Any creative act is an act of profound learning. According to the OECD document published in 2022 Thinking outside the box. The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment, creativity is an inherent human skill that we continually express in the situations we experience. Creative thinking allows the generation, evaluation, and improvement of ideas that can be original and effective for advancing scientific knowledge, artistic creation, or any everyday situation that presents a challenge to be solved.
In the educational field, we have explored the creative experience as part of the teaching and learning process necessary in a school context. But beyond problem-solving, the creation of literary texts, or the invention of poetry, in education, artistic expression and creativity can develop in other ways that can enhance self-awareness and the unique talents we have each of us. Fostering creativity in the classroom is fostering individual freedom to strengthen cognitive development, motivation, self-knowledge, and well-being.
In this sense, knitting can be an educational and creative experience that can be incorporated into the classroom for several reasons, which I will attempt to explain:
- It generates the development of cognitive skills and facilitates new neural connections. Knitting, in general, is a manual activity that requires cultivating attention, concentration, and coordination, and it generates learning about what is being created and beyond. Furthermore, it facilitates the interpretation of pattern symbols, encouraging a new symbolic language that exercises metacognitive reflection. In other words, reading a pattern and creating a project involves many diverse brain functions.
- It promotes curiosity and the desire to continue learning. It generates expectations about what is being knitted, leading to the formulation of hypotheses about the work being done. This cognitive exercise diversifies possibilities and expands one's own creative experience, generating a desire to see the result of what is being woven. The certainty that what we do has a result creates a commitment to oneself and a satisfaction when the work is finished, so that knitting is a learning experience that facilitates continued experimentation and innovation. In school, we can create spaces for knitting using different techniques: with fingers, with arms, using crochet hooks, making knots, even using circular needles.
- It encourages decision-making and free will. This is not insignificant in a world so mediated by rules; the decisions made when carrying out a task will produce certain results. Likewise, free choice fosters a process of internalization and individuation that promotes self-knowledge and reflection on one's own decisions.
- Accepting mistakes as part of the process. Making mistakes, especially when one is learning, is an inherent part of mastering a technique. Accepting mistakes as a key element in the weaving process is necessary to ensure the final product reflects our intentions. In this sense, weaving allows us to confront the fear of making mistakes and demystifies the process, as it's easy to go back and examine why we erred. In school, mistakes are part of the learning process, and we might even say, part of the process of living. Therefore, confronting them in a weaving project can help us accept errors as simply another element in the creation of a knitted product.
- It allows us to explore collaboration among peers, that is, peer learning. Weaving is an individual activity with community repercussions. In this sense, we reclaim the tradition of our grandmothers, mothers, and aunts who participated in community spaces to share the experience of weaving, where one person hesitates, another helps, and vice versa. In school, fostering community learning spaces can be a collaborative experience among peers.
- It opens up to experience and intellectual exploration simultaneously. Knitting fosters a hands-on experience that requires certain cognitive skills, especially hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and the organization of a pattern executed in a specific way. In school, the experience of writing can be likened to knitting, as both require manual dexterity and cognitive reflection.
- It generates satisfaction, self-knowledge, self-esteem, and well-being. At a time when the mental health of children and young people is a challenge in schools, knitting serves as a balm, fostering self-esteem and well-being
- It fosters the unique expression of an activity. Knitting is eminently a creative activity where mastery of the technique opens up infinite creative possibilities, promoting the flow state,
Each and every one of the above arguments are key elements for incorporating different knitting techniques into the school curriculum. Knitting goes beyond a manual experience; it is an experience of self-exploration and self-knowledge, of well-being and life lessons.
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