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Widening our understanding of creative pedagogy a north–south dialogue

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Education 3-13: International Journal
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Widening our understanding of creative
pedagogy: a North–South dialogue
a

b

Vlad Pet re Gl ăveanu , Zayda Sierra & Lene Tanggaard

a

a

Depart ment of Communicat ion and Psychology, Aalborg
Universit y, Aalborg, Denmark
b

Research Group in Educat ion and Diversit y Int ernat ional (EDI),
Facult y of Educat ion, Universit y of Ant ioquia, Ant ioquia, Colombia


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To cite this article: Vlad Pet re Gl ăveanu, Zayda Sierra & Lene Tanggaard (2015): Widening our
underst anding of creat ive pedagogy: a Nort h–Sout h dialogue, Educat ion 3-13: Int ernat ional Journal
of Primary, Element ary and Early Years Educat ion, DOI: 10. 1080/ 03004279. 2015. 1020634
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Education 3–13, 2015
/>
Widening our understanding of creative pedagogy: a North–South
dialogue
Vlad Petre Glăveanua*, Zayda Sierrab and Lene Tanggaarda
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark; bResearch
Group in Education and Diversity International (EDI), Faculty of Education, University of Antioquia,
Antioquia, Colombia

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a

(Received 21 July 2014; accepted 18 November 2014)
The present article offers a reflection on creativity and creative pedagogy emerging out
of an ongoing dialogue between three authors placed in two very different sociocultural
contexts – Denmark and Colombia. Despite obvious geographical, economic, and
cultural differences, similar concerns animate our practice when it comes to the
question of creativity and creative pedagogy. The article opens with a brief
presentation of the two cultural settings considered here and, based on it, continues
with a discussion of paradigmatic foundations of creativity within education in
general and within school in particular. These reflections inform our approach to
creative pedagogy and suggest a reformulation of this concept in the light of
sociocultural and decolonial theoretical perspectives. In the end, we question today’s
global ethos in formal educational environments of striving towards accountability
and standardisation in ways that minimise, if not outright exclude, difference,
diversity, and, consequently, creativity itself.
Keywords: creativity paradigms; decolonial and cultural theory; creative pedagogy;
Denmark; Colombia


Introduction
‘School kills creativity’ – a conclusion that often echoes in today’s discussions of education
in both scientific forums and public debates. A concern that has been on the mind of
researchers and educators for a long time, at least since Torrance gave evidence of multiple
‘creativity slumps’ in school (Torrance 1967). At the same time, several educational
reforms in countries around the world contributed to what Craft (2008, 1) defined as ‘the
beginning of a tsunami of opportunities for creativity in terms of pedagogy, curriculum
and learning’. The present article, and this special issue, contributes to this general movement towards imagining schools and forms of pedagogy that foster rather than ‘annihilate’
creativity.
Our starting point in this debate is that the meanings we give to creativity in school, and
in education more generally, are deeply related to how we understand children, the processes of teaching and learning, and the role of society and socialisation in these processes.
For a long time, developmental theory has been dominated by a reductionist conception of

*Corresponding author. Email:
© 2015 ASPE


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the child as a more or less passive recipient of external influences, a being whose knowledge of self and world is initially limited and biased. The child as essentially reactive is
gradually replaced by a view of children as both active and creative. But, even in this
context, what kind of creativity do we think children are capable of? Some keep a very
residual notion of creativity in the case of children (Sawyer et al. 2003, 240), others celebrate children’s creative expression in the form of ‘little c’ or mundane creativity (Craft
2001). And yet, a critical reflection on this topic would need to start from a more basic definitional question: why do we need to associate creativity with societal value and, more than
this, who decides what is of value for society? A modern tradition of aligning creativity to
the needs of capitalist societies makes us value most of all the (over)production of ‘goods’

