Nurturing Creativity: Whose Wisdom Is of Most Worth?

Researchers and practitioners interested in creativity have explored the concept at length. Wehner, Csikszentmihalyi and Magyari-Beck (1991) examined 100 doctoral dissertations on creativity and found a “parochial isolation” of various studies concerning creativity. There were relevant dissertations from psychology, education, business, history, sociology and other fields. However, different fields tended to use different terms and to focus on different aspects of what seemed to be a basic phenomenon. As instances of creativity are located in multiple domains and homes, one of the learning outcomes in ‘The Malaysian Curriculum Specification for English language’ requires that students be able to express themselves creatively and imaginatively. A discussion about what we might call real creativity, and how we might develop pedagogies in fostering this, is long overdue. In this presentation, the researcher will also highlight on how creativity might be conceptualized and how creativity within education in particular might respond to this rapidly shifting world. I hope then to problematize creativity, and to propose ways in which pedagogies may be meaningfully developed or resurrected in the twenty-first century education.