RECENT TRENDS IN CREATIVITY RESEARCH AND THEORY IN WESTERN EUROPE

Compared to the number of articles in the American literature, creativity is a relatively neglected topic in psychological/educational research and theory in Western Europe. There are no scientific creativity schools or research centres; progress depends more or less on the personal interest of researchers in creativity, leading to studies and papers which are scarce and dispersed in national (sometimes international) journals. To a high degree this work has been stimulated and influenced by developments in American creativity research in the fifties and sixties. Nevertheless, apart from the American oriented work there is a more or less typical European line of creativity research and theory. This review is based upon more than 200 articles published in the last two decades. Twelve trends will be formulated, emerging especially from recent creativity assessment and testing devices; other topics are creativity in everyday settings, in business and management, and different approaches in fostering and training creativity.     

初中物理教学中学生创造力的培养

素质教育作为一种教育观念和指导思想 ,是 2 1世纪人才培养的新目标、新模式。培养学生的创造力是实施素质教育的关键。本文就在初中物理教学中培养学生创造力作一些探讨和尝试     

创新教育的价值与实践探索

实施创新教育 ,是当前教育改革面临的新课题 ,具有十分重要的意义。我们要从深化素质教育的角度 ,以崭新的观点 ,系统地探讨创新教育的价值、内容和途径。     

THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN EXPLAINING GIFTEDNESS AND EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

In addition to exceptional cognitive abilities and domain‐specific aptitudes, creativity potentials are frequently used to explain high achievement in science and technology. In the Guilford tradition, research focuses increasingly on convergent versus divergent thinking, that is, a suspected dichotomy between intelligence and creativity. Despite important insights about the relationship of ability and creativity, a number of important questions remain unanswered. These relate not only to conceptualization and measurement problems regarding the hypothetical construct “creativity”, but also to its diagnosis and nurturance in childhood and adolescence. It would appear that, in view of current research paradigms, the roles of ability and creativity need to be redefined in order to predict and explain excellent achievements more reliably. Advances are mostly expected from synthetic approaches. Consequently new theoretical models and empirical research results will be presented. Finally, some consequences for the explanation of high ability as well as excellent performances in school, university, and at work will be discussed     

PERSONOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON CREATIVITY IN THE PERFORMING AND FINE ARTS

The artist, the musican, the writer, the sculptor are all people who possess specific traits and personality attributes which the vast majority do not. Certain character traits are associated with talented artists which other people do not see in themselves. Society possesses an image of the characteristics or traits which set the creative apart from the “normal” population. In the past these generalizations may have been true: Many creative individuals may have been sensitive, temperamental, or irritable. However, the question arises whether these stereotypes are still true in today's industrial and service society.     

CHARACTERISTICS OF FATHERS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY IN THEIR SONS

Biographical surveys of 65 inventors employed in the mining industry were contrasted with those of a control group of men of similar age, education and period of employment who had failed to display inventiveness in their work. The following variables were taken into account: health and physical fitness; family life; financial status; educational status; origin and development of interests; work history. Among family variables certain characteristics of both parents were found to be decisive such as age, education, practising a profession, parental relationship and attitudes, atmosphere in the home created by parents as well as child rearing strategies. The empirical data showed that certain features of fathers who were inventors stimulated development of their sons' creativity, while some features of fathers of the control group children inhibited such trends in their children.     

CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD AND OLD AGE: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

The purpose of this study was to explore the creative process and creative products across the adult life span. The subjects were 61 women, ages 20 to 83 years, who were comparable in intelligence, education, and interest in writing. They completed a creative writing project and took three standardized creativity tests and two intelligence subtests. Both quantitative and qualitative differences were found favoring young adults. Predictive but not construct validity was demonstrated for the creativity tests with this population of young and old adults. Both methodological constraints and the ecological validity of these measures of creativity are discussed.     

FLUENCY AS A PERVASIVE ELEMENT IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CREATIVITY1

It was suggested that fluency, defined as number of responses, may misleadingly influence both high Intercorrelations sometimes reported among measures of creativity and low correlations sometimes reported between measures of creativity and intelligence. Subjects were 93 Saturday art school students between the ages of 9 and 15 years. Intercorrelations among five “creativity” scores derived from a slightly modified version of Torrance's Figure Completion Test and between these scores and Henmon-Nelson Intelligence were compared using both raw creativity scores and creativity scores corrected for the effect of fluency. Uncorrected creativity scores intercorrelated high among themselves (mean r= .45) and low with intelligence (mean r= .09), while corrected creativity scores showed low intercorrelations among themselves (mean r= .08) and with intelligence (mean r= .13). These findings are interpreted as confirming the influence of fluency upon high intercorrelations among so-called measures of creativity and as failing to support the suggestion that fluency may also influence low correlations among creativity and intelligence measures.