creativity-in-language-teaching-2015

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 12 CREATIVITY AND TECHNOLOGY IN SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING Alice Chik Introduction About two years ago, I was invited to give a talk to parents and teachers at a primary school on integrating technology for language teaching and learn- ing in home and informal contexts. The school was a pioneer in integrating tablet computers for learning across subjects, and faculty members were eager to extend digital learning to the home environment. The principal was hoping I could advise parents on helping their children use technology creatively for English learning and use. In the first part of the talk, I demonstrated using edu- cational websites as supplementary resources, and parents and teachers gave me their approving nods. I also talked about the pedagogical benefits and potentials of using English-language digital games in leisure contexts, supported by findings generated from a research project with Chinese-speaking university students in Hong Kong. At the end of the talk, a parent asked what could be done to pre- vent gaming addiction. This provided a reflective moment for me as a language teacher and researcher. While a recent Swedish report by Sundqvist and Sylvén (2014) demonstrated that boys who play English-language digital games in their spare time outperformed nongamers in an English vocabulary test, more parents and teachers subscribe to the “addiction” theory (Papert, 1993).To parents who only pay attention to the end product, digital gaming becomes an “addiction” that young people might “contract” from their “less-responsible” peers. In this chapter, I will turn my attention to technology-mediated processes and environ- ments that encourage learners to become more creative in their language learn- ing and use.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  181 Technology and Language Learning: New Creativity, Spaces and Affordances Across the world children have entered a passionate and enduring love affair with the computer.What they do with computers is as varied as their activities.The greatest amount of time is devoted to playing games, with the result that names like Nintendo have become household words. They use computers to write, to draw, to communicate, to obtain information. Some use computers as a means to establish social ties, while others use them to isolate themselves. In many cases their zeal has such force that it brings the word addiction to the minds of concerned parents. (Papert, 1993, p. ix) Since Papert (1993) discussed the new roles of school in the era of computers, the technologies might have advanced, but some fundamental conceptualizations of schooling have not necessarily changed. In a very popular 2006 TED Talks pre- sentation, Sir Ken Robinson argued that schools were killing creativity because the current education systems focused on preparing students for the present but not for the unknown and changing future. In the 21st century, technology should already be a given in language education. Education policy makers sometimes talk of technology as if it were the be-all and end-all solution to the problem of ensuring the standards and quality of education.The more computers and tablets the merrier the learning. Universities are frequently the incubators for techno- logical innovations but are not necessarily the places for innovative uses of tech- nology for learning. University students are also found to be less likely to use technology for academic purposes than for personal or leisure purposes (Corrin et al., 2010; Dohn, 2009). Schools are given the financial support to purchase tablets, but school-based curriculum development is not necessarily supported (Davies & Merchant, 2009; Selwyn, 2011). Faculty members and teachers usually place the blame on the technology and curricular restrictions. Students think of course-based technology as yet another assessment box to tick, and the learning management systems have nothing to do with their own everyday digital practices (Selwyn, 2011). Meanwhile, commercial apps and platforms provide user-friendly and interest-driven networks, and students are doing something more creative and spectacular and are learning autonomously in their leisure time (Benson & Reinders, 2011; Nunan & Richards, 2014). Research has shown that learners are leveraging everyday technology, especially those from interest-driven digital prac- tices in informal contexts, for foreign language learning and use.Yet all these cre- ative learning opportunities appear to operate outside the radar of formal learning contexts. What Papert (1993) pointed out in the early 1990s about the array of activities, practices, and engagement young people have with computers and the Internet is still valid today (Eynon & Malmberg, 2011; Furlong & Davies, 2012).

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 182  Alice Chik However, technology cannot be viewed as an “independent variable,” existing in a sociocultural vacuum, which can be integrated into a system for enhanced learning (Sölijö, 2010). In connecting technology with learning, Lievrouw and Livingstone (2002/2006, p. 23) urge researchers and educators to look into three dimensions: • Technology: the artefacts or devices that enable and extend our abilities to communicate; • Practices: the communication activities or practices we engage in to develop and use these devices; and • Context: the social arrangements or organizations that form around the devices and practices. By extending this model, we can examine foreign-language learning and teach- ing with technology. First, thinking about the technology, there is a tendency to chase after the newest and the latest and the wow factor for language learning. However, a change of the technology can bring in different mediational effects that would impact learners’ practices (Kern, 2014).When technology and learn- ing is discussed, there is almost an assumption that creativity will be involved (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010). Bruner (1962) defined creativity as “an act that produces effective surprise” (p. 28). Coming from a different perspective in examining creativity as a phenom- enon, Rhodes (1961) uses the four Ps (person, process, press, and products) to high- light the operation of creativity in different dimensions rather than just focusing on one single part. In his analysis, the four dimensions are as follows: • Person includes the intellectual, emotional, behavioral, and motivational traits that might be linked to displayed creativity; • Process refers to the mental steps in a creative production; • Press highlights the interrelationships between an individual and his environ- ment, especially on how creative thinking frequently comes from responding to environmental and social needs; and • Products are the tangible forms of creative ideas. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect is Rhode’s highlighting of the process and environment that a person operates in, arguing that no one operates in isolation and that the environment has a strong impact on the process. By examining the environment (press), it would be possible to highlight components that enhance creativity.This will also be the focus of this chapter in looking at how the change of technology impacts the learning and creative process. Creativity is instrumental to foreign-language learning success, yet its role is not fully understood (Dörnyei, 2005). In this respect, autonomy becomes the

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  183 linking construct. It has been argued that autonomous foreign-language learning in out-of-class contexts is achieved through learners’ creative and imaginative deployment of learning strategies and resources (Benson, 2006; Murray, 2013; Ushioda, 2011).The display of creativity by learners in envisioning learning selves and communities, strategies, or resources is a main focus in two recent collections on language learning beyond the classroom (Benson & Reinders, 2011; Nunan & Richards, 2014). However, the systematic study of language learning beyond the classroom is underresearched.This is important if we are to suggest areas of lan- guage learning beyond the classroom that are more favorable for creative learning and use. To that purpose, Benson (2011) uses common terminology in informal learning to propose a four-dimensional model (location, formality, pedagogy, and locus of control). The model provides a template for examining the complex interplay of access, resources, and environment in foreign-language learning and use. Addressing this complexity with the addition of technology, Ushioda (2011) suggests that technology use outside the classroom provides creative spaces for learners, and teachers should consider bridging the gap of creative technology use inside and outside the classroom. Applying Benson’s model to technology (digital gaming) and language learning, Chik (2014) expands the model by adding the trajectory dimension to highlight the long-term agency development of the learner. The two models are currently the only theoretical models in exploring the ways learners creatively engage with technology and foreign language learn- ing in out-of-class learning. However, their starting points are exploring autonomous learning behavior and strategies by learners who willingly created these favorable learning contexts. To extend the investigation further, we will see how technology provides a more favorable learning context for creative language learning and use. The Project The present study is extracted from an action research project on understand- ing group collaboration and dynamics in a general education course.The course, Image of the City, was offered to all undergraduates in an English-medium univer- sity in Hong Kong.The course was first offered in spring 2014 and was designed by the author and her teaching team. The team included two faculty members, two teaching staff, and a research assistant.When designing the course materials, we made an effort to widen the discussion of a city to more than a constellation of tourist attractions; for instance, students discussed London as a literary city through Charles Dickens’s works, Paris and Tokyo as culinary cities, Beijing as an artifact of political change, and so on.The course was very popular and had 100 students enrolled in two sections. Because it was a general education course, the students came from different disciplines and most wereYear 1 students.The author

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 184  Alice Chik did not teach on the course but oversaw the materials development, assessment moderation, and general coordination. The research assistant’s main role was to provide technical support.The data discussed in this chapter were taken from the group assignment and focus group discussion. The group assignment was the only collaborative assignment on the course, and students were encouraged to work in groups of four or five. Students were required to produce a short video of five minutes or less of a thematic presenta- tion of a city using Google Maps. For instance, a group could choose to showcase the pop music history of Manchester by using Google Maps to introduce different performance venues or recording studios used by bands like New Order, Joy Divi- sion,The Smiths, Oasis, and Elbow. PowerPoint presentation was not allowed.The teaching team decided to request students to use Google Maps to create a virtual tour so as to avoid the overuse of published media materials (e.g., clips from TV traveling programs, excerpts from travel blogs). Our previous experience with a general education course on popular culture showed that students sometime cut corners in their PowerPoint presentations by inserting irrelevant published mul- timedia materials to make up the spaces.The team was hoping that by utilizing a less familiar format of presentation, students would be encouraged to devise new strategies in content creation. All videos were uploaded to YouTube, and students were given a short instructional video on how to use Google Maps and screen- capturing software. In class, the research assistant made two demonstrations on using Google Maps, screen capturing and recording, and video editing. Google Maps is a web mapping application that allows users to manipulate various ways of viewing a location: aerial imagery, street map, and street view.When designing the course group assignment, we believed this application might provide a new and appropriate platform for students to think about a city. Students met with their teachers to discuss their work and progress 3 weeks before project submis- sion and with the research assistant for technical support. A total of 22 multimedia projects (videos) were submitted, covering 20 Asian and European cities. At the end of the course, all students were invited to par- ticipate in focus group discussions. Members from 18 groups (with a total of 79 students) discussed their creative and collaborative processes while reviewing their own project videos. Each member was asked to comment on the process and chal- lenges in composing a multimedia presentation without using PowerPoint. The focus group sessions were mostly conducted in Cantonese (with code-mixing in English), and the choice of language was decided by the student-participants. Each session lasted between 20 and 45 minutes, and all sessions yielded more than 9 hours of audio recording.The author listened to all the interviews several times to allow the emergence of significant themes across sessions and the selection of relevant interview excerpts to be translated and transcribed (with English phrases kept intact). The excerpts were treated as narrative excerpts to create a bigger picture of technology, language use, and creativity. Following Rhodes’s (1961)

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  185 definition of creativity in action (person, process, press, and product), the analysis will focus on the process and press of integrating technology for language learning and use. A Tale of Two Cities: Rome and Edinburgh In this section, I will use two projects (Rome and Edinburgh) to examine the process and press for creativity for language learning in project work. Here, I use the dic- tionary definition of creativity as “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness” (Oxford English Dictionary) to point out that all these group projects can be viewed as creative products, as students are imagining alter- natives when they use new technological interfaces to organize and develop their thoughts.Though it might be interesting to delve into the discussion of whether a project is creative or not, it might be more productive for language educators and teachers to understand the process and environment that were conducive to the creative process. In the following sections, I will first give brief descriptions of the finished and submitted projects and use excerpts from the focus group discussions to illustrate the working process of creating these projects.The two projects were selected from two tutorial sessions to eliminate the influence of tutor on topic and presentation style. At the discussion, both groups disclosed that they had sought technical help and advice from the research assistant. Rome (three male and one female Year 1 students) introduced architecture from different periods as the image of Rome. The structure of this presentation mimicked an in-class presentation, with the opening slide showing the course title, presentation title, names, and student numbers; meanwhile, we could hear FIGURE 12.1  Screenshot of Rome (map view)

