Creativity and How it Happens

Thainique Bailey

Tara Kelley

ENC1101

25 November 2018

                        “Creativity and How It Happens”

Zhu et al define creativity as the cornerstone of human progress and that it is vital to all realms of our lives. This is similar to Kaufman and Beghetto’s opinions; “The other predominant approach to creativity is more focused on everyday creativity.” (Kaufman & Beghetto 81) Although Zhu et al think brain structure links everyday creativity to creative achievement, “The present study aims to investigate the brain structures underlying individual differences in everyday creativity” (Zhu et al 127); Kaufman and Beghetto use a model called the Four C model of Creativity to clearly identify the nature of creativity. With thus being said scholars define creativity differently from others because models and studies have been used to show creativity is achieved in numerous ways.

The Four C Model of Creativity consist of the Big-C, little-C, mini-C, and the Pro-C. The Big-C is the study of the lives of well-known creators, or interviewing renowned individuals, or by studying people who excel at high levels on creativity measures. Little-C is studies that use college students or children as participants who focus on everyday creativity. Mini-C highlights personal and developmental aspects of creativity. Pro-C represents the developmental and effortful progression beyond little-c (but has not reached Big-C status). “The model offers a framework for conceptualizing and classifying various levels of creative expression and points to potential paths of creative maturation.” (Kaufman and Beghetto 90) Basically what Kaufman and Beghetto are saying is that there are different ways and levels to classify creativity and its achievement.

Zhu et al focus on brain structure and how it can be linked to everyday creativity and creative achievement. “Many inconsistent results have been reported because of the different measures and tasks of creativity employed.” (Arden et al., Dietrich & Kanzo, 2010; Piffer 2012) This quote from a study signifies that there are multiple studies being conducted that has applied different brain imaging technology that show there is no link to creativity and brain structure. “Despite these studies… creativity remains elusive, largely due to the complex cognitive processes and neural networks that are likely to be involved in creative behavior (Zhu et al 127).  Even though Zhu et al have found that brain structure has some affect on everyday creativity it does have limitations. “We were not able to determine the direction of causation between everyday creativity, creative achievement, and the volume of the right premotor cortex.” (Zhu et al 138)

 Even though scholars define creativity in numerous ways there is not just one way to look at it. It really depends on the person. Researchers demonstrate everyday creativity inside and outside of the classroom by doing research and having multiple teaching methods. Having multiple teaching methods while teaching students in class help students realize that there is more than one way to do something. Research helps not only students but teachers too. It helps students if they have a question about something or if they want to know more about a topic. Doing research helps teachers to further their knowledge in that topic and get be more confident in explaining that topic. Teachers may also have students participate in research which means both teacher and student are both gaining academic innovation.

Academic innovation occurs when teachers and students seek to build or use knowledge and skills in different ways. This innovation can occur inside and outside of classroom, students demonstrate this by getting together in study groups to study, finding ways to help them learn better, and using different resources (i.e. the library) to gain knowledge. Having/gaining academic innovation in college is important if you want to succeed because you need to find what works for you. Something that might work for someone else might not always work for you. Another reason that gaining academic innovation is important is because it could lead to others succeeding. For example, teacher’s assistants are just students who have taken that class before who have done well and breaks the topics down to make it easier for students to learn.

UNF along with other colleges show academic innovation around school by creating clubs and research groups. Not only does creating clubs show academic innovation but participating in them show it as well. Being involved in clubs you need to advertise for people to join your club. When you advertise for a club it is important to be creative because you want people to join it. UNF shows academic innovation around school by creating The Institute of Undergraduate Research program which helps bring undergraduate students together to do research on topics they want more information on.   Everyday creativity and academic innovation are important if you want to be successful. Writing this essay, I had trouble trying to understand how creativity is achieved. Reading these excerpts, I realized there are multiple ways to define creativity and that in every person it is achieved at a different point in time in life. “We argue that the Four C model allows us to consider creative ability, interest, and pursuits at an appropriate level of specificity.” (Kaufman & Beghetto 100) In this quote Kaufman and Beghetto state the Four C model helps to determine what may affect creativity. [870 words]

Academic innovation is a huge contribution to creative achievement because it helps expand current ideas and conceiving new ones. Not only students, but teachers too use academic innovation from having different teaching methods to doing research. I feel like academic innovation is not talked about enough because to be completely honest I had no idea what it was. Explaining what academic knowledge and creative achievement helps everyone (students and teachers) reach creative achievement. Teachers using different teaching methods can show student’s that there is more than one way to do things and I feel that is important because it shows students other opportunities to learn. Everyone sharing knowledge when doing research leads to creative achievement because having more than one brain is better than just working with one. Talking more about academic innovation I hope to make people realize that academic innovation plays a VERY important role in creative achievement.