“Just Be Creative!”
Jeff McLaughlin
Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Published in Rychly, L. (2024). What do we mean by that? Interrogating familiar expressions in education. Myers Education Press.
Pronita Mehrotra (2021), an entrepreneur and advocate for creative thinking in schools, has written that “viewed from the economic lens [emphasis added], it’s clear that creativity, which by its very definition makes things non-routine, should be the most important skill to possess” (para. 1). Mehotra thus presents a defense for creativity in schools based upon practical and corporate considerations (“Creative thinkers are good for the bottom line”). Classroom teachers, on the other hand, are more likely to view creativity from a more student-centered perspective (“Creative thinkers are self-fulfilled and cognitively well-rounded”).
This difference in perspectives is problematic if one is seeking a clear answer to the question: What do we mean by “Just be creative?” Across the board, the economic outcomes of education in the United States have come to be valued over those outcomes related primarily to the health and well-being of individuals. In this context, creativity comes to be “viewed from an economic lens,” as Mehotra states above, and is thereby accorded a legitimate place in the school curriculum. Creative thinking is promoted as a “practical skill” with usefulness to be demonstrated when students finally enter the corporate world and use this skill to help their employers thrive in a competitive marketplace. So, a teacher’s answer to the question, “What do we mean by creative thinking?” may differ significantly from that of school administrators and those in the corporate world whose funding priorities often determine the content of school curricula.
The “corporatist” model of creativity is, in fact, very much at odds with typical conceptions of creativity prevailing in the contemporary educational community. Teacher education programs typically include coursework in educational psychology and child development. These courses normally incorporate research and theories related to creative thinking, specifically as connected to classroom practice. One such theorist is E. Paul Torrance (1972, 2008), a pioneer in the identification and assessment of creative ability, who defined creativity as a cognitive process and devoted himself to predicting what kinds of individuals could master the process, what kind of climates made it grow, and what products would be involved. Torrance developed a series of tests designed to assess creativity-related dispositions such as fluency (quantity of ideas), flexibility (diversity of ideas), and originality (uniqueness of ideas). Presumably, a teacher, based upon scores in these different areas, could identify the creative strengths and weaknesses of individual test takers. Such diagnostic information could then be used to design appropriate classroom activities and other interventions to either develop or enhance a student’s creative ability. According to Torrance, as students develop creative dispositions, they become more capable of deep understanding and flexible thinking about school subjects. Creative engagement in subject matter also supports intrinsic motivation and persistence in learning, both of which are student-centered outcomes.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996), a psychologist and teacher, advocated a five-step process that lends itself well to fostering creativity in classroom settings. The steps – which may or may not unfold in this order – are preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, and elaboration. One of Csikszentmihalyi’s main interests was how creative activity contributes to intellectual focus and enhances students’ engagement in self-satisfying activities.
Researchers Ronald Beghetto and James Kaufman (2013) described creativity as the ability to produce original, productive, and task appropriate solutions to problems. They also elaborated some classroom implications as follows: “Teachers who understand that creativity combines both originality and task appropriateness are in a better position to integrate student creativity into the everyday curriculum in ways that complement, rather than compete with, academic learning” (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2013, p. 12). Thus, Beghetto and Kaufman agree with Torrance and Csikszentmihalyi in asserting that creativity is a valuable disposition “in its own right,” rather than merely a skill to master on the way to success in the corporate world.
This is just a sampling of typical classroom-related notions of creativity. Similar conceptions have been presented and applied in pedagogical settings by Guilford (1967), Renzulli (2017), Sternberg (2017), and Robinson (2022). A common implication of these theories is that teachers can and should help students become more creative. Further, it is assumed that the development of certain component skills will result in an increase of creative ability in students.