and their incessant consumption. Should children be expected to participate in this cycle
with their creativity?
The above-mentioned reflections, concerning the meaning and value of creativity in
education and schooling, are born out of an ongoing dialogue between researchers
located in Denmark and Colombia. Despite great cultural and socio-economic differences
between these two contexts or, rather, because of them, the three authors of this article
found themselves confronted with a similar question: from which paradigms are we theorising creativity in school, for what purposes, and with what consequences? This question
stems from both our long-term engagement with theories of creativity and their paradigmatic underpinnings on one hand and, on the other, from our experiences of working
with teachers and students within various educational contexts. In our dialogue, we share
a sociocultural understanding of creativity as a distributed process that connects people,
objects, and symbolic systems (Glăveanu 2014). This relational ontology makes us, first
of all, wary of theories and practices that reify creativity and consider it a more or less
‘objective’ quality some people possess more than others (the psychometric model).
Second, the symbolic and normative constraints placed on the definition of creativity
bear the mark of relations of power between different groups and are often used to marginalise or discriminate. It is our aim to build a critical cultural approach to creative pedagogy
that engages with paradigmatic discourses and notices how they are embodied in a series of
everyday practices inside and outside the classroom. Such an exercise not only makes us
aware of the cultural and political make-up of our theories but also, above all, can help
us construct better, more fair and equitable perspectives.
For this purpose, we begin this article with a discussion of the two cultural contexts that
inspire our work; then, we discuss three main paradigmatic views of creativity and their
educational consequences, primarily in relation to current models of creative pedagogy.
At the end, we consider the role of diversity for creative pedagogy worldwide and question
the present-day ‘cultures of standardisation’ in school striving towards sameness and, to a
great extent, conformity and uniformity rather than creativity.

Contrasting cases: creativity and schooling in Denmark and Colombia
In recent years, the Danish educational system at large has been undergoing extensive
reforms under the neo-liberal regime increasingly governing public institutions. New,
large schools and colleges are under construction, and fusions between institutions are

seen everywhere. At the same time, institutions for teachers’ education have moved
away from focusing on teaching particular subject matters to emphasising competences
and results (Rasmussen and Rasch-Christensen 2014). Overall, output-oriented education
is fashionable in Denmark, in particular in the light of the PISA discourse, measuring


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what can be measured to ensure that learning interventions are effective and controlled by
outputs (Rasmussen and Rasch-Christensen 2014, 16).
Part of the new rhetoric in education, both in Denmark and in Europe more generally,
focuses on the need to develop both functional skills in traditional subjects and meta-competences such as creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The latter are considered
important vehicles for translating knowledge into action, for the creation of economic
growth and social welfare. Creativity is perceived as central for the development of local
and national economies. What remains largely unquestioned is how exactly creativity in
school helps the economy and, most of all, what teachers can do to foster it; and yet, considering the long tradition of innovation in the country, many would place creativity at the
core of how Danes think about themselves and their history. It is indeed hard to tell the story
of the Danish educational system without mentioning creativity. The roots of creativityenhancing reforms go back to the romantic movements of the 1800s and Rousseau’s innovative ideas about education (Appel and Fink-Jensen 2014). Up to this day, the Danish law
regarding public schools (Folkeskoleloven) explicitly mentions the necessity for school teachers to develop students’ imagination (fantasi), desire for learning and doing (virkelyst),
and democratic values.
However, in recent years, the usual high confidence in the capacity of the Danish educational model to ensure the development of creative competences among pupils (a combination between fantasi and virkelyst) is being questioned. The high weight placed on
international competition and the trust in global measures of performance embodied by
PISA are now forcing Denmark’s policy-makers to change the system. For example, in
the new reform of public schools (Folkeskolen), students are to receive more teaching
within subjects such as language and mathematics which lead to measurable functional
skills. Moreover, new teaching materials are preparing students directly for national test

items, leading to misguided forms of ‘teaching to the test’ and disregarding any other educational processes or outcomes not included in the assessment. Responses to such changes
are mixed to say the least. Teachers rightfully worry about their role in shaping activities in
the classroom and, more than this, about the fact that their own evaluation might be guided
by criteria towards which they have little input.
Overall, these macro-level changes invite more and more teachers to reflect on the
general role of education and the way in which creativity is understood and enacted in
the educational system (Lene Tanggaard, the third author of this article, has been repeatedly
invited in this context to offer creativity workshops to Danish teachers in different municipalities). What teachers are mostly concerned about is whether the creative expression of
children can or should be ‘assessed’ just as any other competence. Moreover, the exact position of the teacher is questioned: either to adopt a coaching role and let the environment
create, in a broad sense, the space for creativity or, on the contrary, to adopt a more directive
role and model the creative activity of students. This is particular important since, in Danish
schools, creativity is considered vital to the culture of schooling. It is something teachers
often praise and value to a high extent. Accordingly, and as an alternative to outputdriven schooling, researchers have argued that one way forward is to develop a ‘muddy’,
‘impure’ pedagogy that is meant to materialise the potential of students to change and
create things, also those not illuminated by present learning goals (for details see Tanggaard
2013; Tanggaard, Rømer, and Brinkmann 2014).
To some extent, the same concern for the effects of outcome-driven schooling and the
growing emphasis on testing are also present in Colombia. However, unlike Denmark,
which shares the Western cultural legacy of thinking about creativity, the Colombian
case forces us to start from a more basic interrogation. How to conceptualise creativity


