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Defining Creativity

Creativity remains a poorly defined construct within the sciences that study it. Creativity is not easily distinguished from intelligence, wisdom, ingenuity, insight, or intuition, all terms used to describe creative behaviours. Guilford's (1966) distinction between convergent and divergent thinking has perhaps had the most influential effect on how our understanding of creativity has developed. Convergent thinking leads one to arrive at a correct, conventional answer whereas divergent thinking involves generating many novel answers and solutions. Since Guilford, many other components have been included in our understanding of creativity. Here are some creative thinking abilities assembled by Bowd, McDougall, and Yewchuk (1994, pp 150-151):

• Fluency: The ability to produce many responses to an open-ended question or problem, such as "how many uses can you think of for a paper clip?"
• Flexibility: The ability to generate ideas that are unconventional, or to view a situation from different perspectives.
• Originality: The ability to produce unique, unusual, or novel responses, relative to one's reference group.
• Elaboration: The ability to add rich and elaborate detail to an idea, and to develop and implement it.
• Visualization: The ability to imagine and mentally manipulate images and ideas, so as to see them from different internal and external perspectives.
• Transformation: The ability to change one thing or idea into another, to see new meanings, applications, and implications of something already in place.
• Intuition: The ability to see relationships or make connections based on partial information.
• Synthesis: The ability to combine parts into a coherent whole.

In a number of studies, Robert Sternberg (1988) investigated how people distinguish between characteristics of creativity, wisdom, and intelligence. He first asked people to list characteristics they thought described someone who was creative, wise, or intelligent. From the list of characteristics generated through this procedure, he created a questionnaire which asked how characteristic each of the set of behaviours was of an ideally intelligent, wise, or creative individual. Result from his research showed that people have similar conceptions of intelligence, wisdom, and creativity. First he found that intelligence and wisdom are perceived as most closely related, intelligence and creativity as next closely related, and wisdom and creativity as least related. Higher amounts of intelligence were always perceived to accompany higher amounts of wisdom, or creativity.

The Development of Creativity

The ability of children to think divergently has little to do with scores they attain on tests of intelligence. This non- relationship is also true in adulthood. The most creative are not necessarily the most intelligent. Comparisons of creativity in identical and fraternal twins show the genetics has little influence of creative behaviour. It appears creative thinking is a skill that can be enhanced by experience.

Research on family environments reveal that parents of creative children value non-conformity, emphasize intellectual curiosity and freedom of exploration, and are highly accepting of their children's individual characteristics. Personality studies reveal characteristics of creative children and adults who are broad in their interests, attracted to complexity, and are unconcerned about complying with conventional social norms. Classroom research shows that children in traditional facts and memory classrooms exhibit less creative behaviour than those from non-traditional open classrooms, which offer more choice and hands-on experience (see Berk, 1991 p. 338) .

Research is turning away from trying to identify general attributes of creativity, and is looking more toward domain specific abilities that are fostered and developed through a supportive environment, and perhaps through some portion of natural ability. Inevitably, if you asked a musician, an artist, a computer programer, or perhaps a gymnast, they will tell you they owe their ability and creative expression in their particular area to supportive parents or teachers, and lots of practice. Results from studies of specific abilities suggest that the best way to foster creative behaviour is to provide children from an early age with systematic training aimed at thorough mastery of a particular domain. Other instructional techniques that have been shown to foster divergent thinking include modeling, direct instruction in question asking, and make- believe play.

Creativity in Language

Perhaps one of the most "unobvious" acts of creativity is the use of language. Beyond early childhood the use of language, both recognizing it and producing it, is a highly automated ability. The nature of language is such that the vast majority of utterances produced or heard are done so for the first time. Most of what we hear and speak are created rather than recalled from memory. Language is stored as knowledge of speech sounds, of word patterns, and of rules for creating words and stringing them together. Having developed these automated skills and knowledge, language use becomes almost entirely subconscious and almost entirely creative.

In the Scheme of Things

In developing a model of thinking, the concepts associated with creativity can help bring together your understanding of the various components of learning that have been discussed throughout the course.

At the beginning of the course, consciousness introduced you to the activity that occurs in your mind in various states of "awareness", and the Nature of Metacognition talked about how metacognition might act as a vehicle for obtaining knowledge, or it may act as a part of the knowledge itself. Which is the case, remains to be seen. I'll go out on a limb and say both general and specific components exist. The general-type components are those that are used often and across a variety of content areas. Working backwards or reviewing errors would classify as general strategies. The specific-type components are those that apply to particular tasks. Using thinking type icons is specific to reading and note taking, using mnemonics are often specific to particular types of knowledge being learned, or a date book is specific to organizing your affairs. As such metacognitive activities become practiced or routinized, their use requires little or no conscious effort. The association between highly practiced abilities has been a focus for more recent research on creativity, and metacognitive behaviour.

Creativity can also be used to bring learning styles into "the scheme of things". Styles are preferences or tendencies toward particular ways of learning and doing things. Theories such as that of Gardner (1986), suggests multiple areas of ability, describing domain specific skill and creativity. Associations between learning preferences, or styles, and creativity remain virtually uncharted territory, partly because both areas lack clear definitions.

