Ronald A. Beghetto

Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity

Most investigations of creativity tend to take one of two directions: everyday creativity (also called “little-c”), which can be found in nearly all people, and eminent creativity (also called “Big-C”), which is reserved for the great. In this paper, the authors propose a Four C model of creativity that expands this dichotomy. Specifically, the authors add the idea of “mini-c,” creativity inherent in the learning process, and Pro-c, the developmental and effortful progression beyond little-c that represents professional-level expertise in any creative area. The authors include different transitions and gradations of these four dimensions of creativity, and then discuss advantages and examples of the Four C Model.

Why Isn't Creativity More Important to Educational Psychologists? Potentials, Pitfalls, and Future Directions in Creativity Research

The construct of creativity has a great deal to offer educational psychology. Creativity appears to be an important component of problem-solving and other cognitive abilities, healthy social and emotional well-being, and scholastic and adult success. Yet the study of creativity is not nearly as robust as one would expect, due in part to the preponderance of myths and stereotypes about creativity that collectively strangle most research efforts in this area. The root cause of these stereotypes is the lack of adequate precision in the definition of creativity. The body of the article is devoted to specific suggestions for conceptualizing and defining creativity to maximize its potential contributions to educational psychology.

Creative Self-Efficacy: Correlates in Middle and Secondary Students

ABSTRACT: This study examined correlates of creative self-efficacy (i.e., self-judgments of creative ability) in middle and secondary students (N = 1,322). Results indicate that students mastery- and performance-approach beliefs and teacher feedback on creative ability were positively related to students creative self-efficacy. Creative self-efficacy was also linked to student reports of their teachers not listening to them and sometimes feeling that their teachers had given up on them. Students with higher levels of creative self-efficacy were significantly more likely to hold more positive beliefs about their academic abilities in all subject areas and were significantly more likely to indicate that they planned to attend college than students with lower levels of creative self-efficacy. Finally, students with higher levels of creative self-efficacy were significantly more likely to report higher levels of participation in after-school academics and after- school group activities. Implications for creativity research and practice are discussed.

Classroom contexts for creativity

Various factors influence the development of creative potential, including everything from individual differences to the kinds of experiences and opportunities that creators experience throughout the lifespan. When it comes to nurturing creativity in the classroom, the learning environment is one of the most important factors – determining, in large part, whether creative potential will be supported (or suppressed). In short, classroom context matters. It is one thing to recognize that the classroom environment impacts the development of creative potential, it is quite another to understand just what it takes to develop an optimally supportive creative learning environment. This is because many of the features of optimal learning environments are quite subtle and even counterintuitive. In this paper, we discuss insights from the research on how teachers might establish a creativity-supportive learning environment in their classroom.

Creativity and academic achievement: A meta-analysis.

This article reports on a meta-analysis of 120 studies (total N = 52,578; 782 effects) examining the relationship between creativity and academic achievement in research conducted since the 1960s. Average correlation between creativity and academic achievement was r = .22, 95% CI [.19, .24]. An analysis of moderators revealed that this relationship was constant across time but stronger when creativity was measured using creativity tests compared to self-report measures and when academic achievement was measured using standardized tests rather than grade point average. Moreover, verbal tests of creativity yielded significantly stronger relationships with academic achievement than figural tests. Theoretical and practical consequences are discussed.

Creative learning: A fresh look.

That creativity can play a role in learning seems clear. Indeed, creativity researchers and educational scholars have long asserted that theories of learning need to be broadened to include creative cognition. What is less clear, however, is the specific nature of that role. The purpose of this article is to introduce a new model of creative learning. The article opens with a brief discussion of previous work on learning and creativity. Next, a model of creative learning is introduced, specific assertions based on the model are discussed, and an example of how the model might be applied to classroom learning is presented. The article closes with a discussion of implications for future research on creative learning.

Who Studies Creativity and How Do We Know

Guilfords 1950 presidential address to the American Psychological Association helped spark the growth of creativity research in the 2nd half of the 20th century. This growth has been fueled by an influx of creativity researchers, a group of individuals about whom we know little. In this study, the first 32 volumes of the Journal of Creative Behavior were subjected to an author analysis to identify 1st-time authors per year, create a contribution distribution of its authors, identify a possible trend in 1-time authors, and identify highly productive authors. The results of this study suggest that the field of creativity is similar to other scientific fields in respect to its author contribution distribution. There is a positive trend in 1-time contributors, and prolific contributors to this journal are no longer active, at least as can be estimated from an analysis of authors contributions to the first 32 volumes of the Journal of Creative Behavior.

The Difference That Makes a ‘Creative’ Difference in Education

The perspective of creativity as rooted in difference opens up new questions for researchers and educators concerning the sharing of perspectives and, most importantly, the role of contradiction between perspectives within the educational act. While differences of perspective between students, teachers, or students and teachers, can be considered a precondition for the emergence of new and valuable ideas or practices, this condition is necessary but not sufficient. The process of engaging with difference in a productive or creative manner includes,being aware or, recognising, and valuing different perspectives, but this process itself doesn’t explain how exactly novelty emerges in classroom settings. Furthermore, not any kind of difference fosters creativity under any circumstances. What type of difference is favorable for creative action in educational settings? The present chapter addresses this question based on a series of theoretically-informed empirical examples.

Ideational Pathways: Toward a New Approach for Studying the Life of Ideas

Abstract What is the life of an idea? How do some ideas result in creative outcomes? People interested in creativity often want to know the answers to these questions. Although there are numerous methods and measures for assessing creative persons and products, there is little by way of methods for documenting and analysing the trajectories of ideas. The purpose of this paper is to address this need by introducing a new approach for tracing and analysing ideational pathways. Ideational pathways refer to the trajectory of ideas in temporal and spatial dimensions. That is, how ideas travel through time and space and whether those ideas end up resulting in creative outcomes. We open the paper by providing a theoretical and conceptual background for ideational pathways. We then introduce an emerging approach for tracing these pathways and apply it to two examples. We close by discussing implications and directions for future research.

Creative Aspirations or Pipe Dreams? Toward Understanding Creative Mortification in Children and Adolescents.

What experiences influence the development of creativity in children and adolescents? One experience is the mortification of creative aspirations. Creative mortification (CM) refers to the loss of ones willingness to pursue a particular creative aspiration following a negative performance outcome. The purpose of this article is to introduce an empirically testable model of CM. Specifically, the model highlights how CM can result from interpreting a negative performance outcome through the lens of internal attributions, fixed ability beliefs, and the experience of shame. The model further posits that young peoples level of aspirational commitment, the feedback they receive, and their sociocultural context can moderate their interpretations and experiences of negative performance outcomes and CM.