Ingredients of Creativity: Originality and More

In spite of voluminous research into the nature of creativity, the definition of the term is still highly controversial. Much of the work in this area has focused on the questions of what, and how many, factors should form the definition. This study took an empirical approach to the question considering the various perspectives such as the standard definition of creativity, the US Patent Office definition, and the Creative Product Analysis Model. Subsequently, the usefulness of four major factors of creativity—originality, value, surprise, and aesthetics in the context of 3 types of outputs (ideas, everyday products, and socially recognized products) were investigated. The major focus of the study was to reveal which of these 4 factors are most crucial to creativity. The analyses were also extended to the concept of innovation. Data collected from both experts and nonexperts indicated that originality was the strongest correlate of both creativity and innovation. Surprise explained a significant amount of variance in creativity above and beyond originality and value, which supports the 3-dimensional Patent Office definition. However, it played a less significant role in explaining differences in innovation. Aesthetics was also significantly related to creativity in all types of outputs but was mostly unrelated to innovation. Interestingly, expertise mostly did not influence the evaluations. Limitations and further research are discussed.     

Academic Self-Schemas and their Self-Congruent Learning Patterns: Findings Verified with Culturally Different Samples

This paper reported two studies investigating high school students’ academic self-schemas in learning mathematics and their self-congruent learning engagement patterns. Using cluster analyses, Study 1 located two contrasting groups of students holding positive and negative self-schemas in learning mathematics among Chinese participants. MANOVA analyses showed that these two groups of Chinese schematic students differed from each other in the use of achievement goals, approaches to learning, and expected levels of performance. These findings were validated and extended in Study 2 using a culturally different sample, Australian students. Again, cluster analyses successfully classified Australian participants into positive and negative schematic clusters. It was also found that these two groups of schematic students approached learning mathematics in a self-congruent manner similar to those found in Study 1. The converging results in both studies lent empirical support to the theoretical formulation of positive and negative schematic students and the validity of using the self-schema concept to investigate motivation and learning. The differences in their learning engagement patterns were discussed in terms of students’ different academic self-schemas in learning mathematics.     

Creativity research: Originality,utility, and integration

Case studies of major creative figures who were active in different domains can help to indicate commonalities and distinctive features in the creative process. With this goal in mind, a comparison is made between the mathematician Georg Cantor's study of various orders of infinity and the psychologist Sigmund Freud's exploration of the operation of the unconscious. In both cases, similar processes can be discerned: (a) articulations of a new intuition; (b) construction of local coherences; (c) the reworking of standard symbol systems, giving way to the creation of a new, more adequate symbolic system; and (d) the articulation of a new thema (Holton, 1988). The study also describes a number of contrasts, among them the criteria by which formulations are judged in the two domains, the contrasting cosmological stances assumed by the investigators toward their projects, and the differing needs for a formal symbol system.     

Culturally Competent Assessment: More Than Nonbiased Tests

The persistent and unresolved issue of minority disproportionality in special education provides a strong rationale for ensuring that assessment is culturally appropriate and sensitive. An extensive literature on test bias has failed to find evidence of bias sufficient to fully explain disproportional representation of minorities in special education. Yet minorities in this nation, most especially African Americans, have been exposed to a long history of unequal opportunity and oppression, and these inequities continue to be played out in educational settings. In the face of inadequate cultural and educational opportunity, unbiased tests provide an accurate estimate not only of individual capability, but also of the inhospitable conditions that depress that capability. A failure to take differential educational opportunity into account when considering minority test performance may lead to serious errors of test score interpretation. In the face of unequal educational opportunity, culturally competent assessment thus means more than manipulating the content of tests. Rather, it represents a comprehensive process that uses the results of assessment to identify and remedy educational conditions that systematically disadvantage students of color.     

