Proceso de simulación de la antena dipolo tipo varilla basada en la segunda

The teaching creates opportunities for the student to experience him/herself as a creator and co-creator.

(Haselbach & Hartmann, 2013)

Creativity is a key part of being a competent learner. New ideas come from differences. They come from having different perspectives and considering others’ ideas and theories (Estelle Ruth Jorgensen, 2008; Lucas, 2001; Robinson, 2011). Imagination and creativity are energising and we, as teachers, must be imaginative and creative to inspire these attributes in our students.

Developing creativity in children is what has long been recognised as a necessity for ‘good education’. As creativity is imaginative thought and action, this imagination drives the process and the product (Hennessy, 2013; Estelle Ruth Jorgensen, 2008). Being creative can be a noisy business (Gilpatrick, 2009; Lytton, 1971, 2012). Many teachers find it is “an excruciating challenge…to sit back, watch, and let the students’ creative process unfold” (Cave, 2010, p. 8). Music as an aural medium, can present a noise level that many see as a significant hindrance in allowing for small group work. The challenge for most teachers is to push through the expected pandemonium to reach a point where children self-regulate their behaviour. It can go against our instincts and training to allow for such behaviour (Cave, 2010).

Creativity is a trait within us all in varying degrees. It involves thinking about problems in many different ways and is imaginative thought in action. We draw on our intuition, critical judgement and experience. It requires self-confidence and resilience. It can be fostered and developed given an environment in which it is encouraged and nurtured (de Bono, 1970; Gardner, 2015a; Estelle Ruth Jorgensen, 2008; Lytton, 1971, 2012; Robinson, 2011; Sangiorgio, 2015; UNESCO, 2006; Whitehead, 1967). “Spontaneity needs to be sustained and the imagination and the desire to experiment needs to be stimulated” (Haselbach, 1971, p. 43). We can enact our creativity in multitudes of ways but we must not confuse creativity with right and wrong. In music the lines between creativity and right and wrong can be blurred. If a child is expected to play on the accented first beat in a three beat metre, we may consider him ‘wrong’ if he accents on beats of different groupings. The first example presents what we have asked of the child. The accent represents his playing. We could say that this is ‘right’.

A child who knows the rules and then bends them to create interest such as in the next example is showing an understanding of ‘right’ combined with creativity.

This model of accenting on irregular beats is common throughout the Music for Children volumes. This third example demonstrates a child who does not appear to understand the concept of accent, metre or beat.

We cannot label this as creative as there is not the evidence of understanding.

There is growing acknowledgement that creativity is becoming the most valuable

commodity in the 21st _{century. Edward de Bono has revolutionised the way we think about} creativity. His now famous remark regarding lateral thinking, “you cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper” (de Bono, 2016) can be related to those teachers who continue to offer the same types of experiences and expect varied creative results (Lucas, 2001). It is reflection that is the key to digging elsewhere.

In our formal education system there appears to be less opportunity for children to “become—to create themselves among beings who are different, to choose themselves as thoughtful human beings, decent and engaged, wide-awake to the world” (Greene, 2007, p. 1). This objective can only be reached through an education system that encourages creativity, embeds values education, and engages children in responding to our world in a variety of mediums. In 2005, the Australian Government proclaimed that “an education rich in creative arts...is vital to students’ success as individuals and as members of society”. It informed us that “schools that value creativity lead the way in cultivating the well-informed and active citizens our future demands: where individuals are able to generate fresh ideas, communicate effectively, take calculated risks and imaginative leaps, adapt easily to change and work cooperatively” (Ministerial Council for Education Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs Cultural Ministers Council, 2005, p. 3). An education promoting creativity combined with the humanistic intentions of Orff Schulwerk would seem an ideal framework for teaching in our schools.

