I don't think we can distinguish creativity from critical thinking.  They
overlap and feed one another.  The more you ask students to be creative, the
more critical thinking they practice.  After all, how can one begin to do
something like write a poem or story, create a picture, sing a song, make
meaning of what they see and hear without critical thinking?  Likewise,
unless we express our critical thinking, what good is it?  Rote memorization
yields neither critical thinking nor creativity.

Creativity, to me, means expressing our thoughts in meaningful ways,
expressing our ideas in ways that others might not expect but that a variety
of people with different learning styles and perspectives can appreciate,
melding those ideas so they come out in a form we design.  But this kind of
thinking takes time and a willingness to consider ideas.  Rigid, controlling
individuals rarely appreciate creativity.  Anyone care to help me qualify
that statement?  : )


Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt





-----Original Message-----
From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:assessment-bounces at nifl.gov]On
Behalf Of David J. Rosen
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2007 11:18 PM
To: The Assessment Discussion List
Subject: [Assessment 1015] GED preparation and creativity


Hello Andrea,

On Oct 27, 2007, you wrote:


> Has anybody yet in this conversation defined 1. critical reading

> and 2. creativity?


Here's more on defining creativity.  To begin  with, it's quite
unlikely that we will agree on a definition.  There are more than 60
of them in the psychological literature (Taylor, 1988),  and as far
as I am aware there is no standardized measurement instrument for
creativity. Some believe it is inherited; some believe it can be
taught; some believe it can be nurtured or encouraged. I believe that
some kinds of creativity can be taught or at least nurtured and that
it involves a set of mental activities often closely aligned with the
kind of mental activities we call critical thinking. Most of us would
agree, I believe, that a key element is originality, but we might
differ in describing the paths to it. And it may look different in
different contexts, in the sciences, in the arts, in technology, and
in the creative problem solving of daily living.

In the context in which I raised the issue of creativity, I was
thinking of the application of new ideas, what some would refer to as
innovation or ingenuity. It is this applied creativity that I believe
Marc Tucker had in mind as something that Americans have historically
valued and excelled at, that has been an element of American economic
success, and that may be undervalued or lost now in the education
systems' rush toward performance on high stakes standardized tests.

Are adult literacy education students  (including basic education,
secondary education and ESOL) capable of  this kind of creativity? If
so, should we nurture it? I believe they are and that we should.  In
many GED programs I have seen, it is not nourished, usually not even
acknowledged in program goals or objectives.  And I have never seen
it measured. This indicates to me that, as a field, we do not value
and support student creativity. I agree with Marc Tucker that, if we
are interested in Americans' global competitiveness that we should
value creativity, and of course, there are other good reasons to
nourish creativity.

What do you think about this?


* Taylor, C.W. (1988). "Various approaches to and definitions of
creativity", in ed. Sternberg, R.J.:  The nature of creativity:
Contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge University Press.

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net


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