By Carol Hernandez, Ed.D.
Senior Instructional Designer
carol.hernandez@stonybrook.edu
Perhaps we all in some way, strive to be creative and to use creativity in our teaching and learning practices. But have you stopped to think about how creativity is defined and measured? How is it taught?
Creativity is a critical skill as identified by the 21st Century Skills Framework, which focuses on a comprehensive list of abilities, skills, and attitudes that young people around the world will need to be successful in their personal, professional, and civic lives. This is becoming increasingly important as each day we are witnessing artificial intelligence and other technologies showing up to help us do our work. While at the same time, there is no end to the number of wicked problems we are faced with in every aspect of our lives, which may feel increasingly complex.
Complexity on its own, is not inherently good or bad. But it does present us with an opportunity to be creative in our teaching practice. In the 30s and 40s, Ellis Paul Torrance was a teacher in Georgia who noticed that some of his students had off-beat ideas, but were not necessarily fitting into the traditional classroom structure. He believed that creativity and standard intelligence tests were not measuring the same thing. He wanted to explore and measure creativity on its own, which led him to create the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. He is now considered the Father of Creativity Research. And you can learn more about his ideas here. As defined by Torrance, creativity is (1966, p. 6):
- A process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on;
- identifying the difficulty;
- searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies;
- testing and retesting these hypotheses and possible modifying and retesting them;
- and finally communicating the results.
Using this definition, how could you adjust your teaching practice to help your students be more creative? If you’d like to test your own creativity, there are a number of free tests online. Here is one offered by AULIVE, an online resource for creativity and innovation.
References
Torrance, E. P. (1966). Torrance tests of creative thinking—norms technical manual research edition—verbal tests, forms A and B—figural tests, forms A and B. Princeton: Personnel Pres. Inc.