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 186  Alice Chik FIGURE 12.2  Screenshot of Rome (street view) the presentation started with “Today we are going to introduce . . .” and ended with “That’s the end of our presentation, thank you.” The content was divided into three sections: the Pantheon, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Colosseum. On the opening slide, the group presented three still images of the landmarks before using Google Maps to introduce them. At each location, one student read architectural and historical facts aloud, and the visual presentation alternated between map and street view. Keyword subtitles were added to some sections but not throughout the whole presentation.The read-aloud audio tracks were accompanied by light background music. Visually, the presentation was not coherent, with the audio recording bar visible in parts of the presentation and the alternate use of English and Chinese interfaces. The presentation closed with a short summary and an end-credit slide. Edinburgh (four female and one male students, all Year 2 students) opened with a short animation which showed the course and project title. The pre- sentation was divided into five sections, with the five students being respon- sible for each section. The students also put their name onto the opening slide in each section. The focus of the project was not very clear when the group started with presenting Edinburgh as the City of Literature with the Elephant House, the International Book Festival and the International Festival. However, the presentation then shifted to the introduction of historic landmarks such as the Royal Mile, Mary King’s Close, Palace Holywood House, and Arthur’s Seat. The group utilized still images when they were introducing the festivals but used Google Maps to show a tour of different historic locations with alternate map and street views.When street view mode was used, the transition was edited to

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  187 FIGURE 12.3  Screenshot of Edinburgh (map view) FIGURE 12.4  Screenshot of Edinburgh (street view) allow smooth presentation.The group used subtitles throughout the presentation to supplement the vocal tracks, and background music was also used. The pre- sentation was recorded in high definition.Visually, the presentation was coherent, with the showing of full-screen operation, sophisticated maneuver of the avatar, and seamless incorporation of still images and map and street view animation. The presentation closed with an animated end-credit slide and “Thank you for watching.”

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 188  Alice Chik The Process and Press for Creativity All members from both groups attended the focus group discussion and shared the process of making the presentations. Students were informed at the beginning of the course that they would have to produce a multimedia video in lieu of an in- class presentation, so they operated differently in their preparation and researching for the presentation. First, students thought about and imagined the format of the end product before they started researching: We thought about doing something with sports or movies, but couldn’t find a focal point for a discussion on sports. In terms of presenting information with a video, it might be easier to focus on architecture. (RomeM2) By thinking about the possible shape of the end product, students then reconsid- ered the genre of the presentation.The Edinburgh group discussed how the format dictated their thinking: M1: If we were to present in class, it would be so simple, just stood there with a short introduction, content and Q&A . . . F2: Yes, like an essay . . . . F4: But a video is not really like an essay, and the topic was to introduce a city, so it was more like a travel program, at least that was my idea. F3: So you needed the background music, it sounded really boring with only the VO Alice: What is VO? F3: Voice over . . . we watched a lot of traveling programs on YouTube, and many have background music. F1: Have to be really soft. Alice: So what did you choose? F3: We tried bagpipe music, because it represented Edinburgh, but it is just too loud F2: . . . difficult to control the volume because the spoken vocal tracks all have different volume levels . . . Alice: What did you choose then? F4: [Laughter] The music from the soundtrack of Midnight in Paris [All laughed] M1: Paris! The first mode that attracted the students’ attention was the background music, and both groups discussed how they discarded different tracks either for appropri- ateness or for copyright reasons. Second, the seamless integration of different modes dominated the discussion. The students all agreed that it was essential to have one person overseeing the

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  189 technical aspects of putting together the video and audio tracks. However, the two groups differed in their creative processes.The Edinburgh group adopted the most popular creative approach used: they recorded the audio tracks first and then produced the visual presentation. F2:  We did our background research, and each wrote a short script for our section.Then read aloud and recorded the section with our smartphones. F3:  This was the part that we controlled the length of the audio tracks. I lis- tened to my own track over and over to make sure there was no pronun- ciation mistake. F2:   Saying the names of foreign places was the most difficult thing. M1:   I recorded my track five times . . . Meanwhile, the Rome group chose to make the video first: F1: We each wrote a script, and then decided to make the video first. Alice: Why did you make the video first? M2: The script actually gave direction on how to introduce the buildings, so we wanted to make sure that the video was under five minutes.We could speak faster or slower or add more information to make sure the sound track fit the duration of the video track. M4: We all worked on the video recording and then recorded the sound tracks individually. During the video recording, we kept discussing the flow of the presentation. How was the process of producing a presentation changed? And how did the change encourage creativity? And how was it related to language learning? The Edinburgh group provided a straightforward explanation to these questions: F3:  Making a video is a free form, so we have to think about what and how to present our information. M1:  A PowerPoint presentation is only about categorizing textual information you collected from research. It is linear, you simply do it slide by slide, adjust the font size, and add some pictures. F3:  Yes, a video is different, you have more rooms for creative thinking: like adding important components to make it look like a video, not just a stu- dent presentation. When prompted to elaborate on the “linear” form, the student explained that a PowerPoint presentation restricts the amount and format of information on one slide, so students just “cut and paste information without thinking too much of

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 190  Alice Chik the language or other things” (M1). The Rome group emphasized the language- in-use component: M2: When you are doing an in-class presentation, you don’t really care about the spoken fluency or pronunciation because you are already too worried about the content. But it is different with a video production because we can record the presentation several times. M4: Practice makes perfect. M2: Yes, video can be edited, so the teacher can assess the fluency of the stu- dents better . . . I think it is important when we actually spent a lot of time trying to make our pronunciation and phrasing as good as we can. M3: We also tried to make the spoken words more interesting . . . Alice: How do you do that? M2: Like using intonation or stress . . . using different words like we changed “architecture” to “building,”“landmark,”“construction” when I listened to the track again, I did not like that I said the word “architecture” five times in my section.You won’t do that for an in-class presentation because no one remembers what you said. Alice: Are you saying because this is a video, you have to do that. M2: No, I do not have to do it, but the video format made me want to do it. A video is a more permanent piece of work that others might want to watch it over and over [laugh]. An unfamiliar digital environment prompted students to be reflective of their work, which they thought contributed to the creative process. For this group, spoken language use that matched the visual components constituted creative presentation. Students from the Edinburgh group were explicit in linking reflec- tion to creative use. F3: Making a video is challenging because of the editing. Alice: Is it because of technical knowledge required? F3: Yes, partly, technical knowledge is one thing, when we were editing . . . when I was editing, I was the one responsible for editing, I kept think- ing about the content. Not just whether this section was good enough or not, but was it interesting and creative enough? F4: We sat down and discussed various sections that we could change to make the presentation more attractive and fluent. It was not necessarily just the written or spoken words, but the combination of the visual and the audio. Alice: So, as the video editor, you were thinking about the flow of the whole video. F3: Yes, because when I watched the uncut videos over and over, there were places that were not especially well connected, and I tried to watch it

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  191 from the audience’s perspective. Do I understand what we were trying to say? So I had to ask my group mates to add some phrases or words here and there. Similar thoughts were shared by the Rome group: M3: The best thing about making a video is that we were not copying and pasting . . . you know, when we did the background research, we read all the stuff. If we had to submit a group essay, then it would just be copying directly and changing a bit of wording in the group essay. Now, because we are making a video, we have to visualize the information so the audience can easily understand the information. It took a lot of thinking to condense and repackage the information into both visual and audio formats. Alice: So you are not just reading aloud some notes on Roman architecture. F1: You can’t. For example, when [M3] was talking about the spatial design of St. Peter’s [Basilica], we checked that Google Maps allows you to enter the building, so we can show the inside of the church. M3: We also used a 360° panorama view to show the use of space inside . . . F1: . . . yes, matching the voice over . . . At the end of the discussion, both groups agreed that they put more effort into improving the language than they expected: I never worked so hard on getting my English right for a presentation, not even for the English courses. (EdinburghF4) Students were not only focusing on their section, they also learned from peer reviewing: Teachers constantly said we can learn from peer review, you know, reading others’ essays, but it never worked in class, it was so boring to read a long essay . . . but for this video, we have to make sure all the sound tracks work together, I really listened to what other members were saying and how they said it . . . so I was learning English as well, which I did not expect to do in a General Education course. (RomeM1) An interesting thought to conclude this section is an observation on reasons for focusing on language: I proofread and listened to my own track several times because the tutor did not make the language accuracy a requirement, so I was not forced to do it to get the grade. I wanted to improve the quality of the sound track to

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 192  Alice Chik make the presentation better and more creative, so I guess English learning is just a bonus. (RomeM3) This experience of “voluntary” autonomous English learning was shared by other groups, and most attributed the language learning to the format of the presenta- tion and the process of audio and video editing. Concluding Thoughts One potential pitfall of technology-integrated language teaching is to assume that technology will inherently spawn a creative product (Kern, 2014).The sum- maries of the two projects might not have given the most promising impressions of being creative works, but this will only be so if we are overtly focused only on the products (Comas-Quinn & Mardomingo, 2009). In this study, students were asked to reimagine the group presentation as a multimedia video, and this unfamiliarity prompted the students to seek alternate routes in content pro- duction. When students were required to adopt technology, they adapted their operation patterns. By utilizing the “free form” of a video, students paid atten- tion to different modes for expression: the sound, the writing, and the visual. In working backward, starting the presentation production first by envisioning the end product and then working out the appropriate content or even deciding on the topic probed the students to be reflective in their work. The back-and- forth thinking of the format and content also shows a more innovative way of conceptualizing content presentation. When the integration of a new and less familiar digital platform creates a new set of practices, a new context is also cre- ated (Edwards, 2009).And in this new context, students strove to achieve creative language use. As students expressed the desire to submit an improved finished video, foreign-language learning and use might not have been the primary focus. In this sense, the technology itself has not enhanced language learning, but it mediates opportunities and enables students to become more efficient in learn- ing (Gauntlett, 2013). We can measure creativity by the products, we can argue there are people who are “born” creative, but it is valuable to find creativity in the process of doing and being supported in the environment. In this chapter, I have used a case study of changing the structure of a group project to highlight the spaces for creativ- ity in the process and the impact of digital environments. As the course is not a language-enhancement course, English learning and use is not the major focus. Group work as an assessment component is a common feature, if not essential, and is frequently in the formats of in-class presentation or essay or a combina- tion of both. When the assignment is adapted to include a new technological interface, Google Maps in our case, a new environment (press) is being created

