Working definition of creativity and if it can be taught.
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What is creativity, * and * can creativity be taught, or can it be learned? , no dictionary definitions.) Someone can learn to play the piano, or can be taught to do calculus, or can be trained to write a short story. Is that learning, that teaching, that training the same thing as being creative? Why or why not?
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Solution Summary
This solution offers a description, which is not taken from a dictionary, of creativity and whether or not such creativity can be taught.
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The following analysis of creativity was taken from 'Human Motivation', 3rd ed., by Robert E. Franken:
? Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. (page 396)
? Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:
1. need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation
2. need to communicate ideas and values
3. need to solve problems (page 396)
? In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown. (page 394)
From Creativity - Beyond the Myth of Genius, by Robert W. Weisberg.
? ..."creative" refers to novel products of value, as in "The airplane was a creative invention." "Creative" also refers to the person who produces the work, as in, ?Picasso was creative." "Creativity," then refers both to the capacity to produce such works, as in "How can we foster our employees' creativity?" and to the activity of generating such products, as in "Creativity requires hard work." (page 4)
? All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation." (page 4)
From Creativity - Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
? Ways that "creativity" is commonly used:
1. Persons who express unusual thoughts, who are interesting and stimulating - in short, people who appear to unusually bright.
2. People who experience the world in novel and ...
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