Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-chc8l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-30T09:11:12.999Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Roads Not Taken, New Roads to Take: Looking for Creativity in the Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Thomas Skiba ,
Mei Tan ,
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Elena L. Grigorenko
Edited by
Ronald A. Beghetto  and
James C. Kaufman
Thomas Skiba
Affiliation:
Yale University, USA
Mei Tan
Affiliation:
Yale University, USA
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Tufts University, USA
Elena L. Grigorenko
Affiliation:
Yale University, USA; Moscow State University, Russia
Ronald A. Beghetto
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University, San Bernardino
Get access

Summary

A river runs through a village somewhere. And for many years, it is just a river, feeding the rice paddies, carrying away waste, silt, pebbles, and the occasional dog or cat. But one day, without even consciously trying, someone realizes that it is a road, a way out. And later that someone wonders why he or she didn't see it before – that the river is a road and that the road can be a river – even though it had been there all along.

And so we are beginning to realize with creativity that it has always been in the classroom but hidden in plain sight. It is not that creative behavior, creative thinking, and creative learning never existed before in classrooms. A colleague recalls once proposing an unconventional subject of study for a senior project in high school. While his classmates took up the ubiquitous topics of various sports, medicine, feminism, and other well-recycled subjects, he decided to review the history and legitimacy of parapsychology. His topic was firmly rejected. However, being a persistent fellow, he undertook it anyway, approached it seriously, and presented an interesting and worthy paper in the end that earned a high mark. But why was his innovation and unconventional thinking not recognized initially as a form of creativity?

In this chapter, we examine the evolving and exploratory relationship between teachers and creativity in the classroom.