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity and Technology  193 to support new processes of conceptualizing and organizing information pre- sentation. Sometimes, technology enables learners to produce creative work; at times, teachers might receive an “effective surprise” (Bruner, 1962). In this case, the “effective surprise” is how learners adapted their production process to new technology and used the process for creative language learning and use. In con- ceptualizing the role of technology in the language classroom, one step forward could be the use of less familiar presentation formats. Technology itself alone will not yield creativity, but it can motivate students to be critical of their own routines.This heightened awareness to language use will be the key to empower language learners to be creative in every dimension of their language learning and use. Questions for Discussion 1. What kind of research issues does this chapter raise and how could some of these issues be researched. 2. In your practice, do you integrate technology into your classroom? If yes, do you use it for creativity? 3. How would you define “creativity” in your students’ work? 4. If you were to use Rhodes’s model to explore the operation of creativity, which dimension do you want to focus on? Which dimension do you think your students prefer? 5. The study used Google Maps to push students out of their comfort zone (i.e., PowerPoint) when presenting. Can you nominate another software program or application for your classroom? Suggestions for Further Research 1. In the study, the videos were published on YouTube, so they can be shared among students. Peer feedback and assessment can be implemented to gain students’ perspectives on creativity. The teacher/researcher should provide guiding questions or a matrix for conducting peer feedback and assessment. 2. To turn a group assignment into a more collaborative language-learning experience, students can be asked to submit reflective journals on the creative process.The teacher/researcher should provide guiding questions for writing up the reflections. 3. The use of Google Maps requires technical learning, so the group project could be implemented in two stages: the use of a PowerPoint for in-class presentation and then the production of a video using Google Maps. In this way, students can have the space to focus on the content and the presentation. The comparison of presentation methods will be valuable in understanding the affordances of technology.

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Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 13 CREATIVITY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE DISCIPLINES Christoph A. Hafner Introduction Teaching language in the disciplines, that is, teaching the use of language and specialized genres for particular disciplinary purposes, is not always immediately associated with creativity. Indeed, many teachers and students tend to regard the specialized academic and professional genres that are taught in discipline-specific language courses as too rigidly constrained by convention to allow for much creativity at all. In this chapter, I will argue that the process of learning to manip- ulate such genres and conventions, balancing the generic requirements of the disciplinary community with one’s own private intentions, is a fundamentally creative process. Drawing on some practical examples of teaching materials from discipline-specific English language courses, I will show how the creativity inher- ent in disciplinary communication can be fostered in the language classroom. I begin by providing an overview of the assumptions that underpin language teaching in the disciplines as a particular teaching approach. I then consider how creativity may, in theory, be implicated in disciplinary communication. Finally, I provide an analysis of teaching materials, which shows how tasks and projects that engage learners with a range of genres can be designed to elicit a creative response. Language teaching in the disciplines, or language for specific purposes (LSP), is an approach to language teaching which recognizes that the kinds of language tasks and activities that learners encounter in specialized disciplinary domains var- ies greatly from one discipline to the next. For example, the specialized language of law differs considerably from that of science.Thus, in the academic context, a second-/foreign-language learner studying law is frequently required to produce

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  197 a genre like the legal problem question answer (Howe, 1990), while science stu- dents are routinely expected to produce a genre like the lab report (Braine, 1989). As a result, needs analysis—the identification of the language needs of students in particular disciplines—is a key feature of the LSP approach (Belcher, 2006). In principle, knowing the precise language needs of particular groups of learn- ers allows teachers to design activities that efficiently and effectively target those needs. A common practice in such needs analysis is the identification and analy- sis of key genres in the discipline, which play a role in particular disciplinary practices. Here, “genre” can be defined as rhetorical action in a recurrent social situation (Miller, 1984), that is, genre is a communicative response to a particu- lar set of circumstances, addressed to a particular audience in order to achieve a particular purpose on the part of the author. A genre therefore usually takes the form of a conventional text type, which is regularly used in the service of disciplinary goals. One widely studied example of an academic genre is the research article (RA), with its many subgenres in different disciplines, which is routinely employed when academics wish to report their research findings to the community. RAs take a conventionally expected form, often some variation on Introduction–Methods–Results–Discussion, though the precise form varies from discipline to discipline. In LSP, genre analysis (Bhatia, 1993, 2004; Swales, 1990) is frequently employed in order to provide a detailed description of relevant genres, their typical communicative context, purpose, audience, organizational structure, and lexico-grammatical realization (for an example of a multidimensional analysis of a legal professional genre, see Hafner, 2010). Building on such an analysis, teachers are able to design teaching and learning materials that specifically target the genres and practices of the relevant discipline. Bhatia (1991) provides an example of materials designed to develop the special- ized genre knowledge of language learners. In Bhatia’s example, learners are pro- vided with a sample text (in this case, a promotion letter) and engaged in a range of exercises that focus attention on the communicative purpose, organizational structure, and language in use encountered in that genre.Thus, the materials dem- onstrate for learners how the text is “staged” in a sequence of “moves” (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990) as well as how these moves are typically realized through various combinations of grammar and vocabulary. Engaging learners with genres in this way has the potential to raise their awareness of the conventional organi- zational strategies and associated patterns of language in use employed by writers in their discipline. There are, however, limitations to this approach. Genre theorists are careful to point out that descriptions of genre usually provide only a partial picture: as Fairclough (1995, p. 189) notes,“accounts of individual genres and discourse types appear to be largely accounts of ideal types.” While we can recognize general pat- terns in genres, we must keep in mind that every instance of a particular genre is

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 198  Christoph A. Hafner different. For one thing, the accounts of genres provided often fail to capture the “private intentions” (Bhatia, 2004) of individual authors, especially more expert members of the discourse community, who seek to accomplish their individual goals through the creative adaptation of disciplinary genres. In addition, the con- struction of a specialized genre frequently involves the creative appropriation of texts and discourses, which must be reworked in order to achieve the communi- cative purpose of the genre. When taking a genre approach, teachers must therefore guard against the temptation to present the conventions of disciplinary genres as formulaic models that can be uncritically applied. While generic conventions clearly do constrain the range of forms available to writers, it is crucial to acknowledge that, within these constraints, there remains space for creativity and individual agency. As such, in order to develop second-language writers who are conscious of the way that their writing can be strategically used to serve their disciplinary purposes, it is important to find ways to bring creativity into LSP curricula and course materi- als. In this chapter, I describe an approach to the design of pedagogical tasks and projects in LSP, which seeks to engage students not only with the rhetorical con- ventions of genre identified in standard descriptions but also with opportunities to creatively transform texts across modes and genres in order to communicate with a range of audiences. The Concept of Creativity There has recently been a shift in the way that the concept of creativity is under- stood.As Ron Carter (2004, p. 13; cited in Jones, 2012) remarks, creativity is now considered “not a capacity of special people, but a special capacity of all people.” In other words, creativity is located not just in the products of the solitary genius (the Mozarts and Newtons of the world) but also in the everyday actions of the everyday person. In this sense, the concept of creativity has been “democratized” (Maybin & Swann, 2007) so that small acts of creativity can be observed in routine actions: the witty remarks that people make in conversation or the way that they improvise solutions to their everyday problems, for example. The psychologist Margaret Boden (2004) provides a useful framework for understanding creativity. According to her, creativity can be defined as “the abil- ity to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising and valuable” (p. 1). Thus, one important element of this definition relies on the notion of an idea (or artefact) that is “new.” There are, of course, different kinds of new ideas: the idea that is entirely new in the historical development of humankind (for example, a new invention, a new symphony) and the idea that is new only to the person who had it (a new realization for that person but not for all of humankind). Boden therefore suggests that we make a distinction between two different kinds of

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  199 creativity: “historical creativity,” which includes the production of entirely new, world-changing ideas and inventions, and “psychological creativity,” the more modest but perhaps no less important process of coming up with ideas that are new to the individual concerned. This distinction is often referred to in terms of “big-C Creativity” on the one hand and “little-c creativity” on the other (see Jones, 2012). Another important element of Boden’s definition is the notion of a “surpris- ing idea.” Boden (2004, pp. 2–3) suggests that we may be surprised by an idea because it is unlikely, unexpected or even impossible. On this basis, Boden sug- gests three kinds of creativity.The first, “combinational creativity,” is the kind of creativity that is evident when unlikely combinations are made, for example the combinations of meanings in poetic metaphor.The second,“exploratory creativ- ity,” involves an unexpected idea that nevertheless fits within an existing thinking style: for example, an artist learns a new trick, expanding their repertoire but not going beyond it.The last,“transformational creativity,” is the impossible idea that breaks with the existing thinking style, forcing a reevaluation of practices that may lead to new ways of thinking and new fields of inquiry. Note that, on this dimen- sion, these three kinds of creativity are distinguished by the extent to which they transform the individual and his/her practices. Finally, there is the question of what makes an idea valuable. This question is ultimately difficult to answer, as “Our aesthetic values are difficult to recognize, more difficult to put into words, and even more difficult to state really clearly” (Boden, 2004, p. 10). One possible approach emerges from the work of Rodney H. Jones on discourse and creativity. He emphasizes that, in a discourse and cre- ativity approach, creativity is located not so much in innovative combinations of words in texts but rather “in the concrete social actions that people use these words and texts to perform” (Jones, 2010, p. 467). From this perspective, a new and surprising idea could be considered valuable if it can be used strategically to achieve social action. In disciplinary writing, for example, an element of creativity could be employed in order to further the disciplinary goals of the writer. Creativity in the Disciplines How, exactly, might creativity serve a writer’s disciplinary aims? Let’s begin by considering some examples from professional practice. In his book Writing the Economy (2006, pp. 75–78), Graham Smart describes the creative exploitation of genres in the context of economists working in a bank. These professionals are routinely engaged in specialized, disciplinary writing, constructing genres like “research memoranda” in order to achieve their goals in the workplace. A par- ticularly audacious strategy was adopted by one economist, engaged in the task of designing and promoting a new economic model to be used in the bank’s

