The Nature of Creativity
The Nature of Creativity
ABSTRACT: Like E. Paul Torrance, my colleagues and I have tried to understand the nature of creativity, to assess it, and to improve instruction by teaching for creativity as well as teaching students to think creatively. This article reviews our investment theory of creativity, propulsion theory of creative contributions, and some of the data we have collected with regard to creativity. It also describes the propulsion theory of creative contributions. Finally, it draws some conclusions.
The field of creativity as it exists today emerged largely as a result of the pioneering efforts of J. P. Guilford
(1950) and E. Paul Torrance (1962, 1974). It is wholly fitting to dedicate a special issue of the Creativity Research
Journal to Torrance because of his seminal contributions to thinking about creativity. To this day, the
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1974) remain the most widely used assessments of creative talent. Guilford and Torrance had many more agreements than disagreements about the nature of creativity and the ways to measure it. Both were basically psychometric theorists and conceived of and attempted to measure creativity from a psychometric standpoint.
However, both were broad thinkers, and their conceptions were much more expansive than the operationalizations of these conceptions through their tests. Both concentrated on divergent thinking as the basis of creativity and devised tests that emphasized the assessment of divergent thinking. Both left behind numerous students and disciples to carry on their pioneering work. Torrance, in particular, was a warm, caring, and positive person. I met him only a few times, but I was enormously impressed with the modesty he displayed, given his preeminence in the field. He showed that the best people in the field have no need for the pretensions to which less-distinguished academics can be so susceptible.
There are a number of
ABSTRACT: Like E. Paul Torrance, my colleagues and I have tried to understand the nature of creativity, to assess it, and to improve instruction by teaching for creativity as well as teaching students to think creatively. This article reviews our investment theory of creativity, propulsion theory of creative contributions, and some of the data we have collected with regard to creativity. It also describes the propulsion theory of creative contributions. Finally, it draws some conclusions.
The field of creativity as it exists today emerged largely as a result of the pioneering efforts of J. P. Guilford
(1950) and E. Paul Torrance (1962, 1974). It is wholly fitting to dedicate a special issue of the Creativity Research
Journal to Torrance because of his seminal contributions to thinking about creativity. To this day, the
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1974) remain the most widely used assessments of creative talent. Guilford and Torrance had many more agreements than disagreements about the nature of creativity and the ways to measure it. Both were basically psychometric theorists and conceived of and attempted to measure creativity from a psychometric standpoint.
However, both were broad thinkers, and their conceptions were much more expansive than the operationalizations of these conceptions through their tests. Both concentrated on divergent thinking as the basis of creativity and devised tests that emphasized the assessment of divergent thinking. Both left behind numerous students and disciples to carry on their pioneering work. Torrance, in particular, was a warm, caring, and positive person. I met him only a few times, but I was enormously impressed with the modesty he displayed, given his preeminence in the field. He showed that the best people in the field have no need for the pretensions to which less-distinguished academics can be so susceptible.
There are a number of