Creativity In Education

829 Words4 Pages

In this day and age schools are obligated to prepare students for life and that includes developing creativity skills which answer the most essential requirements of the present and the future. (Cardoso et al. 2015). “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” (Sir Ken Robinson, TED talk, 2006).

Creativity is a personality trait believed to be naturally borned. Some are born more creative than others. However, the environment plays a great role in the development of creativity.
Robinson (2005) says there are some misconceptions about creativity. “The assumption is that real creativity is an exceptional capacity that’s limited to people of rare ability… [However,] in reality, we …show more content…

Teachers give assignments that are creative only as a bonus or enrichment assignments, but what is right and desirable is that creativity would be part of everyday education. It should be part of the basic skills children are being taught and it should be done gradually till every learning outcome has a creative dimension in it. States “should invest in developing creativity in the education system as a whole, because for many people that’s where the problem starts...The problem is standardization. Standardization is the enemy of innovation.” (Robinson, …show more content…

Therefore, it is interesting to examine whether creativity can be taught or at least developed through education.

Gallagher (1994) explains that in order for creativity to happen, teaching should enable the process of perceiving a new linkage between two existing knowledge structures that had previously been strangers to one another. When teaching provides the right environment, the students can explore these relations. Teachers "should concentrate on helping students build effective knowledge structures in a domain and encourage students to link various knowledge structures across domains, instead of simply providing more and more information" (Gallagher, 1994)

Coate & Boulos (2012) add that traditional education in which students are passive is no longer effective. Students should own learning and create new knowledge within the current environment using digital tools. Alane Starko (2010 in Hanson, 2014) has argued that these tools are useful when they are fully integrated into the curriculum and students are taught when and how to use

Open Document