THINKING SKILLS:  

 

CREATIVE THINKING:  
Be Creative-and-Critical
Creativity in Life (Part 1)
What, Why, and How
Principles & Strategies
Liberating Creativity
Creativity in Life (Part 2)
Education for Creativity
Research about Creativity
  

 
CRITICAL THINKING:
What is critical thinking?
Why teach critical thinking?
How to teach it effectively?
Effects of Motivated Reasoning
Ethics of Critical Thinking
 
PROBLEM SOLVING:
Problems and Problem Solving
Basic Problem-Solving Skills
Education for Problem Solving
Problems in Design & Science
Problem Solving in Schools
 
 
You can explore other parts of our
website for Whole-Person Education    
(using links at bottom of page) and
our community of science-and-faith.

Education for Creativity:

   teach Practical Creativity   

(useful Creative Thinking)

for Better Daily Living

 

The sections in this page are:

 

Be Creative-and-Critical

Creativity in Life (Part 1)

 

what and why and how

 

   Principles & Strategies   

Liberating Creativity

 

Creativity in Life (Part 2)

 

  Education for Creativity  

 

Research about Creativity

 


 

Creative Thinking plus Critical Thinking

 
Creative Thinking is extremely useful — and it's fun! — but it should be combined with Critical Thinking, during your process of Productive ThinkingWhy?

During productive PROBLEM SOLVING you creatively Generate Ideas and critically Evaluate Ideas.  Usually, creative generation is the most exciting part of creative-and-critical Productive Thinking and it's very important.  But critical evaluation (i.e. logical evaluation) is usually more important, in two ways:  • if creative ideas are immediately converted into action (without being wisely evaluated) the result can be unwise action;   • your critical evaluation of ideas can motivate-and-guide your creative generation of ideas, as explained in the next section, Creative Thinking in Everyday Living.

By itself, creativity is not sufficient.  But it is useful and fun.  Hopefully this page — with its fascinating “ideas about getting ideas” — will inspire exciting mental adventures and creatively productive ideas, because (as expressed by the creative Albert Einstein) “creativity is intelligence having fun.”  Enjoy!

 


Options  —  You can explore the page in any way you want, by clicking a link and jumping to...  Creativity in Everyday Living (Part 1)  –  What is Creativity?  –  Teaching Creativity, Why & How  –  Principles & Strategies for Improving Creativity  –  Liberating Creativity  –  Creativity in Everyday Living (Part 2)  –  Education for Creativity  –  Research about Creativity.

 

Creative Thinking in Everyday Living  –  Part 1

 
Creative Thinking + Critical Thinking in Cycles of Design Generative Creativity:  Many times throughout every day – whenever you make a decision so you can do an action – you're using practical creative thinking.  How?  When you make a conscious decision, you combine creative thinking (to get ideas, to generate options for “what to do”) and critical thinking (to evaluate your options and decide “what to do”), as shown in the diagram.  During this process — when you creatively Generate Options and critically Evaluate Options — you are using cycles of creative-and-critical thinking, when you Generate-and-Evaluate-and-Generate-and-Evaluate-..... until you make a decision, and do an action.

 

That's the basic process for a common way to be creative.   In the rest of this section, you'll see:

• how Decision Making (using Generative Creativity) is the practical Problem Solving you do many times every day, in all areas of your life;

• how a productive interaction between creative thinking and critical thinking occurs in the Guided Creativity (when creative thinking is motivated-and-guided by critical thinking) that is one kind of creativity.

 

You use practical idea-generating creativity many times every day, whenever you try to “make things better” in some way.

Problem Solving:  a problem is an opportunity, in any area of life, to make things better.  Whenever a decision-and-action helps you “make it better (or “do it better”) you are problem solving, and this includes almost everything you do in life, in all areas of life.     { You can make things better if you increase quality for any aspect of life, or maintain quality by minimizing a potential decrease of quality. }    {design thinking is the problem-solving thinking we use to solve problems}

Education:  In another broad definition, education is learning from life-experiences, learning how to improve, to become more effective in making things better.  For example, Maya Angelou – describing an essential difference between past and present – says "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better," where improved problem solving (when "do better" leads to more effectively “making things better”) has been a beneficial result of education, of "knowing better" due to learning from life-experiences.

Growth:  One of the best ways to learn more effectively is by developing-and-using a better growth mindset so — when you ask yourself “how well am I doing in this area of life?” and honestly self-answer “not well enough” — instead of thinking “not ever” you are thinking “not yet” because you know that your past performance isn't your future performance;  and you are confident that in this area of life (and in other areas) you can “grow” by improving your understandings-and-skills, when you invest intelligent effort in your self-education and self-improving.  And you can support the self-improving of other people by helping them improve their own growth mindsets.

Growth in Creativity:  The goal of this page is to help you improve your creativity and your ability to combine creative thinking with critical thinking in ways that are practical & productive, in all areas of your everyday living.  Yes, you can do it.    {resources: growth mindset for creativity}

 

Guided Creativity  —  Part 1
Critical Thinking can motivate-and-guide Creative Thinking.
3 Elements in 3 Comparison-Checks

When you carefully examine this diagram — showing how people use 3 Elements in 3 Comparisons, when they are trying to solve a problem and “make things better” in some way — you can recognize a useful strategy for practical creativity.

After you've been examining for awhile, exploring the diagram (thinking about each part and how the parts interact), you may find it helpful to use these questions:

What are the 3 Elements?  How do you “make” each of them?

Think about your own experiences and ask “what part of my own problem-solving process is in each part of the diagram?”   Why do you think I said "you can recognize a useful strategy" instead of “you can discover...” or “you can learn... ?

What are the 3 Comparisons?  In what situations (and in what ways) will each comparison be useful?   What kinds of things might you be “designing” in General Design?  and in Science-Design?

Guided Creativity:  During cycles of problem solving (when you Generate-and-Evaluate-and-Generate-and-Evaluate-...), how can your critical Evaluation of an Option (it's a possible Problem-Solution) motivate you to creatively Generate a New Option?  and how can your critical Evaluation guide your creative Generation in a critical-and-creative process of Guided Generation?

Your diagram-examining & question-responding can help you develop a better understanding of problem-solving process.  And if you want, you can see some results of my examining & responding.

 


 

Why, How, and What?

 
WHY teach creativity?

Why should educators help students become more creative?

Basically, because it will help them live more effectively.

Why Creativity?Creativity: What, Who, and WhyWhy Creativity Is The Most Important Quality You Havecreativity is one of the most critical skills for the futurethe economic value of creativity (from LateralAction.com) – Why Creativity Now?  A Conversation with Sir Ken Robinson.

The International Center for Studies in Creativity asks Why study creativity? and explains the benefits.  And they claim that yes, teaching creativity (i.e. "helping students become more creative") is possible:  "Creativity is an effective resource that resides in all people and within all organizations.  Our more than 30 years of research has conclusively demonstrated that creativity can be nurtured and enhanced through the use of deliberate tools, techniques, and strategies."

what creativity really is - and why schools need it (by Liane Gabora) -

Why Creative Education is Important for Kids (from Parenting.com) – Why Care About It? – because Creativity in the Classroom Matters More Than Ever so...

 
HOW to teach creativity?

HOW can you help your students become more creative?

Many practical creativity-stimulating ideas are in Education for Creativity.

In a useful general strategy, teachers can encourage creativity when their students do activities that provide opportunities to be creative, while they are learning useful principles and strategies.

 
WHAT is creativity?

The purpose of this page is to help you improve your practical creativity for everyday living.  But... what is creativity?

Wikipedia begins by defining creativity as "a phenomenon [a process? a result?] whereby something" that is "somehow new and somehow valuable is formed," and later describes a general agreement that creative results are "novel and useful,... original and worthwhile."  Beyond these basics, there is much variability.    {why is it educationally useful to use a broad definition of creativity so it occurs anytime "something... somehow new... is formed" ?}

In the section above you see Guided Creativity but it's only one of many kinds.  One source of variety is...

 

Multiple Creativities using Multiple Intelligences:  When people are solving a wide variety of problems (to “make things better”) in all areas of life we can think creatively (and do creatively) in a variety of ways, with MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES.  Each of these is a way for us to BE creative (with creative thinking + creative doing), as described in 8 Types of Creative Intelligence (by Robyn McMaster) and (by Robert Sang) multiple intelligences in the context of faith.

