Viewing adult creative learning in relation to that of kids

Natalie & Mitch noted in a Week 2 video that most of their projects together are about kids creating projects. It's nothing they hide that their focus is on creative learning for children. In asking us to do, for example, scratch projects, LCL could be saying that doing such a project will prepare us to bring it into our teaching of children. But do readers of this post also feel that LCL implies that adult creative learning amounts to recovering the sense of creative learning we had as children? And we lost that sense because schools shut down the 4Ps. To the extent that projects were organized they weren't real Projects, but activities in which everyone had to follow instructions, without much Play or Peer sharing, and no finding of Passion. OK, we might share a critique of lost opportunities in schooling, but it is still possible to inquire into adult creative learning as something in its own right, no? Indeed, we might even consider creative learning in children as a specially constrained case of what adults do when they are creatively learning. After all, the microworlds of Papert and Lifelong Kindergarten keep at bay much of the messiness of making something take off and get sustained in the adult world. Would such a reframing make a difference to the different projects and Projects we take on as LCL-interested adults? (I might over generalize here, but I haven't bumped into any non-adults yet on LCL and LCL2.)

I have been thinking about this too as I work in the field of adult informal education. Most people who work in the adult education world might struggle with the idea of creative learning and there may also be many adult students who are resistant to the idea as well.

However, if you are familiar with the work of Malcolm Knowles then you may see that there is a way in for creative learning. For Knowles adult learners are autonomous and self-directed (that's the 'project' and 'passion' bits). Adult learners are goal-orientated, create their own set of objectives and above all they want results (again projects and passion). A good teacher can introduce peer learning and a playful way of learning to adult learning too.