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DEFINITIONS & SCOPE: WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
Creativity has often been interpreted by society as synonymous with artistic expression (Prentice,
2000; Eckhoff, 2011; Saracho, 2012). Creativity has also been interpreted as the product of
highly intelligent individuals. Similarly, other researchers have viewed creativity as an inherent
characteristic only few possess and only to be studied retrospectively in famous individuals. And
although research has suggested correlations with both the arts and intelligence, creativity as a
construct has been agreed upon to be something unique or novel that had external value, the
result of purposeful behavior, and a result of sustained duration (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996;
Gardner, 1993; Gruber & Wallace, 1999; Reilly, et al., 2011). This definition has often been used
to evaluate the products of artists, scientists, economists, authors and others. Yet Taylor (1975)
and others have stressed that to understand the perceptual and motivational hypotheses
underlying creative acts we must consider the person-creating-in-the-environment, emphasizing
the importance of creator’s dispositional style and goodness-of-fit with the domain and field.
Therefore, we must study the person, the process, the product and the press of creativity in order
to more fully understand the scope of creative behavior.
Creativity has been demonstrated as a sense of curiosity and wonder, inventiveness,
flexibility, exploratory behavior, imagination, and originality. Creative individuals have
developed a capacity to take risks, to tolerate ambiguity, possess openness to experience and a
freshness of perception (Lilly & Bramwell-Rejskind, 2004). Creativity has been correlated with
intelligence, and a vast amount of research on multiple intelligences has provided further
evidence that creativity can take many forms. For example, Gardner (1993) states that
intelligence can be expressed through the traditional outlets of logical spatial and linguistic
expression, yet can also be expressed kinesthetically, intra-personally, inter-personally,
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naturalistically, existentially, musically, and visio-spatially. Multiple intelligences suggest there
are multiple ways individuals can creatively learn and express solutions to novel situations.
Recently, “everyday” creativity (i.e., creativity that can be observed in humans and other
animals in a variety of settings) has been the focus of great research. This research focuses on
how traditionally average individuals can be viewed as creative based on how they recombine
symbols, systems, constructs in their everyday lives. As such, children are prime examples of
taking recently learned concepts and applying them in novel ways (i.e., the product is novel to
the child) (Starko, 1995). This has been instrumental in an argument to reintroduce creativity into
the curriculum and instruction of our public schools. It is crucial for children to learn and then
exhibit creativity in their future learning lives. Creativity must be included in education in order
for children to practice imaginative and inventive ways of thinking and doing (Prentice, 2000).
Young children represent the purest forms of everyday creativity as they explore their
environment. Children use all their senses to explore the objects and events they experience. All
experiences add to the young child’s repertoire of behavioral possibilities. Observing young
children as they recombine shapes, blocks, and toys in novel ways can be inspiring as they smile
and wiggle with delight at their accomplishments. Or observing the intricacies with which
children develop imaginary encounters demonstrates how unencumbered their ideas can be. With
this unencumbered freedom to create comes the social construct of appropriateness. Parents and
family, teachers and peers all contribute to the social learning of children to fit in and be part of
the group. At a very young age children are being taught what is creative and what is not.
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