 

We see a variety of creativities with "intelligences" and with products, process, style:

"The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations.  But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of possible solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships that challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways. ...  [creative thinking] is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things." (Peter Facione, in Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It [along with Creative Thinking] Counts)

We see two approaches to creative process – with Adaptive Creativity and Innovative Creativity – in two styles of creative people who function primarily as adaptors (who focus on improving an existing solution) or innovators (who develop and advocate new solutions).  Each style offers advantages & disadvantages, and when they effectively operate together (in an individual or group) the creative productivity will be higher than with either alone.  Therefore, creativity-facilitators in education (and business,...) should recognize, appreciate, and encourage both styles of creativity.

Guided Creativity and Free Creativity can be useful, with each offering advantages, so we should appreciate and encourage both styles of creativity, guided and free.

 

In different parts of a problem-solving process we see...

Generative Creativity when a person flexibly-and-fluidly generates many options for a problem-solution.

Proactive Creativity when a person imagines a way to make things better in the future, after they recognize “deficiency gaps” in a current situation, with Creative Questioning of the way things are.    {more about Proactive Creativity}

Knowledge-Gathering Creativity when a person learns more by doing creatively clever “detective work” to gather knowledge that is old and new, made by them and by others.    {more about Knowledge-Gathering Creativity}

 

Generative Creativity (by thinking with Fluidity & Flexibility, with Originality & Elaboration) will help improve the Mimetic Creativity & Analogous Creativity & Bisociative Creativity & Narrative Creativity & Intuitive Creativity that are possibilities when asking What's Your Creativity Type?

 

The many kinds of creativity are not mutually exclusive, so they can be combined in a variety of ways.  For example, a person {or group} could do Analogous Creativity with a style that is Adaptively Creative or Innovatively Creative or (usually more productive) some of each.  And there are many other interactive combinations.

 

These are just a few of the MANY ways to describe-and-define our wide variety of creativities.  Asking “what are the best ways to describe?” can stimulate interesting debates, but there is no consensus about “the answers” when we ask experts who study creativity.  Agreement is not possible because there are many ways to think about creativity, and thus many answers when we ask “what is creativity?”

In a long listing of "many ways to think" with a wide range of perspectives, Wikipedia's page-intro tells us that "scholarly interest in creativity is found in a number of disciplines, primarily psychology, business studies, and cognitive science, but also education, the humanities, technology, engineering, philosophy (particularly philosophy of science), theology, sociology, linguistics, the arts, economics, and mathematics, covering the relations between creativity and general intelligence, personality type, mental and neural processes, mental health, or artificial intelligence; the potential for fostering creativity through education and training; the fostering of creativity for national economic benefit [and for benefits to individuals & businesses], and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning."   /   This list is followed by a longer Table of Contents with 59 links.  A few of them — quoted here to give you a feeling for the conflicting theories about many aspects of creativity, including the complex relationships between intelligence and creativity — are "8.1 Creativity as a subset of intelligence,  8.2 Intelligence as a subset of creativity,  8.3 Creativity and intelligence as overlapping yet distinct constructs" and, in 8.4 & 8.5, "...as coincident sets" & "...as conjoint sets."  Wow.

Obviously, this section (and page) cannot cover everything.  Instead my goal is just to provide a coherent overview of essential ideas – along with links to web-resources for further exploration – that I think might be interesting-and-useful for you.

 


Principles & Strategies for Increasing Creativity

• Summaries of scientific principles and practical strategies from Tina Seelig (professor at Stanford) are described in outlines by Aimee Groth & Jessica Stillman (who says "Seelig offers simple but powerful ways to increase your creativity by shifting how you approach problems, including just being more observant and asking better questions") and by Tina Seelig in her talk for Google (video) and her book, inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity.

 

• The Myth of Right-Brain Creativity:  We can try to Debunk the Left-Brain/Right-Brain Myth but the myth may never die so at least we should Know The Myths because (contrary to popularized oversimplifications) Creativity is both Right Brain and Left Brain with Well-Connected Brain Hemispheres.    {these pages are written by Kara Blacker, Christian Jarrett, Sam Kramer, Arts Academy in the Woods, and Christopher Bergland}   {e.g. In a fascinating research study, brain activities were observed in jazz guitarists during their improvising.  The scientists concluded that "creativity is..."}

 

• Perseverance, Relaxation, Flexibility:  To describe their complex (and varying) effects, later I say "perseverance is useful... and often is necessary" but... "creativity also can happen when you just relax," and "sometimes perseverance [but at other times flexibility] is rewarded."  Huh?  Well, people are complicated, and so is our creativity.   {do experts agree about what creativity is, and how it happens?}

Growth Mindset and Creativity Mindset (by Pronita Mehrotra) explains why "growth mindset is especially important in creative work since such work often requires higher levels of perseverance... and resilience [that are] produced by growth mindset.”  For example, Growth mindset in Music by Gerald Klickstein.

• Growth Mindset and Self-View:  Your worldview is your view of the world, used for living in the world.  Your world-view includes your self-view that will improve when you develop-and-use a growth mindset.  Having a growth mindset about creativity — so you believe that you can be more creative in how you think and what you do — will help you be confident that you can do creative things.   /   This attitude is described in a book by David Kelley (founder of IDEO and d.school) & Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence - Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All. (about the book & its authors & excerpts from chapters)   Kelley has a TED Talk (How to Build Your Creative Confidence) and other videos and other options in his links-page.

 

• Modifying and Combining:  New ideas often come from modifying old ideas (or things) in new ways, and combining them in new ways.  You can increase the range of your creative possibilities — giving yourself more ways to modify and combine — if you know a wide variety of ideas (and things), if you have a wide range of knowledge that you can use creatively.  This is one way to take advantage of the principle (from Louis Pasteur, a very creative scientist) that "chance favors the prepared mind."   {other ways are by preparing before relaxing and with flexible thinking}    /    Boost Your Creativity by Combining Ideas (by Pronita Mehrotra) – examples of breakthroughs that were "based on combining information from different domains that are usually not thought of as related" – making new ideas from old elements & detecting connections between ideas  –  {why did Picasso try to do things he couldn't do?  i.e. why did the chicken cross the road?}

 

Collaborative Creativity

Creativity and Collaboration: It's All About Trust and One Mind Catalyzing Another –– and...

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People include Habit 6: Synergize that is "the highest activity in all life" because it "catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the greatest powers within people," as described in condensed summaries:  short (in franklincovey.com's short summaries) & medium-short (in franklincovey.com's more-detailed summaries) & medium-long (by Philip Chowney) & longer (by Carrie Cabral for ShortForm Summaries) and more.   

Build a Creative-and-Critical Community - debates about pros & cons of group creativity -

I.O.U. - I'll continue working on this paragraph during mid-June 2021. -- [[ Creativity in Communities / Community Creativity / personal creativity by individuals and (by interpersonal collaboration) in communities / collective creativity -- habit 6, creative groups, @ brainstorming, @ two styles, @#two -]]

 

The Philosophy of Creativity by Scott Barry KaufmanWired to Create (samples & Google Talk);

Critical Thinking Web describes 3 Principles (and more) to improve Creative Thinking;

creative thinking - understanding & improving (by Robert Harris).

 

• Videos:  in YouTube you can search for [creativity in life] and [creative thinking] and [ted creativity] plus other terms & combinations.

 

Craig Rusbult (editor of this links-page) examines 5 Ways to Creatively Generate Ideas — including Guided Generation (when Critical Thinking stimulates-and-guides Creative Thinking) and Free Generation — and describes some of the ways a freely-creative Generation of Ideas can be hindered;  and how, in an effort to liberate creativity by decreasing these hindrances, we can use Strategies for Thinking* to Reduce Restrictive Assumptions and Adjust (by using Brainstorm-and-Evaluate) the Interactions between Creative Thinking & Critical Thinking (but does it work? Yes and No).

* Thinking Strategies — when you regulate your cognition-and-metacognition by deciding when to avoid metacognition or use it, and how — can help you improve your performing and/or learning (+ enjoying) in many areas of life, to improve your performing now and (by learning more from your experiences) your performing later.

note:  To help you decide whether to click a link or avoid it, links highlighted with green or purple go to pages I've written, in my website about Education for Problem Solving or in this website for THINKING SKILLS (CREATIVE and CRITICAL) we use to SOLVE PROBLEMS.