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 200  Christoph A. Hafner quarterly projections: the so-called quarterly projection model, or QPM. This individual had written research memoranda and conducted in-house seminars in order to explain and promote the new model. However, these efforts had failed to secure sufficient support for the new QPM. In his own assessment of the situation, the economist noted: At that point in the history of the model, one of our problems was that we were trying to explain answers to people who didn’t understand the ques- tions. And what we needed was a real simple paper that not only gave the answers, but also gave the questions. (Smart, 2006, p. 77) The “paper” that this economist wrote took the form of a two-act play, set in the bank cafeteria and later in a nearby pub.The action in this play consisted of a dis- cussion of the new model, with one character asking questions about the model as well as about economic modeling theory in general, and the other providing answers. Once written, this document was circulated to the other economists in the bank.The writer reflected on the innovative strategy adopted and commented: [The play] gave questions and answers in a way that I thought everybody would be likely to read, because its format was so unusual.And in retrospect I really think it had a big impact, because the ball started to roll our way after that. (Smart, 2006, pp. 77–78) In this example, an unexpected literary genre was recruited in order to achieve the writer’s workplace goals. Having exhausted the conventional forms—research memoranda and in-house seminars—the writer turned to drama in order to cap- ture the attention of his colleagues and promote the new economic model. In doing so, the writer blended genres in order to create a novel, hybrid genre, which Smart refers to as an “unconventional research memorandum.” To get a feeling for the text produced, it is worth considering an extract, near the beginning of the “play” (Smart, 2006): Scene:The Bank of Canada cafeteria. “Doug” gazes mournfully at his untouched plate of lunchtime offerings. Pushing his lunch tray away with a sigh he eyes the arrival of “Mike” another economist. Mike asks if he conjoin [sic] Doug for lunch and Doug quickly agrees.The conversation, between bites, flows quickly and easily. (p. 221) The creative nature of this text, as a workplace genre, is immediately apparent. The tone adopted is playful and humorous, with the writer using the “stage directions” to poke fun at the bank’s cafeteria food. In the scripted conversa- tion that follows, Mike inquires about Doug’s work: “So I hear that you guys

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  201 are working on some pretty weird stuff for your model, rational expectations, stock-flow dynamics, steady-state equilibria and stability analysis.”The two char- acters then enter into a discussion of economic modeling theory as applied at the bank.The resulting text mixes discourses in a surprising and innovative way: literary discourses, economic discourses, and workplace discourses all mingle in this text. Here, then, creativity is evident in the way that the writer has appropri- ated an entire genre—breaking with convention by shifting that genre from the literary context of creative writing and performance into the workplace context of banking practices. A second example that Smart gives involves the creative appropriation of text. In the same banking context, he describes how one economist departed from convention in the way that he framed an “issue note.” (An issue note is a docu- ment that is circulated before a so-called Issues Meeting, a bit like an agenda, in order to introduce proposed changes to policy and/or procedures).The issue note began with an extract from a Rolling Stones song (Smart, 2006, p. 75): You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes You just might find You get what you need Asked what motivated him to frame the issue note in this way, the economist gave a number of reasons, including that “I wanted an eye-catcher to get people’s attention, so we’d get the approval we needed.” Smart reports that this innovation contributed to a “persuasive, and ultimately successful, argument for the proposed change to the trade sector” (2006, p. 76). These two examples of creativity in disciplinary writing serve to highlight a number of features of creativity in such contexts. 1. Creativity is strategic, in that the innovative texts produced serve the writers’ communicative goals; 2. Creativity involves the appropriation of genres and the appropriation of texts, often breaking with established convention; 3. Creativity involves the construction of hybrid texts, which mix together dif- ferent kinds of discourses. The examples that we have just considered were chosen because the creativ- ity and innovation in the texts is obvious. In both examples, we can clearly see creative transformation that occurs when genres and texts from literature and popular culture are repurposed in the workplace context. In this chapter, I argue that such creative transformations are common in disciplinary writing and need not always be as striking as the examples given. As such, tasks that promote these

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 202  Christoph A. Hafner kinds of creative transformations can be incorporated into materials and course design to engage students with different degrees of creativity when writing in the disciplines. Transformation as a Guiding Principle in LSP Task Design As noted earlier, the goal of discipline-specific language instruction is to pro- vide students with an understanding of the conventions of disciplinary genres so that they are able to reproduce the expected forms of those genres them- selves.A potential problem is the tendency for teachers and students to treat these expected forms as generic “templates” that must be strictly applied. The chal- lenge for LSP teachers, then, is to design language-learning tasks that engage stu- dents in something more than simple imitation of target genres. Instead, teachers should strive to design tasks that demand a certain amount of innovation, a certain amount of small-c creativity on the part of the students. One way to achieve this is to design tasks that involve not only language production but also some kind of transformation: students are engaged, for example, in transforming a spoken genre to a written genre or a specialized genre to a popular genre. In this section, I pro- vide two practical examples to demonstrate how this idea of transformation can be used as a principle of task design to challenge learners to produce specialized texts that also involve an element of creativity on their part. Example One: An In-Class Task The first example is taken from task-based teaching materials for a course in Eng- lish for science.The course is designed for science majors at a university in Hong Kong and aims to promote students’ scientific genre knowledge. One genre that the course focuses on is what is referred to in the course as a “scientific report,” similar to what others have called a “research report” (Nesi & Gardner, 2012). In order to teach this genre, instruction focuses on the following genre moves: introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgments.There is also class input and activities related to citation and referencing techniques. In class, students do a range of awareness-raising activities, for example identifying genre moves in sample texts and using corpus tools to explore associated grammar and lexis. In order to provide students with free practice, a writing simulation is used. In this simulation, students must imagine themselves as researchers following up a line of studies on the development of altruism in human children.Text Box 1 shows how the scenario is presented in course materials. Writing the introduction is the focus of one lesson.The tasks are designed so that students will be provided with listening input, in the form of a podcast interview from the Nature website (http://www.nature.com/nature/newsvideo/fehr.mp3). In this interview, a scientist describes the findings of a psychological experiment

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  203 TEXT BOX 1: SIMULATED WRITING SCENARIO You are a scientific researcher, working in the area of experimental psychology. You are interested in the topic of “altruism,” that is, kindness to others, and how this trait develops in human children. There is already some interesting research in this area, but it has some weaknesses and more research is needed. In this writing simulation, you will: (1) write an introduction that summarizes existing knowledge and points out the need for more research; (2) write a results section that introduces the charts provided; (3) write a discussion sec- tion that interprets the results; and (4) write a conclusion. investigating the development of altruism in children aged three to eight. Based on this interview (a spoken genre), students will develop the content of their introduction section (a written genre).The lesson procedures include a pre- listening task, listening, discussion, and writing, and are described in more detail in Text Box 2. TEXT BOX 2: WRITING SIMULATION PROCEDURES (INTRODUCTION SECTION) Task 1. Prelistening • Students play a thought experiment game (see Appendix A) that consists of making choices and tests their levels of altruism. • Note that the game is based on the procedures of the psychological experiment described in the listening task that follows. • Students discuss the choices that they made, why they made them, and what their choices mean in terms of how altruistic they are. Task 2. Listening • Students listen to the podcast, take notes, and answer comprehension questions. Task 3. Discussion • Students discuss possible limitations of the research and how these could be overcome by a future experiment. • Students are expected to notice a potential limitation in the original experiment, which was based on a sample of approximately 200 Swiss children and did not include children from other cultural backgrounds. continued

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 204  Christoph A. Hafner Task 4. Writing • Students brainstorm and write an introduction section for a scientific report on the topic of altruism in different cultures. • Students refer to their notes in order to provide a summary of previous research findings as described in the podcast. In this lesson, then, students are engaged in implicitly familiarizing themselves with the procedures of the focal experiment (Task 1); understanding and record- ing the main findings of the experiment (Task 2); critiquing the findings, iden- tifying problems, and imagining solutions (Task 3); and creating an introduction that summarizes and critiques this previous study and introduces a new, imagined study (Task 4). In the process, there are two main creative challenges. First, as students take notes on and summarize the contents of the podcast interview, they are involved in transforming the text across modes: They move from a spoken to a written genre.The podcast is a generic form that relies on questions and answers, some- thing very different from the formal academic writing that students will be asked to produce themselves. In addition, while the podcast deals with a technical topic, the register is that of semiformal, spoken language, with all its false starts, redun- dancies, fillers (“well”), conversational hedging devices (“basically”), first- and second-person pronouns (“you,” “us,” “our”), and so on. Students cannot simply reuse the language that they hear in the podcast. Instead, they must transform the speech that they hear, first into note form then into the formal register of academic writing. The second creative challenge involves students in transforming the text across audience and purpose:They move from the interview, a genre that aims mainly to inform and entertain a nonspecialist audience to the introduction section, a genre (or part genre) that aims not only to inform its specialist audience but also to evaluate (by pointing to shortcomings or gaps in previous research) and persuade (by claiming to fill those gaps). Specifically, this involves discussing the limitations in the reported study: As mentioned, students are expected to notice a possible bias in the sample, which drew on approximately 200 Swiss children and did not include children from other cultural backgrounds. Students then need to imagine a new study, one that addresses the limitations that they have identified. Thus, this task provides students with input in a spoken, popular genre and requires them to generate a written, specialized genre. Performing the task requires creative transformation of the source material. Students generate new ideas as they critique the original study and new forms of expression as they construct the appropriate formal, written mode.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  205 Example Two: A Group Project The second example is a group project used in a course in legal English, an LSP course designed for law students at the same university in Hong Kong.Again, this course aims to promote students’ genre knowledge, this time in the legal domain. Students complete two major assignments in this course.The first is a “legal popu- larization,” in which students create a popular text that explains some aspect of the law to an intended audience of nonspecialist readers. The second is a “legal problem question answer” (Howe, 1990), a pedagogical genre that interprets a factual scenario and presents a legal opinion to a specialist, academic audience. Here, I will describe the first of these projects, the legal popularization, focusing on the way that it engages students in creative transformation of disciplinary texts for a nonspecialist audience. An excerpt from the project prompt is provided in Text Box 3. TEXT BOX 3: LEGAL POPULARIZATION ASSIGNMENT PROMPT EXCERPT Working in groups of three or four, select some legislative provisions that are both (1) of interest to the general public and (2) difficult for the general public to access because of the use of complex and specialized legal English. Rewrite the selected provisions in the form of a legal popularization in plain language suitable for a nonspecialist audience. On this assignment, then, students work in groups in order to first select and then present a legislative text. In-class activities on the legislative genre draw on the work of Vijay Bhatia (1983, 1987, 1993) and focus on the cognitive struc- turing and lexico-grammatical features of the legislative genre. Students learn how these features serve particular disciplinary goals, including the sometimes conflicting ideals of precision, clarity, and all inclusiveness. Students also consider various strategies that can be used in order to both “easify” and “simplify” such legislative texts for specialist and nonspecialist audiences, respectively (see Bhatia, 1983, 1993). These strategies are illustrated with reference to examples of legal popularizations, the kind of brochures that are particularly common in govern- ment departments and that explain legal obligations in layman’s terms (e.g., the intricacies of the tax code explained to potential taxpayers). Based on this input, students create a legal popularization of their own. As an example of the kinds of challenges involved, consider Text Box 4, an extract of a Hong Kong legislative text taken from section 4(2) of the Public Cleansing and Prevention of Nuisances Regulation (Cap 132BK). The section deals with “Dumping of litter in public places.”