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(and creative pedagogy) within one of the most culturally and biologically diverse countries
in the world, one that, at the same time, has been dealing with a long-lasting armed conflict

and deep economic inequalities? Considering creativity in this context means understanding, first of all, a formal education system that does not promote critical thinking and
problem-solving but the mere transmission of information, not connected with students’
lives and current world changes (Zubiria 2014).
In Colombia, recent results of the PISA tests reveal a grim picture. Students from
different social classes not only study separately, but also receive an education of different
quality. The country ranked 62 among the 65 who participated in the 2013 study and fell
10 places compared to the last assessment in 2009 (El Espectador 2013). These are the
overall results, but the interpretation changes if we distinguish students by social class,
type of school, and the city they live in. The Colombian educational system separates
people based on class: in general, the rich study with the rich in private schools, and
the poor with the poor in public schools, which account for 72.7% of the population.
The public sector, particularly in rural and ethnic areas, is the one who faces daily the
problem of smoothing the functioning of schools in these different social, cultural, and
economic contexts while their students are having, at the same time, the poorest resources
in terms of quality of teachers, didactic materials, and infrastructure (Pereyra 2006).
According to García et al. (2013), if we look at skin colour or ethnicity, standardised
evaluations also show a serious case of segregation and inequality. The poor results are
primarily of students from economically deprived families, who are the majority. The
upper-class students, however, do better, although their performance is still mediocre
compared to European countries, as Gentili observes (2014). For this author, what
makes students from the Latin American elites more competitive is a historically existing
model of accumulation and exploitation of the poor, which makes rich families so rich,
and not their school virtues.
Colombian educational policies have been oriented in the last decade to the inclusion of
all children into the school system. However, these policies have tended to confuse equality,
the universal access to schooling (without reviewing critically its Eurocentric objectives
and contents), with equity, the recognition of the adverse impact of an oppressive colonialist
history on many diverse cultures and the need for an intercultural knowledge dialogue with
them. Although the constitutional reform of 1991 recognised the pluricultural character of
the nation – a result of decades of resistance by Indigenous and Afro-descendent people –

an assimilative official curriculum is still compulsory, which continues ignoring differences
and reproducing the status quo (López and y Sourrouille 2012).
Several initiatives in the field of ethno-education and popular education have emerged
in Colombia in the last two decades as an effort from Indigenous, Afro-descendent, rural,
and other economically disadvantaged groups to better serve their children’s needs towards
building a more democratic and pluralistic society (Castillo and Caicedo 2008; Cendales,
Mejía y, and Moz 2013). These initiatives require another type of qualitative assessment
(i.e. students’ participation in identifying and solving problems in their communities; creative leadership towards participative actions to reduce poverty; equity in gender, interracial,
and intergenerational relationships; political incidence, among others). However, government educational policies permeate or co-opt these efforts by centralised administrative
decision-making based on individualistic standardised measurements designed in places
far away from these communities. Thus, government policies and curricula continue to contribute to the violence that has characterised Latin American history since the European
conquest. It is, in particular, an epistemological violence that, according to CastroGómez (2000), occurs when certain ways of being, thinking and living in the world are


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ignored, made invisible or denied, while knowledge and practices from the elites who hold
political, economic and social power are legitimised as superior.

