Fueling Creativity in Education

What does a design thinking program for children look like? Let’s find out!

In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome Zviko Kanyoka, a Project Manager for placemaking programs at Play Africa. Zviko is currently preparing to scale Play Africa's Design Thinking with Children programs across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering children with creative skills by encouraging active citizenship within their communities.

Listen in to learn how Zviko’s background in architecture inspires her curriculum design and her work with children in the classroom. She sheds light on how children can actively participate in designing their learning environment along with the opportunity educators have to create workshops for learning creative skills, communication skills, spatial awareness and connectivity, problem-solving, and much more!

Zviko talks about methods of teaching kids about climate change and environmental conservation, the most important part of engaging children in your community, and the importance of having the freedom to play as a child, especially within African communities.

“To value play is to value our imagination, to value our creativity, and continually entertaining the idea that we always have an option to create new models of being.” – Zviko Kanyoka

Plus, you’ll learn how Play Africa’s Design Thinking with Children program is making a direct impact on their communities and her strategy for scaling and expanding the program.

“We’re centering children’s varied experiences, feelings, and needs and we’re helping learn how to identify social challenges and creative problem solve through ideating, prototyping, and testing possible solutions for safer and more playful communities.” – Zviko Kanyoka

Zviko’s Design Thinking with Children Workshop Framework:

1. Transfer your workshop from the school to a communal workspace in your community, like a library. Familiarize your students to the environment and have them think of ways they would transform the space.
2. Get your students to ideate, draw, and visualize ideas for transformation they want to see in those spaces.
3. Encourage them to gather materials, then have a session for prototyping their transformations.

Recommended Resources:

Listen to the episode with Tamara Doleman

Listen to the episode with Dr. Vlad Glaveanu

Play Africa Toolkit

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Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?

Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.

What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?

Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.

Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!

You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!

About Zviko Kanyoka:

Zviko Kanyoka is a Project Manager for placemaking programmes at Play Africa with a background in architecture. Her work is driven by her passion for supporting children’s creative expression and right to the city through participatory development. She's currently preparing to scale Play Africa's Design Thinking with Children programme across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering children with creative skills through encouraging their active citizenship within their communities.

Follow Zviko on Instagram

Have you ever heard of the participatory framework of creativity?

In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome Dr. Michael Hanchett Hanson, a developmental psychologist, author, and leader of the Participatory Creativity Lab. Among many other notable roles, Michael is one of the leading advocates for the participatory framework of creativity, emphasizing the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change.

Listen in to hear Michael break down the participatory framework of creativity and how it can be applied to educational environments and maker spaces. He highlights how the participatory framework of creativity fosters a continual creative process in a child’s day-to-day life and helps students become aware of the creative processes happening in their classroom.

“Once you make this slight shift in how we think, there are really broad and deep implications... The core question implied by the idea of creativity shifts.” – Michael Hanchett Hanson

Michael also sheds light on a few ways to support teachers’ creativity, then shares what he learned from writing his new book, “Creativity and Improvised Educations: Case Studies for Understanding Impact and Implications”.

Michael’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:

1. Think about it as creativity in the service of good education, not education to produce creative people. If people are well educated and deeply engaged in a domain, they will have ideas.
2. The combination of formal, traditional education and self-directed learning is different in each case, but both are absolutely necessary.
3. Really good education is understanding the deep questions that drive domains of knowledge.

Recommended Resources:

Learn more about Participatory Creativity Lab

Creativity and Improvised Educations by Michael Hanchett Hanson

Listen to the episode with Dr. Vlad GlaveanuListen to the episode with Jonathan Plucker

Listen to the episode with David Cropley

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?

Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.

What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?

Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.

Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!

You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!

About Michael Hanchett Hanson:

Michael Hanchett Hanson is a developmental psychologist; Director of the Masters Concentration in Creativity and Cognition at Teachers College, Columbia University; leader of the Participatory Creativity Lab (www.participatorycreativitylab.org); and a founding board member and Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI).

Michael is one of the leading advocates for the participatory framework of creativity, which emphasizes the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change. He has written on the history of the construct of creativity within psychology; creativity in education; the ideological uses of the construct; ironic thought patterns as a creative heuristic, and creative practices in the construction of the self. His most recent book, “Creativity and Improvised Educations: Case Studies for Understanding Impact and Implications”, looks at case studies of creative work across a variety of domains and what these cases can teach us about the roles of education in lifelong creative development.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn

Buy his book,

How do you find joy in your classroom and infuse creativity into your students’ curriculum? In this throwback episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood revisit their discussion with Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers, an Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State.

Susan teaches graduate courses in creativity, chairs the curriculum committee, and serves on leadership teams of various departments across campus dedicated to infusing creative learning into their teaching and learning practices. Her focus is educating the next generation of creativity experts who will utilize their degree in creativity in diverse professional and personal arenas.

“Good teaching is creative teaching.” - Susan Keller-Mathers

Tune in to learn how to infuse creativity into your curriculum and how to find joy every single day you walk into your classroom!

You’ll gain insight into the importance of the practitioner-scholar model, the difference between teaching creativity and creative teaching, and the best practices for nurturing long-term professional learning in teachers. Susan also gives great advice for teachers who are overwhelmed or challenged with constraints in the classroom.

“You have to be an advocate for creativity outside of your classroom to do it in your classroom. You can close your door and you can do what you want to do, which is what a lot of teachers want to do, but you must also be that teacher leader who helps others understand the value of it. Then, it becomes more embedded in the educational environment because you can’t do it in isolation.” - Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers

Susan’s Tips for Teachers:

1. Your attitude and energy make a difference in the classroom.
2. Remember why you’re an educator and come in refreshed and ready to engage with your students.
3. Always think about how you can meet the needs of your students and bring out their creative thinking.