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 206  Christoph A. Hafner TEXT BOX 4: EXTRACT OF HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE TEXT (2) If any litter or waste is deposited from a window, balcony, verandah or roof top of any premises or part of any premises in contravention of subsection (1), the occupier of such premises or part thereof shall be guilty of an offence unless he proves that the contravention was committed by a person who is not a member of his family nor employed by him. (L.N. 401 of 1981) This text consists of one single 65-word sentence, which uses a qualified con- ditional structure (“If . . . unless . . .”) in order to set out the circumstances under which the rule applies. In an effort to be all inclusive, the draftsman uses a num- ber of multinomial expressions, such as “window, balcony, verandah or rooftop,” which add to the reader’s cognitive load.The text adopts a nominal character that relies on nominalizations and passive voice (e.g.,“if any litter . . . is deposited . . . in contravention of ”), which tends to deemphasize social actors. In addition, where actors are referred to, this is done in an impersonal way, by referring to legal cat- egories, like “any person,”“the occupier.”The overall effect is a text which can be difficult for a nonspecialist to penetrate. Considering how such texts can be “repackaged” as popular texts for a lay audi- ence engages students in a creative challenge, which is both linguistic and multi- modal. In order to engage with their audience, students must transform the highly technical and impersonal legislative genre into a hybrid genre, one that mixes dis- courses of law with other discourses, for example promotional and advertising dis- courses.The resulting popularization is characterized by short and/or incomplete sentences, imperatives, question forms, first- and second-person pronouns (“we,” “you”) and other linguistic features often associated with the discourse of adver- tising. In addition, such popularizations tend to have a very strong visual element: Images may be used in order to catch the attention of a lay audience or, alterna- tively, in order to communicate legal processes, rights and obligations through the use of flowcharts, tables, diagrams, and so on. Students may also draw on a range of techniques that are generally unavailable to the legal draftsman, such as FAQs and scenarios that illustrate how the law applies in particular circumstances. In this project,then,the input is a specialized legal genre,which students transform into a hybrid popularization. Students again come up with something new, poten- tially something surprising, as they creatively mix legal and advertising discourses. In this case,the transformation involves the adoption of popular genres that are designed to be accessible to a nonspecialist audience.The value of this creative transformation lies in the purpose of this new text, to attract the attention of a broad audience, sim- plifying important legal information and making it accessible to the public.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  207 Task Design and Creativity: From Imitation to Innovation Recalling Boden’s definition of creativity as “the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising and valuable,” it should be clear that the tasks described engage students in a form of creativity as they repurpose input across genres and modes. Both tasks involve transformations in genre and register in order to strategically meet disciplinary goals. On the one hand, the English-for-science task described involves transformation from the spoken podcast interview genre, intended for a nonspecialist audience, to the written scientific report introduction genre, intended for specialist readers. On the other hand, the legal-English task involves transformation from the specialist genre of legislation to the nonspecialist genre of legal popularization. It should perhaps be emphasized that these tasks are designed to be used as “free practice” activities only after students have already acquired sound knowledge of the target genres through various awareness-raising activities, as described earlier. The activity of transforming content across genres and modes provides students with creative challenges.They must meet these challenges not by imitating fixed examples of genres but by creating innovations (albeit modest) in linguistic, dis- cursive, and multimodal terms. Such transformations are not uncommon in insti- tutional and disciplinary discourse. For example, Iedema (1999) has documented the way that architectural design moved through a series of ever-more-concrete discursive stages, from spoken interactions in meetings to reports to designs to the concrete building itself, in a process that he calls “semiotic recontextualiza- tion.” Here, I suggest that such transformations always involve a kind of small-c creativity, however modest. The activities described in this chapter demonstrate the creative transformations that are involved in moving from a spoken mode to a written mode or a specialist genre to a nonspecialist genre. In summary, the idea of transformation described in this chapter provides a resource for task design in LSP. In principle, materials designers can strategically provide input in one genre or mode while requiring output in another genre or mode. The resulting task is one that requires students to creatively transform the source text(s). Such a task is appropriately deployed after students already have sound knowledge, through exposure to samples, of the target genre. It then provides students with a series of creative challenges: students must go beyond the simple imitation of generic forms to identify the genres and linguistic and multimodal resources that are required to connect with their audience and achieve a particular disciplinary purpose. In addition, by engaging students in the transformation of existing text(s), such a task provides students with opportunities to compare and contrast different ways of making meaning, especially how these fit with particular generic configurations of audience and purpose. Reimagining the input in a form that effectively achieves social action—that is, serves disciplinary goals—is what the creative process of disciplinary text construction is ultimately all about.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 208  Christoph A. Hafner Questions for Discussion 1. In teaching English in the disciplines, what are the possible problems and benefits of providing learners with samples or models of target genres? 2. What is the meaning of creativity in different disciplines? For example, is creativity different for a scientist compared to a lawyer? 3. How important is creativity in different disciplines? Do some disciplines value creativity more than others? 4. In writing for the disciplines, at which stages of writing (researching, col- lecting data, brainstorming, writing, proofreading, revising) is creativity most needed? 5. In writing for the disciplines, how is information transformed at these differ- ent stages? 6. How do the disciplinary writing tasks in textbooks encourage student cre- ativity? What more could be done to make these tasks more creative? 7. What research issues does this chapter raise, and how could some of these issues be researched? Suggestions for Further Research 1. Investigate how experts from different disciplines view creativity. Design interview protocols that ask these disciplinary experts what creativity means to them in their field. Ask them to provide samples of disciplinary writing that they consider creative and describe the creative aspects of it. 2. Analyze texts in which disciplinary experts attempt to make their field acces- sible to a lay audience. See, for example, winning entries in “The Flame Challenge” at http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/the-flame- challenge-2/. Compare these popular texts with specialist texts on the same topic in order to determine what linguistic and multimodal strategies experts adopt. Appendix A In-Class Materials—Altruism Thought Experiment Imagine that you are playing a game with a partner in which you can be rewarded with cash. How much money you and your partner get depends on your choices. What would you do in the following situations? Choice A: You receive $1,000 and your partner receives $1,000. Choice B: You receive $1,000 and your partner receives nothing.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Language Teaching in the Disciplines  209 You choose: ____________ Why? __________________________________ Choice A: You receive $1,000 and your partner receives $1,000. Choice B: You receive $1,000 and your partner receives $2,000. You choose: ___________ Why? ___________________________________ Choice A: You receive $1,000 and your partner receives $1,000. Choice B: You receive $2,000 and your partner receives nothing. You choose: ____________ Why? __________________________________ Work in pairs. Discuss with your partner the choices that you made and why you made them. Does this prove anything about you? About people in general? References Belcher, D. D. (2006). English for specific purposes: Teaching to perceived needs and imagined futures in worlds of work, study, and everyday life. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 133–156. Bhatia,V. K. (1983). Simplification v. easification:The case of legal texts. Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 42–54. Bhatia, V. K. (1987). Textual-mapping in British legislative writing. World Englishes, 6(1), 1–10. Bhatia, V. K. (1991). A genre-based approach to ESP materials. World Englishes, 10(2), 153–166. Bhatia,V.  K. (1993). Analyzing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman. Bhatia,V. K. (2004). Worlds of written discourse:A genre-based view. London: Continuum. Boden, M. A. (2004). The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Braine, G. (1989).Writing in science and technology: An analysis of assignments from ten undergraduate courses. English for Specific Purposes, 8(1), 3–15. Carter, R. (2004). Language and creativity:The art of common talk. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Hafner, C. A. (2010). A multi-perspective genre analysis of the barrister’s opinion:Writ- ing context, generic structure, and textualization. Written Communication, 27(4), 410–441. Howe, P. M. (1990). The problem of the problem question in English for academic legal purposes. English for Specific Purposes, 9(3), 215–236. Iedema, R. (1999). Formalizing organizational meaning. Discourse & Society, 10(1), 49–65. Jones, R. H. (2010). Creativity and discourse. World Englishes, 29(4), 467–480. Jones, R. H. (2012). Introduction: Discourse and creativity. In R. H. Jones (Ed.), Discourse and creativity (pp. 1–13). Harlow: Pearson Longman. Maybin, J., & Swann, J. (2007). Everyday creativity in language:Textuality, contextuality, and critique. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 497–517. Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151–167.

210  Christoph A. Hafner Nesi, H., & Gardner, S. (2012). Genres across the disciplines: Student writing in higher education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smart, G. (2006). Writing the economy: Activity, genre, and technology in the world of banking. London: Equinox. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 SECTION IV Creativity in Teacher Development

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Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 14 A CONVERSATION ABOUT CREATIVITY Connecting the New to the Known Through Images, Objects, and Games Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan1 Anita: So to your way of thinking, what is creativity? Kathi: What is creativity? Well, I think creativity involves generating novel forms or combining existing forms in novel ways. Anita: I did some reading on this topic and found some interesting ideas. According to Andreasen (2014), “The essence of creativity is making connections and solving puzzles.” Kathi: That idea makes sense to me, because I got started thinking about this issue because of some struggles I was facing—teaching puzzles, if you will. Anita: Can you give me some examples? Kathi: Definitely—lots of them! As you know, for many years in my work as a teacher educator at MIIS, I have often taught two of the least popular courses. One is Educational Research Methods, a first-semester course in our MA program. It covers research design and basic statistics. The second is a seminar in language assessment. These are not courses that our MA candidates initially see as being fun or as being immediately rel- evant to their goals of becoming better teachers. So one of my goals is to convince my students that this knowledge and this skill set are essential to Master’s degree holders in our field and also valuable and interest- ing information for teachers.And another complicating factor in teach- ing these two courses is that many people—including myself—become language teachers because we are people with an interest in language. Quantitative reasoning and mathematical procedures may not be part of our skill sets, or at least not among our strengths. I had two statis- tics courses as a graduate student myself, but those experiences didn’t

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 214  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan necessarily prepare me to TEACH statistics to others. So in order to help my own students understand and master some of the statistics and research design concepts covered in these two MIIS courses, I often tried to connect the new, abstract ideas with familiar, concrete concepts that my students understand. Anita: Yes, I can see that being true for some of my classmates. So what are some of the specific teaching puzzles you’ve faced as you’ve tried to achieve that goal? Kathi: Here’s an example from the language assessment seminar.To estimate the internal consistency of a test, we often split the students’ scores on the whole test into their scores for the odd-numbered items and their scores for the even-numbered items and correlate those two sets of scores. But by splitting the test in half, we shorten the points possible, which often has the effect of depressing the reliability coefficient.We then use a sta- tistic called the Spearman-Brown Prophecy formula to correct the prob- lem.To illustrate the point that the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula corrects the way we “deflated” our test (in effect, taking half the air out), I use the images of a flat tire and a bicycle pump. I tell the students we are reinflating the reliability tire. Using the formula isn’t cheating—it’s just restoring the reliability of the whole test, after we split it into two halves. Anita: Oh yeah, I remember that lesson! Here’s something I found in the research literature that relates to your point. “Imagery skills may seem like tangential skills but they do play a significant role in many creative efforts. Imagery is often useful in the arts. . . . It is also useful for the comparison of objects and for encoding and storage. After all, a picture tells a thousand words” (Runco, 2007, p. 193). Kathi: Yes, that’s it exactly. I believe that if I can help my students make associa- tions between something they already know and the abstract concept we are studying, that the connection leads to both understanding and reten- tion. Here’s another example: When we study validity in experimental research, to illustrate the trade-off between internal validity (having a high degree of control over variables) and external validity (generaliz- ability of findings beyond the experimental context), I use the image of a teeter-totter. When internal validity is very high, external validity is low, and vice versa. Anita: That makes sense. Kathi: Another example involves explaining the relationship of intervening variables and other types of variables in experimental research.The con- cept of intervening variables is especially difficult to grasp because it’s so abstract and because many published studies don’t include an intervening variable—or don’t explicitly label it if there is one. So I draw a picture of a big rock (the dependent variable), a lever poised to move the rock (the independent variable), and a fulcrum (the intervening variable).