 

• strategies for problem-solving creativity (for stimulating-and-using creativity in a process of solving problems) are explained, and are illustrated with 20 historical examples, in Creativity, Innovation and Problem Solving

articles about creativity from Harvard Business Review.

Models for the Creative Process by Paul Plsek, is a historical review, from 1908 to 1994, concluding with his DirectedCreativity Cycle that "is a synthesis model of creative thinking that combines the concepts behind the various models proposed over the last 80+ years."

• A wide variety of strategies — 31 tools for creativity — are described by Charles Cave in Creativity Techniques plus "What can I do to increase my creativity?" and a link to plenty of ideas and resources in his Creativity Web: Resources for Creativity and Innovation; and a Resource Center with lots of information in 11 categories, including software, magazines, books, organizations, conferences, and websites.  This website is very thorough, worth exploring, is useful for getting a comprehensive overview of the field.

• Another website is much less comprehensive, but is interesting:  Thoughts on Problem Solving was developed by faculty in the Engineering Dept at the U of Michigan.

Edward de Bono has been influential in the field of creativity, with his Thinking Tools — Lateral Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, Direct Attention Thinking Tools, and more.  On another website, de Bono describes Lateral Thinking and (on a timeline) other ideas & programs.

Visual-Literacy.org has a creatively organized Periodic Table of Visualization Methods to stimulate creativity, and Stairs to Visual Excellence and in other ways when you click their navigation links.   (hint: to see mouseover-popup “visual representations” on these pages, your browser's Javascript must be enabled)

 
 

Perseverance, Relaxation, Flexibility

Perseverance is useful for creatively generating ideas, and often is necessary for productively transforming ideas into realities.  Thomas Edison, a prolific inventor, said "genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," and "opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  According to Angela Duckworth, the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but is a special blend of passion and persistence she calls "grit" because (says Edutopia about her ideas) "research is increasingly linking a constellation of traits (including grit, passion, creativity, teamwork, loyalty, and honesty) to success throughout life," and (says Angela) "enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare." {review of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance} [[e.g. find pages & videos about edison's perseverance with light bulb, seeing long process as 1000 steps, not 1000 failures, @ws#all ]]   /   You can make creativity an action-verb by combining talent + passion + persevering with tenacious grit (by Fred & Annie, Loud Coffee Press) – creativity & grit: to get productive momentum, dream big and plan small, show up and start to work (by Kate Maria Pennell) – Develop Grit and Amplify Your Creativity (1:35:12 video, by Flow Research Collective with Angela Duckworth (imagine "what is far away from the here and now") & Scott Barry Kaufman [a podcast with transcript] [authenticity, creativity, confidence]).  Imagination, Creativity, and Productivity (by Lisa Canning) asks how imagination and creativity (they're not the same) flow into productivity; she looks at theories of creativity, especially the work of Ned Herrmann.

Overcoming Procrastination:  Are you avoiding a task that should have high time-priority — due to its urgency and/or importance, or a timing that will let you take advantage of opportunities while they're still available — because it seems overwhelming or unpleasant, or both?  One way to overcome this procrastination is to use a Swiss Cheese Strategy by “poking holes in the task” so it seems less overwhelming.  Then when you're feeling good about what you've already done, and you anticipate the much greater satisfaction you'll feel when you get all of it done, and it's over, you'll be motivated to continue working.    {and more}

Relaxation and Incubation:  Creativity can be a result of perseverance and hard work, but it also can be stimulated when you just relax.  Sometimes incubation — that occurs when you just “take a break from trying” — can stimulate (allow?) creativity.  If you work on a problem for awhile (to prepare your mind) but don't solve it, and then stop thinking about it, when you return to the problem you may be able to solve it.  How and Why?   /   In her comments on a research study about "aha" moments of insight, Jean Ann Van Krevelen describes another way that Chance Favors The Prepared Mind when, if you "stay observant and open to creative opportunities and solutions... [that previously] you were unaware of, you maximize the possibility of an aha moment."

Flexibility and Perseverance:  Sometimes tenacious perseverance is rewarded.  At other times, flexibility pays off.

blank no-content spacer gif
Sometimes PERSEVERANCE
is needed, so DIG DEEPER.
  
Sometimes FLEXIBILITY
is needed, so DIG ELSEWHERE.
treasure is beneath hole where man is digging
blank no-content spacer gif
treasure is to the side of hole where man is digging
Thus, perseverance and flexibility are contrasting virtues.  When you aim for an optimal balancing of this complementary pair, self-awareness by “knowing yourself” is useful.  Being flexible in your thinking about “where to dig” and “how to dig” are two kinds of...

• Thinking with Flexibility:  If an Opportunity Presented Itself, Would you Notice? (by Jay Gordon Cone) explains why “yes” is more likely if you can think flexibly with a prepared mind.  And if (as in a pivotal period of life-experiences for Peter Buffett) you have learned skills that prepare you to take advantage of the opportunity.  And on a much smaller scale, How I didn't Learn to Ski (and then did) with Persevering plus Flexibility with Insight.

 
 

Being Creative when we Learn and Define

a context:  When we're thinking creatively about creativity – as in our descriptions of what creativity is – it's useful to think about process & products & styles, in different areas of life.  A few of the many ways to describe creative process are Multiple Creativities (by “thinking” with Multiple Intelligences), and/or Adaptive Creativity (by improving an existing solution) & Innovative Creativity (by developing a new solution) and Generative Creativity (to generate many options for a solution);  the "and/or" is due to overlaps between these ways to use process.  Here are two of the ways your process-of-thinking can be creative, when you Define and Learn, with Proactive Creativity by recognizing “deficiency gaps” in a current situation, and imagining a way to make things better in the future, and with Knowledge-Gathering Creativity by doing creatively clever “detective work” to gather knowledge that is old and new, made by yourself and by others.  Let's look at these two related aspects of creative thinking.

 

Proactive Creativity to Define:  When you Define a Problem, you can be proactive — defined as "acting in anticipation of future problems... intending to produce a good result or avoid a problem, rather than waiting until there is a problem" — when you use prediction to recognize a problem (an opportunity to make things better) so (with a decision to “go for it”) you can design-and-do actions to help make things better in the future, or at least avoid making things worse.  A creatively proactive defining & doing is more likely to happen if you are able-and-willing* to recognize “deficiency gaps” in a current situation or idea, if (with critical thinking) you can see how it's inadequate and (with creative thinking) you can imagine that it could be improved.  At this point (after you have defined a problem-solving objective) you can try to solve this problem by generating options & evaluating options, making decisions, and doing actions.  Many things in life will be “made better (or not made worse)” only if people are creatively proactive in defining a problem and deciding it should be solved.   Because most important life-situations involve other people, often a useful process for proactive defining is by asking (to understand with empathy) “what do they want?” and (to understand with self-empathy) “what do I want?” and – based on your understandings of others & self and aiming for a win-win outcome (by using Habit 5 and Habit 4) – “what do we want?” and then pursuing your problem-solving goals with decisions & actions that will help you achieve the win-win outcomes you want.    /    * it's "able and willing" because Proactive Creativity often requires a Creative Questioning of the way things are, and this questioning may lead to resistance by defenders of the status quo.  Many people are not willing to question because they don't want to experience the resistance.

 

Three Parts of a Process:  What is the relationship between proactivity and gathering knowledge?  My basic model of problem solving has two stages – Define and Solve – beginning (in the top line of my basic diagram) with "Learn so you understand more accurately-and-thoroughly" followed by "Define your Objective, Define your Goals for a Solution." {and in the bottom part of the diagram, trying to Solve the Problem with cycles of Generate-and-Evaluate}   But the time-sequence of "Learn" and "Define" can be reversed, because Learning more is useful in two ways:  your improved knowedge can help you recognize a deficiency-gap and Define your Objective-and-Goals;*   it also will help you Solve the Problem, because your improved understanding will help you be more effective in creatively Generating Options (for a Problem-Solution) and critically Evaluating Options.   /   * Because you can Define more proactively when you Learn more, your Proactive Creativity (when you proactively Define so you can Solve) can be improved by your...

