Creativity and Social Innovation in the Open and Unpredictable Landscape of ICT and Learning

This paper combines observations from educational research, creativity research and research in innovation in order to identify preliminary suggestions for ICT-based and open learning designs targeted towards creative and innovative skill development in students. Creativity research has established a number of observations on the nature of creativity, as well as factors that nurture the possibility of creative skill development. These factors include diversity, flexibility, and (a balance between) personalization and collaboration. Pedagogical and learning researchers in the social constructivist tradition, have also argued that these elements are of crucial value for learning processes just as a predominantly part of research and theories about innovation are based on the assumption that these factors matters. In this paper we try to benefit from these theoretical fields as inspiration and as an early step towards further understanding of the roles and potentials for using open learning contexts and -resources in support of creative and innovative skill development and social innovation in 21st century educations and society