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  215 Anita: What do you think about this quote? It seems to fit with what you are saying. “Connecting unexpected people, places, objects, and ideas pro- vides a huge boost to your imagination. You can practice this skill by using provocative metaphors, interacting with those outside your normal circles, building on existing ideas, and finding inspiration in unlikely places.These approaches enhance creative thinking and are terrific tools for generating fresh ideas” (Seelig, 2012, p. 46). Kathi: Yes, I like that idea, and I like to use images in my teaching. Sometimes I try to get my students to imagine that the pictures represent objects. For instance, to explain the properties of the normal distribution, bet- ter known as the bell curve, I start by drawing a circular pie chart on the whiteboard. The pie chart is familiar to everyone, and the students readily see that if I bisect the circle with a straight line, we have 50% and 50% of the whole represented by the two halves of the circle.Then I add more lines, and the students identify the piece of the pie that is 25% or 10% or whatever. Anita: Oh! I remember that activity. You asked us to pretend that the circle defining the pie chart was a piece of string that we “untied” on the white board and then you told us to imagine laying out the string in the shape of the bell curve instead of a circle. After that we bisected the bell curve and then drew in the vertical lines for the standard deviations, so we could see what percentages of the whole fall under the parts of the bell curve. Kathi: Right. Doing this little exercise only takes a few minutes, and it helps my students understand the abstract concept of the percentages covered under the areas of the bell curve. Honestly, I think the little mental trick of turning the circle into an imaginary piece of string is useful. Anita: Okay, so the examples we’ve talked about so far all involve images, but do you also use objects? In this bell curve example, you got us students to imagine a piece of string.Are there times when you use actual objects to teach? Kathi: Yes, sometimes, for some concepts. In the language assessment course, when we estimate reliability, we want the statistic called Pearson’s cor- relation coefficient to be high. But when we estimate validity, there are times when it should be low—for instance, when we are correlating measures of two different traits, we want that correlation to be lower than the correlation of two measures of the same trait.To illustrate this contrast, I bring in a clawed hammer and ask the students what we can do with a hammer. Of course, everyone says we can hammer nails into walls, but usually someone points out that we can use the hammer’s claws to pull nails out of walls, too: same tool, different purposes, and different results. Anita: Okay, but for what you just described, you could use a picture of a ham- mer instead of a real hammer. I’m trying to figure out if there is a benefit to using objects instead of images.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 216  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan Kathi: Good question. I think using objects allows us to build in activities where the teacher trainees are actually manipulating something. Anita: Oh, of course! I remember in the applied linguistics research seminar when we were talking about the difference between surveys and case studies.You put that glass measuring cup in the middle of our seminar table along with a tall, narrow glass and a shallow glass baking pan.The measuring cup had two cups of water in it, and you had a student pour exactly one cup of water into the baking pan and then pour the other cup of water into the tall glass.Then you asked us to explain how these items are related to case studies and survey research. Somebody pointed out that we can get equally valuable data from the two approaches, but case studies go into depth, while surveys strive for breadth in terms of the number of people involved in the data collection. So in that example with the water and the different containers, at least one person gets to physically handle the objects. Kathi: Yes—and I hope that the objects make the concept more memorable. In the past, I’ve just used images of a measuring cup, a baking pan, and a tall glass, but I really believe that having the actual stuff in the classroom is more intriguing. In fact, sometimes I will go to the classroom early and put these items in the middle of the seminar table and then cover them with a tablecloth. I leave a note saying that no one is to peek under the cloth. I want to create a little mystery, to make the demonstration—and hopefully the concept it represents—more memorable. Anita: I really like that idea of mystery and suspense. Have you found that other professors share your philosophy and use similar tactics in their classes? Kathi: I’m not sure about the “mystery” part, but I know some of them do use this strategy of using images or objects or games to help the teacher trainees understand abstract concepts. Heekyeong Lee told me about some ideas she uses for the second-language-acquisition seminar. She has been working with ideas from sociocultural theory, some of which are rather abstract. She said that to explain the construct of mediation—the Vygotskian notion that the mind and interactions with the world are “mediated” by artifacts—she talks about Steve Jobs’s inventions, because everyone knows about iPods or iPads. Even without having the devices in the classroom, she and the students discuss how these physical tools have led us to transform the way we live in the world; and through these changes, and also how using them changes us and the way we think about the physical and spatial world. Anita: That’s a great example, because everyone can relate to mobile devices these days. Kathi: Right. Heekyeong also has a good idea for explaining the concept of “affordance,” the reciprocal relationship between an organism and a par- ticular feature of the environment that signals an opportunity for action. She points at a chair in the classroom and asks students what they can do

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  217 with the chair, according to their different needs—sit on it in class, stand on it as a step to reach an object that is above one’s height, and so on (Heekyeong Lee, personal communication,August 27, 2104). Anita: Fascinating. So here’s something that might interest you. It’s a list of ways that academics use their imaginations. It’s from Jackson and Shaw (2006, p. 105):“Academics use their imaginations to: • Generate ideas and possibilities (e.g., to find problems). • Invent ways of exploring problems, complex situations and sys- tems (e.g., thinking holistically, being resourceful, inventing new or adapting existing methodologies). • Combine ideas and things in novel ways. • Interpret and find novel solutions to problems and challenges.They fill in the gaps, synthesize, find patterns and connections, hypoth- esise and theorise, engage in sense-making that is not constrained by that which can be observed or proved. • Construct and tell stories that explain and change the way people see the world.” Kathi: That third point is exactly what I’m talking about—combining ideas and things in novel ways. And you’ve made me think of something else. Images are two dimensional but objects are three dimensional. I think we add to the memorability of the images or objects used as teaching devices if we have students do something with them. And as I men- tioned, I like the idea of mystery or intrigue. Here’s an illustration. In my applied linguistics research seminar, we cover all sorts of qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. When I review experimental designs, I start out by asking the students what they know about Zorro. They will usually say that he was a Robin Hood figure in early Cali- fornia, that he’s played by Antonio Banderas in the movies, and that he would mark a large Z with his sword as he was leaving the scene of his latest exploit. Then I leave the students wondering why I brought up Zorro as we work with a chart on the whiteboard. Anita: Oh, yeah! The chart was a two-by-two box diagram with the four major classes of research designs as labels in the boxes. I remember: pre-experimental, quasi-experimental, ex post facto, and the so-called true experimental designs.You asked us about the increasing power and prestige of these four classes of research designs and what all of this has to do with Zorro. Somebody figured out that a large Z superimposed on the box diagram of the research design classes indicates their importance in the culture of experimental research. Kathi: Right, and if no one offers that explanation, I draw the Z over the box diagram and then someone interprets the action. It’s often an “Aha!” moment for my students. In fact, I hear them say things like, “Oh, I get it!” The point of all this is that we can simply look at images or objects,

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 218  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan or we can actually do things with images or objects. Anita: How about having your teachers in training actually create their own images—like mind maps, for example? What do you think about having your trainees draw mind maps or make posters while they’re learning about abstract concepts? Kathi: Personally, I love to draw, and I think mind maps and posters are great. Remember in the language teacher supervision seminar last week? On the first day of class I asked you all to draw a mind map around the words “language teacher supervision”—to surface your existing ideas about what is involved in this part of our profession. I’ve done the mind map as a way of starting this course before, but this time, when you all were finishing up your drawings and I could see some people looking around expectantly, I asked you to get into pairs and to read four definitions of supervision in our textbook. The task was for you and your partner to compare your mind maps and to see how the ideas in your drawings related to the experts’ definitions and vice versa. I could have just had you compare your mind map with your partner’s, but I wanted that to be done along with the connection to the definitions. Anita: Oh, I didn’t realize you just added that step!You should permanently add that to the mind map activity; drawing parallels between our mind maps and the reading was really helpful. As a matter of fact, I have another great example of doing things with mind maps. My professor for the sec- ond language acquisition seminar was Netta Avineri. She had us conduct interviews with language learners, and then we each drew a mind map that showed what we had learned in our particular interview.Then, as an added step, we had to share the mind map with the interviewees to see if we had accurately captured and depicted their stories. Doing so added a new dimension to the assignment and made the interview unforgettable, actually! I think the process of converting receptive information into a physical representation helps you to process it and really makes it stick with you. Kathi: Yes, I think physical actions like that can be really helpful. Again, some people may participate in the action while others just observe. For example, to help my Educational Research Methods students remember that the statistical procedure called t-tests compares two and only two group means, I sing the opening lines of an old song called “Tea for Two.” Sometimes I even do a few steps of the old vaudeville dance called the “soft shoe.” If anyone in the room admits to knowing what a “soft shoe” is, I’ll bring that person up and have him or her dance a few steps with me. Later, when students get stuck when they’re trying to figure out what statistic to use in a given situation, if the correct answer is the t-test, all I have to do is hum a few bars of the song, and they figure it out. Anita: Oh, that’s a good one!

