Creativity: What does it mean?

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Creativity What does it mean?
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Concept of Creativity

• Has always intrigued humans
• Fascinated historians, scientists educators
• Elusive

Ford Harris, 1992
Young (1985) described creativity as a
honorific term because of the difficulty
associated with finding a universally accepted
definition.
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Creativity Key terms
Imaginative
Interesting Ideas
Flexible
Variation
transform
Unpredictable
Improvization
altering rules
Evolutionary
Human Imagination
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Some theories of Creativity
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The principal goal of education is to create
people who are capable of doing new things, not
simply repeating what other generations have done
people who are creative, inventive discoverers.
- Piaget
For Piaget, an ability to evaluate a situation
from a multitude of perspectives was a necessary
factor in the creative process.
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Piaget (1962)

• Creative imagination is gradually reintegrated in
  intelligence as children age.
• During the developmental process, the creative
  imagination increases.
• Creativity Intelligence synergistically
  encourage each other to generate more productive
  activity.
• Nature of the creative process is malleable it
  changes as the child progresses through the
  developmental stages.

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Unless more people leave formal education with an
enhanced capacity to engage in, and make an
active contribution to, innovation, then much of
what we label creativity and inventiveness and
entrepreneurship and enterprise will remain
unexploited to the detriment of both individuals
and society. David Hargreaves, 2001
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Torrance, 1971

• Human beings are born with abilities that tend
  to be specific to a domain.
• Creativity is a combination of
• ability
• skills
• motivation
• Creativity is teachable.
• Life experiences of culturally diverse groups
  prepare them to be creative.

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http//www.ltscotland.org.uk/creativity
Creativity Some Myths

• Myth 1 Creativity is only important in some
  areas of human activity
• Myth 2The creative process just happens it is
  always inspirational, effortless and comes like a
  bolt from the blue
• Myth 3 Creative people are somehow special, a
  bit different from the rest of us and actually a
  bit strange in some way.

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Myth 1 Creativity is only important in some
areas of human activity

• This view is all rooted to the all common
  misconception that creativity involves artistic
  sensibility.
• But scientists and mathematicians are no less
  creative in their fields than artists and
  creative writers

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Myth 2 The creative process just happens it is
always inspirational, effortless and comes like
a bolt from the blue

• This derives, in part, from the thought that
  creative thinking is somehow separate from other
  forms of thinking and that it is not possible to
  plan for creative ideas.
• The notions that creative individuals will come
  up with ideas because they are good at that sort
  of thing and that disciplined thinking is at
  odds with creative thinking needs to be
  challenged.

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Myth 3 Creative people are somehow special, a
bit different from the rest of us and actually a
bit strange in some way.

• Historically this view of things is associated
  with formal educations preoccupation with
  conformity.
• In a system where what was learned and how it was
  learned were best determined by the teacher or
  the system, any deviation from the orthodox
  approach was thought unconventional and even
  dangerous in that it challenged the status quo
  and destabilized the system with catastrophic
  consequences!

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Initial Problem in Defining Creativity

• Society respects creativity less than
  intelligence academic ability (a bias evident
  particularly in schools)
• Standardized tests tend to ignore creativity
  (Ford, Harris Winborne, 1990)
• Traditionally, society has provided a hazy yet
  rigidly defined impression of creativity
• Creativity suffers in cultures or societies that
  do not appreciate creative people (Marl,1976
  Torrance, 1984)

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Creative
The ability to make something that no one else
has made, to produce something novel, something
original
(Becker, M.G. 1994)
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Describing Creativity

• Bringing into being something that was not there
  before. (Edward de Bono, 1992)
• Wallas (1926) described creativity as a 7-step
  process
• Encounter was the stage of identifying a problem
  or something out of the ordinary to be addressed.
• Preparation consisted of gathering information,
  researching the problem.
• Concentration was the time-consuming stage that
  occurs when a child puts forth effort to solve
  the problem.

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• 4. Incubation occurred when a child could not
  decide on a course of action. At this stage, a
  child may physically remove himself from the
  situation, hoping that a solution comes to mind.
• 5. During illumination, the idea or solution
  becomes apparent (Eureka!)
• 6. During verification, a child attempts to prove
  that the solution is appropriate.
• 7. Persuasion occurs when a child attempts to
  convince someone else that his product / idea
  solves the problem.

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What does it mean to be creative?

• The creative person conceives something new,
  makes something real that was unreal (i.e.,
  fictitious, imaginary), actualizes what was
  formerly only potential.
• These are the commonly held conceptions of
  creativity, but researchers have not agreed, and
  still do not agree, on what is meant by
  creativity (Glover, Ronning, Reynolds, 1989
  Krebs Shelley, 1975 Runco Albert, 1990)

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Becker, 1994

• His contention Current use of the label
  creativity
• obscures the importance of discovery (Getzels
  Csikszentmihalyi, 1976) of specialized, technical
  competence (Root-Bernstein, 1988)
• underplays the importance of asking the right
  question (Brown, 1989 Csikszentmihalyi, 1990
  Ghiselin, 1952 Henle, 1974)

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Defining Creativity
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Moustakas, 1961

• Experience of expressing or actualizing which
  emerges from ones own search into oneself

Self-actualization as a creative act rather than
a cleansing or polishing of something that has
been obscured
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Gruber Root-Bernstein (1988)

• The word CREATIVE emphasizes the power of the
  creator to produce something new
• rather than
• the skill knowledge required to set the stage
  for, recognize, bring forth, show a discovery.

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Psychological Definition(Boden, 1992)
Creativity
The ability to come up with an idea which,
relative to the pre-existing domain-space in
ones mind, one could not have done before
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What if others have done it?

