Is expertise a necessary precondition for creativity?: A case of four novice learning group facilitators

Many North American theorists conceptualize expertise as preceding creativity. The rationale is, that in order to be truly creative, one must master a field so remarkable contributions can be made. Therefore, in order to be truly creative one must be an expert in a structured and codified domain. This inquiry attempted to examine the relationship between expert thinking skills and creativity in an ill-defined domain, embedded in the community of practice of group facilitation whose goal was to support learning. Using an instrumental case study approach to explore a unique system embedded in a naturalistic context, the case was comprised of a team of four female novice group facilitators, functioning as teaching assistants for learning task groups of university students. Various sources were drawn upon in order to map this group as a coherent knowing system. Debriefing sessions and interviews were transcribed and coded using a category string method in order to retain a holistic sensibility to the analysis. The codes revealed that the system displayed characteristics of shared expertise and social creativity. The overall pattern of creative response closely followed those of expertise. The codes for expertise generally preceded those instances of creativity, suggesting that creativity does need to rely on expert thinking skills. However, this inquiry suggests expanding the notion of expertise, in that it need not be situated in a single person, but can emerge from a system of shared expertise.     

Natural Acceleration: Supporting Creative Trajectories

Natural acceleration happens through an internal fire that burns to learn and may transcend school boundaries. Based on their passionate interests and connections with a domain, children who hunger for domain understandings outside school curricula require different types of acceleration, motivated by these interests. The lifeworks, domains, and interests of two eminent Brazilian brothers, Walter and Roberto Burle Marx, represent different creative trajectories. Examining childhood experiences that helped them accomplish their endeavors finds major differences in their early education. Both boys reported that their real education was through pursuit of their passions wherein they hungered for expertise, not through school. Though acceleration in school subjects certainly benefits some students, careful observation and honoring of young children's passions allows natural acceleration steered by the student, rather than school personnel, which may lead to greater possibilities of attaining high levels of creativity.     

Characterizing Children’s Expectations About Expertise and Incompetence: Halo or Pitchfork Effects?

Do children expect an expert in one domain to also be an expert in an unrelated domain? In Study 1, 32 three‐ and four‐year‐olds learned that one informant was an expert about dogs relative to another informant. When presented with pictures of new dogs or of artifacts, children who could remember which informant was the dog expert preferred her over the novice as an informant about the names of dogs, but they had no preference when the informants presented artifact labels. In Study 2, 32 children learned that one informant was incompetent about dogs whereas another was neutral. In this case, children preferred the neutral speaker over the incompetent one about both dogs and artifacts. Taken together, these results suggest that for children, expertise is not subject to a “halo effect,” but incompetence may be subject to a “pitchfork effect.”     

COGNITIVE STRUCTURES OF CREATIVITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

While creativity of the order which produces paradigm shifts in a knowledge domain is usually the result of the efforts of creative experts, any novel outcome of the work of a problem solver can be referred to as “creative”, be it process or product Any individual, regardless of level of expertise, is capable of creativity if he or she employs the entire cognitive system differentially and synergistically. Consequently, the aim of instruction aimed at enhancing creativity should be to provide opportunities for learners to use all three knowledge orders for creative problem solving. The paper provides various ways in which this may be done.     

Liminality in education: generating a creative space of encounter and dialogue between teachers and students within educational structures

ABSTRACT

The dominant results-driven/performance-oriented culture and the pressures of performativity in education have meant that the promotion of creativity has been narrow in scope and the translation into practice less apparent than the rhetoric would suggest. Creativity can survive even in times of standardisation, but it is more likely to be confined to interstitial zones. Interstitial zones are in-between social spaces outside the formal teaching zones in which creativity may give voice to those students whose voice is not always heard in the formal teaching context.

Often, creativity is equated exclusively to substantial creative outputs and, as a result, teachers who are not sensitised to creativity in a broader sense may underestimate their own creative ability and the positive impact this might have on the relationship with their students. A shift in teacher education that results in a more meaningful appreciation of both the nature of creativity and its benefits is therefore required. A developmental approach which starts with teacher cultivation of creative sensibility is essential to achieve greater infusion of creativity. The paper posits that teachers who resist rigid social structures and engage in critical pedagogy are also more likely to be receptive to creativity and its the pastoral potential in education.     

On Creativity: A brainstorming session

The article problematizes in aphoristic condensation the heterogeneous concepts of creativity in philosophy, psychology and sociology and outlines their paradoxes. Creativity in these concepts is tied to the human potential to bring into being something new and to the capacity of drawing differences. In its contingency, creativity is ambivalent to a high degree—at one and the same time a desirable resource and a threatening potential. So on the one hand, creativity is meant to be mobilized and set free; on the other hand, it is meant to be controlled and reined in. The imperative of being creative is nowadays connected to the mobilization of the entrepreneurial self. Entrepreneurial action demands permanent innovation—and consequently ceaseless creative exertion. Everybody not only has to be simply creative, but more creative than the others.     

