Creativity, Curriculum and Young Children: Mathematics

Running head: MATHEMATICS 1
Creativity, Curriculum and Young Children: Mathematics Paper
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MATHEMATICS 2
Creativity, Curriculum and Young Children: Mathematics
Introduction
According to recent literature on creativity in education, two particular contexts have
garnered significant interest with regard to policy and exploration – creative teaching, and
educating for ingenuity. While the former is predominantly teacher-centered, the latter is based
on the enhancement of creativity in classrooms by inspiring students’ imagination. Chappell
(2011) posits that teachers’ values, despite being the center of the learning process, should
manifest during learning in the right context, and using tasks that could be translated
meaningfully for the education of young children, particularly in the field of science and
mathematics.
1. Most Noticeable Features of Creativity in Mathematics Curriculum
In relation to the early childhood education in Australia, the following are the most
prominent aspects of creativity in the mathematics curriculum.
1.1. Time, Space, and Flexibility
Creativity is assured in the mathematics curriculum through the proper allocation of
spaces in-between exercises to allow for some degree of uncertainty (Craft, 2011). Flexibility,
another commonly held feature, dwells not only on the teacher’s capacity to remain receptive to
the unexpected, but in their willingness to allocate enough space and time for young children to
discover and test different outcomes with the acknowledgement on a properly structured support
system. The emphasis on availing sufficient time and space during exploration ensures that
teachers can nurture their instructional practice of possibility thinking during creative interludes.
For example, the curriculum allows teachers to create specific times and spaces during the
learning process to discover their environment, the learning resources availed to them, and

MATHEMATICS 3
requires them to practice problem solving during actual mental play. During mental play,
however, learning exercises afford the use of open adventures and exploratory learning to
empower young children to take learning risks, and push boundaries (Canning, 2010).
1.2. Open-ended Questions, and Modelling Intrigue
The curriculum similarly integrates open-ended questions to encourage transferable and
deep thinking between learners, and to help them restructure the problem in a manner that would
be more relevant to them. Studies show that this feature enhances metacognition, resulting in
heightened levels of understanding (Chappell & Craft, 2011). In addition, a teacher who
similarly sharpens their creativity by questioning their perspective and knowledge influences a
similar attitude in young learners, thus leading to the development of intrigue (Craft, 2011).
1.3. Categorizing Agency
An important feature in the creative learning process is the development of a profiling
agency and a sense of individuality using which a young child gets into the practice of learning
for their personal benefit, as opposed to acquiring knowledge for their teachers and parents. This
feature therefore cultivates individuality, self-drive, and self-control (Dezuanni & Jetnikoff,
2011). In this way, the curriculum allows the teachers to not merely set open-ended tasks during
creative interludes, but also categorize them into groups orchestrated by themselves, and steering
the learning process using their own ideas. For instance, to facilitate the development of agency
and independence, teachers are instructed to use reverse questioning to pose the question back to
the young learners. The children then pick up the important aspects of the dialogue, including the
environment of collaboration, and utilize the unstructured group discussions to nurture individual
originality. By allowing children’s unstructured collaboration, scientific understanding, and
proper task-management concepts may be understood (Hyvonen, 2011).