Teaching creativity in the classroom is a crucial skill for tomorrow’s workplace

Claire Halliday

A new report reveals that graduates, educators and hiring managers all consider creativity to be a crucial skill for the workplace – yet current education frameworks are not set up to encourage creativity in the classroom or equip students with these skill sets. 

The Creativity in Education report from the visual communication platform, Canva, reveals less than half (47 per cent) of educators think graduates are prepared for the demands of the workplace.

Canva’s report, released in September this year, surveyed more than 1,000 recent Australian university graduates, educators, and hiring managers, with the findings revealing most recent graduates (86 per cent) and hiring managers (83 per cent) consider creativity essential for finding a job and succeeding in the workplace.

Despite this, there remains a significant gap in educators’ ability to foster and encourage creativity in the classroom, where creativity starts. While 85 per cent of educators want to encourage more creativity in the classroom, challenges around lack of time, curriculum that integrates creativity, and funding and resources impede their ability to do so. 

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The findings underscore a critical need to rethink how the education system equips students for their future careers. Creativity is emerging as a crucial skill, yet it often lacks the attention it deserves in current educational curricula. The report calls for a shift in educational focus to better prepare students from K-12 through higher education for the demands of a rapidly evolving job market.

“Even with technology and AI reshaping the workforce, creativity is one of the few skills that will always be essential for innovation and problem-solving. It is an inherently human trait that cannot be replicated with technology. But creativity needs to be developed and fostered over time. And it needs to start at the earliest stages of education,” says Carly Daff, Head of Teams & Education at Canva.

“Unfortunately, while educators understand the importance of fostering creativity, they don’t have the space or resources to encourage it in the classroom. If we’re serious about preparing our talent for future demands, particularly as our workforce becomes more global, we need to rethink how creativity can be integrated into the classroom and provide more support with access to readily available resources that place creativity at its core.”

Head of Teams Education at Canva Carly Daff says there are some really fun ways to bring creativity to life in the classroom.

Key findings from the Creativity in Education Report 2024 (Australia):

  • Australian hiring managers view creativity as the most sought-after skill in talent
    • 83 per cent of Australian hiring managers think creativity is important to landing a job and rank it as the most important skill they look for in talent (56 per cent) ahead of problem-solving (53 per cent) and communication (49 per cent).
    • recent graduates echo the importance of creativity in the workforce with two-thirds (64 per cent) of recent graduates ranking creativity as the most useful skill in their current job.
  • Creativity is a learnt skill and needs to be fostered from an early age 
    • creativity starts from the earliest age. The majority of educators (70 per cent) and hiring managers (68 per cent) believe educators should encourage creativity to a great extent
    • more than half (58 per cent) of educators think creativity should be emphasised in the classroom as early as primary school. 
  • Educators want to encourage more creativity in the classroom but face challenges integrating it into their teaching
    • Less than half (47 per cent) of educators think graduates are prepared for the demands of the workplace.
    • Educators understand the importance of fostering creativity and want to encourage more of it in the future but challenges around lack of time (36 per cent), a curriculum that integrates creativity (33 per cent), and funding and resources (28 per cent) are preventing educators’ ability to achieve this goal. 
  • As AI continues to transform the job market, the need for human creativity is more important than ever.
    • An overwhelming majority of recent graduates (89 per cent) and hiring managers (87 per cent) believe that creativity will become even more important as technology evolves.
    • While the majority of hiring managers (57 per cent) and recent graduates (54 per cent) think that the rise of AI will encourage more creative thinking, educators are wary with only a quarter (26 per cent) believing it will as technology cannot fully replicate the innovative problem-solving that human creativity drives.

“We review more than 300,000 applications each year, and the most successful candidates are those who can think outside the box and approach problems with a creative mindset. We believe in investing in creativity from the ground up, starting in the classroom so that the next generation is equipped to meet future challenges,” says Amy Schultz, Canva’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition.

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Free tech tools help empower educators

To empower teachers to create visual lessons, streamline their work, and unlock creativity in the classroom, Canva provides Canva for Education 100 per cent free for all K-12 teachers, students, schools, districts, campuses, ministries, and school systems, with more than 100,000 education and lesson templates and over 10 AI tools with the safety assurances of Canva Shield.

Canva for Campus is Canva’s higher education plan for higher education institutions globally, enabling everyone on campus to collaborate and do their best work. Since launching, Canva has donated $1 billion worth of annual product value through its education and nonprofit programs, with more than 70 million students and teachers now using Canva’s tools to design, collaborate, and learn.

Thinking differently and exploring fresh ideas

Daff told EducationDaily that creativity in the classroom can come to life in a range of ways, including “through hands-on projects, teamwork, and problem-solving activities that encourage students to think differently and explore new ideas”. 