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  219 Kathi: Here’s another one that is more related to pedagogical techniques than to abstract concepts.To illustrate “tango seating” for pair work, I have a student stand up and dance a few steps of the tango with me.Then after students are reminded of the relative body positions of the partners in a tango, I put two desks or chairs together side by side and have my tango partner sit in one. I then sit in the other, with my right shoulder next to the partner’s right shoulder, so that we are facing opposite directions but can still easily communicate. It’s a great setup for pair work involving the two-way information gap, because the paired students can’t see each other’s pictures or maps or puzzles—whatever it is that they are com- municating about. But the point is that my teacher trainees remember the name, tango seating, as well as the idea, because they associate it with the demonstration of the tango. Anita: That sounds like an easy idea for teachers in training to adopt and use in their own classrooms. Kathi: Yes, it’s great for language-teaching activities. Here’s an idea that Aya Matsuda shared with me. She uses it for teacher training, but I think it could be used in pronunciation lessons, too. Aya said that when she taught a unit on vowels in the phonetics section of the introduction to linguistics (or whenever she talks about tongue movement in English phonology), she brings flat lollipops to class. The she has her students say words with various vowels with the lollipops in their mouths so that they can feel the tongue movement (Aya Matsuda, personal communica- tion,August 20, 2014). Anita: I can see how that would work. How about games? Do you ever use games in your teacher education courses? Kathi: Yes. I was using that game called “Two Truths and a Lie,” just as an ice- breaker for some of the classes I teach online, but my colleague Jason Martel has a more creative use. He has all the students craft three sentences—two that are true and one that is fictitious—about themselves. Their peers try to guess which sentence is the lie. It’s tricky to come up with truths that seem outlandish, so it’s hard for your classmates to discern which is the lie.The activity is intriguing and fun, and you learn interest- ing things about the members of the class. But after the ice breaker, Jason uses this experience as a first lesson on content and language integration. At the beginning of our curriculum design class, for example, he and the students then spend 10 minutes discussing which language support learn- ers might need in order to successfully play the game. This ranges from work on tenses (past, present) to sequencing words (first, second, finally). Jason says the game is fun, but it also introduces a really important con- cept that sits at the foundation of most of the courses he teaches. Anita: Yes, definitely. I remember Jason using another really fun game in the course on classroom observation. It involved LEGOs, and there were four students on a team: a Watcher, a Communicator, a Builder, and an

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 220  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan Observer.The teacher trainer (in this case Jason) builds something out of LEGOs, but that structure has to be hidden from all the trainees except the Watchers.The student teams have to have exactly the same LEGO pieces as the trainer has.The Watcher observes the original structure being built and then tells the Communicator, who in turn goes to the other side of the room and tells the Builder, who is supposed to replicate the hidden structure made by the trainer. Meanwhile, the Observer is watching and listening to his teammates to see what language and communication strat- egies they use.When it’s over, the teams get to see the original structure built by the teacher and discuss why theirs differ from the model. It was a great game and really effective in showing us the different roles and the problems that can arise in observation contexts. Now that I think of it, Jason might actually have said he learned it from you. Kathi: That is a great game. I did share it with Jason, but I learned it from Doug Brown at a teachers’ workshop we did in Japan a while ago. Anita: Oh, wow, I bet that workshop was really helpful! Can you think of any other games that you or other teacher educators you know use in teacher education classes? Kathi: Donna Brinton told me about one. Remember how there are so many acronyms used in language assessment—the names of a lot of the stan- dardized tests or assessment procedures?Well,Donna uses the Concentra- tion game to help her teacher trainees learn those acronyms. She writes the acronym on one card and the full name of the test on another.Then all the cards are turned face down on the table. Her students worked in groups to match the acronym (e.g., IELTS) with the full name of the test (International English Language Testing System) (Donna Brinton, personal communication,August 20, 2014). Anita: Thank goodness there’s an easier way to learn all those acronyms! Con- centration sounds like much more fun than trying to memorize a list of them or just remember them all. Kathi: Donna also told me about an activity where her students created post- ers about the action research cycle. Oh—that is another type of work with images. In creating posters, the teacher trainees are doing things with images. Fredricka Stoller told me about having her students cre- ate a graphic organizer that depicts relationships among at least eight different syllabus types and four different approaches to syllabus design. The trainees then write an explanation of the syllabus types and approaches in their picture. She said they had submitted images of trees (with a trunk, branches, and roots), gardens, Greek temples, guitars, complex grids, semantic maps, highways with exits and roundabouts, and many more creative depictions of the syllabi, the approaches, and their relationships. Anita: So in that assignment, the students have the freedom to create images that represent the constructs they have been studying. It’s not a case of the teacher trainer producing images to help them learn.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  221 Kathi: Right. In fact, Fredricka said the activity helps the trainees “consolidate the learning of course content” (Fredricka Stoller, personal communica- tion,August 25, 2014). Here’s another example about curriculum design, which I got from Ruth Larimer. In her curriculum course, she puts up posters with different types of syllabi written at the top (Functional, Task-Based, Grammatical, etc.). Then she gives out paper strips either to pairs of students or several strips to each individual if it’s a small class. On the strips of paper are various topics that would likely be covered in a particular kind of course—such as past perfect, compliments, fol- lowing directions on a map, and so on. The students visit the various posters and paste their strips under the label of the type of syllabus. Ruth says this activity really highlights what the students don’t know without embarrassing them since no one knows who put up the individual strips. Then she gives a definition for each type of syllabus, at which point the students get a chance to go around and move their strips to a different poster. Finally, she comments on the good and bad choices, and they discuss how some things could fit more than one type of syllabus (Ruth Larimer, personal communication,August 20, 2014). Anita: How interesting! That actually reminds me of an activity we did last year in the language analysis course with Thor Sawin. We had just finished learning about language production and language processing, and Thor had us do a fun concluding activity. He wrote the steps of the pro- cesses on notecards in different colors (one color for processing, one for production, and a third color for steps involved in both processes) and handed out one card to each of us. We then had to physically arrange ourselves into the correct order of operations from the conception of an idea to the production of sound waves, and then back from the process- ing of sound waves into thoughts. Since only half the class was involved in each process, it meant the other half was free to help people arrange themselves into the correct order. I remember it being a really effective activity because we were all moving around and sorting through the processes as a group. When we had arranged ourselves in the correct order, we had a very concrete way of visualizing these rather heady linguistic processes.The activity actually served as both a review and an assessment! Kathi: What was written on the cards? Anita: On the cards, Thor had written things like Idea, Articulation, Allophonic rules, Lexical selection, Derivation and compounding, Inflection, Lexical projec- tion, Merge, Movement, Phonemic representation, Phonetic representation, Sound waves, and Semantic decision making (Thor Sawin, personal communica- tion, August 21, 2014). But I suppose a trainer could break up the pro- cesses however they see fit. And I think this exercise could be adapted and used for all kinds of different content. I can see myself using this with ESL students in my future classes, too.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 222  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan Kathi: Okay, I see how it works. Anita: I think creative activities like these are especially beneficial in teacher training because they provide safe, low-stakes environments where peo- ple aren’t afraid to make mistakes.As Ruth mentioned, they allow train- ers to identify gaps in their trainees’ knowledge without singling out individuals or calling attention to their mistakes. Kathi: I would definitely agree with that. Are there other examples of creative teaching that stand out from your coursework here? Anita: In that same course, actually, we learned about syntax through a really creative and memorable demonstration. Thor brought in coat hangers to visually depict the hierarchical, nonlinear nature of phrase structure rules. He labeled the hooks of the hangers with either VP (verb phrase) or NP (noun phrase).Then he explained that the two bottom points of the hanger represented the head and modifier positions. When I asked Thor about this idea, he described the concept in more depth. He said, “With coat hangers you can easily demonstrate how within every phrase, there is a head, and a spot for a modifier of that head. And, in fact, you could hang another coat hanger in the corner where the modi- fier should be, and use a whole phrase as a modifier.You can also rotate the coat hanger, keeping the hierarchical organization intact, to demon- strate how a head-final language, would become head-initial, like having nouns before adjectives in French.You can also detach a coat hanger, and move it, with all of its internal structure intact, to a higher spot in the coat hanger tree to demonstrate how movement happens.” (Thor Sawin, personal communication,August 21, 2014). Kathi: Wow! I can see how this would be a powerful demonstration. Anita: You spoke earlier about the “Aha” moment when an idea suddenly clicks for someone. Well, syntax is a really tricky concept to grasp, but I saw several of my classmates experience that “Aha” moment after Thor’s dem- onstration with the coat hangers. And for those of us who already had a base in linguistics, seeing syntax depicted in this innovative way allowed us to reprocess our existing knowledge and to view it in a new light. Kathi: That’s really interesting. So far we’ve been talking about various ways of helping teacher trainees understand new concepts, through the use of visual images, objects, and games. But you’ve added a dimension of restructuring existing knowledge. My sense of these activities is that the more engaged the learner can be in making the connection, the deeper the learning will be. Did I ever tell you about Donald Freeman’s use of the Möbius strip? Anita: That thing with one side and one edge? No. How did he use it? Kathi: We were doing a workshop for language teacher supervisors, and he was illustrating the various ways of thinking about teacher training and teacher development. He did what he called a “picture dictation,” where he was describing something verbally and the participants were trying to

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  223 draw what he described. He described three images, but the participants couldn’t see them. Each image he described represented possible ways of thinking about the relationship between training and development. One was a two-headed arrow—a straight horizontal line with an arrow tip at both ends. He had the participants write “Training” on one side and “Development” on the other.Another one was a circle bisected by a straight vertical line, with one side labeled “Training” and the other side labeled “Development.” Both of these images suggest different relation- ships. But the third image was the punch line, if you will. He had an overhead transparency with a picture of a Möbius strip—that loop of ribbon that has a twist in it, so that it has only one side and one edge. So the point of using that image is that training and development have an endless and intimate relationship. Anita: Oh wow, that’s great! The arrow and the circle are both good for train- ing and development, but transposing their relationship onto the image of the Möbius strip is quite brilliant, actually. I bet those supervisors will remember that image forever! Kathi: But you know what? One time when we were doing this gig, we didn’t have the overhead transparency with the picture of the Möbius strip. So Donald made one out of a strip of paper. He twisted it and then taped the two ends together.When he passed around the paper Möbius strip, the workshop participants could actually run their fingers along it and see that it really does have only one side and one edge. Anita: So in creating a physical Möbius strip, he turned an image into an object. And in passing it around for the participants to handle and examine, he changed their role from observers to actors. Kathi: Right. It turned out to be a good thing that we didn’t have the over- head projector transparency! In my opinion, there were more “Aha!” moments when our trainees actually got to touch the Möbius strip than when they just saw a picture of it. Anita: You know, one of my linguistics professors in my undergraduate pro- gram used to tell really amazing stories to illustrate certain themes in class. I recall her saying how former students would often tell her, years after taking her class, that they remembered her stories well but could not always recount the points they were meant to illustrate. In terms of teacher training, remembering the story alone isn’t really enough, is it? Going back to what you were saying about bridging the known and the unknown, in my opinion it’s important to remember that creative practices like these are meant to highlight and reinforce the points being covered in a course. I think all the examples we’ve discussed reflect very conscious and thoughtful creativity on the part of the trainer rather than just using creativity for creativity’s sake. Kathi: Right.The point isn’t just to fill lesson time with clever activities. It’s to help teachers in training learn by using images and objects and games

