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Creativity in a 21 st Century Education
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Newton, Lynn |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | The 2006 UNESCO conference Building Creative Competencies for the 21 st Century was international in its participants and global in its reach. The proclamation of the DirectorGeneral that ‘Creativity is our hope’ captured the essence of the conference proceedings and the focus on creativity was seen as offering solutions to global problems (UNESCO, 2006: 5). Yet, according to Banaji (2008: 1), while creativity might be seen as a solution to all problems, it is ‘neither understood properly nor given more than superficial significance’ in education. A further difficulty is the tendency to see creativity only through Western eyes. There is a need for consideration of other cultural views. Only by doing so might we gain insights that can inform educational practice in the 21 st century global community. This paper will discuss some recent studies of creativity, reflecting the growing interest in it globally and comparing it with the established Western perspectives. A more comprehensive, international perspective might support a press for fostering creative thinking in schools and inform practices in our increasingly interconnected world. The training of teachers, however, needs to include an introduction to the diversity of views as well as the expectations of the local contexts. Introduction Azzam (2009: 22) suggests that creativity has been ‘maligned, neglected, and misunderstand but is finally coming into its own’. In her discussion with Sir Ken Robinson, chair of the UK government’s report on creative and cultural education (NACCCE, 1999), he identifies creativity as the crucial 21 st century skill needed to solve pressing contemporary problems. Creativity is nothing new. At least 40,000 years ago, creative activity flourished as people, with the help of language, used the creative process in their art and technology, making it ‘one of the most striking features of the human species’ (Carruthers, 2002: 226). The 1 The final version is available in PROSPECTS: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, ISSN: 0033-1538 DOI: 10.1007/s11125-014-9322-1 Newton & Newton (2014) 2 evolution of humans through the various ages of stone, bronze and iron to the modern technological digital age rests on creative thinking and problem solving. These are highly valued processes, largely for material reasons (Beghetto, 2007). At the personal level, creativity offers a kind of empowerment which may help people cope with and lead fulfilling lives and is personally satisfying (Shaw, 1989; Kind & Kind, 2007; Newton, 2014). Most of us can respond to needs with a degree of imagination and creativity (Boden, 2004). Creativity is complex, vague and elusive, evading definition and categorisation (Burnard, 2006; Pedersen and Burton, 2009; Rowlands, 2011). Yet research has generated a plentiful supply of descriptions of creative thinking in different contexts. For example, Carruthers (2002: 226) suggested that, ‘anyone who is imagining how things could be other than they are will be thinking creatively’. Compton (2007) identifies six components as essential for creativity: enquiry, evaluation, ideation, imagination, innovation and problem solving. Lin (2010) notes the use of imagination, independent thinking and risk taking. However, Runco (2008: 96) argues persuasively that focusing on performance misleads us and suggests that educators should define creativity literally as, ‘... thinking or problem solving that involves the construction of new meaning.’ For him, the construction of understanding is a creative process since understanding involves the construction of new ideas and explanations. A more consensual view is provided by NACCCE (1999: 29): creativity is ‘... imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are original and of value.’ The problem is that degree to which novelty or originality as opposed to usefulness or appropriateness is prioritised seems to vary between cultures. While novelty and appropriateness are looked for in solutions to problems, novelty is prioritised in the West, while appropriateness is particularly valued in the East (Morris and Leung, 2010). In Eastern contexts Lin (2011) discusses the emphasis on product-orientated creativity while Kimbell (2000) suggests that in the West the focus is on process-orientated creativity. This reminds us of the need to be open to other cultural perspectives when thinking about creativity and educational practice. The Press for Creativity: Economic, Cultural and Personal Perspectives Craft (2006) describes how in the 1990s there was increasing interest by policy makers worldwide that shifted creativity as a topic from the periphery to the core of debate. Numerous research studies, official reports, government publications and reviews of policies Newton & Newton (2014) 3 and practices summarize thinking about creativity and promote it (e.g. NACCCE, 1999; Loveless et al, 2002; Ferrari et al, 