Creativity in Higher Education: A Qualitative Analysis of Experts’ Views in Three Disciplines

Helen Georgiou,Annette Turney,Pauline Jones,Christine Edwards-Groves,Paul Gardiner,Erika Matruglio

doi:10.3390/educsci12030154

Helen Georgiou, Annette Turney + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12030154

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Abstract

Creativity has been identified as an increasingly important graduate attribute for employment in the 21st century. As sites of significant development of disciplinary specialization, universities seem to be the natural place for creativity to be fostered. However, there remain contestations and ambiguities in the ways creativity is theorized, and this translates to difficulties in operationalization, particularly in the higher education context, which attracts significantly less research than the school setting. Here, we report on interviews with physicists, historians, and poets, as both educators and producers of knowledge that progresses their disciplines, to provide elaborations on the nature of creativity. We draw on sociological theory to elucidate the characteristics of creativity as expressed by experts in particular disciplinary fields. We find that whilst perceptions appear common across the disciplines, on further analysis, they tend instead to encapsulate discrete attributes. Further, there are some qualities of creativity that are uniquely emphasized by participants in specific disciplinary fields. We argue that theorizing both the discipline and the nature of creativity together is important in order to understand how creativity might more fruitfully be discussed and fostered in higher education.

Highlights

Creativity is recognized as playing an important role in personal well-being and in social and economic innovation and as such has prompted significant developments in education [1,2]
In Australia and beyond, creative and critical thinking skills have been embedded in school curricula, with efforts underway to design valid and reliable assessments of students’ creativity [3,4]
As an example of sample selection within physics, the physics participants were recruited through: (P1) contact with head of teaching and learning of the school of physics who provided recommendation of P1, amongst others; (P2) direct contact of current practicing physicist who conducts significant outreach and has published popular physics books; and (P3) direct contact based on disciplinary expertise and university specialism, based on recommendations from P1 and P2 who were from the same field (Astronomy)

Summary

Introduction

Creativity is recognized as playing an important role in personal well-being and in social and economic innovation and as such has prompted significant developments in education [1,2]. Whilst creativity, when considered in its entirety, constitutes a range of different elements and dimensions, in the context of education, creativity is often conceptualized in terms of a set of creative attributes, habits, or thinking skills, e.g., [3,8,19,20,21]. In the higher education context, Jackson and Shaw [8] identify: being imaginative, being original, exploring, processing, analysing and synthesising data and ideas, and communicating, as skills that academics view as important. In higher education, Jahnke et al [20] identify the “facets” of self-reflective learning, independent learning, curiosity and motivation, producing something, showing multiple perspectives, and reaching for original, entirely new ideas

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