Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts © 2009 American Psychological Association

2009, Vol. 3, No. 1, 38 – 42 1931-3896/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014919

Help Us Creativity Researchers, You’re Our Only Hope

Matthew C. Makel
Duke University Talent Identification Program

I propose suggestions for how creativity can be fostered in the classroom and what creativity researchers
can do to facilitate creative growth in students. Suggestions include closing the creativity gap between
current education policy and current societal values of creativity, better training of teachers on how to
teach creativity, creativity researchers becoming more active and vocal advocates of education policy
supporting creativity in the classroom, and changing the language authors use away from a need to
enhance creativity and toward the view that creativity needs to be encouraged.

Keywords: creativity, creativity gap, creativity education, creative development, teacher training

In 1961 John W. Gardner (1961/1995), the future secretary of
health, education and welfare, asked if we can be equal and
excellent too. The question of finding the right balance continues
to plague us as a society. One place it causes particular trouble is
how to best prepare our children for the future. I think that the
greatest impact creativity researchers could have on society (and
where I hope the field is headed) is helping schools foster creative
development in our youth. My goal with this paper is to adumbrate
some of the relevant problems that need to be resolved and to
suggest three broad proposals that, if pursued, will move the field
in that direction.
In the 1900s, schools strived to share with the masses what had
been the treasure of a select few: information. However, techno-
logical advancements have made the transfer of information insig-
nificant next to the power of procedural knowledge (e.g., how to
find the right information), evaluation (e.g., how to select the right
information), and creativity (e.g., how to manipulate and use the
right information). Where it was once a sign of educational afflu-
ence to have a set of encyclopedias in the home, having access to
millions of informational and educational websites is now quite
common. Of more importance now is not access to information,
but how to find, select, and use the desired information. Despite
this shift in importance, the transmission of knowledge remains a
top priority in schools. This mismatch between educational actions
and societal value fails to establish a solid foundation for the
future. To use the phrase a colleague recently told me, “we need to
stop preparing our kids for the 20th century” (Richard Courtright,
personal communication, November 3, 2008).
In fact, Florida (2002, 2005) proposed that the United States has
outgrown not just its industrial roots, but the “knowledge econ-
omy” as well. He suggested that we have progressed now to being
a creative economy and that the only way we can maintain our
current place in the world is through developing creative excel-
lence. Florida (2005) believed we as a society need to “tap the full
creative capabilities of everyone” (p. 246) and “educate people for
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matthew
C. Makel, Duke University Talent Identification Program, 1121 West Main
Street, Durham, NC 27701. E-mail: mmakel@tip.duke.edu
the creative age” (p. 253). These actions reflect the value of
creativity as a means of advancing society. Florida (2005) went on
to suggest that to achieve these goals, the current educational
system needed to be overhauled. He did not discuss how the
education system should be overhauled (he is not an education
researcher so one should not necessarily expect him to do so), but
I will elaborate on some possibilities that creativity researchers
could help catalyze.
Closing the Creativity Gap: Aligning Actions
With Values
I think it is safe to say that creativity researchers believe that
creativity is important for individuals as well as society. However,
I do not see this value clearly reflected throughout society. For
some reason, we have deemed creative development and perfor-
mance extremely important in the professional world of adults, but
appear to minimize it in children. Because naming things as gaps
is all the rage, I will call this disparity between valuing creative
performance in adults and not fostering creativity in students the
creativity gap.
One reason for the creativity gap may be that lessons in school
are taught in one context and applied in another. In an article on
learning transfer, Barnett and Ceci (2002) use the terms near
transfer and far transfer to distinguish between situations when the
learning and application contexts are similar (near transfer) and
different (far transfer). Lamentably, when the learning and appli-
cation context differ substantially, much of the literature has
shown that transferring knowledge from one context to another
does not always occur (e.g., Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Ceci & Liker,
1987; Ceci & Roazzi, 1994; Lave, 1988; Nuneś, 1994; Nuneś,
Schliemann, & Carraher, 1993). This is particularly relevant to
schools because the context in which something is taught (e.g., a
problem set in a mathematics class) may differ substantially from
the context in which it is later applied (e.g., figuring out the cost
of putting up wallpaper in a bedroom). This being the case,
educators can try to teach material in as relevant a context as
possible, but it is simply impossible for teachers to prepare stu-
dents for every imaginable future context.
On the other hand, in the workplace, the learning and applica-
tion situations may be more similar to each other than in a