As mentioned above, the use of language is perhaps the most common creative act that all humans possess and exhibit as a regular part of their daily lives. Our skill at creating language is likely the result of a genetic disposition for such creative behaviour. An earlier discussion of semiotics and representational competence points to skills that allow humans to represent and re-represent meaning using systems of symbols. In spoken language sounds are "signs" of meaning. In areas of language like reading and writing, graphical forms represent the sounds, that represent the meanings. The act of reading contains components of creativity, drawing on context for definition, interpreting a particular prose in new ways, or developing new ideas by manipulating the meaning of what one is reading. The latter is a key component of writing, manipulating meaning to express it in new and creative ways. Writing is one of our more creative abilities, with the best writers being able to draw on knowledge of language, of readers, and knowledge of some content area, to produce text that conveys meaning to the reader as the writer intended it to. Like the creative acts of musicians and painters, the creative acts of writers are the result of years of practice, and an expert knowledge of strategies and the content area in which they create.

Creative problem solvers are those that approach a problem with an open mind, and apply what they know about the nature of problem solving as well as what they know about the content area of the problem being solved. Creative problem solvers understand the mechanics of problem solving, and possess this knowledge as sets of internalized general and domain specific learning strategies that "kick in" whenever the problem solver identifies specific task characteristics. For example, tasks like the cannibal and mercenary problems, here called the hobbits and orgs problem, requires that the problem solver regress in order to progress -- a common day analogy is "giving a little to get a little". Think for a moment of other situations where this strategy, or phrase might apply.

Roger Schank has assemble what are now known as "Schank's Maxims". These maxims are the "best" strategies for question-asking, active thinking, and fostering creative thought. Schank believes that social pressure prevents us from being as creative as we could be. This is reminiscent of the research outlined in the Nature of Metacognition that studied private speech in teens. "The difficult part is changing one's own attitude toward one's own ability to think"

Shank's Maxims

1. Look for anomalies. Anomalies are where the action is, creatively speaking.

2. Listen. You can't find anomalies if you weren't paying attention to what was going on in the first place.

3. Find data. Before you make a theory, look to the world around you, ask yourself what is happening. The more you know the more you can create.

4. Classify, and invent new classifications. Their real value is the generalization they capture.

5. Make rash generalizations. The idea behind making rash generalizations is not to be right, but to be thinking.

6. Explain. When we learn something, it's because we have invented an explanation for it. We have explained it to ourselves.

7. Refuse to learn the rules. You must pick your spots for rebellion, be sure that you have reason on your side, and be prepared to take the consequences.

8. Reject old explanations. Ask why. [Authorities tell us to simple explanations to complex issues] . . . it is important to learn to distrust these explanations, not because someone is trying to fool you, but because the standard wisdom might be wrong.

9. Let your mind wander. . . . the process of letting your mind go where it wants can be useful if where it wants turns out to be an interesting place to go.... If you don't give your mind a little freedom every now and a again, it may stop wandering.

10. Fail early and fail often. Failure is a good thing. We learn from failure. Take a chance. Have an idea and allow the possibility that it might be a bad idea.

11. Reject all the above maxims. Who says I know what I'm talking about. Can we really enhance our creativity? That's a good question.

From Gross (1991)

The Future of Creativity

While I'm sure you intuitively understand what creativity is, and you could identify it when it happens, it is something that scientists have had a difficult time measuring. How should creativity be studied? That's a difficult question to answer, and like studying metacognitive behaviour, there are a whole variety of factors that will affect how it develops, and how and when it is exhibited in a person. The study of metacognition may provide some insight into the nature of creativity. Some of the creative thinking abilities outlined by Bowd et. al. (1994) are also components in the study metacognition. Fluency is the automation or elimination of metacognitive behaviour. Flexibility is adaptive behaviour, associated closely with metacognitive abilities. Elaboration is synonymous with deep strategic behaviour, which is often accompanied by metacognitive thought.

Many of the tools that have been used to measure metacognition can provide valuable information about the creative aspects of a person. Ask simple questions like: "What did you do?" "What were you thinking?" or "Why did you think (do) that?". These questions provide valuable information about metacognitive, or strategic behaviour, but also provide valuable information about creative, or inventive, imaginative, enterprising, clever, novel, resourceful ... behaviour. Computers now allow us to measure a whole variety of behavioural and physiological responses. It may not be long before metacognitive and creative behaviour can be measured while it's happening. Monitoring eye movements show promise in providing a behavioural measure that can be compared with the qualitative accounts collected from questioning. Response speeds can be collected and learning curves can be created by calculating the change in speed over time. Together, questioning, monitoring eye movement, and monitoring response speeds, may help us better understand the relationships between automated and conscious behaviour, and between creativity and metacognition.

Berk, L. E. (1991). Child Development. Allyn and Bacon: Boston

Bowd, A, McDougall, D., and Yewchuk, C. (1994). Educational Psychology for Canadian Teachers. Harcourt, Brace and Company: Toronto.

Guilford, J. P. (1966). Intelligence: 1965 model. American Psychologist, 21, 20-26.

Gross, R. (1991). Peak Learning. How to create your own lifelong education program for personal enjoyment and professional success. Tracher Inc. Los Angeles.

Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The Triachic Mind: A new theory of Human Intelligence: Penguin Books: New York