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Understanding creative pedagogy: from which paradigm?
There are many differences between the educational system in Denmark and Colombia.
And yet, teachers in both geographical and cultural locations are striving to incorporate
creativity into the curriculum and their educational practice. Interestingly, in both cases,
school reforms are largely considered to come ‘from the outside’, imposed in a top-down
manner by governments who look towards standardised testing and international rankings
as golden measures of achievement in education. What is at stake here, however, goes

beyond common challenges. It concerns the very central question of how we theorise creativity in education and for what purposes. In other words, our North–South dialogue is
largely centred on understanding what paradigmatic views of creativity underpin existing
models of school and society, what is the origin of such views, and how they are reinforced
in models of education, of schooling, and current discussions of creative pedagogy. In this
regard, the following three paradigmatic views have been previously outlined: the He-paradigm, the paradigm of the creative genius; the I-paradigm, the paradigm of the creative individual; and the We-paradigm, the paradigm of creative collaboration (see Glăveanu 2010).
The Western conception of creativity has been dominated since its beginnings by the
image of geniuses – highly eminent creators who are capable, almost singlehandedly, to
shape their society and culture. Defined by uniqueness and rarity, these people stand out
and often struggle against the society and culture of their time. Moreover, the ideological
construction of the genius has traditionally favoured male creativity (hence the term ‘He’
paradigm) and disregarded both the contributions of women and children, as well as
other marginalised groups such as the poor or the mentally ill. The consequences of this
paradigm for education are plain to see. Not only was the schooling of males (especially
from the dominant classes) given priority in Western Europe and, later, its colonies, but
the role of education was for a long time considered to be that of cultivating the skills
and types of knowledge validated as important by church and state. In this view, there is
virtually no place for creativity in the school, or at least for ‘real’, genius-level creative
achievement. Children are considered ‘inferior’ to adults, and the role of teachers is to
socialise them into cultural systems considered beyond questioning. Being creative and
taking leadership were roles reserved for the few, not the many. Despite the radical
social and educational transformations that came to challenge such conceptions, the Heparadigm resonates today in those conceptions that deny children’s creativity on the
ground of them not making visible contributions to the society (Csikszentmihalyi in
Sawyer et al. 2003, 220) and, more generally, in teacher-oriented and curriculum-based
education.
Of course very few educators around the world would support this model today
(although we need to acknowledge differences particularly in rural or underdeveloped
areas) and the shift in creativity theory towards the I-paradigm is largely concurring with
a general transition towards student-focused approaches and the emergence of creativity
as a major topic on the agenda of teachers. In fact, it is interesting to locate this shift in Guilford’s (1950) American Psychological Association address in which he explicitly encouraged psychologists and educators to cultivate the creativity of their students. This
paradigmatic change was prompted by both scientific and social developments taking

place in the USA. On one hand, the development of psychometric measures of creativity,
including Guilford’s own conception of divergent thinking (Guilford 1957), started to


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give educators the practical means to evaluate creative expression. On the other hand, the
context of the Cold War and the initial slower progress of the USA compared to the Soviet
Union were making the capacity to innovate a societal priority. What followed were
decades of research into children’s capacity of divergent thinking (with the help of wellknown measures such as the Torrance Tests for Creative Thinking; Cramond et al. 1999)
and, at the same time, the beginning of placing the assessment of creativity in the
driver’s seat when it comes to educational practice. The I-paradigm did make educators
much more sensitive to the issue of cultivating the creativity of their students and, to
some extent, their own creativity in teaching, but it also encouraged them to consider it
an individual quality. In other words, the ‘democratisation’ of creative expression in education was not matched by a ‘socialisation’ of this phenomenon (Glăveanu 2010).
Starting largely from the 1980s, both psychologists and educators became much more
sensitive to the systemic and social nature of creativity inside and outside the classroom
(Hennessey 2003). The recovery in the West of the writings of Lev Vygotsky (among
others), and their impact on educational practices, played a major role in the construction
of new forms of teaching and new types of curricula. Vygotsky’s ideas about the zone of
proximal development, as well as his work on creativity and imagination (Vygotsky
1978, 2004), emphasise the fact that creativity is only expressed and developed in relationships. At the core of the We-paradigm in education is a view of creativity not as a mental
process but as a form of (inter)action in and with the world. Any creative pedagogy elaborated within this paradigm needs therefore to account for the simultaneously social,
material, and temporal distribution of creative acts. This means that, instead of individual
activities that stimulate thinking skills, what comes to the fore is the creation of opportunities for collaboration and interaction with material, cultural artefacts. In line with
Dewey’s (1902) seminal work, this view emphasises teacher–student collaboration and