Essential skills for creative writing: Integrating multiple domain-specific perspectives

The aim of this work was to gather different perspectives on the “key ingredients” involved in creative writing by children – from experts of diverse disciplines, including teachers, linguists, psychologists, writers and art educators. Ultimately, we sought in the experts’ convergence or divergence insights on the relative importance of the relevant factors that may aid writing instruction, particularly for young children. We present a study using an expert knowledge elicitation method in which representatives from five domains of expertise pertaining to writing rated 28 factors (i.e., individual skills and attributes) covering six areas (general knowledge and cognition, creative cognition, conation, executive functioning, linguistic and psychomotor skills), according to their importance for creative writing. A Many-Facets Rasch Measurement (MFRM) model permitted us to quantify the relative importance of these writing factors across domain-specific expertise, while controlling for expert severity and other systematic evaluation biases. The identified similarities and domain-specific differences in the expert views offer a new basis for understanding the conceptual gaps between the scientific literature on creative writing, the writer's self-reflection on the act of writing creatively, and educators’ practices in teaching creative writing. Bridging such diverse approaches–that are, yet, relatively homogeneous within areas of expertise – appears to be useful in view of formulating process-oriented writing pedagogy that may, above all, better target the skills needed to improve children's creative writing development.     

Demystifying Creativity: What Creativity Isn’t and Is?

To understand creativity is to recognize and develop the creative potential within oneself and others. This article examines what creativity is not and then what creativity is. First, the six leading misconceptions about creativity are discussed: Creativity belongs solely to the arts; creativity is quickly recognizable; innovators always work alone; mental illness enhances creativity; creativity is a divine flash of inspiration; and newness is a prerequisite to creativity. Then, using the research-based CATs model, what creativity is and how creativity develops into innovation are discussed: (a) cultivate creative climates; (b) nurture creative attitudes; and (c) develop creative thinking skills. Creativity does not come from nature but from nurture, and developing gifted children’s creativity should be the goal of parenting and education.     

Creativity polymathy: What Benjamin Franklin can teach your kindergartener

Creative polymathy at the very highest levels is rare, but this is largely the result of a long period of training usually necessary to become proficient in any field. We explain why creative polymathy is not ruled out by arguments for the domain specificity of creativity and argue that consideration of multiple levels of creativity (Big-C, Pro-c, little-c, and mini-c) leads to the conclusion that creative polymathy may actually be fairly common. We introduce a hierarchical model of creativity (the APT Model) to help understand some constraints on and possibilities for creative polymathy, suggest different ways creative polymathy may be expressed, and offer guidelines for recognizing and nurturing creative polymathy in students.     

Creativity in Artistic Education: Introducing Artists into Primary Schools

Despite a more prominent role of arts education in the school curriculum, artistic creativity does not occur to a great extent in primary school practice. More opportunities for teachers to strengthen their know‐how in the field of artistic creativity can therefore be considered important. Arts education projects focus on pupils' development of creativity by means of introducing artists with their divergent working methods into primary schools. Beside fostering pupils' creative openness and skills, arts education organisations aim to transfer artistic enthusiasm to teachers in each project. Collaboration with artists can encourage teachers' artistic creative work. New working methods, techniques or ways of experimenting are more likely to be adopted in daily teaching practice when the project duration consists of several years. However, most projects are short‐lived and the means for a long‐term project policy are limited. Consequently, results in the area of sustainable outcomes concerning artistic creative work with teachers are limited. To create a long‐term view, the availability of financial resources is an important condition in order to realise a mentality change towards artistic creativity in education. Finally, continuing debate with several participants about making artistic creative work sustainable remains necessary.     

高等学校如何培养青年学生的创造性

高等学校是培养具有创造性的高素质的人才的摇篮。高等学校培养创造性人才首先应该有一批具有创造性素质的教师队伍，使教师由知识传授型转变为知识创新型，其次高等学校还需要为创造性人才的培养构建一套行之有效的培养措施。     

Bridging theory and practice: a conceptual framework for consulting organisations

A growing number of organisations are emerging as partners to districts pursuing systemic improvement. Given the critical role a consulting organisation could play in supporting system reform efforts, how does a district leader looking to establish a consulting partnership determine what characteristics in a consulting organisation may be more likely to yield success? This paper utilises an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach for two purposes: (1) to assess whether the quality domains of consultants most prevalent in the literature are consistent with multiple sources of expert knowledge at the point of practice and (2) to determine which, if any, quality domains of consultants are perceived as more important than others for partnership success. Overall, the findings corroborated that the domains identified through the literature are influential to partnership success. While no specific domain or set of domains emerged as most dominant, interpersonal skills and content expertise are foundational indicators that crosscut the other domains.     

EXPERTISE AND GIFTEDNESS

The thesis of this paper is that to be gifted means being able to go through the developmental curve from novice to expert more rapidly. Central in growing expertise are the building up of pattern recognition capabilities, schema formation, proceduralization of the knowledge base, and the development of a multistrategy control structure. However gifted the person, in most domains this development takes thousands of hours of hard work. For this reason the contribution to success of sheer intellectual ability is hypothesized to be overshadowed by the personal and situational characteristics that have been found to differentiate between actually (not potentially) creative and less creative persons, e.g., an early, passionate, personal interest in a domain.     

