Myriad views on creativity

Abstract

Considered as one of the main 21st century skills, creativity seems to be a major concern of contemporary education. Over the past few decades, creativity seems to have increasingly filtered into educational discourse. Within ELT, we have a number of publications devoted to it (Maley & Peachey, 2015; Xerri & Vassallo, 2016), as well as a dedicated organization: the CGroup. However, some argue that it is not yet adequately addressed at a practical level by curricula around the world. For example, Amabile (1998) affirms that “creativity gets killed much more often than it gets supported”, while Robinson (2012) believes that “We’re all born with deep natural capacities for creativity and systems of mass education tend to suppress them.” The reason for such negative sentiments is linked to some of the phenomena that inhibit the cultivation of creativity within education, such as a heavy emphasis on standardized testing and the absence of creativity training. Nonetheless, one of the most powerful obstacles is probably constituted by misconceptions about what creativity is. Misconceptions about the nature of creativity are harmful as they have an effect on people’s practices in the classroom, as well as at policy and curricular levels. Despite the burgeoning popularity of the term in language learning and teaching, conceptions of creativity are highly varied and at times conflicting. In this article, I explore some of the most seminal views on creativity and how these can help to inform classroom practices. In my discussion of these views, I have had to be highly selective and the very selection I have made is indicative of my own conceptions of creativity.