Sharing strategies for a creative and sustainable learning: CREANOVA in the Basque Country

CREANOVA PROJECT

Creative Learning and Networking for European Innovation

Duration: 2008/12/01-2011/11/30Agreement number: 2008-3596/001-001

Proposal number: 143725-LLP-1-2008-1-ES-KA1-KA1SCRProject financed by the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency, Lifelong

Programme. Education and Training

INDEX

1. Brief presentation of Creanova Project

2. Theoretical Framework: the Interpretative Model3. CREANOVA experiment in the Basque Country

4. Conclusions

• Funded by the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive

Agency

• 12 partners from 8 different countries• Universities• Vocational Education Training centres• Technical and creative companies• Local governments

• Duration of this project: three years (2008-2011)

1 CREANOVA PROJECT in a nutshell

PARTNERS Consortium

Sharing strategies for a creative and sustainable learning: CREANOVA in the Basque Country

I. Fernández, P. Ruiz de Gauna, M. Arandia, M. Barandiaran, A. Eizagirre, I. Etxebarria, E. Torres

A. Ezeiza

• The current social context: • globalization• change• uncertainty

• Research of the sense and meaning

of creativity and innovation

1. Introduction

DEFINITION OF INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

• Creativity: “the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain”.

• Innovation: “the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization”.

2. Creativity and innovation in learning contexts

IN CREANOVA, CREATIVITY:

• A human ability.

• A complex process

• Nucleus: creative thinking

• A response to basic needs of survival and to higher levels of development

• Interaction with the context

• Quality attributable to all people which can give rise to small innovations in immediate environments, as well as to inventions of great importance for humanity (continuum)


IN CREANOVA, INNOVATION:

• Originally related to the practical application and development of new ideas in the industrial world (competitiveness).

• Parallel debate on the ultimate aims of innovation.

• A successful response to the needs of social nature (greater equity, sustainability and equal opportunities), including both those economics (the logic of the market and competitiveness), and those of higher rank (desirable social goals).


LEARNING:

• The key to today's society because it is a society willing to learn and to cope with changes, a creative and innovative society.

• As a concept can mean flexibility, interaction and collaborative action.

• Social capital.

• Vision included in extensive educational concepts focused on the formation of the student as a subject.


COLLECTION OF BEST PRACTICES: CONDITIONS AND FACTORS

• In a third stage, CREANOVA worked on the detection and analysis of "best practices":

-To identify the factors and conditions present in the educational processes that generate creativity

-To obtain a higher level of knowledge about those practices that enhance creativity and innovation and about the elements they pay attention to

3. Conditions and elements that promote Creativity in learning contexts

DIFFICULTIES

• The simultaneous management of all the factors

• We needed a tool: an interpretive framework to allow planners and educators to put their attention into broader categories to cover all these elements

3. Conditions and elements that promote Creativity in learning contexts

INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORK TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE PROCESSES IN LEARNING CONTEXTS

• Conditions and factors more persistent and recurrent

• Four broad categories:• Need• Freedom• Interaction• Environment

4. Interpretative Model

NEED:

• Related to something that drives people to create and innovate.

• The root from which the processes of creativity and innovation emerge.

• Understood and interpreted in terms of survival, creation of problems, resolution of conflicts, motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), personal interests, social needs, questions with a deep meaning, passion, etc.


FREEDOM:

• Possibilities of self-fulfilment within the process

• Materialized in the opportunity of self-management (personal management of time and space), independence, freedom of expression, confidence, not judgement, freedom to define duties and roles, openness, risk, absence of punishments, acceptance of errors, high level of initiative, violation of rules, etc.


INTERACTION:

• Related to access to knowledge and to communication experiences.

• Noticed in expressions such as: interaction between systems, institutions and actors, network, teamwork, communication among peers, communication between different, etc.


ENVIRONMENT:

• Context in which learning occurs

• Mentioned in three levels:

• Macro environment

• Physical environment

• Positive climate for the creation


INTERPRETATIVE FRAMEWORK :

• Flexible: each case sets a type of interaction between the various factors

• Articulator of theories and practices in specific cultural contexts

• Accessible to non-formal education, formal contexts and the world of work

• Open to receiving new macro-categories


• Subject: EJE Empresa Joven Educativa

A learning project designed for VET trainees

to develop entrepreneur competencies and to

stimulate trainee's curiosity for the labour

market

Aim of CREANOVA: to incorporate to the EJE

project some new elements related to

freedom, interaction, need and environment

Duration of the experience: 4 months

3. CREANOVA experiment in the Basque Country

STEPS OF THE PROJECT

• Create a company: targets and corporative image

• Work in the company: with a real product, real clients and suppliers and rotating through the different departments of the company

• Commercialization, marketing and results: final results are compared with different companies working in the same field


PHASES OF THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Intensive phase:

- 3 days, 100 students from different professional groups, 7 teachers from the EJE program and 5 members of the CREANOVA team, at a youth hostel in Zarautz (outdoor learning)

- Techniques: storytelling, workshops, auto schedule, six hats of De Bono and interaction between different, focusing on the creation of a point of sale



PHASES OF THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Extensive phase. Four groups (around 50 students) followed the whole process until the end of the academic year.


RESULTS

• Some of the main results of this experience in relation to the CREANOVA´s model:


ABOUT NEED

• It is hard to concrete in formal educational practice (VET)

• Students live need, as far as it is induced, in a more diffuse and distant way

• Students participating in the CREANOVA experiment in the Basque Country have pointed out: work, dedication, effort, involvement…

• The category of Need in the CREANOVA model must be reviewed and resized

• Creativity and innovation are assumed as a response to the need to solve a problem


ABOUT ENVIRONMENT

• The value of the environment as a way to foster the development of other dimensions (interaction, need and freedom) is highlighted

• In the case of CREANOVA in the Basque Country the intervention on it has been very noticeable

• It has become a key element to be institutionalized in the EJE programme


ABOUT FREEDOM

• The importance of lowering the level of control, present in formal systems of education

• To promote the creation of ideas: playing, humour


ABOUT INTERACTION

• Acting in Teaching as a guide or facilitator in opposition to more managerial models:

- Liberating source of ideas and creation that induces to make more complex and multidimensional learning.

- Opening towards "different, others" and the development of creativity.

- Change of the self-image of students.

- Students learn to share, to listen, to be open minded to the ideas of others as a source of learning and promoter of new ideas.


• Creativity and innovation are shaped by the versatility, dynamism and change of globalized environments

• A creative and innovative society is ready to learn

• From the theory and the best practices reviewed four main pedagogical concepts: Need, Freedom, Interaction and Environment

• These seem to be useful to facilitate a better understanding of the educational practices that develop creativity and innovation as part of learning

4. CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission for the financial support of this project, and also the rest of the research team of the Basque Country: Nerea Aguirre, Jesús Ibáñez e Iñaki Zabaleta as well as the other parners of the Basque Country: Tknika (Basque Government) and Creativity Zentrum.

Creanova Project website:http://www.creanova-project.eu

Creanova Association: http://www.creanovanet.org

Creanova ConferenceBilbao (Spain), 7-8 Oct. 2011

Follow us on Twitter: @creanovaeu

Thank you! Eskerrik asko!

http://www.creanova-project.eu/




http://www.creanovanet.org/