 

Knowledge-Gathering Creativity to Learn:  During your process of Defining-and-Solving a Problem you can Learn more by doing creatively clever “detective work” to gather knowledge* that is old and new, made by yourself and others.  You can MAKE knowledge that is new,  and you can FIND knowledge that is old {is already existing} by REMEMBERING it in your personal memory or LOCATING it in our collective memory, in what is recorded {is culturally remembered} in books, web-pages, journals, audio & video recordings, etc.   /   Your process of gathering knowledge can use creative thinking — when you creatively ask “how can I MAKE it?” and “where can I FIND it?”, when you think about creative ways to be systematically thorough in your searching — and always should use critical thinking, so your ideas (your understandings & predictions) are logical and are based on reality, are based on observations that are true because they correspond to the reality of what did happen, or what is happening.

* knowledge is observations, plus ideas that include predictions.    {when you effectively combine relevant knowledge with creative thinking and critical thinking, the result is productive thinking}

{more...  about the process of generating observations and predictions that are old & new, made by yourself & others;   and about using the many ways to gather many kinds of knowledge}   {and from other authors, [[ find ]]

 
 

Strategies to Liberate Creativity

by Optimizing the Productive Interactions
of Creative Thinking with Critical Thinking
 

When you effectively combine Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking with relevant Knowledge, the result is Productive Thinking.  When you're trying to "effectively combine" creativity & criticality & knowledge so you can solve a problem, asking “how do they interact?” and “how should they interact?” are important questions.

In principle, Critical Thinking and accurate Knowledge are always mutually supportive, with beneficial interactions, because:  critical evaluation helps you construct accurate ideas-knowledge;  and the more you truly know (when your ideas are accurate, are true because they correspond to reality) the better you can evaluate.

But the interactions are more complex, with more variation in productivity, when Creative Thinking is combined with Critical Thinking or with Ideas-Knowledge, because...

    these interactions can be beneficial, which occurs when your critical Evaluation (of an Old Idea that's part of your Ideas-Knowledge) stimulates-and-guides your creative Generation (of a New Idea), when you creatively Revise the Old Idea to Invent a New Idea.
    or the interactions can be detrimental in two ways, if Creative Thinking is hindered by its interactions with Ideas-Knowledge, or with Critical Thinking.
 
Free Creativity:  The next two sections examine strategies for optimizing the productive interactions of creative thinking with KNOWLEDGE and with CRITICAL THINKING, by increasing beneficial interactions while decreasing detrimental interactions to encourage Free Creativity.

 


 

1. Strategies to Liberate Creativity

so it becomes a more-free creativity
by reducing the hindering interactions
between Creativity and KNOWLEDGE:
 

Usually, relevant knowledge will help you be more creative.  But not always.  Why?  Viewing a situation from new perspectives can increase creativity.  By contrast, your creativity will decrease if your knowledge of “the way things are” becomes a certainty about “the way things must be” and this rigidly restrictive assumption hinders your ability to "view... from new perspectives" and your creative generation of new ideas about “other ways things could be.

These interactions are described in Dimensions for Thinking: a Framework for Curriculum and Instruction (Marzano, et al, 1988):

    Human “theories of the world” are essential to our learning and making sense of the world.  However, there is a curious paradox about schemata.  Just as they are the basis of human perception and understanding, so too are they “blinders” to interpretations that fall outside their scope. ...  Creativity involves the ability to go beyond the schema normally used to approach a problem... and reframe the problem so it might appear in a different light.  Characteristically, the creative person has the ability to look at a problem from one frame of reference or schema and then consciously shift to another frame of reference, giving a completely new perspective.  This process continues until the person has viewed the problem from many different perspectives.
 
Craig Rusbult describes “combining the best of old & new” and using Strategies for Thinking to Reduce Restrictive Assumptions — so your knowledge of “the way things have been” won't become a certainty about “the way things always must be” — to let you escape ruts-of-thinking, so you can creatively imagine “the way things could be.”
 

• People in the community of education (and business,...) should recognize, appreciate, and encourage different styles of creativity.  In a research-based essay (Two Dimensions of Creativity: Level and Style), Gerard Puccio (describing ideas of M.J. Kirton, as in Adaptors & Innovators - Why New Initiatives Get Blocked) describes the advantages & disadvantages in two styles of creative people, who function primarily as adaptors (whose focus is improving an existing situation) or innovators (who develop and advocate new solutions).  Puccio says, "Instead of valuing one style, an organization should respect and value the adaptive and innovative styles of creativity.  Individuals within an organization can work more effectively together by capitalizing on each others' strengths, rather than punishing each other because of individual differences.  If an atmosphere of openness and trust prevails in the organization, then the adaptors and innovators will be able to join their creative talents to propel the organization to success. ...  Individuals will manifest their creativity in different ways, and both styles of creativity are valuable."

 

I.O.U. - Later, maybe in late-2022, I will read web-pages — found by searching for [creativity ruts] or [creative thinking outside the box] or [assumptions hinder creative thinking], etc — to learn more, and select additional pages for linking-to in this section.

 


 

2. Strategies to Liberate Creativity

so it becomes a more-free creativity
by reducing the hindering interactions
of Creativity with CRITICAL THINKING:
 

A blending of creativity and critical thinking is necessary for productive thinking that produces a high-quality solution for a problem.  But creativity can be hindered by its interactions with critical thinking, for reasons that are psychological and/or sociological, affecting individuals and groups.

First we'll look at a distinction (when asking “what does critical mean?”) and then a “brainstorming” strategy to liberate creativity.

A hindering is more likely when critical is “emotionally charged” (due to the intention of a critical thinker, or perception by others) instead of critical thinking just being logical thinking.  The meaning of "critical" is important, and it's why my links-page for CRITICAL THINKING begins with a clarification of what critical does mean, and doesn't mean:

To avoid misunderstanding, in the context of "critical thinking" we need to understand what "critical" does mean, and doesn't mean.  In this context, critical thinking is just logical thinking;  critical thinking is not necessarily being “negatively critical” as in a commonly used meaning of the word.  In fact, a more accurate term would be logical thinking (re: its process) or evaluative thinking (re: its goal).  The result of evaluation can range from positive to negative, from acceptance to rejection or anything in-between.
 

In an effort to decrease a hindering-of-creativity by critical thinking — especially if it's emotionally charged (by intention and/or perception) but also if it's mainly logical — one strategy is to temporarily adjust the creative/critical interactions by focusing on creativity for awhile.  How?

 

Brainstorm-and-Evaluate occurs in two phases:  During a creative Brainstorming Phase, critical feedback (from self & others) is temporarily reduced, to encourage confidently free creativity in generating lots of ideas, aiming for innovation.  Later, these ideas are evaluated in a critical Evaluating Phase.

During a Brainstorming Phase, you can relax and be wildly creative because you have the confident assurance of knowing that your innovative ideas won't be “put into action” before they have gone through an Evaluating Phase, so unwise actions can be avoidedThe goal of this strategy is to allow the effective operation of both creativity and criticality, at different times in an overall process of creative-and-critical problem solving.

The Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) says, "The fundamental principle of ideation [the process of generating ideas] is to be cognizant of when you and - your team are generating ideas and when you are evaluating ideas – typically keeping these two tasks separate, and only mixing the two intentionally."

MindTools has a “how to do it” overview of brainstorming plus other Creativity Tools and a wider range of thinking strategies in their Full Toolkit.

The Creative Education Foundation can help you improve your Creative Problem Solving (using the CPS Process) by combining creative divergent thinking (as in brainstorming) with evaluative convergent thinking.  They offer programs & workshops, both in person and online.   {wikipedia}

 

Creative-while-Critical Multitasking?  No.

Scientific research (in psychology, neurology,...) shows that we don't think by multitasking, instead we shift back & forth between thinking in different ways, each with a different focus and purpose.  The goal of various brainstorming strategies — thinking strategies in which you intentionally try to be “creative without critical” temporarily, by first creatively Brainstorming, and then critically Evaluating — is to optimize interactions between creativity & criticality, so the overall result is more productive.

making adjustments:  During your process of problem solving — when you are using creative-and-critical cycles of Generate-Evaluate-Generate-Evaluate-... — two variables you can adjust are the focusing and timing in your half-cycles & cycles.  For example, your critical thinking can be delayed or immediate.

    delayed critical thinking:  In a particular half-cycle of creatively Generating Option(s) you may want to try generating many options (as in brainstorming) while you are intentionally avoiding any evaluation of options, to promote a Free Generation of Options.
    immediate critical thinking:  But in other phases of your overall problem-solving process,* you may find it useful to critically Evaluate one option, and then immediately use your Quality Check (that provides feedback about the option's Quality) to guide your creative Generation of a better version of this option, with Guided Generation of an Option.
    Of course, during these adjustments of focus you also will adjust your timings by deciding whether the time for each half-cycle (when you Generate or Evaluate) will be short or long, so your cycling will be fast or slow.  Often you will do this automatically, without thinking much about the timing.
    * You choose what you will do in each phase of your problem-solving process, trying to more effectively coordinate your process of design by making wise action-decisions about “what to do next.”
 