Type
Chapter
Information
Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom , pp. 252 - 269
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abuhamdeh, S., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2004). The artistic personality: a systems perspective. In Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L. & Singer, J. L. (Eds.), Creativity: From potential to realization (pp. 31–42). Washington, DC: APA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amabile, T. (1989). Growing up creative: Nurturing a lifetime of creativity. New York, NY: Crown.Google Scholar
Atchley, R. A., Keeney, M., & Burgess, C. (1999). Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms linking ambiguous word meaning retrieval and creativity. Brain & Cognition, 40, 479–499.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beghetto, R. A. (2005). Does assessment kill student creativity?The Educational Forum, 69, 254–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beghetto, R. A. (2007). Does creativity have a place in the classroom? Prospective teachers' response preferences. Thinking skills and creativity, 2, 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beghetto, R. A. (2008). Prospective teachers' beliefs about imaginative thinking in K-12 schooling. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3, 134–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beghetto, R. A., & Kaufman, J. C. (2007). Toward a broader conception of creativity: A case for “mini-c” creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1, 73–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besançon, M., & Lubart, T. I. (2008). Differences in the development of creative competencies in children schooled in diverse learning environments. Learning and Individual Differences, 18, 381–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, D. W., & Chan, L. (1999). Implicit theories of creativity: Teachers' perception of student characteristics in Hong Kong. Creativity Research Journal, 12, 185–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coyne, R. (1997). Creativity as commonplace. Design Studies, 18, 135–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craft, A. (2006). Fostering creativity with wisdom. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36, 337–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawson, V. L. D., Andrea, T., Affinito, R., & Westby, E. L. (1999). Predicting creative behavior: A reexamination of the divergence between traditional and teacher-defined concepts of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 12, 57–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diakidoy, I. N., & Kanari, E. (1999). Student teachers' beliefs about creativity. British Educational Research Journal, 25, 225–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, S. M. (2001). The technology paradox: Efficiency versus creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 13, 221–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esquivel, G. B. (1995). Teacher behaviors that foster creativity. Educational Psychology Review, 7, 185–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldhusen, J. F., & Goh, B. E. (1995). Assessing and accessing creativity: An integrative review of theory, research and development. Creativity Research Journal, 8, 231–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldheusen, J. F., & Treffinger, D. T. (1977). Teaching creative thinking and problem solving. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt.Google Scholar
Fishkin, A. S., & Johnson, A. S. (1998). Who is creative? Identifying children's creative abilities. Roeper Review, 21, 40–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flanagan, J. C. (1976). Flanagan Aptitude Classification Tests/Ingenuity (FACT Battery). Chicago, IL: Science Research Associates.Google Scholar
Florida, R. (2003). The rise of the creative class: And how it's transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Grigorenko, E. L., Jarvin, L., Tan, M., & Sternberg, R. J. (2008). Something new in the garden: assessing creativity in academic domains. Psychology Science Quarterly, 50, 295–307.Google Scholar
Grigorenko, E. L., & Tan, M. (2009). Teaching creativity as a demand-led competency. In Tan, O. S., McInerney, D. M., Liem, A. D., & Tan, A.-G. (Eds.), What the West can learn from the East: Asian perspectives on the psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 11–29). Vol. 7 in Research on multicultural education and international perspectives series (Series eds.: F. Salili & R. Hoosain). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Press (IAP).Google Scholar
Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Guncer, B., & Oral, G. (1993). Relationship between creativity and nonconformity to school discipline as perceived by teachers. Journal of Instruction Psychology, 20, 7.Google Scholar
Hartley, D. (2003). New economy, new pedagogy?Oxford Review of Education, 29, 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasse, C. (2001). Institutional creativity: The relational zone of proximal development. Culture & Psychology, 7, 199–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, S. J. (2004). Inventors: The ordinary genius next door. In Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L. & Singer, J. L. (Eds.), Creativity: From potential to realization (pp. 103–126). Washington, DC: APA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houtz, J. C., & Krug, D. (1995). Assessment of creativity: Resolving a mid-life crisis. Educational Psychology Review, 7, 269–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four c model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (2007). Creativity. Change, 39, 55–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2006). The international handbook of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, K. H. (2008). Underachievement and creativity: Are gifted underachievers highly creative?Creativity Research Journal, 20, 234–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwang, N. A., & Smith, I. (2004). The paradox of promoting creativity in the Asian classroom: An empirical investigation. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 130, 307–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E. A., & Seo, H. (2006). Understanding of creativity by Korean elementary school teachers in gifted education. Creativity Research Journal, 18, 237–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohman, D. F., & Hagen, E. P. (2001). Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside Publishing.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, D. W. (1961). The study of creativity. In MacKinnon, D. W. (Ed.), The creative person (pp. 1-1–1-15). Berkeley, CA: Institute of Personality Assessment Research, University of California.Google Scholar
Makel, M. C. (2009). Help us creativity researchers, you're our only hope. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 3, 38–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGreevy, A. (1990). Tracking the creative teacher. Momentum, 21, 57–59.Google Scholar
Mednick, S. A. (1967). The Remote Associates Test. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Murdock, M. C., & Puccion, G. J. (1993). A contextual organizer for conducting creativity research. In Isaksen, S. G., Murdock, M. C., Firestien, R. L. & Treffinger, J. D. (Eds.), Understanding and recognizing creativity: The emergence of a discipline (pp. 249–280). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn't creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proctor, R. M. J., & Burnett, P. C. (2004). Measuring cognitive and dispositional characteristics of creativity in elementary students. Creativity Research Journal, 16, 421–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renzulli, J. S. (1977). The enrichment triad model: A guide for developing defensible programs for the gifted and talented. Wethersfield, CT: Creative Learning Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, M. (1961/1987). An analysis of creativity. In Isaksen, S. G. (Ed.), Frontiers of creativity research: Beyond the basics (pp. 216–222). Buffalo, NY: Bearly Limited.Google Scholar
Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657–587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Runco, M. A., & Johnson, D. J. (1993). Parents' and teachers' implicit theories on children's creativity. Child Study Journal, 23, 91–109.Google Scholar
Runco, M. A., & Johnson, D. J. (2002). Parents' and teachers' implicit theories of children's creativity: A cross-cultural perspective. Creativity Research Journal, 14, 427–438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoen, L., & Fusarelli, L. D. (2008). Innovation, NCLB, and the fear factor. Educational Policy, 22, 181–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, L. C. (1999). Teachers' biases toward creative children. Creativity Research Journal, 12, 321–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seo, H., Lee, E., & Kim, K. H. (2005). Korean Science teachers' understand of creativity in gifted education. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 2, 98–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: Who makes history and why. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity in science: Change, logic, genius, and zeitgeist. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 607–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Successful intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1999). The theory of successful intelligence. Review of General Psychology, 3, 292–316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, R. J. (2006). The nature of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 18, 87–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Singer, J. L. (Eds.). (2004). Creativity: From potential to realization. Washington, DC: APA.CrossRef
Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1991). An investment theory of creativity and its development. Human Development, 34, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying the crowd. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1999). The concept of creativity: prospects and paradigms. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Torrance, E. P. (1962). Guiding creative talent. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torrance, E. P. (1966/1974). The Torrance tests of creative thinking. Bensenville, IL: Scholastic Test Services.Google Scholar
Torrance, E. P., & Safter, H. T. (1990). The incubation model of teaching. Buffalo, NY: Bearly.Google Scholar
Treffinger, D. J. (1991). Creative productivity: Understanding its sources and nurture. Illinois Council for the Gifted Journal, 10, 6–9.Google Scholar
Treffinger, D. J., Selby, E. C., & Isaksen, S. G. (2008). Understanding individual problem-solving style: A key to learning and applying creative problem solving. Learning and Individual Differences, 18, 390–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westby, E. L., & Dawson, V. L. (1995). Creativity: Asset or burden in the classroom?Creativity Research Journal, 8, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×