Assessing the creativity of scientific explanations in elementary science: an insider–outsider view of intuitive assessment in the hypothesis space

Assessing creativity is commonly believed to be difficult but there is evidence that an intuitive, holistic assessment is easy and reliable. Given that children can engage in creative activity and teachers are expected to foster it, some assessment of it could aid planning and optimise support. Assessing creativity intuitively and holistically could be a useful, quick way of assessing to inform teaching. A teacher of young children, however, is essentially an outsider in the child’s world and often also in the world of science. Judging a child’s creativity in this way from a child’s point of view may not always be easy or reliable. Here, pre‐service elementary teachers in the UK assessed explanations of simple science events. Their holistic assessments of creativity did not agree to any great extent. Agreement improved when they assessed some of the attributes of creativity but was still less than expected. Nevertheless, these novices’ assessments as a whole showed there was some ability to discriminate usefully between explanations, albeit with considerable variation from teacher to teacher. Some implications for teacher training are described.     

The Uses and Misuses of Evaluation

Current research indicates that creativity in teaching can and should be enhanced in order to promote student learning. This article begins by stressing the importance of creativity in education and the ways in which creative teaching benefits students. Next, it addresses key points for better understanding classroom creativity by identifying common barriers that counteract or hinder teacher creativity. After identifying the characteristics of teachers who are considered creative educators, this article concludes with general recommendations, as well as specific strategies, for increasing the level of creative teaching in today's classrooms.     

The relations between acculturation and creativity and innovation in higher education: A systematic literature review

This systematic literature review focuses on research findings from 20 peer-reviewed studies on the relations between the constructs of acculturation and creativity as well as acculturation and innovation in higher education. The overall research findings suggested a primarily causal relation between acculturation and creativity through statistical modeling. However, acculturation was also found to be correlated with and predict creativity. Moreover, attributes of acculturation discovered to engender creativity included multicultural learning experiences, individualistic culture type, homogeneous cultural dyads and the acculturation strategy of biculturalism. In contrast to its well-founded relation with creativity, acculturation was tentatively found to be a positive and significant predictor of innovation. This review highlights the strength of acculturation aspects, particularly biculturalism and the integration of contrasting cultural ideas, in influencing the ability to be creative or innovative in postsecondary environments.     

The assessment of creativity for people with autism spectrum disorder

The term “creativity” can conjure various ideas and meanings. It's no surprise that methods for measuring such a concept vary widely and are not without controversy. This is particularly true among people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are a unique yet incredibly diverse group of individuals. This article provides an overview of the assessment of creativity among individuals with ASD. Findings among studies that have sought to determine whether individuals with ASD are more or less creative than their neurotypical peers are mixed, yet the authors propose that intentional development of creativity in all youth, including those with ASD, can be beneficial.     

Making and being made: wise humanising creativity in interdisciplinary early years arts education

This paper focuses on how wise humanising creativity (WHC) is manifested within early years interdisciplinary arts education. It draws on Arts Council-funded participatory research by Devon Carousel Project and University of Exeter’s Graduate School of Education. It is grounded in previous AHRC-funded research, which conceptualised WHC in the face of educational creativity/performativity tensions. WHC articulates the dialogic embodied inter-relationship of creativity and identity – creators are ‘making and being made’; they are ‘becoming’. The research used a qualitative methodology to create open-ended spaces of dialogue or ‘Living Dialogic Spaces’ framed by an ecological model to situate the team’s different positionings. Data collection included traditional qualitative techniques and arts-based techniques. Data analysis involved inductive/deductive conversations between existing theory and emergent themes. Analysis indicated that ‘making and being made’, and other key WHC features were manifested. We conclude by suggesting that WHC can help develop understanding of how creative arts practice supports the breadth of young children’s development, and the role of the creativity-identity dialogue within that, as well as indicating what the practice and research has to offer beyond the Early Years.     

教师创造力内隐理论述评

创造力内隐理论(implicit theories of creativity)是指一般公众(专家和外行人)在日常生活和工作背景下所形成的,且以某种形式存在于个体头脑中的关于创造力概念、结构及其发展的看法(也称为"内隐观"或"公众观")。研究教师的创造力内隐理论有助于研究者了解教师对于创造力的观念以及他们对待创造性儿童的态度,从而把握教师实施创造性教学的状况,有针对性地对教师进行培训,改进教师的教学,从而有利于在教育教学中对学生创造力的培养。通过教师对创造力的理解,对创造性学生的态度及人格特征的认识,对创造力的培养等论述,以期有助于我国教师创造力内隐理论的研究。     

从化学实验测验评价高一年级学生创造力的研究

采用托拉斯测验和自行编制的高中生化学实验创造力测验对湖南省某中学高一年级73名男生和73名女生进行了测试,运用SPSS软件统计调查数据.比较了不同班级和性别学生之间的创造心理特征和创造力差异,并对学生创造力的流畅性、变通性及独创性三个方面分别进行了分析.结果表明:大多数高一学生创造心理特征处于中等水平,创造力还没有得到很好的发挥,还有很大的发展空间;创造力与创造心理特征存在正相关,由此可以认为加强培养学生的创造心理有利于培养学生的创造力.