Divergent Thinking (Thinking Outside The Box): According to. Webster's online dictionary, divergent thinking is a creative thinking that may follow many lines of ...
Creativity in Postsecondary Settings: Multiple Paths Are the Rule Not the Exception Ayman Aljarrah (PhD Candidate) Educational Research/ Curriculum and Learning Supervisor: Dr. Jo Towers
Why Creativity?
Researchers in creativity and education agree on the importance of creativity, and the need to reconceptualize pedagogy for purposes like: teaching for creativity, learning creatively, and promoting creativity in classroom settings.
Overcoming Obstacles (Creative Desperation): this metaphor suggests that the spark of creativity glimmers when we are addressed by a worthwhile problematic situation.
Divergent Thinking (Thinking Outside The Box): According to Webster’s online dictionary, divergent thinking is a creative thinking that may follow many lines of thought and tends to generate new original solutions to problems.
Assembling (Things In New Ways): Creativity includes using what we have creatively, which, in turn, may require finding connections, combining ideas and information, and assembling things in new ways. Route-Finding: Koestler (1964) argued that “the creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing: it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines and synthesizes already exciting facts, ideas, faculties, skills” (p. 120).
What Is Creativity?
Creativity In Postsecondary Settings
A brief tracking of the origins and uses of the word “creativity” in different cultures indicates that the word in its beginning reflects a kind of biological fruitfulness, which means to bring something new into being. This is why most scholars in the field of creativity suggest newness and fruitfulness as two criteria for judging creativity. Tardif and Sternberg (1988) suggested that creativity in real life exists in many different forms. In addition, Torrance (1988) claimed that, although there have been many attempts to define creativity, it still defies precise definition. So even after long decades of research in creativity the problem of articulating and sustaining an acceptable and applicable description of creativity is still unresolved.
Metaphors Of Creativity Data Sources: I conducted a thoughtful review of the literature on creativity in the field of education in order to understand the nature of creativity as it applies to classroom settings. I developed a number of themes, which I then combined and recombined over successive iterations until I had seven themes in the form of metaphors that encompassed all of the literature I reviewed. I suggest that these metaphors can be used to describe creativity as it applies to classroom settings. The current paper addresses the need to consider creativity in postsecondary settings in different forms and at different levels.
Conclusion
It can be considered as an invitation for educators to think about how to create and offer many genuine learning opportunities for students to exercise creativity.
Creativity is “now considered good for economies, good for society, good for communities and good for education” (Burnard & White, 2008, p. 669). Based on such claims, the current paper addresses two important questions regarding recognizing, and promoting creativity in postsecondary settings that are: What does creativity look like in postsecondary settings? And How can creativity be fostered within such settings?
Expanding Possibilities: Being Imaginative, Asking Questions, And Playing: Craft (2000) argued that one of the engines for little-c creativity is the idea of “possibility”. She conceived of the idea of “possibility” as using imagination, asking questions, and playing. Collaborative Emergence: Sawyer (1999) conceived of creativity as an emergent phenomenon that results “from the collective activity of social groups. Although collaborative emergence results from the interactions of individuals, these phenomena cannot be understood by simply analysing the members of the group individually” (p. 449).
Birthing (Producing, Originating, or Making Something New): The word “creativity”, both in its origins and in most of its different uses, reflects a kind of newness; originality; or novelty. It indicates bringing something new into being. In addition, and based on the belief that acts of creation are matters of divine inspiration, the creation; i.e., the new thing that is brought into being was seen, also, as something valuable, fruitful, effective, appropriate, etc.
Word cloud. Retrieved from: http://dumbanenguebyceleste.blogspot.ca/2015_03_01_archive.html
Bibliography • • • • • •
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