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16 - Creativity in the Classroom: The Dark Side

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Arthur J. Cropley
Edited by
David H. Cropley ,
Arthur J. Cropley ,
James C. Kaufman  and
Mark A. Runco
Arthur J. Cropley
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
David H. Cropley
Affiliation:
University of South Australia
Arthur J. Cropley
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University at San Bernardino
Mark A. Runco
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Summary

TEACHERS' AMBIVALENCE ABOUT CREATIVE CHILDREN

Ng and Smith (2004, p. 87) asked the question at the heart of this chapter: “Why is there a paradox in promoting creativity in the … classroom?” Put simply, the paradox is that most teachers express strong approval of creativity in theory, as already shown over 30 years ago (Feldhusen & Treffinger, 1975) and repeated more recently by Runco, Johnson, and Bear (1993). However, in practice, the situation is different. Although they claim that they enjoy having creative children in their classroom, and indeed, as will be shown below, creative students are often very successful learners, teachers (Dawson, D'Andrea, Affinito, & Westby, 1999)

  • dislike characteristics associated with creativity and

  • not seldom express disapproval or even dislike of the students in their classes who are most creative or score highest on creativity tests.

As Westby and Dawson (1995) showed, many teachers who claimed to have a favorable view of creative children almost bizarrely described them as “conforming,” something that Brady (1970) had already reported early in the modern creativity era. As Smith and Carlsson (2006, p. 222) put it, “… teachers seem to have a confused picture of what is a favorite pupil and what is a creative pupil.” When the teachers in the Westby and Dawson (1995) study were given adjectives describing traits more typical of what creative children are really like (e.g., risk-taking, curious), they said that they disliked such youngsters (see also Aljughaiman & Mowrer-Reynolds, 2005).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Dark Side of Creativity , pp. 297 - 315
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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