2009). Creativity is now a concern in the political, social and educational agendas of many countries. For example, in Europe and North America ‘...identity, society and culture [require] new types of teaching and learning ... focused on fostering cultural identity, creativity and social cohesion’ (UNESCO 2006: 29; 39). In Asia and Pacific Rim countries, one of the challenges is the ‘...need for imagination, creativity and collaboration as societies become more knowledge-based’ (UNESCO, 2006: 13). Economic and Cultural Perspectives The start of the 21 st century has seen the world population more than double in the previous 50 years, with no indication of the rate slowing down (Bandarin, 2011). Rapid advances in technologies have resulted in changes in how people work and in their values and aspirations. These changes generate problems which will need ‘every ounce of ingenuity, imagination and creativity’ (Robinson in Azzam, 2009: 22). Increasing pressures on limited world resources generate economic challenges and this has stimulated interest in creativity worldwide (Shaheen, 2010). The intellectual products of creativity are seen as a source of economic wealth and a panacea for financial ills (Banaji, 2011). The creative capacity of the workforce is now seen as critical for the economy of many countries who are all encouraging its development through education (e.g. Bell & Jayne, 2010 [UK]; Faggian et al, 2011 [USA]; Ho, 2009 [Singapore]; McWilliam and Haukka, 2008 [Australia]; Oral, 2006 [Turkey]; Phan et al, 2010 [China]). Burnard (2006: 313) describes how there has been: ‘... an unprecedented resurgence of activity in the field of creativity in education as an area of scholarship, as a key element of the shifting policy context, and official agenda in relation to efforts to improve our schools. The creativity agenda is recognized in many countries – not as a transient fad, but as having an explicit role in the economy.’ This instrumentalist view, with a political focus on the economy, is also stressed by Beghetto (2007: 1) who argued that creativity is ‘the ultimate resource and an essential for addressing complex individual and societal issues.’ Past studies of creativity was mainly Western in origin, particularly from the USA. More recently a wider perspective has been taken by researchers. The notion of creativity as being value-laden and culture specific has been discussed by a number of researchers (e.g. Craft, 2003; Chiu and Kwan, 2010; Erez and Nouri, 2010). Examining the effect of culture on Newton & Newton (2014) 4 national innovation and prosperity in 63 different countries worldwide, Williams and McGuire (2010) note the significant influence of culture on economic creativity. Kharkhurin and Motelleebi (2005) compared the impact of culture on the creative potential of students from the USA, Russia and Iran. Using divergent thinking measures to make judgements, they found that while originality and innovation were valued as creative behaviours in the West, this was less the case in the East. They argue, however, that studies showing superior creative performance in Western students could be attributed to the differences in how the concept of creativity is perceived in East and West and the fact that the tests, developed in the West, are culturally biased in favour of Western values and beliefs. Recent work by Niu and Kaufman (2013) generate similar conclusions. They compared beliefs about creativity in Chinese and North American (US) cultures, describing these as the two most studied cultural groups in the field of creativity. They looked particularly at how creativity is conceived, evaluated and nurtured. From their findings they note the stereotypical view that Chinese cultures are less creative than American cultures but challenge this by arguing that the measurements and theories were developed in Western countries (mainly the USA) and are, therefore, culturally biased. Fleith (2011) describes the press for creativity in South America (Brazil) as a socio-cultural and contextually embedded phenomenon, with the effects of cultural factors paralleling those manifested worldwide. In India, the potential of creativity to contribute to economic growth is increasingly recognised, although schools still favour rote learning (Singh & Singh, 2012). Yet, this is in a thriving culture of jugaad, the frugal, creative improvisation of solutions to practical problems (Singh, 2012). For example, Radjou et al (2012) describe an affordable refrigerator of fired clay, cooled by evaporating water, and invented for the poor living in hot climates. Jugaad’s six principles (find opportunities in difficult situations; do more with less; be flexible; keep things simple; include society’s margins; use intuition) form a mind-set which has attracted attention elsewhere as an approach to the business of innovation (Bobel, 2102; Radjou et al, 2012). Nevertheless, some Indian politicians are ambivalent about jugaad, doubting that its creativity can have economic value (Sheikh, 2 |
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| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
