What is Creativity?

Creativity is a means of connecting the previously unconnected in ways that are new and meaningful to the individual concerned (Duffy 2006). Creativity allows and enables individuals to be able to find different routes and paths that they can travel. It is a process of conscious invention and describes the resourcefulness of ordinary people rather than extraordinary contributors (Craft, A. & Jeffrey, B. 2008).

 Being creative is what makes us all unique. Having our own way of doing things and creating new ideas allows us to be different from everyone else thus making us stand out and being all different. Everyone needs to be creative in order to be different because without this everyone would be the same or similar and the world would be a boring place.

 Being creative is important. Education must not favour students because of their creative abilities but instead they should optimise the talents that all learners may have and can open them up to new ideas and to embrace the notion that we as learners need so it can give us many opportunities to be able to play with ideas.

In Education it is also better for them to emphasis students being able to break their barriers and not to use traditional but non-traditional approaches to problems. Also it should try and get students to make new connections and to acknowledge the importance of an environment which encourages and values the importance of creativity and using the imagination.

 Whys is creativity important for us you might ask?  Well For creativity to occur, a set of rules and practices must be transmitted from the domain to the individual. The individual must then produce a novel variation in the content of the domain. The variation then must be selected by the field for inclusion in the domain (Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1999)

The other predominant thrust of work in the field looks more at everyday creativity (Richards, 2007), such as creative activities that allow the average person to be able to  participate in each day.

 

 References
Duffy, B. (2006) Supporting Creativity and Imagination in the Early Years (pp. 3 – 27). Berkshire: Open University Press.

Craft, A. & Jeffrey, B. (2008) Editorial.  Creativity and Performativity in Teaching and Learning: Tensions, Dilemmas, Constraints, Accommodations and Synthesis.  British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 577–584.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999) Implications of a Systems

Perspective for the Study of Creativity in Sternberg, R. (Ed.) Handbook of Creativity (p. 35). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richards, R. (2007) Everyday creativity: Our hidden potential in Richards, R. (Ed.), Everyday creativity and new views of human nature (pp. 25 - 54). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.