Schools play a large role in providing a climate for developing creativity demonstrated through the physical environment; the policies in place regarding curriculum, classroom management, and values and ethics; staff members; plus the allocation of budgets. The development of creativity is not something to be restricted to experiences in the arts curriculum. It is something to be embedded within all aspects of school decision-making, and throughout each child’s education. “Creativity is not a frill to the side of learning facts and skills, but is an essential strategy for developing a true understanding of every subject. In short, creativity is the highest level of cognition” (Goodkin, 2006, p. 6). However, it is with the arts that creativity is most expected. Orff educators plan for the development of creativity as part of children’s learning. Creativity is central to Orff Schulwerk (Frazee, 2012; Goodkin, 2001, 2002; Jungmair, 2010; Keller, 1974; Orff, 1963b, 1978; Regner, 1975; Wampler, Orff, & Smith, 1968). The Orff approach “frees students from slavishly copying someone else’s creation and leads to true musical understanding” (Birkenshaw-Fleming, 2000, p. 16).

Providing space for children’s own ideas invites an environment where the process of creating artistic and aesthetic musical and movement experiences is shared between students and teacher. This belief about music and movement as being co-created offers personal meaning for the child (Banks, 1982; Gilpatrick, 2009; Hartmann, 2000; Jungmair, 2000). As children develop and gain musical skills and knowledge, they utilise more creative thinking in their musical decisions. This thinking may not result in creating something ‘new’ necessarily (Runco & Pritzker, 2011)—a preferred outcome of creativity from adults—as ‘new’ for a child may be something that we recognise as common through our experiences. However this does not detract from the creative process that has occurred through a child’s thinking and exploring.

When children are asked for their ideas as co-creators, these ideas will differ from child to child and from day to day depending on many factors: their individual experiences; their engagement; their participation in creative tasks within and outside of school; and physical implications such as a lack of sleep. Despite this, our schools have inbuilt expectations for children to be creative on cue. Children are expected to be creative during timetabled arts classes, just as they are expected to feel like running and jumping during a physical education lesson. Both are unrealistic expectations. We need to allow space and time for creativity in order to work through the creative process at the pace that suits each individual. As educators, it is essential to provide quiet pauses to “giv(e) individuals the chance to “speak” to themselves at a different speed” (Lucas, 2001, p. 173).

The difficulties lie in the segregated curriculum. Children in Australian primary schools read and write before recess, solve mathematical problems before lunch and spend the last hour or two of the school day involved in all the other curriculum areas. Maybe some children feel more creative at the beginning of the day. I know I’m at my best at about six in the morning so it’s no wonder any artistic abilities went unnoticed when I was at school.

Orff educators do not sit back waiting for the creative process to happen. We provide a problem for children to solve and it is our role to challenge, assist, suggest, encourage, and ask question after question to assist them in solving this problem creatively (Gilpatrick, 2009; Goodkin, 2001; Hartmann, 2000). Orff educators recognise the vulnerability that learners may feel when creating and testing ideas. We must ensure a nurturing and accepting environment, and trust in the students’ capacity to develop their creativity, at their own pace, as they develop their knowledge and skills in music within that environment.

We should educate children to understand the difference between freedom in invention and lousyness in performance. But that does not mean we have to repeat a piece until it is dead (and therefore not better performed). We should start with the tiny little units to make children listen, watch, perform more carefully. Then the more demanding pieces, songs, dances, scenes will be of more quality (B.Haselbach, personal communication, February 2016).

Vignette: Imagine an abacus.

Let us for a moment imagine that children sit as the beads on the lines of wire at the left side of the abacus. Several beads sit on each wire. By immersing children in creative experiences, some will move quickly along their wire taking up the creative challenges placed in front of them. One could see these children as those beads on the abacus having more of an innate disposition to create coupled with a desire to travel along the wire. Others may travel but at a slower rate. Others, faced with the same challenges, stay rooted on that left side. But do they stay there because they have no idea of how to move? No way of thinking of how to be creative? But within this environment these children have been witness to the beads moving at different paces along the wire. They recognise the creativity in others, copy their ideas, immerse themselves in them and over time slightly modify them. This learning from others helps them to move along the wire.

