Research frontier: "Creativity': A blind man's report on the elephant.

Abstract

Something people call an elephant is therethis much is sure. And all of us, blind men, have been touching it, feeling it, figuring it out and describing it to each other. On some facts, we agree among ourselves; on others, we cannot even understand what each is trying to tell the other. But, it is precisely this amorphousness which is the elephant-the elephant of creativity.So, we agree on certain things about creativity. We agree, without knowing exactly what, that creativity is an essential element in selfrenewing man and society (Gardner, 1962) and that giving "a fair chance to potential creativity is a matter of life and death for any society" (Toynbee, 1964, p. 4). Most of us agree that the definitional and criterial problems must somehow be resolved, that theoretical formulation or model building is desirable, that refinement of measuring techniques and instruments is necessary, and that coordinated research efforts are essential (Gallagher, 1964;Stein, 1962;Yamamoto, 1964). But, alas, that about exhausts our happy agreement on the elephant.

Why Isn't Creativity More Important to Educational Psychologists? Potentials, Pitfalls, and Future Directions in Creativity Research

“…Without an agreed-on definition of the construct, creativity's potential contributions to psychology and education will remain limited. Of course, others have shared similar concerns over the decades (e.g., Yamamoto, 1965), but the situation stubbornly remains the same.…”

Creativity in the person who will never produce anything original and useful: The concept of creativity as a normally distributed trait.

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HE term creativity is used with something approaching gay abandon by both psychologists (Yamamoto, 1965) and people in general (Bruner, 1962;Morreale, 1969), but is most appropriately applied where there is evidence of achievements that are original and make a meaningful contribution to culture. Writers on creativity would surely agree that if the term is to be applied to people who in the strict sense are not creative, the links between these and eminent creators must be established clearly.

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Measuring Creativity in Elementary School: The Current State of the Art*

“…Activity in creativity measurement research may eventually help to resolve dilemmas about conceptions and definitions of the construct. Yamamoto (1965) named four categories of theoretical approaches to creativity: (a) non positivistic holism, (b) positivistic holism, (c) nonpositivistic elementarism, and (d) positivistic elementarism. The same contending conceptions are stilI very much alive after 10 years.…”