Creative Survival, Creative potential

Reading more about creative potential recently and capturing some quotes that were interesting; more to read!

It is now common knowledge that creative efforts represent the key to innovation, advancement, and even survival. Creative potentials and efforts are vital for health, innovation, and so many forms of progress… Potential may sound like a risky topic, but it is used in a variety of sciences. Think here of “potential energy” in physics or of the action potential of neurons, which is an electrical-chemical state. That is not to say that there is no risk when studying and investing in creative potential. Indeed, there is no guarantee with potential. If the right conditions are met, potential might be fulfilled, and then there is a payoff. 

Runco, M.A., 2016. Commentary: Overview of developmental perspectives on creativity and the realization of potential. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2016(151), pp.97-109.

Despite entrenched beliefs to the contrary, every person has the potential to think creatively (OECD, 2017). Creative thinking is more than coming up with unexpected ideas: it is a tangible competence grounded in knowledge and practice that supports individuals (and groups) to achieve better outcomes, especially in constrained or challenging environments.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment

How do you decide who is creative or what products are creative in order to validate the creativity tests? If the criterion is shaky-for example, scores on another creativity test or ratings of creativeness by someone who believes that creativity means neatness, high grades, and pleasing the teacher-the correlations between test and criterion cannot be high.

Creativity is assumed to be trainable, on the basis of, for example, testimonials of workshop participants (e.g., Edwards, 1968; Pames, 1978; Smith, 1985) and measured improvements in creative attitudes (e.g., Davis & Bull, 1978). However, Ridley and Birney (1979) found that college seniors who had been trained in creativity as freshmen scored no better on a creativity test than untrained peers.

Davis, G.A., 1989. Testing for creative potential. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 14(3), pp.257-274.

At the teacher level, there is a distinction between how to teach creatively, versus how to teach creativity (e.g. Craft 2005; Cremin, Burnard, and Craft 2006). It is first important to note that, by their attitudes and way of being, adults may impact children’s development of creative potential in a more general way. High expecta­tions, mutual respect, the modelling of creative attitudes, flexibility, and dialogue are among the most important features of the teacher–learner relationship for creativity (Davies et al. 2013). Hence, teaching for creativity requires not only the teaching of a set of domain-specific knowledge and skills, but also a more general attitude encouraging emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty or take risks (Cremin 2006). However, literature on creativity in education has repeatedly reported teachers’ difficulties to integrate creativity into the traditional classroom routines. 

Barbot, B., Besançon, M. and Lubart, T., 2015. Creative potential in educational settings: Its nature, measure, and nurture. Education 3-13, 43(4), pp.371-381.