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A disturbing discovery in creative education. The rise of theory-lite courses
Spoken and written by
Tudor Rickards
December 5 2024
In researching for a revised edition of my textbook Dilemmas of Leadership, over the period August-December, 2024, I have become increasingly disturbed about the lack of progress in the field of teaching materials on offer about the nature of creativity.
This informal note is addressed in the first instance to members of my professional network of contacts with whom I have been corresponding.
It has the merits (and weaknesses) of a preliminary announcement. Through it, I hope to encourage discussion among colleagues with prior interest in, and many with considerable practical and scholarly knowledge of creativity.
This note is at present no more than an initial impression from a literature search for new ideas on creativity and leadership. It also drew on creativity research sources cited in the most recent edition of Dilemmas of Leadership which was published in 2015 (itself based on earlier editions in 2006 and 2012).
The precise concern arose after I had closely examined the first nine chapters, each of which addressed a theme dealing with an aspect of leadership. Each chapter is examined through case examples and a literature-based study. In every chapter I was able to identify new and valuable material.
However, in Chapter ten, on creativity, I was disturbed that I have so far failed in finding any convincing new contributions which took a theory-based approach. Worse, the bulk of the new courses ignored vital contributions historically.
As one simple but important example, the work of Teresa Amabile helped moved the focus of research underpinning creative education towards incorporating a social science perspective. This seems to be ignored in the plethora of newer research-lite offerings I am finding.
A related omission is the significance of creativity as a personal felt experience
which grew out of the human potential movement pioneered by Maslow and by Carl Rogers.
This suggests that creative education is attracting a large number of new entries to the field. This is clearly a potential source of innovation. However, it seems to be coming with a disturbing number of organisations and individuals with simplistic models for supporting creative thinking.
Some are using the emerging AI paradigm to claim the novelty of the new courses. As far as I can see, there is little appreciation of the nature of the creativity paradigm.
I have avoided citing specific courses, and would encourage anyone interested to carry out their own search and share their findings.
If my preliminary finding turns out to be correct, it will become a matter of concern to the community of creativity and innovation researchers and practitioners, and a focal point for action.
Postscript
My work at present has been confined to courses offered in English. Any comments from international sources would be particularly welcome.
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