Annotated Bibliography

Creativity & Behavior:

                          

Ritchie, Shirley Peeler. (1980). Creativity and risk-taking in young children. Greensboro: The University of North Carolina

In this book, the author examined self-assessment of risk-taking attitudes of young children in relationship to IQ and creativity. In this study, risk-taking was included in the model as an important means of assessing affective traits of creativity to find out relationships between IQ, creativity, and risk-taking attitudes of young children. The data were collected using teacher judgment (Renzulli-Hartman Scale of Creativity), subjects' self-assessment of risk-taking (PACT), and the Slosson Intelligence Test. The subjects were 48 boys and girls in kindergarten through third grade in 3 schools in piedmont North Carolina. Subjects were selected by their teachers as highly creative. Results of analysis of data showed no relationship between subjects' self-assessment of risk-taking and teachers' rating of creativity. The researcher concluded that subjects' attitudes toward risk-taking were a better means of measuring creative traits of young children than teachers' judgment.

 

Shivley, Joe E., Feldhusen, John F. & Treffinger, Donald J. (1972). Developing Creativity and Related Attitudes. The Journal of Experimental Education, 41 (2), 63-69.

In this study, researchers examined the relationships between creativity and required attitudes for problem solving. They chose sixteen fifth-grade teachers and 377 students for experimental classes. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were used as pretests and post tests and the Childhood Attitude Inventory for Problem Solving was given as a posttest. Eight of the experimental classes used sixteen lessons of the Purdue Creative Thinking Program (PCTP) for five weeks and eight used the Productive Thinking Program (PTP). Eight teachers used relevant discussion, eight did not; eight teachers were high and eight were low in creative ability. The result of this study showed that students in all conditions made significant gains on verbal and nonverbal originality and nonverbal fluency. Teachers who were low in creative ability and teachers who engaged in supplementary activities and discussion also tended to have classes with lower means than their counterparts.

 

Smith, Gudmund J. W. (1983). Creativity and anxiety: An experimental study. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 24 (1), 107-115. 

In this study, the researcher tested a group of 31 psychiatric patients with anxiety by using a percept-genetic (PG) test measuring creativity or willingness to reconstruct subjective interpretations of the stimulus. For half of the subjects, a threatening motif was presented subliminally during part of the PG series. The researcher estimated the subjects’ urge to create and their anxiety through interviewing. Taking into account their urge to be creative, the clinical subjects received few positive scores on the PG test. The subliminal addition to the anxiety level did not facilitate creative functioning that was the case with the normal subjects. The result of this study showed that the main obstacles to creative functioning seemed to be serious anxiety.

 

Rosenthal, Robert, Baratz, Stephen S. & Hall, Clay M. (1974).Teacher behavior, teacher expectations, and gains in pupils' rated creativity. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 124(1), 115-121.

The researchers examined how teacher behavior and expectation affect black students’ creativity. In their experiment, approximately 1/5 of the black children in urban area showed unusual potential for creativity. The high potential students in the 5th grade also showed significant effects of having been expected. Those 5th graders who had been expected to grow in creativity also showed significant effects of teachers' expectancies upon their IQ scores. According to their research, greater gains in creativity scores were made by children whose teachers behaved in a more motivated, more child-centered, more professional, and more encouraging manner.

Fostering Creativity in Education:

Hong, Eun Sook, Hartzell, Stephanie A. & Greene, Mary T. (2009). Fostering Creativity in the Classroom: Effects of Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs, Motivation, and Goal Orientation. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 43 (3), 192–208.

Through this article, the researchers examined the relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity. They measured teachers’ practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, task commitment, creative skill use, and collaboration as indicators of their effort to foster students’ creative thinking. Through this research, the authors found the three following facts. 1) Teachers' learning goal orientation was the most significant teacher attribute for all five creativity-fostering instructional practices. 2) Teachers with sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and with high intrinsic motivation for creative work also reported supporting student creativity through some of their instructional practices. 3) Teachers' motivation for challenging work, beliefs about learning, or performance goals did not significantly predict most of the creativity-fostering practices.