So, what’s the problem? So far, this all sounds like good pedagogical practice and indeed, there is nothing inherently problematic about developing creative thinkers. On the contrary, evidence suggests that, if anything, creative thinking is “at risk” in our contemporary test-obsessed school environment. Indeed, a casual walk through some typical American public schools might suggest that the real goal is to systematically educate creativity out of children. The intense curricular focus on classroom preparation for standardized tests often leaves little room for “special subjects” like art and music. Even social studies, a subject that lends itself to creative problem solving, is often de-emphasized to make room for the “tested subjects,” namely math and reading. It would seem that, if anything, we should be advocating for restoring and revitalizing creativity in the classroom. However, as with all innovations, it’s important to look at underlying perspectives and motivations for classroom practice. In the case of creativity, such a deeper analysis can be troubling. As demonstrated in what follows, the issue is not creativity itself but rather certain justifications and accompanying strategies that are employed for promoting creative development via school curricula.
So, to return to the central questions: When we ask students to be creative, what are we really asking them to do … and more importantly, why? Creativity for what? I will suggest two messages that are most often conveyed with a directive to “just be creative.” Then, I will propose an alternative message that would better connect classroom practice – as it concerns the development of creativity – more closely with a deeper consideration of current theoretical perspectives.
Message # 1. Individuals need creative thinking skills to succeed in a competitive economic environment; in other words, creativity should be valued and developed as an important job skill. This is an instrumentalist (and corporatist) notion of creativity. As Vassallo (2017) stated, “Those who are concerned with global competition, innovation, technological advancement, and corporate sustainability tout the importance of making creativity an explicit, formal pedagogical goal” (p. 68). Further, “creativity has become a means or instrument for achieving particular ends that are economic and individualized as opposed to democratic and humanizing” (p.71).
Admittedly, the instrumentalist justification for creativity is often articulated – by advocates – in order to make creativity seem palatable within a pedagogical setting where thinking “out of the box” might be interpreted as an unnecessary “filler” or merely a “fun activity” in which to engage when the important stuff has been taken care of. Or, and especially relevant in our current political climate, creative development might be interpreted as nothing more than “free thinking” and thereby classified with other so-called “woke” objectives like respect for diversity, equity, critical thinking, and social-emotional development. By “polishing up” creative thinking activities with the veneer of career-oriented respectability, educators may find creativity to be more amenable within the bureaucracy of school boards and local politics. But whatever the motivation, the reductionist economic approach to “just being creative” needs to be examined and called out for its true intentions and underlying perspectives.
A creative workforce serves corporate capitalism by assuring the continuous replacement of existing consumer “wants and needs” with new sources of marketable (and profitable) value. Novelty rules in the marketplace, so corporate profitability and competitive advantage depend on the perpetual creation of new consumer desires along with development of the commodities that satisfy those desires for a price. The problem surfaces when, within this context, creative thinking is valued only to the extent that its results serve to enhance the economic objectives of capitalist / corporate culture. Similarly, in the classroom, creative thinking is encouraged and accepted as long as its results are confined within the prescribed limits of school culture, which these days tends to mean “tested subjects” within the curriculum. For example, it is generally acceptable to explore alternate interpretations of a short story or to “play around” with original ideas for designing a school garden (both of which are, on their own, laudable and worthwhile objectives). But it might be less acceptable for students to challenge and offer creative and serious alternatives, for example, to school itself, to standardized testing, to capitalism itself, or to systems that exploit workers and facilitate injustice and inequality. In other words, as long as the problems to be addressed are confined to expectations within existing school culture, creative thinking is sanctioned and even encouraged.
However, and to the contrary, the central tenets of creative thinking elaborated by prominent theorists and thinkers in the area delegitimize such a view of the purposes and possibilities of creative thinking. For example, according to Sawyer (2015), the goal of creative thinking in school should be to enable a deeper understanding of content. To this end, students should be allowed and encouraged to invent, improvise, and work collaboratively to develop and examine their own ideas. While it could be argued that such “deep and wide” learning actually benefits student performance on standardized tests, these goals are not typically articulated in contemporary classrooms. Rather, factual knowledge is prioritized and developed through highly scripted curriculum materials that leave little room for invention or improvisation. Creative thinking, when it is encouraged at all, occurs within strict limits and generally does not allow for thinking that extends too far afield of very specific curricular goals (i.e., tested skills and knowledge) or, for that matter, a teacher’s comfort with unexpected or unconventional ideas. Once again, this conception of creativity mirrors the priorities of the corporate environment, where new ideas are encouraged to the extent that they contribute to the economic bottom line which, in school, is represented by standardized test scores. Once the important work of test preparation is completed, perhaps at the end of the school day, students might be rewarded with some creative activities that are enjoyable but most likely disconnected from the actual content presented earlier, during the “important” and “serious” parts of the school day. Creativity is thus disconnected from both meaningful content and from student initiative. It is, in this manner, reduced to a “skill for success” to be developed alongside other skills contributing to the marketability of future graduates and employees.
