Beyond ideas: How creative learning emerges from process

Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., Morgan Distinguished Professor of Educational Innovations at the UNC School of Education and a leading researcher focused on creativity, has synthesized more than a decade of research for a new, first-of-its-kind book that explores the creative and teaching practices used by faculty members within art and design programs. “Learning to See: Inside the World’s Leading Art and Design Schools,” released this spring by MIT Press, reveals how students undergo personal transformation through technical skill and by learning to think and see in new ways.

Interviewing more than 100 faculty members and students from institutions including the Savannah College of Art and Design and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sawyer explores how to teach people to create. With insights from educators across more than 20 disciplines, including painting, sculpture, architecture, and advertising, the book reveals shared pedagogical foundations across art and design programs, presented through nine chapters focusing on core habits of mind such as the importance of material engagement and the misunderstood value of constraints.  

A jazz pianist for over 30 years, Sawyer draws on his personal experiences with improvisation and group performance to inform his research. His previous work has applied qualitative methods to analyze creativity in collaborative settings, focusing on how groups interact moment-to-moment to generate outcomes greater than the sum of their parts. Throughout his career, Sawyer has studied three interrelated topics: creativity, collaboration, and learning, while paying attention to the hidden roles of conversation, interaction, and improvisation in these processes. 

Sawyer, an internationally recognized creativity researcher, is the author of the creativity research textbook “Explaining Creativity;” a book on leading creative teams, “Group Genius;” and “The Creative Classroom,” which offers guidance for teachers on how to foster creativity in their students — each translated into multiple languages. 

“Learning to See,” Sawyer’s 20th book, provides an in-depth look at how faculty and students in art and design programs engage in processes of personal transformation and creative development, offering insights that extend beyond the arts and highlighting project-based learning and process-driven instruction as approaches for fostering student engagement and learning across disciplines, even science, math, history, and literature. 

In the following Q&A, Sawyer discusses skills for success in creative professions and how his new book can provide insights for educators beyond the arts. 

What inspired you to embark on a decade-long journey of observing and interviewing over 100 artists and designers in BFA and MFA programs?  

I started this project in 2010, when I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, where I had the opportunity to interview professors — artists and designers — and it sparked something in me. As a creativity researcher and learning scientist, I’ve always been interested in how people learn to be creative. And I thought, who better to learn from than art and design professors? 

“Learning to See” is a story about how professional artists and designers create themselves and how they then teach others to create in this same, distinct way. It’s a unique creative process, one that these professors have mastered, and that new students, despite their talent and impressive portfolios, haven’t yet developed. 

What struck me most was that these professors weren’t just teaching students how to paint or weave. Sure, those technical skills are part of it, but that’s not the core. The deeper goal, they said, is to teach students to think and see differently. 

The more I interviewed, the more compelling the stories became. I kept interviewing at SCAD and then at other universities because every professor had something powerful to share. And over time, I noticed something unexpected: artists and designers, whether they were painters or typeface designers, were describing similar core processes. Despite the differences in medium, they shared a way of seeing and thinking that underscored their success. 

In “Learning to See,” you describe “seeing” as a learned skill at the heart of creativity. How do you define this kind of seeing, and why is it so central to artistic and design education?

My book has nine chapters that focus on nine habits of mind or practices that professors use in their own creative work and that they’re also trying to teach their students. One of the more surprising ones is the importance of constraints. Most of us think of art as something unconstrained, something where you should be free to do whatever you want, and that freedom is what maximizes creativity. But everyone I talked to said the opposite: without constraints, you don’t learn anything. Students need structure in order to learn how to see, how to think, and how to work in new ways. The importance of constraints came up again and again — in art, design, and architecture, across all the disciplines. That theme was incredibly powerful. Creativity isn’t about removing limits and doing anything you want. In fact, creativity is enhanced by adding thoughtful constraints. 

Creative ideas actually emerge from that process. The process that professors are teaching is that you don’t have to have an idea at first — the idea comes through the process of working with materials. That’s a big mindset shift. Throughout the book, professors often talk about the misconceptions students bring with them. One of the biggest ones is the belief that you need a brilliant idea before you begin. A big part of the professor’s job is helping students unlearn that and guiding them to let go of that misconception and become open to discovery through the process.  

You’ve written extensively about creativity in previous books. How does “Learning to See” expand or shift your perspective on creativity and its development? 

As a psychologist, I’ve spent years thinking about what happens in the mind when people are being creative and what happens when they’re learning. But I’d never thought about learning this way before. I started out thinking this was a book about art and design. And it is. But as I worked through it, I came to realize that it’s really a book about personal transformation. It’s about how you guide someone to leave behind a way of thinking and working that expert creatives know won’t lead to long-term success. 

My research hasn’t traditionally focused on personal transformation. It hasn’t been about what it means to become a different kind of person. But “Learning to See” is exactly that, a book about personal transformation. Yes, it’s about art and design, but at its core, what unifies those disciplines is a powerful shift: learning to see the world differently and learning to think differently about what you’re doing. 

Your book highlights the value of failure, emergence, and ambiguity in the creative process. How can educators incorporate these principles into their own teaching practices? 

The primary audience for this book is professors in art and design schools and their students. Those students often arrive expecting simply to learn how to paint or design, but reading my book will help them understand what their professors are actually trying to do.  

A closely related audience is K-12 arts educators — teachers working in high schools, middle schools, and even primary grades. Beyond that, I see value for educators in every discipline — math, history, biology, physics — because the pedagogical practices I describe have broader relevance. 

The way art professors design project assignments with carefully chosen parameters aligns closely with project-based learning (PBL) in science education. In PBL, primary school or high school students tackle open-ended problems so they can explore a “problem space” rather than chase a single correct answer. That’s exactly where the lessons from art– and– design pedagogy come in. By studying how professors think about and structure constraints, any educator who uses project-based learning, whether in science, math, or the humanities, can refine their own assignments and help students achieve deeper, more meaningful learning. 

What do you hope educators — whether in the arts, sciences, or other disciplines — take away from “Learning to See” about fostering transformative learning experiences? 

I found the stories of these professors to be incredibly compelling. I read every book about art and design schools I found. There are a lot — I filled up an entire bookshelf! But I discovered that these stories I was hearing simply haven’t been told. So, my first goal is to share the stories of these brilliant educators. The reason I want to tell their stories is because I believe they carry powerful messages for anyone involved in education. When you leave the school classroom, a lot of educators don’t lecture, like museum educators or someone designing museum exhibits with the goal of teaching visitors about physics. So, how do you shape that kind of learning encounter in classrooms? I think “Learning to See” can help all teachers reflect on and deepen their practice. It’s for all educators, whether K-12 or college.

In many ways, “Learning to See” is a book about professional expertise, about developing professional practice within a discipline. It’s an apprenticeship book. What the art and design students in these programs are going through is a kind of apprenticeship, and the book explores that process. 

I think educators who are preparing students for knowledge-intensive careers, whether in business school, law school, medical school, or elsewhere, can learn a lot from what these art and design professors are doing.  

To explore more about “Learning to See: Inside the World’s Leading Art and Design Schools,” click here.