Creativity talent development : Fostering creativity in schools

How do we prepare gifted students to be leaders who can tackle the complex social, environmental, medical, political, technological, economic and ethical challenges in our globalised society? International rhetoric about the importance of developing creativity in twenty-first century education in our current global climate often stands in stark contrast to educational systems that still emphasise performativity, standardised curricula and testing. Creativity has been conceptualised as a continuum with four forms of creativity: Big-C (eminent) creativity, Pro-c (professional) creativity, little-c (everyday) creativity and mini-c (intrapersonal) creativity. Educational creativity (ed-c) as an additional form of creativity, useful for discussions on creativity in education, is proposed in this chapter. Creativity’s relationship to intelligence and giftedness is also discussed in relation to two major schools of thought, namely, creativity as an essential component of intelligence/giftedness and creativity as a domain of intelligence/giftedness. The development of creativity has been largely the purview of stand-alone creativity training programs, which have been popular in gifted education and talent development programs. However, it is argued that teaching for creativity needs to be infused throughout the curriculum using empirical research of how education can develop students’ creative capacity. Findings from the literature about how creativity can be fostered in schools, as well as original research on environmental influences on students’ creativity, as reported by young people themselves in research conducted with students in selective secondary schools in Australia will be presented in this chapter. Understanding how highly creative students are creative to varying degrees, depending on how environments support or inhibit creativity, has practical implications for students, teachers, school administrators, teacher education and educational policy regarding how we can foster creative engagement and development of creative intelligence in schools.