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 224  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan metaphorically. You know there’s that saying—the idea that learning consists of connecting the new to the known.The formal statement of the principle reads like this: “New meanings are acquired by the inter- action of new knowledge with previously learned concepts or propo- sitions” (Ausubel, Novak, & Hanesian, 1968, p. 127). But the teacher educators in our examples are helping teacher trainees connect new meanings with very familiar everyday objects, images, and games. I can assume, as a trainer, that virtually everyone has had experience with a coat hanger or a glass of water or a piece of string or the Concentration game. On the other hand, it may not be correct to assume that all my students are familiar with concepts or propositions that have supposedly been learned previously. Anita: Like what? Can you give an example? Kathi: Sure.Think about Aya Matsuda’s lollipop lesson. If I tell the students in my seminar on teaching speaking that a certain English sound is a high, front, tense vowel, I’m assuming that they all know the specialist mean- ings of high and front and tense. But maybe some of them don’t remember those concepts from the prerequisite course, or some of them didn’t do the reading assignment before class. But if I get them to say “Wheeee” with a lollipop in their mouths and have them extend the vowel sound, they can feel what is meant by high and front and tense. Anita: Okay, so because you use familiar objects or images or games as the point of reference—the “known” thing—no students are put on the spot if they DON’T know or CAN’T remember the basic concepts. Kathi: Right. So not only is there a cognitive connection with a new abstract concept—there is also a sense of affective security. Using an existing and very familiar image, object, or game minimizes the potential for the trainees to feel stupid or to get confused.This use of safe and memora- ble connections is important to me because the teachers and preservice teachers in my courses have varied backgrounds in linguistics, differing knowledge of quantitative analyses, and a wide range of teaching experi- ence, from very little to several years. Anita: So going back to what you said at the beginning, this kind of creativity involves combining existing forms in novel ways. Kathi: Yes—in a nutshell, the idea is to use simple images, objects, or games to help teachers learn and remember. Anita: Very cool.Very creative. Questions for Discussion 1. If you are a teacher educator, have you ever used images or objects to help teachers in training understand abstract concepts? If so, what was the context? How well did the activity work?

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 A Conversation About Creativity  225 2. If you are a teacher in training, have your professors ever used images, objects, or games to help you understand abstract concepts? If so, what was the con- text? How well did the activity work? 3. This chapter suggests that actually handling objects and manipulating them in some way may be more advantageous for learning and retention than is simply seeing images. What is your opinion? Why do you hold your particular view? 4. Language teachers often use games to help their students learn new vocab- ulary or structures in the target language, but what about the educators of language teachers? If you are a teacher educator, have you used games in your training program? If so, what game(s) did you use and to what purpose? 5. If you are a teacher in training, have your professors used games in your train- ing program? If so, what game(s) did they use and to what purpose? 6. Mind maps are drawings that are used to depict ideas and relationships among ideas. If you are a teacher educator, do you have your trainees draw mind maps in your classes or workshops? If so, what have you used them for and how well did the activity work? 7. As a teacher in training, what (if anything) do you gain if your professor asks you to draw a mind map representing an abstract concept? 8. Whether you are a teacher educator or a teacher in training, what is one technique discussed in this chapter that you found surprising? What is one technique discussed in this chapter that you would like to try in your own teaching/learning? Suggestions for Further Research 1. We can imagine an experiment in which an abstract concept is conveyed to teacher trainees under four different conditions: (1) using an image to rep- resent the concept; (2) using an object to represent the concept; (3) using an object the trainees manipulate in some way; and (4) via an oral description only with no visual or physical representation provided (the control group). Later, the trainees’ understanding and retention of the abstract concept could be assessed to see if there are statistically significant differences among the four groups. 2. Teachers in training could respond to a questionnaire designed to elicit their preferences for the in-class (or in-workshop) use of devices such as those discussed in this chapter. Are some techniques strongly preferred over others? 3. If trainees do have preferences for the use of some training techniques involv- ing images, objects, or games, are those preferences related to their learning styles (e.g., visual, kinesthetic, or auditory)?

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 226  Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan Note 1 At the time of this writing, Anita Krishnan is a master’s degree candidate at the Mon- terey Institute of International Studies (hereafter MIIS), where Kathi Bailey works as a teacher educator. They share an interest in creativity in terms of music and the arts, so they started talking about how creativity can be used in teacher education.This chapter reports on their conversations with one another and with other people. References Andreasen, N. (2014, July/August). Secrets of the creative brain. Atlantic. Retrieved December 29, 2014, from www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/secrets-of- the-creative-brain/372299/ Ausubel, D., Novak, J., & Hanesian, H. (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Jackson, N., & Shaw, M. (2006). Subject perspective on creativity. In N. Jackson, M. Oliver, M. Shaw, & J.Wisdom (Eds.), Developing creativity in higher education (pp. 89–108). New York, NY: Routledge. Runco, M. (2007). Creativity:Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice. Burling- ton, MA: Elsevier Academic Press. Seelig,T. (2012). inGenius. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 15 CREATIVITY AS RESISTANCE Implications for Language Teaching and Teacher Education Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns Introduction The notion of creativity is well established in fields such as art, design and litera- ture. Until relatively recently, it has been a less familiar construct in other areas such as educational, technical, and vocational fields but is now increasingly seen as having a central role to play in equipping teachers and students for essential 21st-century skills. Although it is gaining more attention in the field of language teaching, it is a challenging concept to define, but it can be said to include notions of change and improvement, innovative practice, self-efficacy and agency on the part of teachers, and motivation and investment on the part of learners that will lead to greater communicative independence and empowerment. However, worldwide, many language teachers have to operate within con- siderable educational constraints, controlled by rapidly changing and top-down ministry policies, mandated curricula, prescribed materials, and prespecified out- comes. In this chapter, we argue that under such circumstances, in order to be creative and to respond empathetically and innovatively to the often diverse and multidimensional needs of their students, teachers may need to act as resisters or subverters of these prescribed conditions. Indeed, many teachers may either intentionally or unintentionally contest these constraints through the ways in which they respond intuitively to learners’ immediate learning and social needs (Canagarajah, 1999, 2004; Janks, 2010; Stein, 2008;Toohey, 2007). This chapter illuminates the ways in which teachers of adult1 ESL literacy learners, many of whom work within particularly constraining teaching condi- tions, may seek to conceptualize and enact their roles as agents of creativity. In this context, creativity is envisaged in terms of the multiple ways in which teachers

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 228  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns devise and carry out innovative and engaging practices in the face of policy, insti- tutional, and material factors that frequently act to limit creativity. Such factors may range from overzealous reporting requirements dictated by current policy to a lack of specific pedagogical training for teachers of low-literate adult learners. We argue that effective teaching and learning practices that emerge within some ESL literacy classes against the background of these prescriptive conditions can be conceptualized as agentive and creative behavior that constitutes a subtle form of resistance to these limiting conditions. In adopting this particular perspective on creativity, we draw parallels with Ahearn’s (2001) view of agency as “the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act” (p. 112).The construct of agency has frequently been examined in terms of language learners and their ability to realign their relationships with their mate- rial conditions or fellow speakers to assume more powerful identities from which to interact in the target language (see Norton & Toohey, 2011; Norton-Peirce, 1995; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Pavlenko & Norton, 2007). However, the issue of human agency is also particularly pertinent to language teachers and their ability to resist highly limiting policy environments or situations where resources are restricted or forcefully prescribed (see Baynham, 2006; Hornberger, 2003; Stein, 2008). To illustrate this link between creativity and agency or resistance, we draw upon case study research into teaching and learning experiences involving adult ESL literacy learners within Australia’s Language, Literacy and Numeracy Pro- gram (LLNP).We begin with a short overview of the LLNP, focusing particularly on constraining policy conditions within the program. Next, drawing on data taken from one particular classroom, we discuss a teacher’s conceptualization of her identity as a creative teacher and reflect on her sense of agency in resisting limiting material and policy conditions. We sketch a scene from the classroom to illustrate how the teacher’s self-perceived creativity manifests in particular practices or behavior and reflect on the resulting impact on learner engagement. Finally, we draw wider implications for the ways in which creativity in the form of resistance to teaching constraints can be viewed as a resource and not simply as an act of protest in the language-teaching classroom. Overview of the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program The LLNP is the product of the Australian adult literacy sector’s marked trans- formation from the late 1980s from a community-oriented, humanistic endeavor toward a more industrialized, economically driven enterprise.This transition was credited with an accompanying shift in the ethos and values underpinning the adult literacy sector (Castleton & McDonald, 2002; Searle, 2002). Where previ- ously small-scale, community-orientated literacy programs emphasized human- istic goals, such as identifying and responding to individuals’ social and personal

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  229 needs, the later amalgamation of these programs into the vocational education and training sector introduced an emphasis on industry-related goals such as produc- tivity and cost effectiveness. By far the most significant strategic development in the adult literacy and numeracy sector in Australia has been the focused delivery of literacy and numer- acy training, originally known as LANT in 1998 and now known as the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program (LLNP).This program, carried out according to the federal government’s Mutual Obligation2 arrangements and administered by Centrelink,3 caters for the long-term unemployed. Initially, it was for those aged between 18 and 24, but because of initial low participation, it now includes all welfare recipients found to have poor literacy skills.Today, the LLNP’s stated pro- gram objective is to “improve clients’ language, literacy and/or numeracy with the expectation that such improvements will enable them to participate more effectively in training or in the labour force and lead to greater gains for society in the longer term” (www.innovation.gov.au).The LLNP provides up to 800 hours of free accredited language, literacy, and numeracy (LLN) training for eligible job seekers whose LLN skills are below the level considered necessary to secure sus- tainable employment or pursue further education and training. Despite the LLNP’s claims to social and economic benefits for its partici- pants, the policy conditions surrounding the program have attracted criticisms from many quarters. Paramount among these is the casualization of staff contracts, narrowly focused, short-term funding arrangements, and limited opportunities for teachers to either develop professionally or ensure learner progression within programs.There is a large body of first-hand accounts from LLNP providers (see Black &Yasukawa, 2011) that cite the inflated costs, inefficiencies, and detrimental effect on program quality and teaching emanating from the competitive tender- ing system for the program. Furthermore, a report by Perkins (2009) notes an inherent contradiction between the LLNP’s stated core purpose and the “clients” or learners it accepts for training.The LLNP describes itself as a labor market program aimed at “meet- ing a growing need for vocationally oriented literacy and numeracy training” (www.innovation.gov.au). It follows, therefore, that the best factors to determine a potential client’s suitability for training are expressing a genuine desire to get a job, engaging in further training or study, and showing evidence of related ­commitment. However, Perkins points out that the disadvantaged learners whom the LLNP targets, many of whom are humanitarian entrants to Australia, are often those who do not necessarily demonstrate these criteria. They show little com- prehension of the work or training opportunities available to them, have had little experience of formal education, and often have pressing social and family obligations that prevent them from attending class regularly.According to Perkins (2009), this incongruity vis-à-vis the LLNP’s stated and actual learners poses sig- nificant difficulties in terms of assessment and reporting.