Creativity: Playful Reflective Dialogue in Classrooms

In the last chapter, Chap. 4, I developed the idea of dialogue as adirection for education through exploring the impact of teaching Exploratory Talk on the solving of reasoning test problems. However, the emphasis on explicit reason in definitions of Exploratory Talk isquestionable. While explicit reasoning is good for developing critical thinking but is not always the best way of encouraging creative thinking. In this chapter I use transcript evidence to argue that creativity is more fundamental to productive dialogues, a category which includes the solving of reasoning test problems, than explicit reasoning and that creativity can be promoted through and educational design. This chapter is in two parts, in the first part I present a research programme based on teaching explicit reasoning, in the second I ‘deconstruct’ this programme, revealing the importance of the neglected ‘other’ of explicit reasoning: playful talk.