“There are some really fun ways that tech can help bring this to life. With Canva for Education, for example, we’ve made it easy for teachers to help students express their creativity visually. Our ready-to-use design templates let students create everything from posters and infographics to presentations – turning their learning into visual storytelling. For group projects, students can collaborate in real-time on things like whiteboards and presentations, using the intuitive drag-and-drop tools to bring their ideas to life.”

What’s been even more exciting, she says, is “how AI has elevated this creativity”.

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“For teachers, AI is a huge time-saver, helping them whip up engaging classroom materials like worksheets and flashcards in minutes. We’ve actually seen AI usage in classrooms more than double over the past year, which shows just how much educators are embracing these tools to boost both their productivity and their students’ creativity.”

And although some people fear the way tech-driven tools may have the potential to impede hands-on creativity, Daff’s believes students are naturally drawn to creativity when they have the tools to explore it – no matter what tools they are.

“As AI and technology continue to advance, creative thinking will be more important than ever. Creativity isn’t just for art – it’s something that should be encouraged across all subjects from day one, helping students become adaptable and ready for whatever the future brings.

“When teachers have access to tech-driven tools, they’re able to better support students in unlocking that creative mindset. We’ve seen that since bringing these tools into classrooms, students are gaining confidence in their creative abilities and starting to take more initiative in their learning. It’s amazing to watch students feel empowered to explore their ideas more freely, and these tools are making that possible.”

Nurturing tech-driven classroom creativity

Bronwyn Deane is a teacher at Lane Cove Primary School in Sydney – and a Canva ambassador.

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She told EducationDaily that “the curriculum dictates what to teach, but we use teacher judgement on how to teach it”.

“It is through our teaching planning and delivery that we have the freedom to be authentic and creative in tailoring curriculum content to our student’s specific needs and interests. More than ever teachers need to be dynamic and engaging in their teaching delivery, to compete with students’ shrinking attention spans due to being immersed in an endless stream of digital technology. We can, however, intentionally harness students’ preoccupation with technology to produce meaningful academic outcomes.”

Teacher Bronwyn Deane says educators can “harness students’ preoccupation with technology to produce meaningful academic outcomes”.

Deane says, “multiple studies have shown that children perform better than adults across multiple creative-thinking measures”.

“As teachers, we need to know our students, their interests and how they best learn in order to successfully harness their divergent thinking skills. This can be achieved through the design of open-ended tasks based on learners’ interests, allowing students to co-create learning tasks, brainstorm, problem-solve and foster a growth-mindset environment where students feel safe to experiment with their learning. 

“Whether I’m planning lessons or explicitly teaching, I’m acutely aware of the importance of being flexible, giving students room to make choices and take risks in their learning process. While it can be challenging with time constraints and a very full curriculum, it’s essential to provide students with the freedom to explore, discuss, and challenge ideas, apply reverse-thinking skills and engage in class debates.

She told EducationDaily this approach “encourages the production of multiple unique ideas and new ways of solving problems”.

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“Helping students refine their critical thinking skills then allows them to choose the best solution for their problem. Thinking back to my own school journey, the most memorable learning moments for me occurred through scenario-based activities involving problem-solving, where I could apply my learning to a real-life context. These skills – creativity and critical thinking – are increasingly being valued by employers in today’s workforce. Furthermore, they are skills that AI has not yet been able to replicate.”

AI can have a positive influence – but creativity is uniquely human

Deane says that, although the rise of AI has contributed to the focused development of skill outcomes in educational institutions, creativity remains “a uniquely human domain”.

“It’s important to recognise that AI is merely an extension of human input, processing and analysing existing human data in various forms. As a reflection of the past, it cannot create genuinely original ideas. This is why fostering creativity in our classrooms is more important than ever. By providing students with opportunities to exercise their creative potential, they are better prepared to apply critical thinking skills and solve problems beyond AI’s capabilities and generate novel ideas. 

“As teachers, we need to intentionally plan the delivery of curriculum content to maximise creative opportunities for students. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that my own rigidity might be depriving my students of authentic learning, especially when the pressure to complete a task is high. School leaders must provide teachers with time and resources prioritised to the creative revamping of their lesson planning and delivery, as well as collegial sharing of ideas. Additionally, as a society, we need to move away from the mindset that creativity is confined to the arts and recognise it as a form of intelligence in its own right.”

By allowing students greater creativity in their learning results in more active participation, engagement and better academic outcomes, Deane believes it also improves students’ openness to different perspectives, risk-taking and resilience to setbacks.

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“These are uniquely human skills, and with the rise of AI, will continue to be in demand by future employers. Providing children with the opportunity to practise and refine these skills across multiple contexts starts in our classrooms.”

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Claire Halliday has an extensive career as a full-time writer - across book publishing, copywriting, podcasting and feature journalism - for more than 25 years. She lives in Melbourne with children, two border collies and a grumpy Burmese cat. Contact: claire.halliday[at]educationdaily.au