We all have a capacity to be creative, as we all have the capacity to be compassionate, as we all have the capacity to be adventurous. The immersion with others with these demonstrated

capacities may be the trigger that helps us develop our own sensibilities, but only if we desire them. If this were the case, and creativity was a matter of degree rather than seen as a have/have not capacity, our role as teachers is even more explicit. We must offer varied creative experiences to all children and be optimistic that the beads on the abacas will move, accepting of the different tempos.

Believing in one’s own ability to be creative can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is the role of the whole school community to provide the environment in which a child can explore, contribute, feel respected and be part of that community, and this in turn is likely to affect the processes at work in the classroom and the creative outputs demonstrated. Eisner (as cited in Darby & Catterall, 1994) believed this school community can promote “equity” because being creative through the arts calls for “diversity, idiosyncrasy and personal signatures that show the distinctive ways individuals see, feel and imagine” (p. 5). Without such an environment a new idea and sharing of an idea can be fraught. It can be “killed by a sneer or a yawn, it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow” (Browder as cited in Lucas, 2001, p. 160). This describes the seemingly minor influences that can deter creativity. This quotation refers to creativity in Browder’s profession, advertising, but it is one that particularly speaks to education settings. A creative idea ‘killed by a sneer’ in advertising may be difficult or frustrating for the creator, but that is part of the ruthless world of advertising. Children learn quickly to hold back ideas in the classroom if their creative efforts are not acknowledged and encouraged.

E. Paul Torrance, famous for his Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, believed children required an environment and a teacher with particular attributes if we want to have

classrooms where creativity is encouraged. Teachers should respond respectively to unusual questions; respect unusual ideas of children; demonstrate value in all ideas given by the children; provide opportunities for self-initiated learning and acknowledge their efforts; and provide opportunities for children to explore and create without fear of evaluation or predetermined learning (The University of Georgia College of Education, 2016; Torrance, 1977; Torrance & Torrance, 1973). These attributes are essential to the enactment of this Principle.

Csikszentmihalyi (1997; 2004) asserted that total absorption that consumes individuals engaged in the creative process or, being ‘in the flow’, is the secret to happiness. He affirmed that creative individuals are constantly curious, highly motivated, willing to take risks, possess the ability to think outside the square, to combine unusual ideas with more

environment must be conducive to this. These particular attributes of creative individuals may not be evident in everyone and the fact that Csikszentmihalyi lists these attributes suggests that without them, there is a lack of creativity. However, I would suggest that each attribute is within us all in varying degrees. One might be willing to take risks but be deficient in the curiosity needed to think outside the square. Similarly one may be curious, but lack resilience and motivation to bring ideas to fruition. If what Csikszentmihalyi asserts is correct and creativity is indeed the secret to happiness, and if being creative is a matter of degree, and if the desire in the child to be creative is present, then teachers can only respond in one way. Orff educators must provide continuous, various, varied and intentional

opportunities for children to be creative—to be in the flow. To be creative is to make our lives more meaningful, satisfying, and enjoyable (Connery, John-Steiner, & Marjanovic- Shane, 2010; Hennessey, 2010; Robinson, 2011). Creativity satisfies a need to transform and in turn is transformative (Thwaites, 2013).