• Whether any other person (or system) has already
  come up with it on an earlier occasion is
  irrelevant
• That is a historical question, not a
  psychological one
• Boden, 1992

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Ford Harris, 1992
Creativity

• Modifiable, deliberate process that exists to
  some degree in each of us.
• Proceeds though an identifiable process is
  verified through the uniqueness utility of the
  product created.
• It can be learned.

Creative people are made, not born.
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Identifying Creativity
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Problems inherent in identifying creativity are
as perplexing as those inherent in measuring
intelligence, achievement, and motivation.
Ford Harris, 1992
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Additional Difficulty

• Identifying creativity among culturally diverse
  students is difficult because what is creative in
  one culture may not be creative in another (Ford
  Harris, 1992).
• Society determines the values criteria by which
  creative products are evaluated and opportunities
  for creative expression are unequally distributed
  within a society (Marl, 1976).
• Distinct social cultural influences stimulate
  creativity (Gowan Olson, 1979).
• Unfavorable economic, social political factors
  inhibit creativity (Gray, 1966).

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Torrance, 1984

• Buddhists used creativity tests (Koans) to select
  gifted and talented candidates for training.
• Chinese Japanese identified geniuses by asking
  them to create poems.

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Gays (1978) 6-step plan for assessing
creativity(for culturally diverse students)

• 1. Use vocabulary creativity tests
• 2. Assess the entire student body
• 3. Rate students in leadership
• 4. Have parents complete a checklist of creative
  behavior
• 5. Make a commitment to including increased
  numbers of culturally diverse students in gifted
  talented programs
• 6. Assign weight factors to various abilities

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Understanding Creativity
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Boden, 1990-1992

• Creativity can be scientifically understood with
  the help of computational concepts
• Computers and Creativity make interesting
  partners with respect to 3 rather different types
  of projects

3. PRAGMATIC / EDUCATIONAL Using computers to aid
ones own creativity

• PSYCHOLOGICAL
• Understanding human creativity

2. TECHNOLOGICAL Producing computer creativity
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Intriguing relationships between creativity
machines

• Computers can help us to do creative things
• Computational approaches can clarify many
  questions about our own creative powers
• Computers can give psychologists a way of seeing
  more clearly into the rich subtleties of the
  human mind

Boden (1992)
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Computational Methods
Concepts
Describe conceptual spaces
Draw from artificial intelligence
Generative system
Complex set of rules
Define relevant dimensions
Specify ways in which a range of structures
(ideas) can be generated
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Boden, 1992

• Human creativity is something of a mystery.
• Artists and scientists rarely know how their
  original leads come about.
• Artists and scientists allude to intuition but
  cannot say how it works or how creativity can be
  recognized.

How is creativity possible?
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Non-Combinational Creativity

• Involves exploration / transformation of
  conceptual spaces (styles of thought) in
  peoples minds, for example
• - writing prose or poetry, genres of sculpture,
  painting or music, theories in the math
  sciences (any reasonably disciplined way of
  thinking)

Boden, 1992
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Why Mozart is different from the rest of us!

• His mind contained
• more richly-detailed maps of musical structures
• more ways of negotiating them fruitfully
• than other people

Creative processes occur when there is an
integration of the characteristics of both
critical and creative thinking.
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Creative Thinkers

• Creative thinkers are highly skilled in using
  the kind of thinking that is generally associated
  with the right hemisphere, such as
• making remote or uncommon associations
• constructing unusual categories
• finding new starting points
• going beyond the information given
• building broad networks
• producing novel configurations
• trusting personal intuition

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Some facets of creativity

• include various ways of thinking, doing and
  communicating
• involve combinations of imaginative, intuitive,
  and logical thinking
• is always about originality, the forming and
  making of something new, whether it is an
  artifact or a system or a procedure

Gruber, Pinker, Myers, Howe, Cropley
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Characteristics of Creative People

• Prescience
• Curiosity
• Non-conformity
• Persistence
• Sensitivity to beauty
• Self-awareness
• Independence

• Intuition
• Altruism
• Temperament
• A proclivity to make mistakes
• Sense of Humor
• Risk taking

Creative individuals see what everybody else has
seen but think what nobody has thought.
Ford Harris, 1992
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Creativity Basic Assumptions

• 1. Creativity involves a discontinuous shift in
  perception only when habitual methods are not
  successful in solving a problem or overcoming a
  challenge.
• 2. This perceptual shift is initiated by a highly
  motivating provocative mental image that
  behaves as a metaphoric precursor to an ultimate
  workable solution or new insight. The answers to
  the problem are somehow imbedded within the
  metaphor.

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Creativity Basic Assumptions (continued)

• 3. The probability and rate of occurrences of
  this metaphoric image increases significantly
  when we can relinquish all connections to our
  present mental state in the early stages of the
  creative problem solving process.

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Seven Operating Principles to Improve Creative
Output

• 1. The future initiates and pulls creative
  thought.
• 2. Initial fact finding is best postponed.
• 3. Problem redefinition is often a retrospective
  event.
• 4. Metaphors and analogies fuel the creative
  process.
• 5. Forcing relationships is a key process factor.
  
• 6. Convergence is a highly creative process whose
  potential is often neglected.
• 7. One should work only on participants real
  problems.

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• When the creative potential abilities of
  children are nurtured, they become empowered as
  free and independent individuals.
• Instilling creativity in children creates
  possibilities for solving future problems that
  educators may not have even begun to envision.

Ford Harris, 1992
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Take a moment to enjoy the following performance

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