CIE

Background

What is creativity?

What comes to mind when you think of creativity? People being imaginative, taking risks and challenging the norm? Do you think about being inventive and original and the value of what people produce? Perhaps you think you can only be creative if you are artistic?

A good starting point for defining creativity can be found in ‘Creativity in Education', the IDES Network publication (2001). This publication states that we are all, or can be, creative if we are given the opportunity. Although creativity is not amenable to being described neatly, it does have a number of important facets or characteristics:

  1. it is always about originality, the forming or making of something new
  2. it involves purposeful application of knowledge and skills
  3. it includes various ways of thinking, doing and communicating
  4. it is evident in the thinking and actions of individuals and communities and finally,
  5. it is not of itself a good thing - it must be values driven.

Debating the characteristics highlighted by this definition can be a helpful starting point for agreeing what your school actually means by creativity.

Creativity is in fact possible in any activity that engages our intelligence, because intelligence itself is essentially creative. Creative processes are rooted in the imagination and our lives are shaped by the ideas we use to give them meaning. We all have creative capacities but in many instances we don’t know what they are or how to draw upon them.

Why is it important to teach creativity?

In recent years there has been a growing understanding of creativity and a significant increase in the promotion of creativity within schools. The development of creative thinking in young people underpins two of Scotland’s most important national strategies: Curriculum for Excellence and Determined to Succeed.

Creativity addresses the way teachers reshape the curriculum at all stages in order to better enable Scotland’s young people to become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. There is an increasing recognition that creativity improves the self-esteem, motivation and achievement of learners. Pupils who are encouraged to think creatively become: 

  • more interested in discovering things for themselves;
  • more open to new ideas and challenges;
  • more able to solve problems;
  • more able to work well with others
  • and more effective learners.
  • They also have greater ownership over their learning.

Young people who have the opportunity to develop their creative skills will be better prepared for life after school. The world is changing rapidly and it is almost certain that most people will have to adapt to several careers in the course of a lifetime. Most employers want to recruit people who see connections, have bright ideas, are innovative, communicate and work well with others, and are able to solve problems. Confident, creative individuals will always be in demand.

'The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done - people who are creative, inventive discoverers.' Piaget

 

 

'The most important developments in civilisation have come through the creative process, but ironically, most people have not been taught to create.'
Robert Fritz