Promoting Creativity through Student-Centered Learning

By Julie Olson, Band Director, Randolph School District

Have you ever been in a classroom where you felt the focus was all about the teacher? Think back... sitting in a classroom that was stiff and in front of a teacher who rarely moved from the head of the room. How did this make you feel? What if that classroom had been different? What if the teacher was asking for your ideas and constantly moving around the room to engage students. These are just a couple characteristics of a student-centered classroom in which students are encouraged to be creative on a daily basis.

Student-Centered Classrooms

To say a classroom is “student-centered” has been in vogue for several years, and yet we sometimes struggle to define this focus for education. Perhaps this is because the definition can be oversimplified. A classroom is student-centered if the students are the center of the classroom! It goes beyond this, though. To be student-centered in one’s educational philosophy means that everything done in the classroom starts, and ends with the students in mind. The goal of this type of thinking is to create self-sufficient, creative thinkers and people who appreciate and value the subject being taught. In music education, for example, the goal is not to turn out professional performers or experts in the field of composition, but rather to instill a love of music and a quizzical mind that stays with each student as he or she goes through life. This is achieved by the teacher letting go of the role of “expert” and allowing students to explore ideas themselves. In doing this, the teacher becomes a coach, or facilitator, who is there to assist, rather than to give answers. Many believe that people learn best when teaching others. The same can be said when students are teaching themselves alongside their peers.

Student-centered learning is achieved through a variety of ways. From classroom climate, teaching strategies, and basic classroom rules (or “guidelines for success”) to student-created projects, creative analysis, and student-defined disciplinary actions, the students are constantly involved in their classroom as both learners and facilitators. Assessing creativity can be a difficult task because of its subjective nature and lack of well-defined criteria. Allowing students to be part of the assessment process through portfolios, student-created rubrics, and written reflections are excellent ways to keep them engaged in their own learning throughout the process.

There are many excellent teaching models that promote a student-centered learning environment. Two of the most commonly-used models in our state are Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance (CMP) and Arts Propel. The goal of the CMP plan is to encourage students to learn about and truly know the music they are performing in ensembles, rather than just learning the piece for a performance. Through CMP, the classroom is transformed into a learning environment of “whole music” that is, without a doubt, student-centered. In an Arts PROPEL classroom, students approach music along three intersecting pathways that give Arts PROPEL its name. First, there is production where students perform and/or create music. Then comes perception where students study others works to understand the thought processes in which musicians engage and to see connections between their own and others' work. The final step is reflection in which students assess how their work was created, how effective their work is, and how it can be improved.

How does student-centered learning promote creative thinking?

In addition to understanding what a student-centered classroom may be, it is important to ask how this style of teaching promotes creative thinking and ultimately benefits students. We begin by realizing that there are several levels of understanding that a person can achieve in a given subject. This was outlined many years ago in Bloom’s famous "Taxonomy" that describes the most basic level of educational objectives as knowledge, and then works through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and arrives at evaluation, the most complex level. By promoting creativity in classrooms, students are engaged at the higher levels of this taxonomy.

Outcomes that are usually associated with creative thinking in music are improvisation and composition. Other creative products in music that are also possible, but not always remembered, are creative listening and analyzing. By having students engage in creative listening, we ask students to come up with new ways to approach music that is presented to them. For example, having the students listen to a piece of music and ask them to transform it in some way. Can they imagine the piece being performed by a different ensemble? Can they imagine the piece in a new tempo, meter, or tonality? Rather than simply stating what they are hearing, students are analyzing and then synthesizing new sounds in their heads. Creative analysis is done through problem-based learning where the students direct themselves toward an outcome of accurate analysis. This is done by understanding concepts of form and harmony and then analyzing and evaluating what is presented. Instead of telling students about the form of a given piece, for example, the teacher may ask students to come up with the form on their own. The students then find elements of the music that presented, developed, and repeated. From this, they find their own way to the form. By allowing students to do this, educators set the stage for creative thinking and a greater sense of ownership of the subject being taught.

Essentially, one way to promote creativity is by stretching students toward higher-level thinking. Through levels like synthesis, analysis, and evaluation, students are actively engaged in the learning process. In these student-centered learning environments, students are encouraged to think creatively and to generate new outcomes in composition, improvisation, listening, and analysis. It is through student-centered learning that students gain the greatest sense of knowledge and autonomy in the subject they are studying.

Julie Olson is the band director in the Randolph School District, Randolph, WI. She is also currently a graduate student at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.