the grounding of education in everyday life practices that allow students to relate new
knowledge to prior experiences and make use of it in practice, in ways that deepen their
understanding of the world and possibilities of acting within it.
To these reflections on education rooted largely within a European and North American
model, we need to add other perspectives that take into account the experience and knowledge of people living within what Santos (2012) termed ‘the global South’. The Colombian
case sheds new light on models of creative pedagogy emerging out of the We-paradigm and
adds to them a necessary critical perspective that engages with issues of colonialism, domination, racism, and marginalisation (Sierra and Romero 2002; Sierra 2010). Our North–
South dialogue has convinced us that a more comprehensive understanding of creativity
in school, and in education more generally, can only start from a redefinition of existing
paradigms and their implicit models of individual and social development (Sierra and
Fallon 2013). The South American context has many important lessons to teach us regarding new forms of pedagogy that account for and strive to transcend colonialism and oppressive relations embedded even within seemingly collaborative classroom interactions. Most
of all, it allows us to de-centre (and re-centre) our models from an Anglo-Eurocentric perspective on education for creativity, still very much rooted in the belief that creative action
originates from brilliant minds (Gallagher 1991), towards a critical and cultural account of
what it means to create in schools and communities, towards more equitable, collaborative,
and just societies (Walsh 2013).
What these reflections encourage us to do is not only promote a We-paradigm in education but consider how inclusive this ‘We’ actually is. Are we truly recognising the creative potential of each and every child in the classroom? Are we making efforts to enhance
the creative expression of all? What about in contexts (within each country, not exclusively


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in Colombia) of exclusion, where, to begin with, not every child, based on ethnic and economic grounds, has equal opportunities for education? This example, and many others,
including from places like Denmark, should make us reflect on what we come to recognise
as creative and valuable, who we recognise as creative, and, above all, whose creativity we
legitimise and encourage.
What solutions are there? Are we simply to denounce power relations while considering

them intrinsic to past and present societies and forms of education in ways that end up justifying them? Are there real alternatives to building society and, for our discussion here,
pedagogy? We contend there are and, in the limited space of this article, will point only
to one such alternative represented by the notion of Buen Vivir. Roughly translated as
‘living well’ or ‘collective well-being’, this concept emerges out of the cosmovision of Indigenous people from Abya Yala (the name of the Americas before European colonisation).
Currently, this notion is also placed at the centre of the new Constitution of Ecuador, passed
in a popular referendum in September 2008. In the words of Walsh:
In its most general sense, buen vivir denotes, organizes, and constructs a system of knowledge
and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence. That is, [based] on the necessary interrelation of beings, knowledges, logics, and rationalities of thought, action, existence, and living. (Walsh 2010, 18)

What is the creativity paradigm that incorporates such ideas (or, rather, ideals)? How is
nature integrated into creative pedagogies across the world? Or should it be? These are
all open questions to the community of researchers and educators invested into the study
and application of new pedagogies aimed at fostering classroom creativity. At least since
the emergence of collaborative, We-paradigm perspectives on creativity and education,
there has been a surge in interest towards creative pedagogies. This is reflected in practical
efforts to suggest creative approaches to teaching (e.g. in computer learning, Hamza, Alhalabi, and Marcovitz 2000, in drama education, Toivanen, Halkilahti, and Ruismäki 2013),
the detailed description of case studies (e.g. Das, Dewhurst, and Gray 2011), and applications of theory in different cultures (Lin 2010).
Much theorising, both in the West and East, went into the conceptualisation of creative
pedagogy and these processes are ongoing. One of the most visible efforts in this regard, by
Lin (2011), proposes the interrelation in creative pedagogy of three key components: creative teaching, teaching for creativity, and creative learning. As such, there is increased recognition of the fact that creative pedagogies cannot focus exclusively on either teachers or
students but on their relation; this is very much in line with the We-paradigm within creativity and education briefly described earlier. Of course, the understanding of creative pedagogies does vary, and there are authors who emphasise one side of this relationship,
particularly the teacher side. For instance, Kuntz et al. (2013) focus on the way in which
creative pedagogies enable ‘a teacher’s sense of agency by addressing his/her own pedagogical goals, as well as those dictated by state and local standards’ (43) but remain relatively
silent regarding the contribution of students and their cultural context. Equally, Hamza,
Alhalabi, and Marcovitz (2000) focus almost exclusively on teaching creatively and offer
practical advice for teachers in their article on ‘creative pedagogy for computer learning’.
A critical cultural approach to this notion, building on insights gathered from both the
Denmark and Colombia, supports an understanding of creative pedagogy as a ‘dialogical
and improvisational process’ (Lin 2011, 153) but questions some of the analytical components considered above to constitute this process. Similar to the critical reflection of
Jeffrey and Craft (2004), we wonder if the common distinction between teaching creatively