An additional way that creativity is valued in the corporate world is as a means for maintaining productive and responsive work settings, particularly in environments of diminishing resources. Creative managers employ creative strategies to produce happy, compliant, and productive workers who do not challenging corporate systems of exploitation and injustice. In school settings, a parallel exists in the use of creative activities as ice-breakers or warm-up activities, designed to help students focus and transition into regular classroom activities. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with such activities, but their value is compromised when disconnected from meaningful content or when the process does not allow for the kind of creative thinking that challenges existing structures, routines, and priorities.
Message # 2. The best way to facilitate creative development in the classroom is by practicing a defined set of isolated skills. This is a reductive (rationalist) notion of creativity, but one which closely parallels the way vocational skills are developed in the workplace. As students engage in scripted creative thinking exercises, the actual content of their thinking is less important than the so-called proficiencies they are applying. Two undeniable qualities of these types of “creativity exercises” is that they are easy to implement and they tend to be fun. Further, they can be easily integrated into the classroom schedule as time fillers at the end of class or at the end of the school day. So, in these contexts, students enjoy themselves (not a bad idea in itself) but learn little or nothing about the inherent value of creative thinking or about the actual value of their own creative ideas. Creative activity is safely limited to isolated and content-free tasks like brainstorming alternate uses for a wooden spoon or developing an elaborate list of possible names for an imaginary planet.
In a scripted curriculum, results and endpoints are pre-determined and outcomes (including creative dispositions) are reduced to discreet instructional objectives. So, a particular classroom activity (e.g., brainstorming) might be designed to develop skills in fluency, a recognized component of creativity (Torrance, 2008). The hope is that the target skill itself (fluency) will be developed, while there is less real concern for the actual content of the brainstorming. In fact, as if to assure irrelevance, the brainstorming tasks themselves are often trivial and/or meaningless. The message here is that ideas, in and of themselves, are less important than the application of certain component skills considered part of something called “the creative process.” In a classroom setting, once students have completed the current “creative challenge,” they move on to the next one, repeating the process while leaving any actual fruits of creative thinking behind.
Alternative Message: Creativity and creative thinking should occur within meaningful contexts, should be open-ended and based on real-world problems, should include authentic student engagement, and should form the basis for actual follow-up action within the relevant context.
In his introduction to a discussion of creativity, Slavin (2018) states that “most of the problems that students encounter in school require careful reading, and some thought, but little creativity. However, many of the problems we face in life or not so cut-and-dried. Life is full of situations that call for creative problem-solving” (p. 205). In the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2023) the adjective creative is defined variously, including as: (1) having the quality of something created rather than imitated; (2) managed so as to get around legal or conventional limits. Both of these definitions relate to Slavin’s claim but they also represent objectives that tend to fall outside of the contemporary curricular realm. Observational time spent in most American classrooms would reveal situations where among the lastthings students are expected to do is “get around conventional limits” and where imitation, not authentic creation, is normative.
