Jessica Barker

The Efficacy of Teaching Creativity: Assessment of Student Creative Thinking Before and After Exercises

As the global environment becomes increasingly more turbulent and competitive, creativity becomes the focus when preparing current students and future citizens to deal with uncertainty and to adapt to continuous change both personally and professionally. The purpose of the study was to understand how student creative thinking could be increased in a university classroom. Creativity exercises that can be incorporated in various courses were developed. The exercises formed four learning modules: (a) what is creativity, (b) recognizing and identifying opportunities, (c) generating ideas, and (d) evaluating creative ideas. Four instructors administered the exercises in five courses. To evaluate effectiveness of the training, figural format of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was used to assess student creative thinking before and after completion of the exercises. Creative thinking, which was operationalized as the composite Creativity Index measured by the TTCT, was significantly higher for the total group of participants after completion of the creativity exercises than before the training. Individual class analyses showed that students in four of the five participating classes had significantly higher creative thinking after completion of the exercises. The study demonstrates that by incorporating creativity exercises into existing courses, instructors can help students develop creative thinking —a critical aspect of one’s professional development.

Putting the puzzle together: apparel professionals' perspectives on creativity

The purpose of this study was to understand the role of creativity within the apparel industry by exploring experiences and perspectives of industry professionals. This research investigated: (1) how the industry insiders understood creativity and (2) how they utilised it in their careers. In-depth, structured interviews were used to collect the data. A total of 28 professionals in diverse positions employed in various apparel-related organisations participated in the study. A phenomenological interpretation of the data resulted in three topical areas that allowed mapping the creativity phenomenon to facilitate a deeper understanding of its nature, manifestation and outcomes. The mapping process resulted in a creativity framework that may be used for developing creative thinking skills and opens up new research venues.