Psychologist Howard Gardner has made a worldwide impact on education through his theory of multiple intelligences that claims we all have a number of discrete intellectual capacities (Gardner, 2011, 2015a, 2015b). This redefining of intelligence from earlier thinking of it as being one entity, the extent of which was determined through IQ testing, has been seen as an important link between learning and creativity. If we all have a range of intelligences, “it is an easy step to assume that being creative means being able to harness the fullest potential of each of your intelligences” (Lucas, 2001, p. 152). Gardner confirmed what most musicians and music educators already believed: that musical intelligence is something equally as important as other realms of intelligence (Coogan & Goodkin, 2006). Musical intelligence can be viewed as both a product and a process where the degrees of creativity through such activities as interpreting the music of others in a new way, making unexpected connections with other forms of expression, or improvising and composing are demonstrated (Hennessy, 2013). When Gardner formed his theory and recognised music as an intelligence, it made music educators feel both “defensive and hopeful” (Whitaker, 1998, p. 2). ‘Defensive’ as there was now very solid evidence of the necessity of music in schools and many had been denied the funding to support music programs in schools. ‘Hopeful’ because Gardner’s theories were so widely accepted and a new era of value in artistic education was envisioned in the future because of this. Many saw this as a catalyst for transformation in government and school policies and believed that the inclusion of quality artistic and creative music education programs would be implemented. Unfortunately Gardner’s explicit inclusion of music intelligence was not enough to ensure a paradigm shift in how we educate our children.

Creativity in Improvisation and Composition differs from the other Schulwerk Principles in the sense of it making explicit the inclusion of these two very specific musical activities, improvisation and composition (Dolloff, 1993; Goodkin, 2002; Hartmann, 2000; Orff, 1963b, 1978; Regner, 1975). Musically, these are at the core of Orff Schulwerk. Hartmann (personal communication, July 2014) explained that there are levels of improvisation that involve spontaneous responses. We provide for creativity by asking children to make musical or movement choices about the elements of music (such as dynamics) and this type of creativity develops understandings of how music works. It is only through a progression of experiences to aid understandings about music that growth in quality of improvisation and composition can occur (Bitcon, 2000; Peters, 2011). As children gain experience in

improvising using the body, the instruments, the voice, and other media, this improvisation becomes more complex and demands greater concentration, creativity, expression and musical knowledge.

Definitions surrounding improvisation are varied and depend on context—similar to definitions of creativity—but the Orff pedagogue Wilhelm Keller defined it as the “spontaneous ‘working-through’ of a defined problem” (E. Nichols, 1977a, p. 116). The word ‘defined’ relates to the structure or framework for the improvisation. I wonder if this is too narrow a view of improvisation as it does not include the exploration performed by children at an instrument when no such framework is considered. Haselbach (1971) says “improvisation can lead to a clearly distinguishable form, but it can also be playing with new ideas that are not in any way fixed. It can certainly be considered as promoting creative attitudes” (p. 140).

The voice is critical in Orff Schulwerk. It is used in various ways including speech and language, vocal sounds made by the mouth, teeth and tongue, and through singing. Improvising and composing limited range sung motifs is one way to begin melodic improvisation and composition. The voice, the body, the instruments—all should be experienced in a cyclic and overlapping way that develops music understanding, expression and creativity. Although the voice offers improvisation and composition possibilities, it is through the melodic percussion instruments that a greater range of melodic improvisation and composition opportunities can be experienced from a young age. No orchestral instrument, nor the piano, guitar or other melodic instruments, offers such a successful and aesthetic way into improvisation for children.

is not to say that arrhythmic improvisation and composition is restricted to beginners and in fact should be encouraged throughout a child’s music and movement education. Artistic improvisation on Orff melodic percussion instruments still requires musical knowledge and sensitivity. Unlike orchestral instruments, knowledge and sensitivity can be learned and developed through improvising and composing from the very beginnings of music

education. Through simple accompaniments and repeated patterns, children can improvise both rhythmically and melodically on a xylophone, but for music to be most successful for the learner, they must draw on what they already know (Birrell, 2007; Goodkin, 2006). Thinking again of the traditional rhyme, The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, we might consider how this could be presented to children using melodic percussion instruments. The rhyme used is intentionally the same as the one in the vignette in The Social Dimension Principle to demonstrate the scope of ideas within repertoire and the adaptability that much repertoire offers.

Vignette: Instrumental Improvisation