Evaluations  –  Does brainstorming work?

Among experts “the correct answer” is debated, with some saying YES (IF...) but others NO.*   Disagreements occur due to variations in:  techniques, application-strategies & leadership, situational contexts;   goals (what do you want to happen? how do you define success?);   research methods, re: designing experiments, making observations, interpreting observations, communicating conclusions.

* This "YES...NO" page – assembled by me, Craig Rusbult – has links to pages by experts (especially Mark McGuinness, Bob Sutton, Jonah Lehrer) who are advocates & opponents, along with my summaries and comments.  Two insightful pages from Mark McGuinness (LateralAction.com) are Why Critical Thinking Is Not a Creativity Killer and asking (with pros & cons) Is Brainstorming a Waste of Time?   /   Here are some useful web-resources:

A Review of Brainstorming Research - Six Critical Issues for Inquiry by Scott Isaksen of the Creative Problem Solving Group.

Resolving the Paradox of Group Creativity by Andre Walton, in Harvard Business Review.

Wikipedia examines research about creativity and some "challenges [i.e. hindering factors] to effective group brainstorming."

 
You can find a wide variety of ideas about creative brainstorming in PAGES (10 tips - 11 Best Ways - 8 Tricks - 17 Methods - 10 Techniques - 5 Weird Techniques - Driving with Brakes Off & On - and many more) and VIDEOS (6 Ways - 3 Techniques - 3 Social Strategies - Done Right - and more when you search YouTube for [creative brainstorming techniques] and [ted brainstorming] and other terms).     { i.o.u. - Later, maybe in June 2021, I'll carefully examine these pages/videos and others, trying to find those that are most interesting-and-useful. }

 

here are some rough-draft "scraps" of ideas:  [[ guided generation can be used for new ideas, but is a natural outcome of generating additional ideas while also evaluating ideas, so it's described above -- some correlation, but no linkage (either way) because people can generate without revision, and guided-gen is just another way to creatively generate, it just happens to be a way-to-generate that occurs in the context of generate-and-evaluate cycles, while evaluating

adaptive vs innovative

GUIDED (with small or big) + FREE with BIG CHANGE -- For example, instead of trying to modify an Old Idea so it becomes a similar New Idea that's only slightly modified, you may want to try generating a “newer” New Idea;  you can do this by trying to reduce restrictions on your thinking – by not assuming “the way things have been” is “the way things must be” – to allow a freely creative Generation of New Ideas.   {e.g. A very useful way of "not assuming" is by developing-and-using a growth mindset.}

 

Creativity in Life, for Effective Living  –  Part 2

 

Practical Creativity for Everyday Living:  This page begins with a reminder that you want practical creativity that makes your life better, so you want productive thinking that effectively combines creative thinking with critical thinking and with knowledge.  Therefore, especially for important actions, “raw creativity” should be combined with wise logical evaluation based on reliable knowledge.    {strategies for decreasing unproductive interactions between critical thinking and creativity}

 

The purpose of this page is to help you improve your practical creativity for everyday living.  As described in Part 1, you can be more creative, more often, by just expecting it and doing it,...

    • by viewing more of your daily activities as opportunities for creative-and-critical problem solving (defined broadly as “making things better”)* that combines creative generation of ideas (for “what to do”) with critical evaluation of ideas (so you can wisely decide “what to do” and, with wise filtering, “what not to do”);
    • by developing-and-using a growth mindset so you're confident that you can improve all of your everyday skills (including practical creativity) by investing intelligent effort in your self-improving.
 

* Instead of thinking of creativity as a mysterious process-and-result that happens only in a limited number of special areas (like visual & performing arts, graphic design, product engineering,...) we can recognize the creativity used by people (including you) in many areas of everyday life.  Creative ideas-and-actions can come from professionals (who get paid for what they do) and also from skilled amateurs (who get satisfaction from what they do).    {creative-and-critical design thinking occurs in a wide range of design fields in professional life and in everyday personal life}

 

The Broad Scope of Creative-and-Critical Problem Solving:

People solve a problem when they try to “make it better” and they design (i.e. they find, invent, or improve) a better product, activity, relationship, and/or strategy (in General Design) and/or (in Science-Design) explanatory theory.  These objectives extend far beyond traditional “design fields” to include almost everything we do in life.  For example,...

The creative-and-critical designing of a better activity, relationship, and strategy is illustrated in Guided Creativity, Part 3.

A common creative activity – it's important and fun! – is conversation.   {principles & strategies for improving conversation}

A creatively productive conversation – that improves a relationship or helps achieve some other goal, and is fun – requires an effective combining of many skills.  A productive conversation is a skillful combining of multiple intelligences that include linguistic, logical, intrapersonal (by understanding self) and (by understanding others) interpersonal, along with worthy values and goals.

You can be a creative detective — who is “doing detective work” functionally for personal satisfaction, even if not professionally for pay — when you ask “what is the truth?” and you do what is necessary (by gathering reliable information and logically evaluating it) to help you determine the truth of what has happened, or what is happening.   {creative Detective Work that is creative Scientific Investigation}

With creativity, logic, and knowledge of yourself, you can develop-and-use thinking strategies to improve your performing and/or learning and/or enjoying in all areas of life.

 

I.O.U. – This section will continue being developed later (maybe late-2022?), becoming more complete & coherent.  I'll use some ideas in this brown box, with lots of condensing and revising.

 

[[ these ideas will be combined with those above, about everyday creativity

[[ in all areas of life, including relationships, we can more effectively liberate self from personal ruts, to reduce restrictive assumptions about “how I (or we) must be” and “how I must do”  /  flexibility is an important part of creativity -- with creative thinking in idea-generation, then following up with productive action  /  you can "reduce ruts" by thinking in new ways about other people, with understandings that are deeper & more accurate, based on better empathy, in relationships & also in traditional design projects {link to dp-mo.htm#empathy & #emrel}

[[ but only some decisions (not all) are made by creatively generating options and critically evaluating options, because many decisions are made in other ways, e.g. by habit or by using subconscious intuitions when you do generate-and-evaluate but this is done very quickly and sub-consciously] [or it could happen so quickly that basically you just generate one option and immediately do it] @ thinking strategies

[[ learning and teaching:  you can improve yourself, and (as teacher/coach) improve others.

 

[[ i'll put the ideas below into one of the sections (there are several) about Generative Creativity:

maybe consider option and decide to not do, but maybe just never creatively thought of it (generated it) as an option.

must generate an idea-for-option (with creative thinking) so you can evaluate it (with creative thinking)

e.g. dinner party in Part 3 of Guided Creativity -- if compare B-vs-C and choose C, the quality of your decision-and-action was decreased (because you did C instead of B2) by your lack of creativity / you didn't think of way to make B better, to creatively generate B2 as best option

Time Machine with Life Editing, using Control-Z to Undo/Redo

oops, apology -- error/sin of omission, should have done it but didn't -- if mistake involves another person, apologize for error of omission, oops, i didn't consider it and decide no, it wasn't due to unwise values or priorities -- instead, just didn't think of it as an option to consider / my failure wasn't due to a lack of wisdom in logically evaluating the options (A B C D) that i creatively generated

 

[[ these ideas will be a new section, connected with "What is creativity?" earlier:

somehow new and somehow valuable:  Wikipedia begins with a broad definition of creativity as being "somehow new and somehow valuable," but later they define it more narrowly as "novel and useful,... original and worthwhile."  If you think flexibly – by using the broadening "somehow" in your thinking – you can expect personal creativity more often.  Why?

