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One of the difficult aspects of defining creativity is that the term means many things to each of us, and reflects our unique perspectives and experiences. Our situatedness within a unique, personal context means that the concept of individual creativity defies formal scientific definition. This paper is an attempt to conceptualise creativity differently. It tries to break new ground by defining it through the process of being creative within a dynamic environment. We consider how individuals think about creativity, especially outside the confines of our institutionalised learning, and through the lens of experience. The context is a rising public and scholarly interest in the topic but using the complimentary frameworks of situated cognition and experiential learning. This conceptual paper takes a critical look at formal learning and human creativity, and the role teachers, educators and policymakers play in the process.

Creativity and divergent thinking are components of learning in childhood that often go unmeasured in favor of standardized subject assessments. To better understand the ways in which creativity develops and is related to environmental and crosscultural factors, this study reports on the scores obtained by 8-year-old students living in differently sized communities in Norway and Canada measured using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Results of multivariate analyses indicate statistically significant differences between Norwegian and Canadian children on several Torrance Test subscales as well as surprising relationships between the size of the community in which the children lived and the scores they obtained. Results and discussion are framed in reference to the ways in which culture and communities potentially shape the development of divergent thinking skills and open up questions about the ways in which social environments can influence the development of creativity in childhood.

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