testing regimes and quality assurance measures has not only damaged the esteem of teachers and pupils, but has also turned education into a game where teachers teach the art of passing exams, and pupils realise the academic dangers of nonconformity. (Maisuria 2005, p. 141).  While there is a strong push for creative education, the current implementation of a national curriculum appears to have a counter-effect on the students creativity.  According to Davis (2000), the provision of standardization and rigid control of the curriculum was having an adverse effect on pupils creativity in schools (Maisuria 2005, p. 3).

The provision for modern foreign languages in the National Curriculum established its importance in preparing the students for diversity and globalisation. In the secondary curriculum, the schools have a freedom of choice over what they offer creating opportunities to better engage learners and providing a more relevant pool of national expertise in modern foreign languages (Department for Children, Schools and Families 2008, p. 2).  Languages like Chinese and Japanese are recommended acknowledging the significant global economic influence these countries will have in the future.  Whereas these measures are meaningful to the students future, it is the procedures and framework that a National Curriculum is operating on that limits the teachers creativity.  The testing and standardisation procedures are creating considerable amount of stress on the teachers and the students.  As expressed by Maisuria (2005, p. 149), the role of education ought to be as a vehicle to emancipate the minds of pupils, to encourage improvisation, allowing the pupil to be assertive.  These issues raised about National Curriculum and its effect on creative education indicate the need for further research as to how it can best address the standardisation as well as providing ample venues for the proliferation of creative minds in the schools.