DIGITALTHAT ILLUSIVE BUTTERFLY: DISSECTING THE TERMINOLOGY WITHIN THE CREATIVITY DEBATE. CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING UNPACKED
The University of Notre Dame (AUSTRALIA)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2019 Proceedings
Publication year: 2019
Page: 460
ISBN: 978-84-09-14755-7
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2019.0148
Publication year: 2019
Page: 460
ISBN: 978-84-09-14755-7
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2019.0148
Conference name: 12th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 11-13 November, 2019
Location: Seville, Spain
Dates: 11-13 November, 2019
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
What is creativity?What is innovation?
Where does entrepreneurship fit into the creativity debate?
What relationship does creative thinking have to creativity itself?
And what role does critical thinking play within creative thinking?
This paper strives to answer these questions in the context of Australian educational policy and practice. Australian educational policy, like many nations, is trending towards progressing creativity as a 21st century skill. However, practice-based ambiguity and a lack of clarity around what constitutes creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is widespread (Nooteboom & Stam, 2008). Within educational policy, creativity is the term which has been applied to cover the skills that can be nurtured to develop creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. This may be an effort to simplify a complex field. If that is the case, it could be argued that this effort has failed. Creativity, despite its appearance in Educational Policy documents throughout the world, remains a confusing phenomenon for many educators. This confusion is further confounded by diverse teacher conceptualisations of what constitutes creativity (Andilou & Murphy, 2010). In addition, the Australian School Curriculum has separated out Creative Thinking Skills from Creativity by referring to the thinking skills as the element which teachers hold responsibility for. One effect of this is that teachers in Australia link the terms Creativity and Creative Thinking to such a high degree that these two terms are now being used interchangeably. In addition, to further complicate an already complex landscape of concept terminology, The Australian Curriculum places Creative and Critical Thinking together within Educational Policy without sufficient unpacking of either their points of difference or their points of connection. Such density of language is clarified and all relevant terminology is explained within the body of this paper.