Potential Originality and Effectiveness: The Dynamic Definition of Creativity

Given the central role of creativity in the future post-information society, a call for a pragmatist approach to the study of creativity is advocated, that brings as a consequence the recognition of the dynamic nature of this phenomenon. At the foundation of the proposed new theoretical framework lies the definition of creativity itself, which is turned from static to dynamic through the introduction of the concept of potential originality and effectiveness. Starting from this central definition, and through the introduction of the auxiliary definitions for focus area, creativity goal, creative agent, creative potential of an agent, creative potential of an environment, creative process, product of a creative process, creativity potential of a process, representation of the product of a creative process, and estimator, we arrive at the definitions of creative achievement and creative inconclusiveness. Although both aspects are key in the creative process, creative inconclusiveness was not part of previous definitions, but it is argued that its role is fundamental for effective education in creativity. The new definitions are shown to have full backward compatibility with the extant corpus of scientific research in creativity, as well as forward effectiveness in suggesting novel investigation approaches to support the consideration of new theoretical hypotheses.     

Making Numbers Come to Life: Two Scoring Methods for Creativity in Aurora's Cartoon Numbers

Although creativity has long been recognized as an important aspect of mathematical thinking, both for the advancement of the field and in students' developing expertise in mathematics, assessments of student creativity in that domain have been limited in number and focus. This article presents an assessment developed for creativity that provides a score for mathematical creativity (MaC) in addition to a score for general creativity in the numeric domain, or what we might call numerical creativity (NuC). We developed different rating scales for each and then explored how each scoring method accounts for the students' mathematical/numerical and creative skills. The psychometric properties for both scoring approaches were examined. Each method was shown to reflect different relationships with other performance tests. In addition, it is proposed that MaC may provide useful insight into students' levels of adaptive expertise in mathematics, as reflected by their ability to apply mathematical knowledge (i.e., language, operations, concepts) to novel situations, representing an informative supplement to performance indicators of math achievement.     

Creativity in Three Samples of Photographers: A Validation of the Adjective Check List Creativity Scale

The creativity of photographers was investigated in three samples: photography students (n = 17), neophyte photographers (n = 46), and experienced photographers (n = 49). All participants completed the Adjective Check List (ACL), scored for Domino's creativity (Cr) scale; these scores were correlated with various indexes of creativity, including self- and peer-ratings, ratings of portfolios, and course grades. The findings support the validity of the ACL Cr scale as a measure of creativity.     

Creativity Through a Lens of Social Responsibility: Implicit Theories of Creativity with Korean Samples

Implicit theories of creativity have been the subject of increased research interest in recent years. These investigations are motivated by the observation that an individual's creative activities are guided by personal definitions rather than professional theories, which may be very different. Cross-cultural studies of implicit creativity theories are rare, yet they can add significantly to our knowledge of how creativity is viewed across cultures. The nature of 428 Koreans' implicit creativity theories were identified in a prestudy, and the structure of 478 Koreans' ratings of the indicated behaviors was analyzed in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, 211 participants evaluated the creativity of 44 hypothetical profiles based on the results of the first experiment. Results provide evidence that Korean conceptions of creativity are similar to Western conceptions, although Koreans may emphasize negative behaviors and personality characteristics (e.g., deviance) to a greater degree. When asked to use their implicit theories to evaluate the creativity of hypothetical profiles, Korean adults strongly emphasized specific cognitive, personality, and motivational aspects of creativity over noncognitive aspects (e.g., perseverance, independence).     

迫选式人格测验的传统计分与IRT计分模型

迫选测验的传统计分方式会产生自模式数据, 不能进行传统的信效度检验、因素分析和方差分析等。近年来研究者提出了一些基于项目反应理论的计分模型, 如瑟斯顿IRT模型和MUPP模型等, 它们可以规避自模式数据的弊端。瑟斯顿IRT模型方便进行参数估计, 模型定义灵活; 而MUPP模型的拓展性较差, 参数估计的方法有待提高。另一方面, 已有研究者基于MUPP模型开发了一些抗作假的迫选测验, 而瑟斯顿IRT模型距离这种应用还比较远。此外, 两个模型的适用性和有效性都有待更多的实证研究来检验。