Creativity: Working Definition

As it has already been discussed, the current thesis accepts creativity as a subject- independent construct. The definition I used in order to operationalise creative thinking remains close to the psychometric tradition and adopts most of the elements from there.

Creative thinking is defined as the generation of ideas which are innovative and imaginative. Creative thinking requires elaboration of ideas, ability to abstract their essence and openness to the vagueness that is required during the creative process. Even though the definition adopted by this thesis focuses on creative thinking as a process, in fact these creativity elements are evaluated via the outcomes and the responses that the students provided in the assessments.

To specify these elements, initially there is a reference to divergent thinking.

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from given information where the emphasis is upon variety and quantity of output form the same source; likely to involve transfer’. Particularly, the first part of the working definition of this thesis is concerned with the generation of ideas involving both fluency and flexibility. According to Guilford (1967, p.138), fluency is an ability which refers to the ‘flow of ideas’ and flexibility refers to the ‘readiness to change direction or to modify information’.

Hence, the first part of the definition is mostly based on the tradition of Guildford who focused on this divergent thinking. Even though this part of the definition focuses only on quantity, there is also the element of qualitative evaluation in the definition adopted by this thesis. The students do not only have to generate ideas, but they should also have to generate ideas with some novelty. Standard definition of creativity included novelty. Torrance, Ball and Safter (2008) named the element of infrequency of answers ‘originality’. This thesis accepts that the terms novelty, innovation and originality can be used interchangeably.

According to Craft (2001) there is no creativity without innovation or novelty. However, she sets a very important restriction about this element. Particularly, Craft (2001, p. 56) used the phrase ‘doing it differently’. This is the phrase that is accepted as novelty from this thesis. There is a comparison amongst the students in order to identify who is suggesting different ideas. In that sense, the novelty element evaluated by this thesis is context and sample dependent. Even though this might sound like a restriction, this is not the case. When innovation or novelty is discussed the agent should be considered. For example, something might be novel for a child but not for a field of experts.

Despite evaluating the ‘functional creativity’, there is no evaluation of its functions in a narrow sense. It is not accepted that a creative idea has to be useful. A creative idea in everyday life does not have necessarily to be useful in a practical sense. For example, a humorous response might satisfy an emotional or psychological need without being useful for daily life. Alternatively, it could be argued that entertainment is a function of ‘functional creativity’. Moreover, in agreement with

Weisberg (2015), it would have been very difficult to achieve an objective measurement of the value of the response, and therefore the value and the effectiveness of the answers of the students were not assessed.

Elaboration, abstractness and resistance to premature closure are three elements also assessed by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, Ball & Safter,

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2008). Elaboration refers to the detail added by the student and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking linked that with imagination. Abstractness refers to the process of thinking and the abilities to analyse and synthesise. Abstractness, however, refers to the best form of these two abilities and it is what enables the person to catch the essence of the ideas and to separate the significant information from the trivial. Resistance to premature closure refers to the ability to remain open and not rush into conclusions. Davis (1999) who discussed the personality traits of creative people also suggested that creative people have similar personality characteristics. They are open- minded and attracted to complexity and ambiguity. Therefore, when these three elements are concerned, the behaviour that the participants of this study demonstrate during the creativity activities can also be considered an indirect assessment of these personality traits.

Finally, the working definition of creativity includes an element of imagination. According to Craft (2001) imagination enables somebody to see more than what is evident in the first place. The approach that Davis (1999) presented imagination is very interesting. He mentioned that this term is a complex one and he used the term ‘visualisation’ and ‘synesthesia’ to explain this. Visualisation is the ability that somebody has to see something in their head, fantasise and manipulate images and ideas. The term synesthesia suggests that this does not apply only to images, but also to sounds and other senses. For example, Mozart imagined compositions.

Imagination is the only element in the definition not evaluated directly in the assessment of this thesis. This is due to the fact that I consider imagination an internal creative process. Imagination is important for creative thinking and it is assessed indirectly by examining the creative products occurred. The creativity activities of this thesis require imagination in order for the students to generate ideas.