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11 - Education Based on a Parsimonious Theory of Creativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Mark A. Runco
Edited by
Ronald A. Beghetto  and
James C. Kaufman
Mark A. Runco
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, USA
Ronald A. Beghetto
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University, San Bernardino
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Summary

The best education is grounded in good science. It is not based on opinion, tradition, or speculation but instead is drawn directly from the reliable information of empirical studies and the logical theories that take into account the empirical data. I have often told my students (many of whom are planning to teach) that it is their ethical responsibility to develop curriculum and follow pedagogy that has been tested and verified.

Fortunately, there is no lack of good information about creativity. This means that educators should have plenty of data and reliable theory to apply in the classroom. There is also quite a bit of bad information about creativity, but if opinion, tradition, and speculation are used to identify untrustworthy sources, it is not that difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Indeed, there may be too much information about creativity. There are different perspectives on various aspects of the creative process (e.g., Simonton, 2007; Weisberg, 2007), which can make it difficult to focus. Many of the differences can be explained by the fact that creativity is a syndrome (MacKinnon, 1965; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988), which is affected by quite a few different influences. Additionally, it takes various forms depending on the creator's age (Runco & Charles, 1997) and the domain (Albert, 1980; Gardner, 1983). Age and domain are especially relevant to education because they indicate that certain things may be best for the creativity of a preschool- or elementary school–aged student, but other things may be best for an adolescent or a young adult.

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Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom , pp. 235 - 251
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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