First, because your creativity can be useful (for “making things better” with problem solving) without being original in a strict narrow definition of original.  A result of your creativity can be "somehow valuable" if it's locally new for your situation, even if it's not globally new in the history of the world, so your result could not be patented.  When you proactively find useful problems to solve usually they won't be globally new, because most ways to “make things better” aren't unique to you, they also have been done in the lives of other people.  But when you define-and-solve a problem independently by yourself, it's "somehow new" because it's new for you.   /   And you can effectively use general process-principles and process-strategies by customizing them for your unique personal situation, to stimulate your own creativity.

Second, broad definitions are educationally useful.  By thinking of creativity as "somehow new and somehow valuable" we can help students recognize that THEY often are creative, even when they're not inventing something “totally original” like a light bulb or cell phone.  This will help us build two-way bridges between school and life, for transfers of knowledge-and-skills, and for transitions of attitudes that include a growth mindset of thinking "I can do better (by learning from life-experience) when I invest intelligent effort in improving."    {design curriculum & instruction so students will do creativity-promoting activities}

[[ maybe use these ideas:

NARROW vs BROAD -- My definition of personally-useful everyday practical creativity — which claims that a fluent generation of ideas-for-options can be creative, even if these options aren't “new and innovative” — is broader than a claim that "if an idea isn't innovative, it isn't creative" that often is assumed when describing strategies for improving innovative creativity.

and a difference between my perspective (that includes a fluent generation of ideas-for-options even if these options aren't necessarily "innovative" and "new") and narrower perspectives on creativity.

You use practical Generative Creativity, with pragmatically useful many times every day, whenever you write a brief "title + introduction" to explain that I want this page to include traditional "creation of new idea" and also pragmatically useful creativity -- practical, productive -- everyday, for life, in context of problem solving -- and / my broad definition of PS is useful for this, to "pull things together" and integrate things.

pragmatically useful creativity -- practical creativity -- productive in everyday life, in context of problem solving --

ProMotion (practical creativity) --

David Perkins says, "Creative thinking is thinking patterned in a way that leads to creative results. ...  The ultimate criterion for creativity is output.  We call a person creative when that person consistently gets creative results, meaning, roughly speaking, original and otherwise appropriate results by the criteria of the domain in question." / getting "appropriate results" requires critical evaluation.

include self-disclaimer?  re: many educators using narrower definitions.

 


 

Guided Creativity  —  Part 2

Creative Thinking motivated-and-guided by Critical Thinking
 

Part 1 begins by encouraging you to "carefully examine this diagram (showing how people use 3 Elements in 3 Comparisons)" so "you can recognize a useful strategy for practical creativity," and ends by linking to this section so "you can see some results of my examining & responding."  Hopefully, my insights (into my verbal-and-visual “summarizing of ideas” in the diagram) will help you develop a deeper understanding of the guided creativity that happens when critical evaluation guides creative generation during a process of problem solving.3 Elements in 3 Comparison-Checks

When you're using creative-and-critical cycles of Generate-Evaluate-Generate-Evaluate-... an effective way to Evaluate is to use evaluative comparisons.  How?  During a problem-solving process of General Design, usually you critically Evaluate an Option (for a Problem-Solution) by comparing your Goals (for the properties you want in a satisfactory Problem-Solution) with two kinds of Information about this Option — your PREDICTIONS (made when you imagine what will happen in the future) or your OBSERVATIONS (made when you observe what is happening in the present or you remember what has happened in the past)* in two kinds of Comparative Evaluations, in a Predictions-Based QUALITY CHECK or Observations-Based QUALITY CHECK.

Your evaluation of this option will help you decide whether to reject it or to accept it as-is;  or you can modify it by asking “in what ways do this option's properties (predicted or observed) differ from the desired properties that I have defined as Goals?” — with your Evaluation showing flaws in the current Option, so you're motivated to Generate a better Option — and then you're guided by asking “how can I creatively modify This Option so its properties will more closely match the desired properties of my Goals?”  In this way, Guided Generation occurs when feedback from your critical Evaluation of This Option first motivates you (so you want to creatively Generate a New Option) and then guides your creative Generation of a New Option in the next cycle of Evaluate-and-Generate during your critical-and-creative process of General Design.   /   measuring progress: You want to Generate a New Option that has better Quality – with “quality” defined by your Goals – and you can use Quality Checks (for the Old Option & New Option) to inform you about your progress, to let you know whether you're actually generating a better-quality Option.

In a similar way, during Science-Design the feedback from your critical Evaluation (in a Reality Check for an Explanatory Theory about “how the world works”) can lead you to revise a Theory when you're “surprised” because PREDICTIONS (based on a Theory) and OBSERVATIONS (of Reality) don't match well.  Then you ask “how can I creatively-and-wisely modify This Theory so its PREDICTIONS will more closely match OBSERVATIONS of Reality?”    {or... instead of focusing on the Theory, you can question ALL factors involved in the Reality Check – the Observations & Predictions, and their logical comparison – and for each of these, ask “what could cause errors and produce a surprising mis-match?”}

 

* You can do creatively clever “detective work” to gather information that is old and new, made by yourself and others, because...  Your OBSERVATIONS can be "made when you observe what is happening in the present or you remember what has happened in the past."  You also can use OBSERVATIONS-of-past or PREDICTIONS-for-future that are made by other people.  Thus, by combining "old and new" with "yourself and others," you can MAKE knowledge-information (OBSERVATIONS or PREDICTIONS) that is new,  and you can FIND knowledge-information that is old {is already existing} by REMEMBERING it in your personal memory or LOCATING it in our collective memory, in what is recorded {is culturally remembered} in books, web-pages, journals, audio & video recordings, etc.

 

Guided Creativity  —  Part 3

This is an application-and-illustration, showing how Guided Creativity (recognized by you in Part 1 and described by me in Part 2) could be used to improve “the party atmosphere” of a dinner you'll be hosting, by improving a relationship.     {of course, the wide range of goals for problem solving includes improved relationships, because this is an extremely important part of life}
 

a general situation:  Imagine that before a decision you creatively generated four options-for-action (A, B, C, D) and after critically evaluating these options you chose C.  Later, you look back on what happened and you think “instead of C, it would have been better to do B2 (a modified version of B)” but earlier you had not creatively generated B2 as a possible option.  In this case your failure to make the better decision (by choosing B2) wasn't due to a lack of wisdom, by considering B2 and unwisely rejecting it.  Instead you were hindered by a lack of creativity when you didn't creatively think “even though B has a weakness (compared with C) it does offer some benefits, so instead of just giving up on B I'll modify it (to convert B into B2) in an effort to decrease its weakness and/or increase its benefits, to discover whether B2 eventually can become better than C.”

a specific illustration:  Imagine that you're hosting a dinner party with six people, and you decide to have a seating arrangement, using name cards.  You consider having Laurie and Susan sit across from each other, because they usually have fascinating conversations that they “invite others to join” and their enthusiasm would help convert your dinner into a joyfully fun party.  But... recently Laurie and Susan have been arguing, with mutually unfriendly attitudes.  You consider Options A & D, to invite only one of them (A) or neither (D) but each is a close friend, so you reject these options.  With things as-is, you predict that Option B (with Buddies sitting near each other) would be worse than Option C (they're seated far apart).  But... you creatively ask “what if I try to modify B, to make it better?  could I be a peacemaker before the evening, helping them improve their relationship?”  So you try to convert B into B2, and it works!  Laurie and Susan return to being “friendly friends” so you have them sit across the table in the center (Option B2) where they will stimulate enjoyable interactions between people to their left & right, and this makes the dinner party more fun for them and for everyone else.

 

Guided Generation:  During this decision-making process your Creative Generation of a new option (B2) was motivated-and-guided by your Critical Evaluation.  How?  First you OBSERVED (in reality) the current unhealthy relationship of Laurie & Susan, and recognized this as a weakness of B when you PREDICTED (in your imagination) that the actual properties of B (with former Buddies sitting close together) wouldn't match the desired properties you wanted in your dinner party, and this Quality Check (a Comparison of PREDICTIONS with GOALS) motivated you to improve B (instead of rejecting it) by modifying B.*  Your creative process-of-modifying was guided by recognizing that the relationship was causing the mis-matching of reality with hopes, so you modified B to make it B2 whose actual properties (better interactions during your dinner, due to the improved relationship) would be a closer match with your desired properties.