About Susan Keller-Mathers:

Susan Keller-Mathers is an Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State. Susan holds a BS in Elementary Education, an MS in Creativity, and an Ed.D in Curriculum and Instruction. She teaches graduate courses in creativity, chairs the curriculum committee and serves on leadership teams of various departments across campus dedicated to infusing creative learning into their teaching and learning practices.

Susan’s focus is educating the next generation of creativity experts who will utilize their degree in creativity in diverse professional and personal arenas. For nearly three decades she has continued the development of the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) to infuse creativity into lesson, unit, course and training frameworks, develop creative learning and creative problem-solving initiatives in educational and business institutions and travel the globe teaching creativity to international educators on five continents.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?

Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.

What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?

Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.

Follow Cyndi and Matt on Linkedin.

You can also find The Fueling Creativity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!

How do you facilitate teacher-led change in the classroom? In this throwback episode Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood revisit their interview with Dr. Kulvarn Atwal, an executive headteacher of two large primary schools in East London and author of The Thinking School.

Listen in to hear Dr. Atwal share his thoughts on educational leadership and how to facilitate teacher-led change in the classroom. He sheds light on the importance of trial and error in school systems, how school leaders can support the creativity of teachers, and ways administrators can spark curiosity and professional development in tenured teachers.

Dr. Atwal also gives advice for teachers who crave professional development but don’t have opportunities to foster it. Then, he talks a bit about his next book for empowering teachers, The Thinking Teacher.

“The greatest single factor that impacts upon the quality of children’s learning in school, students’ learning, is quite straightforward. It’s the quality of teaching.” - Dr. Kulvarn Atwal

Dr. Atwal’s Tips for School Administrators:

1. Give teachers more opportunities to collaborate with other teachers and engage in dialogue without having to report back or hit a target.
2. Create culture in which you actively inquire or ask about what your teachers are good at and what they’d like to improve in. This works well if you lead by example.
3. Express your school’s values, mission, and goals. Don’t deviate from those.

About Dr. Kulvarn Atwal:

Dr. Kulvarn Atwal was born and educated in East London and has been headteacher for nine years of the school he attended as a child. in 2018/19 he was Executive Head Teacher of two primary schools; both of which were graded Outstanding in all areas by Ofsted. His doctoral thesis, completed in 2016, examined the factors that influence teacher learning in schools. He has recently published his first book, ‘The Thinking School – Developing a Dynamic Learning Community’.

Follow Dr. Atwal on Twitter

Resources Mentioned:

Learn more about Highlands Primary School

Buy The Thinking School by Dr. Kulvan Atwal

Read Dr. Atwal's Blog Posts here:

The Need for Creative Thinking in Our Schools

Cultivating An Environment for Creativity in Schools

If You Want Creative Thinkers, Focus on Emotional Literacy

Five Strategies for Building a Thinking School

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?

Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.

What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?

Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.

You can also find The Fueling Creativity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!

In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome back Dr. Ron Beghetto along with Laura McBain, Co-Director of the K12 Lab at the Stanford d.school. Ron and Laura recently came out with a new book, “My Favorite Failure: How Setbacks Can Lead to Learning and Growth”. As a human-centered designer, Laura’s work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design and innovative educational experiences.

Listen in to learn about Ron and Laura’s personal favorite failures, the relationship between expectations and failure, how to start the school year off with sharing favorite failures, and the valuable difference between mistakes and failures. The duo also shares their best tips and advice for new teachers as well as how to get students to push through feelings of failure so that they can learn and grow from it.

Questions Answered:

Why is it important to acknowledge and talk about emotions in school?

Are we more willing to take risks when we don’t know the potential consequences?

Are we more likely to experience failure when we do not know anything about the environment?

What types of failure are the most impactful for students? (ie. F letter grades, public failure)

...and more!

Laura’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:

1. Start talking about failure more.
2. Make sure the work you’re designing for young people are worth the failure. How do you design real life examples where students are taking on work of consequence?
3. Provide multiple opportunities for students to reflect on failure daily and/or throughout the lesson.

Ron’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:

1. Stay away from empty slogans that minimize emotions. Find ways to acknowledge and validate the emotional pain and difficulty one experiences when they’re failing and talk about what to do next.
2. Encourage and take beautiful risks yourself. Invite kids to give you feedback on your failures.

Recommended Resources:

Listen to S1 Episode 6 with Ron Beghetto

Listen to S2 Episode 7 with Ron Beghetto

My Favorite Failure by Ron Beghetto and Laura McBain

Weaving Creativity into Every Strand of Your Curriculum by Cyndi Burnett

Bruce Tuckman’s Group Dynamics

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?

Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.

What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?

Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.

Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!

You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!

About Laura McBain:

Laura is the K12 Lab Director of Community and Implementation at the Stanford d.school. In this role, she leads the K12 Lab network and aims to use design thinking to transform education and the world. As a human-centered designer, her work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design. She is an advocate for equity and social justice work and is leading experiments to ensure more students have access to an innovative educational experience that will help them thrive in a changing world. Formerly Laura was the Director of External Relations at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. As the Director of External Relations, Laura traveled the globe designing and leading professional development focused on the implementation of progressive education, school transformation, deeper learning and equity initiatives. She has served as a principal of two HTH sites and has taught middle and high school classes in public charte...