A review of theories and perspectives in the contemporary psychological literature reveals conceptions of creativity that are at odds with much current practice. For example, classroom approaches that are true to principles from the research literature would follow these guidelines:
o Encouragement of creativity should serve as a way to solve real-world problems, perhaps using unconventional means to arrive at unconventional solutions (Slavin, 2018);
o Emphasis should be placed on creative solutions that include action and implementation to change and improve the status quo (Woolfolk, 2019);
o Creative processes should occur in communal settings, in which student work together to wrestle with and solve problems and dilemmas important to them (Vassallo, 2017);
o Creativity in the curriculum should never be viewed a simply a “frill” or as way to mask other objectives that students might find irrelevant or boring (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2013);
o When engaging in brainstorming and other creative activity, teachers should be true to the principles of active listening and suspension of judgment (Slavin, 2018);
o Creativity should not be viewed as a cognitive capacity that exists in varying degrees within the heads of individuals but, rather, as a process all can share in a truly free exchange of ideas and perspectives (Vassallo, 2017);
o Teachers should recognize that knowledge and creativity are not dichotomous or opposed, but rather function together to foster true understanding – and wisdom (Woolfolk, 2019);
o Teachers should consistently model genuine creative thinking for their students, a process that might involve some risk within a traditional school environment (Santrock, 2021);
o Classrooms should represent safe environments where students feel free to offer unique and unconventional ideas and where original thinking is truly rewarded (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016);
o The overall classroom climate should be one that tolerates dissent and allows for the questioning of assumptions (Woolfolk, 2019);
o Teachers should help students become aware of their own creative processes and channel them in ways that are both personally fulfilling and socially beneficial (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996);
o Rather than engaging in isolated creative activities, teachers should maintain classroom environments where creativity is encouraged throughout the school day (Santrock, 2021).
In summary, when we say, “just be creative,” we should mean for students to extend their thinking selves beyond the here-and-now and beyond the rationally defined realm to express ideas that are perhaps strange, perhaps illogical, perhaps impractical, but nevertheless intriguing and worthy of consideration. The only script here would be within the mind of each individual student. Further, the fruits of this process (the creative ideas themselves) would be valued in their own right and therefore more obviously – and intentionally – integrated into “real” school work. For teachers, there is certainly a risk with this kind of activity, because the outcomes are unpredictable. But isn’t that the whole point? The ideas resulting from this kind of truly creative thinking are the ones that can change the world for the better, as well as help students develop the confidence and proficiency to bring about that change.
Again, the underlying question here is: What is creativity for? Should we incorporate creative thinking in our curricula to develop students’ capacity and inclination to improve themselves and the world through innovation and vision? (“Yes!”) Or, are creative activities in classrooms just a means for developing certain specific thinking skills that may be useful “in later life,” specifically in the workplace? (“No!”)
In educational circles, we are not accustomed to working within unbounded contexts where outcomes are not prescribed and where results are not easily assessed with reference to established criteria. But, in order to truly educate for the future, we should move past the skill-based perspective and adopt a more unbounded – and thereby more constructive and legitimate – perspective on the phrase “Just be creative.”
References
Beghetto, R., & Kaufman, J. C. (2013). Fundamentals of creativity. Educational Leadership, 70, 10-15.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. Harper Collins.
Eggen, P., & Kauchak, D. (2016). Educational psychology: Windows on classrooms (10th ed.). Pearson.
Guilford, J. P. (1967). The structure of intellect. McGraw-Hill.
Mehrotra, P. (2021, November 4). Why creativity should be taught in schools. EdCircuit. https://edcircuit.com/why-creativity-should-be-taught-in-schools/
Merriam-Webster dictionary (2023). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
Renzulli, J. S. (2017). Developing creativity across all areas of the curriculum. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Nurturing creativity in the classroom (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, K. (2022). Imagine if …: Creating a future for us all. Penguin Books.
Santrock, J. W. (2021). Educational psychology (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Sawyer, K. (2015). A call to action: The challenge of creative thinking and learning. Teachers College Record, 117, 1-34.
Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Pearson.
Sternberg, R. J. (2017). Teaching for creativity. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Nurturing creativity in the classroom (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Torrance, E. P. (1972). Predictive validity of the Torrance tests of creative thinking. Journal of Creative Behavior, 6, 236-262.
Torrance, E. P. (2008). The Torrance tests of creative thinking: Norms-technical manual. Scholastic Testing Service.
Vassallo, S. (2017). Critical educational psychology. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Woolfolk, A. (2019). Educational psychology (14th ed.). Pearson.