Summary by Kelvin Ware - CQU Student
Creativity - A framework for the Design/Problem Solving Discourse in Technology Education
Theodore Lewis
The article stimulates conversations on the importance of creativity as a goal of technology education. It directs the attention to a subject that remains under-explored and a need for design and problem solving in technology education to allow opportunities for students to step outside the conventional reasoning processes imposed by the rest of the curriculum.
The article addresses:
What is creativity?
Creative cognitive processes
Schooling and creativity
Creativity and technology education and
Implications for technology education.
What is creativity?
Creativity is not easily defined. Bruner (1962) defined "that creativity is an act that produces 'effective surprise". which according to Bruner for the creative person, the surprise "is the privilege only of prepared minds - minds with structured expectancies and interests" and identified 3 kinds of surprise - predictive, formal and metaphorical. Creative people are governed by internal factors, especially personality and tend to be creative within particular areas.
Creative cognitive processes
Is about discovering and examining the logic behind exceptionally creative people Cross (2002) did a study that fashioned a model suggesting that exceptional designers use a broad systems approach to design but also frame problems in a personal way. Csiksezentmihalyi (1996) believed that a creative process has flow. That when in the act of creating your things, are going well, subjects report that their behaviour is almost automatic and unconscious. cognitive process can be broken down into areas of thinking and creation such as, metaphorical thinking - which is a powerful tool that allows comparison and categorization of materially unlike entities. Analogical thinking - is taking a map of knowledge from a base to a target facilitating one to one correspondence. combinatorial creation - is a design process that takes two or more concepts or entities and combine to yield and entirely new product. Divergent thinking - is broken into two forms, divergent and convergent thinking however divergent thinking yields a variety of solutions to a given problem, and the last one is productive thinking - can be seen as thinking outside the box that allow for multiple uses and ideas.
Schooling and creativity
Schooling is an important asset to children as a creative outlet for learning. As the curriculum is in place to help support the learning and taking the children's interests and individual needs into account. Creativity enhancement entails six resources identified by Lubart and Sternberg (1995) as problem definition, knowledge, intellectual styles, creative personality, motivation to use intellectual processes and environmental context. Cropley(1997) states that creativity should be a normal goal of schooling, that the curriculum should entail with overlapping of Lubart and Sternberg's approach content knowledge, encourage risk taking, building intrinsic motivation, stimulating interests, building confidence and stimulating curiosity. Instead of only problem solving within the classroom as that stimulates a semi creative approach as you find one outcome, problem finding allows students creative portals to be opened to find multiple formulations, discoveries, solution options and reformulation of the problem.
Creativity and technology education and
technology education is seen as a creative portal for children to explore their inner imagination and ideas. early curriculum sought teaching technology and creative design as basics, tool use, the ins and outs how things are made. where curriculum now allows children more freedom of use of their own imagination and are given hurdles, and objects in which they must create something to help it, over come it or make it their own.the american standards for technology literacy has a focus to help enhance creativity, that there is no right or wrong answers and that there is multiple ways to achieve an outcome. Reeder (2001) sets forth how things run at his university explaining both traditional methods such as steps to follow to achieve the solution as well as conceptual ways with open ended thinking. Teacher of technology must support both analogical and metaphorical thinking, conceptual combination, productive thinking and divergent thinking, as these are the means in which humans come to novel products. failure is a positive thing as helps your creative imagination realise not all come to the right conclusion but the path you take lead to other interesting discoveries. there is a high need of technological design and the benefits that come with it for both the mind and the products and discoveries opened.
Implications for technology education.
The subject is still a work in progress. At this point it takes cues from science, but could also benefit from aligning with other subjects (art / music), where students are encouraged to use knowledge in support of creative expression.
5 problems were discussed on creativity and included :
a) implications for design/problem solving pedagogy
b) implications for assessment
c) implications for professional development
d) implications for curriculum theorizing and
e) implications for research
Reference
Lewis, T. (2005). Creativity - A Framework for the Design/Problem Solving Discourse in Technology Education. Journal of Technology Education. Retrieved from:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v17n1/lewis.html
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