**3.1 Constructive**

According to this model, meaningful learning should be constructive. This view of knowledge development aligns with constructivists' theories of learning [16, 17].

#### **Figure 1.**

*The MC model of creative and meaningful learning. Applying five broad characteristics of meaningful learning results in each characteristic developing certain creative thinking skills.*

#### *Developing Creative and Meaningful Learning in the Curriculum DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102644*

Constructive activities invite learners to reflect on their thoughts and information. When a learner starts to reflect s/he will be able to incorporate the new knowledge and understanding with his/her previous prior knowledge. With engaging in reflection and teachers' and parents' support, their previous mental models become more and more complex. This results in creative meaning-making and generating new knowledge [18]. A handful of activities can be used to foster constructive learning. KWL charts (i.e., What I know? What I want to know? And what I learned?) are one of the well-known activities that help students to organize their thoughts before, during, and after a lesson while indicating its effectiveness in fostering creativity [19].

The creative thinking skills that will be developed during constructive learning are fluency and flexibility. Learners recall as many ideas as they know regarding their previous knowledge (e.g., What I know?). Afterward, as they want to incorporate the new knowledge with their prior information, they will develop the creative thinking of flexibility. They search for new and different ways of interpreting old knowledge while finding various ways of incorporating the old one with the new knowledge [20]. In simple words, they want a fluent mind to present them with a flow of ideas from before (fluency) and a flexible mind to be able to represent different ways and different thoughts of how old understanding can be interpreted and incorporated with new knowledge. As a result, their previous schema and mental model become more complex, and, hence, constructive understanding will occur.

Some activities that can be used in this regard are, for example, mind maps that provide learners with the opportunity to develop as many ideas as possible. Other

**Figure 2.** *Constructive learning activity through students' commenting.*

activities such as open discussions, commenting, liking, or disliking their classmates' responses also provide learners with opportunities for reflection. It helps them to consider various ways of interpreting and incorporating their old knowledge with their new knowledge. Such activities could be as simple as young students' commenting by happy face or star, as presented in **Figure 2**.

### **3.2 Active**

The second feature of meaningful learning is being active. Active learning denotes activities involving students in doing and thinking about what they are doing [21]. Active learning has a positive influence on learners' creativity as it builds new knowledge and develops new skills [22, 23]. It begins as learners start to interact with their surroundings. Some examples of activities in this respect involve learning new game skills or dealing with a new device. Researchers indicated the important role of active learning in fostering creativity among students [22, 24–26]. The creative learning skill that will develop through active learning is flexibility, which denotes producing different ideas. The flexible mind uses different ways to approach new knowledge and new skills. Games, including online educational games and robotics, for instance, are very effective in developing children's creative skills of flexibility. Furthermore, smart device applications regarding digital stories are very useful for those students who demand lots of active learning, where they can write their own scenario and produce it. Developing the creative skill of flexibility becomes evident as they build different characters, who become involved in different events and produce story morals.

#### **3.3 Intentional**

All that we do is toward achieving a goal. Basic goals may be as simple as making someone happy. More complicated goals may involve deciding to invest in stock exchanges or enter a new profession. As learning becomes goal-oriented and intentional, learners start to develop self-regulated strategies, such as time management; self-discipline strategies, such as organization, or may develop twenty-first century skills, such as leadership [27, 28]. In this stage, I suggest for teachers and parents to provide their learners with opportunities to be involved in local or worldwide events and contests. Researchers indicated that students' learning goal orientation was significantly associated with their creativity [25].

When learners intend to participate in challenging events, they start to develop ideas that are unique and original [29]. As a result, intentional learning helps learners to develop creative thinking skills of originality. Some examples of intentional activities may include publishing digital postcards regarding "Earth Day" and "Children's Day" and raising social awareness or participating in various contests.

#### **3.4 Cooperative**

The fourth characteristic of meaningful learning is to be cooperative. As the old saying states, "team work makes the dream work!" Cooperative learning results in individual and collective knowledge building. In cooperative learning, students communicate together by sharing their thoughts and listening to each other's perspectives. They work together to accomplish the task. A number of creative thinking skills will develop through cooperative learning. A flow of ideas will produce as team members

start sharing thoughts (fluency) [30]. Various ideas will develop as they listen and discuss the task (flexibility) [31] and as members began to add ideas and details to their thoughts, they develop the creative thinking skill of elaboration. Similarly, researchers demonstrated that the more information being shared, the more nonoverlapping knowledge emerges from students within the group. Therefore, the process of knowledge sharing and collective adding of information can leverage students' creative skills of elaboration [25, 28].

### **3.5 Authentic**

Authentic activities enable gifted learners to bring their knowledge and skills into life [32]. As they start to establish the new knowledge through constructive and active learning and master it through intentional and cooperative learning; they will be ready to generalize or apply their learning into new contexts. Authentic learning activities, hence, enable students to deepen their understanding. Authentic learning allows learners to absorb new knowledge. Furthermore, it strengthens the links between what is learned and what they can transfer to future contexts. Subsequently, it helps them to solve future problems in which this present authentic learning may be applicable [33, 34]. Researchers emphasized the development of creative learning when it was contributed to students' life and well-being [26].

The skill that develops during authentic learning is creative problem solving [33, 34], which involves a combination of creative thinking skills of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. When facing a problem, learners use a flow of ideas (fluency), provide various solutions (flexibility) to come up with original and unique ideas (originality), refine the final solution by adding details (elaboration), and finally solve the problem. This could not be achieved without providing meaningful learning, which is constructive, active, intentional, cooperative, and authentic.

The current chapter reports on a research study, which examined the development of learning as part of continual professional development in Bahraini primary schools. The study was carried out in a primary school when the researcher provided teachers with training workshops on creative and meaningful learning and monitored the result on students' creativity. The study hypothesis denoted that applying characteristics of meaningful learning of constructive, active, cooperative, intentional, and authentic learning, positively affect developing creative thinking skills of flexibility, fluency, elaboration, and originality.