 

Briska, I. (2012). Creativity as pedagogical problem: student teachers' view. Rural Environment. Education. Personality, 5, 27-34

In the framework of the article, the author analyzed interrelations between creativity and actual educational principles. Through the empiric study – factor analysis of student teachers’ survey, the author investigated pre-service teachers’ concepts and beliefs about good pedagogical practice from the point of view of promotion of students’ creativity in classroom. The results of the research showed essential contradictions between the creativity as significant goal of 21st century education and student teachers’ understanding of teacher’s responsibility and professional possibilities to promote it. The author not only effectively substantiated current problems and challenges for teacher educators through the research but also suggested and advised for the teacher education curriculum about the strengthening student teachers’ readiness to foster their students’ creativity.

Art education & Creativity:

Gnezda, Nicole M. (2011). Cognition and Emotions in the Creative Process. Art Education, 64(1), 47-52.

 

In this article Gnezda (2011) argues that understanding complex neurological and emotional operations would be helpful to fully understand and foster students’ creativity since creativity is a cognitive-emotional manipulative experience that is accessible to all people. The author also emphasized art teachers are most successful when they teach the whole child, with an awareness of the student inside as well as the work that is being produced outside. Therefore, when teaching students about their own creativity and that of artists they study, it is helpful to understand complex neurological and emotional operations that are active during creative processes. In this article the author explains these operations in order to help art teachers more fully understand what happens inside their students as they create, and she suggests ways teachers can effectively foster their students' creativity.

Free De Backer, Koen Lombaerts, Tom De Mette, Tine Buffel & Willem Elias. (2012). Creativity in Artistic Education: Introducing Artists into Primary Schools. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 31(1) 53–66.

Throughout this article, the authors pointed out that artistic creativity does not occur to a great extent in primary school practice even though it needs to take a significant role of arts education. They argued that art education projects need to focus on students’ development of creativity by means of introducing artists with their divergent working methods into primary schools. They also claimed that collaboration with artists can not only encourage teachers' artistic creative work but also effectively motivate students’ creativity and imagination. They concluded that since most projects are short-lived and the means for a long-term project are limited, results in the area of sustainable outcomes concerning artistic creative work with teachers are limited. They advised that the availability of financial resources is an important condition in order to realize a mentality change towards artistic creativity in education.

 

Correlation between creativity and cultural or environmental influence:

 

Cheng, Vivian M.Y. (2011). Infusing creativity into Eastern classrooms: Evaluations from student perspectives. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 6 (1), 67–87.

 

The author at Hong Kong Institute of Education focuses on methods for fostering creativity based on Eastern classroom environment and explain about relation between creativity and students’ behaviors and attitudes. According to her research, students perceived improvements in their attitudes, conceptions, abilities and behaviors for creative thinking when they were continuously motivated by particular teaching methods and learning environment. Students considered this creative learning as an active and playful learning which encouraged them to think boarder and wider, to appreciate creative ideas, and to develop their curiosity, confidence, risk taking attitude and initiation in learning. The results of this study highlighted several important directions and factors for Asian educators to consider when infusing creativity learning into their regular lessons.

Kim, Kyung Hee. (2009). Cultural influence on creativity: the relationship between Asian culture (Confucianism) and creativity among Korean Educators. Journal of Creative Behavior, 43, 73-93.

 

Based on the fact that East Asian cultures including Korean culture have been strongly influenced by the principals of Confucianism, the author research the impact of Confucianism on creativity and the relationship between Confucianism and creativity. In the study, she tested the hypothesis that a person who adheres to Confucianism will be less creative and that an inverse relationship should be present between adherence to Confucianism and creativity scores. The study involved comparing 184 Korean educators’ scores on a measure of Confucianism (Eastern-Western Perspective Scale) with their scores on a measure of creativity (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural).

The results indicate that Confucianism is negatively related to creativity. Especially, some elements of Confucianism such as unconditional obedience, gender inequality, gender role expectations, and suppression of expression, may present cultural blocks to creativity.