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Email Leslie
Wm. Blake
Creativity
Selection of creative learners
"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light." John W. Gardner
Contents:
Creativity links
Topics in creativity:
Traits and states: Selection criteria for selecting highly creative students
On the importance of persistence and reflectivity in fostering creativity
Bringing creativity to the workplace -- How to make it work.
In the words of others - Notable thoughts related to creativity
Caring for the inner muse - A separate series of pages devoted to techniques, suggestions, and thoughts for maintaining creative inspiration.
Just for Fun
©Leslie Owen Wilson 2004, restrictions on usage
Criteria for the selection of creative able learners
There are a number of good tests that might help in developing a rubric for setting criteria for distinguishing highly creative students. However, many of these types of tests are concerned with divergent thinking patterns, with the potential for creative production, and with scoring aspects like: fluency, originality, frequency, complexity. and the like. Also, tests may be expensive to administer and require psychometric interpreters who are highly trained.
Perhaps an easier way to determine predilection toward high creativity is to simply observe students in action, to talk with them, and to collect anecdotal data concerning certain key personality characteristics from teachers, parents and peers. By the way, parents and peers are pretty good at knowing who is creative.
The following list is not meant to be all inclusive, but many of the listed indicators appear with some regularity in literature describing characteristics and differences in creative personalities.
Highly creative students may:
1. Have the ability to make unusual associations or connections between seemingly unrelated or remote ideas.
2. Have the ability to rearrange elements of thought to create new ideas or products.
3. Have a large number of ideas or solutions to problems.
4. Display intellectual playfulness, fantasize, imagine, and daydream.
5. Are often concerned with adapting, improving, or modifying existing ideas, thoughts or products or the ideas or products of others.
6. Have a keen or unusual sense of humor and see humor others do not see.
7. Do not fear being different, but may still be emotionally hurt by non-acceptance. Often the importance of an idea outweighs that of peer acceptance.
8. Ask many questions at an early age - this trend generally continues past early childhood into adulthood. These are the kids that surprise others with their wonderings.
9. Frequently challenge teachers, textbook authors, and those in authority or "experts".
10. Sometimes come up with unexpected, futuristic, bizarre, even "silly" answers or solutions.
11. Are sometimes resented by peers because of crazy or unusual ideas and their forcefulness and passion in presenting them or for pushing their ideas on others. In the context of cooperative efforts or groupings, highly creative students may get along or work better with younger or older students, or with adults.
12. When completing special or unusual projects or assignments, often show a rare capacity for originality, intense concentration, commitment to completion, and persistence. In essence may be perceived as working hard to achieve personal goals.
13. Become obsessed with completing varied projects, or exhibit unusual persistence in a completing tasks. It is this obsessive need to complete a task that is so important in differentiating folks with good ideas from those who are truly creative.
Synthesized and embellished by Leslie Owen Wilson 10/02/95 -- original sources Klausmier; Renzulli; Torrance; Khatena; and Clark
est.1997, updated 2005