 

* In a second stage of your overall problem solving, you design a strategy for converting B into B2 — returning the relationship to being healthy — by creatively generating options and critically evaluating options.  You quickly decide that although obviously they should talk with each other eventually, you won't begin by talking with both of them together, so...  should you talk first with Laurie? or Susan?  what will you say?  in what ways might they respond, and (for each possible response) what can you say, and how?  {you're Making a Plan that includes Planning How to Improvise}   If your actions are wisely planned and done well, you are predicting that the overall result will be to “make it better” for them (and you & others) and for your dinner party.

 


Teaching Creativity in Schools:
Education for Creative Thinking

 

Plenty of “creativity training” is used in the business community, done by companies for their own people, or by other companies (or individuals) who offer this kind of education.

There is some activity in K-12 schools and higher education.  But the rare “thinking skills” programs that are available tend to focus on critical thinking more than creative thinking, although some combine critical thinking with creative thinking, and a few focus on creativity.

This section includes Resources and Creativity-Promoting Activities:

 

Resources  –  Improving our Education for Creativity

The Quest for Creativity in Schools (by Beth Holland for Education Week)

Creativity, Culture and Education (home - story & people - programs - publications) has a searchable Research Library that includes their research & reviews.

Yes, You Can Teach and Assess Creativity!

Edutopia asks (re: assessment & creativity while interviewing Angela Duckworth) In Schools, Are We Measuring What Matters?

Adobe describes their research showing why Creativity Should be Taught as a Course – and Adobe provides support for creativity education in k-12 & higher, plus business.

Videos:  You can search YouTube for [creative thinking in schools] and [ted creativity in education] and other terms & combinations.    {i.o.u. – Soon, maybe in June 2021, I'll link to individual videos.}

ERIC Digests have excellent overview-summaries about education that stimulates creativity (and curiosity) in counseling and in classrooms (for young children and for gifted in language arts) and adults – and you can search for more about creativity and CRITICAL THINKING and other topics.   And ERIC (its FAQ) lets you search for ideas about thinking skills (creativity & creative thinking and critical thinking, decision making,...) and much more,...

including (by people from ERIC) the Educator's Reference Desk.

 

The International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State University offers a thorough education in creativity, although I'm sure they say “this is just a start, a launching pad for your own explorations.”  You can read their Creativity Collection of students' workprojects and theses (abstract & whole) – and search the Center's Creative Studies Research Guide.

 


 
Creativity-Promoting Activities
that Improve Growth Mindset

 
Promoting Creativity:

With an effective general strategy, teachers can promote creativity by letting their students do activities that provide opportunities to be creative and stimulate creativity, while encouraging students so they are expecting to “do it better” because they are developing-and-using a growth mindset, and helping students learn useful principles & strategies for increasing their creativity.

 
Building Bridges:

When we show students how they use a similar problem-solving process (with design thinking) for almost everything they do in life, we can design a wide range of activities that let us build two-way educational bridges,

• from Life into School, building on the experiences of students, to improve confidence:  When we help students recognize how they have been using a problem-solving process of design thinking in a wide range of problem-solving situations,... then during a classroom design activity they can think “I have done this before (during design-in-life) so I can do it again (for design-in-school)” to increase their confidence about learning.

• from School into Life, appealing to the hopes of students, to improve motivation:  We can show each student how they will be using design thinking for "almost everything they do" in their future life (in their future whole-life, inside & outside school) so the design-thinking skills they are improving in school will transfer from school into life and will help them achieve their personal goals for life.  When students want to learn in school because they are learning for life, this will increase their motivations to learn.

 
Improving Educational Equity:

When we build these two bridges (past-to-present from Life into School, and present-to-future from School into Life) we can improve transfers of learning in time (past-to-present & present-to-future) and between areas (in school-life & whole-life) for whole-person education — and transitions in attitudes to improve a student's confidence & motivations.  This will promote diversity and equity in education by increasing confidence & motivation for a wider range of students, and providing a wider variety of opportunities for learning in school, and for success in school.  We want to “open up the options” for all students, so they will say “yes, I can do this” for a wider variety of career-and-life options, in areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and non-STEM.

 
Designing Curriculum & Instruction:
 

An effective strategy for a Goal-Directed Designing of Curriculum & Instruction is to...

DEFINE GOALS for desired outcomes, for ideas-and-skills we want students to learn,

DESIGN INSTRUCTION with learning activities (and associated teaching activities) that will provide opportunities for experience with these ideas & skills, and help students learn more from their experiences.    {more about Defining Goals and Designing Instruction}

 

[[ I.O.U. - Later, maybe in late-2022, I'll find and link-to some general resources for creativity-promoting activities.

 

Creative Conversation  (with planning-and-improvising)

[[ iou - this section will continue being developed in mid-June 2021 ]]

Everyday Living:  [[intro - this is a topic that will motivate students and will help them form two-way bridges between life & school for an extremely valuable skill (creative conversation) they know is important for them (and everyone else) in many ways ]]

Principles: [[life provides many opportunities for creative improvisations in projects & activities (each of these general categories can include conversation as a common real-life application)  /  a 50-50 principle from music – of sometimes (but not always) meeting expectations, by smoothly blending expectations with some surprises, in a creative mixture – can be used in art (music, stories, drama, comedy,...) and in conversation (that can use stories) -- e.g. when you listen to music, you have musical expectations and music that is “interesting” has a mixture of what is expected (for stability & understanding) and is unexpected (for variety/spice), and CT is especially useful for adding the unexpected -- you also can do this in conversation.

Finding Topics: [[find pages for linking-to

Creative Improvising: design a plan that includes planning to creatively improvise:  e.g. you can use the strategy of Vin Scully -- who justifiably was honored by many "hall of fames" during his long career as a baseball announcer for the Dodgers (in Brooklyn & Los Angeles) -- who would prepare thoroughly before each game, and then during the game he would plan to decide "what to say and when" based on what was happening during each inning, each pitch, each play;  during times with action he would colorfully describe the action, and during times of no-action he would colorfully tell stories (about players, history,...) based on his preparation. ]]

Creative Improv:  [[yes and... is a general strategy used in comedy improv, can be used in general improv of many kinds, including conversation

General Strategies [[find pages & videos for linking-to

 

Creative Detective Work  (i.e. Creative Scientific Investigation)

[[ iou - this section will continue being developed in mid-June 2021 ]]

[[what does a detective do?  scientists are detectives, they just have a different focus-for-investigation;  combining, as in CSI

[[e.g. the creativity-and-logic of Sherlock Holmes, combining creative info-finding [clue finding] with creative logic (with deduction,...) - Holmes as Scientist & Artist -

[[an unfortunately common real-world application, investigating news to determine if it's "fake news" or is reliably accurate  /  facts + interpretation, two aspects of accuracy  /  we should use only a correspondence definition for truth (I use broad definitions for problem-etc because they're useful for education, but use a narrow definition for truth, with precision)

 

I.O.U. - Later, maybe in June 2021, this section will have more information about creativity-stimulating activities & programs, for K-12 and beyond.   {and there will be more in the links-page for TEACHING ACTIVITIES}


 
Scientific Research about Creativity

• There are research-resources in other parts of this page:  pros & cons of brainstorming & Creativity, Culture and Education (their research & reviews) & ERIC Digests & 86 years of Models for the Creative Process and searching the Creative Studies Research Guide of the The International Center for Studies in Creativity and reading students' theses;  and research references from Visual-Literacy.org

• also in other parts of the page:  ideas from others (with lots of links) about Why teach creativity? and what is it?Principles & Strategies for Increasing CreativityEducation for Creativity.

 

ERIC is Education Resources Information Center, a database {comprehensive  search-able  peer reviewed} offered by the Institute of Education Sciences.  For example,

Multiple Creativities in Young Children – and you can explore, to find many related research studies in ERIC, by clicking one of the "Descriptors" and then "Search collection using this descriptor".   {what are multiple creativities?}

 

reviews of research help you get a “big picture” overview:

    Creativity in Education by Anna Craft for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
    What the Research Tells Us About Team Creativity and Innovation by Roger Schwarz, in Harvard Business Review.
    A Brief Review of Creativity (by Johanna Dickhut, with comments by two other students at Rochester Institute of Technology).
 
    Creativity Research in Music Education: A Review, 1922-1962-1979 (by Carol Peterson Richardson & Michael Saffle, 1983) (Google Books).
    Creativity Research in Music Education: A Review, 1980-2005 (by Donald Running, 2008).
 
