Sarbo, Linda and Joseph Moxley. "Creativity Research and Classroom Practice. Colors of a Different Horse.

This chapter tries to look at creativity itself theoretically, which was interesting to me -- I hadn't thought about that before.

The chapter states that this kind of research has a "fundamental obstacle: creativity's imprecise and ambiguous definition" ... music critics, art historians, scholars, and scientists ... often disagree on the creative value of a work" (133). Perhaps this is why creative writing has such a difficult time being taken seriously as an academic practice; everyone has a different definition of it, so it's hard to determine when a student is "successful" or not. "There is agreement that a creative act must be original or novel, that it must be seen as valuable or interesting, and that it cannot be accidental" (134).

Creativity is defined here through several types of processes:

1. An unconscious process: "Influenced by then-dominant Freudian psychoanalytic theory, early twentieth-century philosophers such as Henri Poincare and Karl Popper viewed creativity as an unconscious process ... a creative act occurs when an artist becomes intensely engaged in an encounter with his or her world. In this state of total absorption, the artist experiences a heightened awareness in which the conscious, subconscious, and the unconscious converge in a suprarational process to produce a creative insight. This sudden illumination occurs at the moment of transition between prolonged conscious effort and relaxationand is characteristically concise, elegantly simple, contrary to prior rational thought, and accompanied by a sense of immediate certainty" (134). This would go against what is often taught in composition classes, where conscious choices are made in writing.

2. A Cognitive Process: "Cognitive Psychologists theorized that creativity, like general intelligence, is a cognitive process, a special way of thinking and solving problems ...(cognitive theorist J.P.) Guilford hypothesized that at least eight primary mental abilities, which he collectively labeled divergent thinking underlie creativity: sensitivity to problems, fluency, flexibility, originality, synthesis, analysis, elaboration, and evaluation" (136-137). This is so much like the process I lead my composition students through as they construct a work that I am taken aback at seeing it stated so simply here.

A couple other comments worth recording: "...while divergent thinking is associated with creativity, it is not equivalent to it" and "Student writers are often limited, not because they have no solution, but because they can see only one solution to a narrative problem" (136). Creativity in a composition classroom allows students the flexibility to stay away from one thesis statement, trying to tailor research and points to fit that focus, rather than reaching around a bit to come to an ultimate solution to a writing work.

3. A Personality Trait: This section looks at creativity as a personality factor. However, the features of a "creativity personality" were so broad that I found I could dismiss them easily.