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and teaching for creativity does not in fact dichotomise what is an integrated practice and
should be replaced by a focus on creative teaching and learning (for research on how to
enhance particularly the latter, see Cremin, Burnard, and Craft 2006). Going even
further, sociocultural and decolonial pedagogies invite us to start by problematising the
very distinction between ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ in any educational situation. If creative
action builds indeed a zone of proximal development for those involved in creative collaborations, this should equally apply to teachers and students. Such a remark is not meant to
dismiss the differences between these two roles. On the contrary, if we are to recognise
power differences in the classroom, the one between teachers and students is certainly
among the first to consider. And yet, the transformational power of rethinking pedagogy
from a new paradigm encourages us to transcend authoritarian models of schooling and
focus on dialogical interactions, playful engagement with educational content, and a reconsideration of nature and materiality.
A creative pedagogy, in both North and South, in West and East, is meant to strengthen
and restore the right of people to participate in those forms of cultural expression that give
meaning to their lives. It thus becomes all the more important to emphasise in school curricula the need for a dialogue between school and community, for the co-creation of projects
that draw on and reinvent local traditions, foster intercultural dialogue, and transform
oppressive situations. In sum, a creative pedagogy should restore imaginary play and curiosity, joy and laughter, as part of peacefully weaving communitarian ties, participative
interaction, and awareness.

Epilogue on standardisation and diversity in education
The corollary to our discussion can only be represented by a final reflection on the importance of diversity for creativity and, by extension, for creative pedagogy. Although rarely
acknowledged as such (for an exception, see Glăveanu and Gillespie 2014), difference represents the very condition of creative expression. Beyond individualistic definitions of creativity as divergent thinking, other ways of conceptualising this phenomenon emphasise our
capacity to consider reality from different positions. This ability to de-centre one’s perspective in the world is a deeply social and cultural act (Mead 1964) and creativity, from this

standpoint, not only involves but actually requires the interaction between self and other,
as well as active engagement with the symbolic and material forms of culture. A diversity
of life experiences was considered by Vygotsky to be the very foundation of creative and
imaginative action (Smolucha 1992). Moreover, current discussions of possibility thinking
and its role in creative learning and education as a whole (see Burnard, Craft and Cremin
2006; Cremin, Burnard, and Craft 2006; Craft et al. 2012; Cremin, Chappell, and Craft
2013) rely on a similar principle. The ‘what if?’ question, central for possibility thinking,
can only be formulated and answered by adopting new positions towards the problem at
hand, by noticing not only how things ‘are’ but also how they ‘can’ or ‘should be’. To
value such diversity of views should be commonplace in educational practice. One
would think it should also be the norm in dealing with cultures around the world, particularly in countries as ethnically and linguistically diverse as Colombia. In this sense, Article
7 on ‘Cultural heritage as the wellspring of creativity’, from UNESCO’s (2001) Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity, notes:
Creation draws on the roots of cultural tradition, but flourishes in contact with other cultures.
For this reason, heritage in all its forms must be preserved, enhanced and handed on to future


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generations as a record of human experience and aspirations, so as to foster creativity in all its
diversity and to inspire genuine dialogue among cultures. (63)

How does this ethos sit alongside current, global tendencies towards standardisation and
uniformity? How well can we apply a unitary, psychometric definition of creativity in
diverse cultural contexts around the world? What does creativity assessment divorced
from intervention accomplish? How can we develop creative pedagogies that respect diversity and place it at the core of efforts to enhance creative expression in the classroom and,

more than this, in the community at large? How does creative pedagogy contribute towards
changing oppressive local/global relations? There are no easy answers for such questions.
What we, as researchers and educators, can do is to continue raising these issues and, in
collaborations that bridge cultures and continents, to illustrate the value of diversity, including for our own thinking.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Qualitative Studies knowledge group and the Niels Bohr Centre of
Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark, as well as the Faculty of Education at the University of Antioquia, Colombia, for support that facilitated meetings in both Denmark and Colombia.

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