    Review of Research on Creativity, 1906-1966 (by Marshall Hahn, for Minnesota Research Coordinating Unit, 1968).
    Creativity - A Selective Review of Research (by James Freeman, in ERIC, 1968).
 

book reviews:  Creativity, Ordinary Thinking, and the Cultures of Creativity Research (a book review by Paul Silvia, of Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts by Robert Weisberg;   and a book review (by MaryBeth Zacharias) of Creativity: A New Vocabulary and editorial reviews (if you scroll down).

• research papers:  Sudden Understanding: Aha! Favors The Prepared Mind ("We have begun to understand how the brain prepares for creative insight. [because chance favors the prepared mind] This will hopefully lead to techniques for facilitating it." -

 

Journals about Creativity:  These offer some articles free, and others if you pay or if you have access through a library/institution:

    Creativity Research Journal (aims & scope) has partial free access, including their Top-Cited Articles & The Nature of Creativity and more.
    Thinking Skills and Creativity has some free content when you click "Open Access Articles" (for info, click "Supports Open Access") and free abstracts for all articles, and others for pay or with library/institution access).
    Annual Review of Psychology (abstract free, full text if you pay or have library/institution access) has two years devoted to Creativity, in 2004 by Mark A. Runco, and 2010 by Beth A. Hennessey & Teresa M. Amabile.
    ... and The International Center for Studies in Creativity offers a Creative Studies Research Guide that lets you search for articles in 5 journalsCreativity and Innovation Management - Creativity Research Journal - The Journal of Creative Behavior [the academic journal of Creative Education Foundation] - Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts [abstracts - wikipedia] - Thinking Skills and Creativity.

 



APPENDIX:
 

You can learn about Incubation that Stimulates (Allows?) Creativity from Stimulate your Creative Thinking (by Edward Glassman) and Enhancing Creative Incubation (by Keith Sawyer, for Psychology Today) and Wikipedia and a summary from the page-editor:

 

INCUBATION — using vacations to solve problems

If you work on a problem for awhile but don't solve it, and then stop thinking about it, when you return to the problem you may be able to solve it.

 

How?

Timing:  A non-working break, between active problem-solving attempts, can be short or long, lasting minutes, hours, days, weeks, or longer.  Using analogy between hatching eggs and ideas, the waiting period between solution attempts is called incubation. 

Activities:  During a break, you can work on another problem, study another subject, do non-thinking activities, lay down and rest, go for a run, wash the dishes, listen to music, talk with a friend, or just relax in isolated silence;  or sleep, and then think about the problem when you awake, before getting involved in other activities.

 

Preparation and Expectation:

    To hatch ideas, you must give your mind something to work with.  The closer you come to a solution on your first attempt, the more likely it is that you'll succeed on the second attempt or later attempts.   The incubation process is On-Off-On:  you do active thought (with solution as the goal), take a break, then do more active thought.  Don't be lazy (or cowardly) by using incubation as an excuse to procrastinate, to avoid a challenge you should face.  But don't waste time.  If you're making progress, keep going!  If not, decide whether you should persevere now, or if doing something else for awhile is a better use of your time.
    Expect a solution.  When you take a break, tell yourself “The next time I see this problem, I will be able to solve it.”

 

Why?

• a new approach:  If you get stuck in an unproductive rut, breaking loose (and moving onto a better path) may be easier when time has weakened the rut's hold on the way you are thinking.

• an alert mind:  If fatigue has temporarily decreased your mental productivity, a break can restore the fresh thinking and optimistic attitude you need for success.

• new knowledge:  Between attempts, you may learn new information, or discover a key insight, that helps you solve the problem the next time you see it.

• subconscious thought:  Even when you are not actively working on a problem, thinking that occurs “under the surface” (and during sleep) may help you find a solution later.   {e.g. Thomas Edison relaxing until "the penny drops" as explained below.}

 

Open the Door to Your Creative Genius (by Duncan Wardle) includes this:

"For those of you said [responding to an earlier question] falling asleep or waking up is when you have your best ideas, this is the brain state I call “Thoughtful Theta.” It’s the stage just as you are nodding off but not yet in a deep sleep, or you are coming out of a deep sleep back into some level of consciousness.

Thomas Edison was a Thoughtful Theta, and If you’ve ever heard of the expression “When The Penny Drops,” (that ‘Eureka’ moment when that big idea just drops right in there); it comes from an experiment conducted by Thomas Edison. To open the door between his conscious and subconscious brain just a little deeper, Edison would sit in his armchair and place a penny between his knees and a small tin tray on the floor below. As he nodded off to sleep, his muscles would relax and the penny would drop, hitting the tin tray and making enough noise to wake him up. He would immediately write down what ever he was thinking, and as you know he went on to have more invention patents in the U.S. than any other inventor in the 20th century.  .....

All Thoughtful Thetas should ensure a notepad is kept nearby at bedtime, so that those incredible and often fleeting ideas can be captured on paper before they disappear indefinitely."

 


 

Brain Activities (left & right) during Musical Improvisation:  In a fascinating research study, brain activities were observed in jazz guitarists during their improvising.  The scientists concluded that "creativity is a ‘right-brain ability’ when a person deals with an unfamiliar situation but that creativity draws on well-learned, left-hemisphere routines when a person is experienced at the task."  But when their data analysis considered the factor of experience, for each level of experience (ranging from a little to a lot) "virtually all of the brain-activity differences between highly creative and less-creative performances [as judged by expert musicians] were found in the right hemisphere, mostly in the frontal region."  These observations seem related to the different thinking strategies (by controlling metacognition) used by people for learning and/or for performing.  Musicians with less experience are learning-while-improvising, but those with more experience can focus on performing well by using the improvising skills they already have learned.  In both groups (inexperienced & experienced) musical creativity is occurring, but the creative process is different.  In a possible application for education, "By taking into consideration how brain activity changes with experience, this research may contribute to the development of new methods for training people to be creative in their field."

 

 

a disclaimer & explanation:  Probably this paragraph will be cut from the page.  Originally it was in a section that begins, "Creative-while-Critical Multitasking?  No."  Now it's here because I know that multitasking doesn't occur so the "maybe" is technically wrong.  The reason I've been thinking "maybe" is due to uncertainties in our definitions of thinking that is creative and is critical,  i.e. can thinking be either purely-critical or purely-critical, or can it be mostly-one but with some of the other “mixed in”?  I'm not certain.

Creative-while-Critical Multitasking?  Maybe.  In this page I'm over-simplifying (because it's useful) by considering Generation and Evaluation to be the results of thinking that is purely-creative or purely-critical.  But in un-simplified reality, probably there are overlaps when we think in ways that are mostly-creative or mostly-critical, but not either in pure form.   I say "probably" because the interactions are too complex to accurately know.  For example, during Guided Generation are you quickly shifting back & forth between creative & critical, or (as in common mis-perceptions of multitasking) is some of your thinking an overlapping blend of creative-and-critical?  Probably it's "quickly shifting" but I don't know for certain.  And we don't need to know, because to improve our practical creativity we just need to know that productive interactions of creative-with-critical will happen more often when we use thinking strategies to effectively optimize the interactions.

 

 





A DISCLAIMER:  The internet offers an abundance of resources, so my main challenge has been selectivity, and I have tried to find high-quality pages for you to read.  But the pages above don't necessarily represent views of the American Scientific Affiliation.  As always, we encourage you to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate everything you read.
 
This website for Whole-Person Education has TWO KINDS OF LINKS:
an ITALICIZED LINK keeps you inside a page, moving you to another part of it, and
 a NON-ITALICIZED LINK opens another page.  Both keep everything inside this window, 
so your browser's BACK-button will always take you back to where you were.
 

The area of THINKING SKILLS has sub-areas for
Thinking Skills in Education and Life: Effective Problem-Solving Methods
Education for Critical Thinking in Life     Education for Creative Thinking in Life

 
This links-page – Education for Creativity: Critical Thinking for Everyday Living
(being written by Craig Rusbult, PhD, during life on a road less traveled)
is https://asa3.org/ASA/education/think/creative.htm
copyright © 2001-2021 by Craig Rusbult, all rights reserved.
{ continuing to be updated/revised in June 2021 }
 

All links in this page were checked-and-fixed on July 11, 2018.
 

ASA Blue-Sky Banner

 
SITEMAP for our Education Website