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What’s the relationship between uncertainty and creativity in the classroom?

Team: A/Prof Krisztina Valter, A/Prof Alexandra Webb, Ms Elisa Crossing, Dr Lillian Smyth & students (in progress)

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Some deliberate uncertainty can help the development of student knowledge, skills, and confidence. However, too much uncertainty can cause a student to lose confidence, and feel uncomfortable with creating. The concept of structured uncertainty (Beghetto, 2019) allows uncertainty in some aspects of a task, but not others (e.g. clear outcomes, but uncertain process). Structured uncertainty around what the students are doing gives an opening for creative expression. Structured uncertainty around how it should be done encourages students to approach the task in a variety of different ways. So does that help? Can building structured uncertainty into educational tasks help university students break out of their practiced ways of thinking and build confidence and skills in creativity?

Watch this space.

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