Sunday, July 31, 2011

Creativity Defined

    As a starting point to my project, part of which is taking a close look at creativity and its place in education, I thought I would find a basic definition to start with. Due to the very nature of creativity, which is surrounded by terms like "novel", "innovation", "problem-solving" etc., there doesn't seem to be one, agreed-upon definition. I suppose this makes sense, as boxing in a standard definition of the word would go against all things that creativity is generally defined as. The most agreed upon defintion seems to echo that of The International Center for Studies in Creativity  which asserts that, "the most widely used working definition within the field is 'novel and useful' or in other words,
the production of original ideas that serve a purpose. "
I think it is important  to note that the idea can be simply original to the individual or orginal in a much larger public arena, and that serving a purpose can be interpreted in many different ways.
 Reading a little more deeply, how creativity is considered is based on different aspects like PROCESS, PRODUCT, PERSON OR PLACE. These different aspects will be considered more closely in posts to follow while continuing to feature original ideas to reuse the ubiquitous plastic milk jug.