Fostering Creativity in the Classroom

What is Creativity?

To properly understand creativity and creative intelligence, it is necessary to separate the concepts of creativity from intelligence and talent. William Ward in the Journal of Creative Behavior (1974) was concerned with this process of separation of cognitive abilities and creativity. Ward stated that "creativity is not a mysterious, unobservable process, nor is it an innate, unlearnable ability. It is, instead, a set of skills that can be taught and learned by regular folks." This perspective focuses on the cognitive process, it implies that creativity is to be learned - it is not an attitude not an aptitude.

More recent and relevant studies such as the work of James Moran (1983) distinguish creative potential from cognitive ability; specifically, that a highly creative person is not necessarily a highly intelligent person. Creativity needs to be cultivated on its own, outside and independent of cognitive abilities. It is for this reason that the identification of creativity and creative persons become relevant and important.

Where is Creativity Found?

Traditionally, creativity has been focused on the arts. It is easy to recognize and foster creativity in music or art. Creativity however, takes place across passions and curricular areas; creativity can surface in science, math, and social studies as easily as in drama or a traditional art class. Carl Rogers , in fact, defined creativity as "the emergence of a novel, relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual." This definition approaches the heart of creativity - that creativity focuses on a product, its uniqueness, and it novelty not its content area, and not simply the creation of new ideas.

The creation of ideas, rather than product, is where traditional methods of creativity identification have taken place. Most traditional measures of children's creativity have focused on ideational fluency. Ideational fluency tasks require children to generate as many responses as they can to a particular prompts, much like brainstorming. Ideational fluency is generally considered to be a critical feature of the creative process. Children's responses may be either new and exciting, or popular and cliché. The new and exciting answer is regarded as more creative. Whereas this focus on ideas and the generation of them is an excellent start to recognizing and identifying creativity, without fostering these abilities in creatively gifted students and helping them develop solutions and applicable products much of the creative potential will be wasted. The largest barriers of fostering the generation of product are an atmosphere of criticism, a lack of self-evaluation and expression, and inflexibility in the classroom.

What Harms Creativity?

For many children, a major source of criticism and a barrier to self is what Donald Treffinger, a leading theorist in the field of gifted and talented education, called "right answer fixation." This is the process of socialization where children are criticized for ideas that are out of the ordinary, obscure, or different. In many elementary and middle schools, there are right answers, and in a universe proliferated with standardized tests, there is often only one right answer. In fact, in a study by James Moran the percentage of original responses in ideational fluency tasks drops from about 50% among four-year-olds to 25% during elementary school, and to 15% in middle school aged students. In other words, as children age, they take fewer risks. With such a marked decrease in idea generation, the ability to produce product or solution also drops off. It is important that classroom teachers reflect a respect for divergent thinking and creative ideas. More importantly however, it is important that school culture, in the way of assessment and motivation appear to value creativity and creative idea generalization.

It is this culture of motivation that also affects the ability to create. Rewards or incentives for children appear to interfere with the creative process. In an attempt to support the affective needs of students, schools have moved dramatically to extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivators. Although rewards may not affect the number of responses on ideational fluency tasks, they seem to reduce the quality of children's responses and the flexibility of their thoughts. When students are concerned with the prize, rather than the process or the product, their thinking and creativity suffer.

Conclusion-What Can Teachers Do to Foster Creativity In the Classroom (Specifically)?

There are several steps a teacher can take to encourage and foster creativity in the classroom. These steps, hopefully, will encourage self-actualization, self-evaluation, and reduce the focus of content specific paradigms of creativity. By following the following recommendations, we can hopefully move creative children from great idea generators to problem solvers and/or producers.

Provide an environment that allows the child to explore and play without restraints.

Adapt to a child's ideas rather than trying to structure the child's ideas to fit the adult's.

Accept unusual ideas from children by suspending judgment of children's divergent problem-solving.

Use creative problem-solving in all parts of the curriculum. Use the problems that naturally occur in everyday life.

Allow time for the child to explore all possibilities, moving from popular to more original ideas.

Emphasize process rather than product.