38
 SPECIAL ISSUE: CREATIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM
schooling context, making creativity (which is context dependent)
more readily accessible. For example, imagine a lawyer needs to
transfer knowledge gained from one case to another case. Because the
contexts of cases are very similar, it is easier for a lawyer to transfer
knowledge from one case to another than it is for a student to
transfer from the classroom to another context. Because students
are more likely to be asked to perform far transfer (which is
difficult) than working adults, it does not seen unreasonable—in
the current educational environment—for schools to avoid efforts
that may likely be ineffective. There are simply too many potential
contexts for it to be worthwhile when there is no reward system for
teaching it. Thus, the differing distance being transferred between
schools and adulthood jobs may play a role in the creativity gap.
Another possible cause of the creativity gap is insufficient
training of teachers in how to teach creativity. Despite the nearly
universal acceptance of creativity being an important component
of education, a glance at the typical curriculum of a school of
education at any college or university shows that it has yet to
become an integral part of typical teacher training. It may be that
schools of education are training future teachers about creativity
within other courses that are not specifically targeting creativity,
but the fact that creativity is being left behind illustrates that either
the importance of creativity is not being communicated clearly
enough or that the training is not sufficiently preparing teachers.
The lack of creativity pedagogy should not be interpreted as
blaming the creativity gap on schools of education or teachers.
They work within the current educational policy context. As it is
currently articulated, performance on state standardized tests is the
ultimate indicator of school success in the eyes of their funders
(the government). Forced to work in that environment, schools
strive to meet what is asked of them.
It is not surprising that the immediate gratification of complet-
ing tasks specifically designed to increase test scores quickly
outweighs student performance on long-term goals, such as devel-
oping creativity or civic duty. The current educational system
simply is not set up to reward that kind of long-term investment.
A fifth-grade teacher is not rewarded when students who had been
in her class grow up to be creative thinkers or civic-minded
citizens. However, her principal is likely to point out if her current
students are not performing well on state standardized tests.
I am certainly not the first to point out the issues surrounding the
creativity gap. Plucker, Beghetto, and Dow (2004), in their syn-
thesis on why creativity is not deemed more important, differen-
tiate creativity from mere novelty because of creativity’s feature of
appropriateness or usefulness in a given context. Building on this
idea in an article on supporting creativity in the classroom,
Beghetto (2007) proposed providing teachers with training on how
to help their students make the transition from producing novel
ideas (something unique) to producing creative ones (something
unique and useful in that context). In the classroom context,
teachers helping students develop the ability to self-evaluate their
ideas’ usefulness is an important step in helping students transition
from novelty to creativity. Beghetto called this ability ideational
code switching: to advance an idea from something that may be
personally meaningful to something that is meaningful to others
and appropriate.
Moreover, as Baer and Garret (in press) argued about creativity,
striving to teach creativity can sometimes facilitate knowledge
transmission. In this light, teaching creativity actually helps meet
39
the misguided current aims of the classroom whereas also helping
prepare students for their actual long-term needs. For example,
students who can evaluate the difference between more and less
important ideas will make more efficient use of their time when
making an important decision and while studying for a test. In
addition, students will be better equipped to know when something
they want to say in class is novel and when it is creative. Such
evaluative self-monitoring skills also provide students with social
acumen that some researchers such as Nobel Prize winning econ-
omist James Heckman (Heckman, Stixrud, & Urzua, 2006) sug-
gested may be just as important to future success as cognitive
ability.
Beghetto and Plucker (2006) went so far as to ask whether
“purposeful, school-based learning necessarily [comes] at the cost
of student creativity” (p. 316). They concluded that, as the educa-
tion system is currently structured, the answer is “probably.” They
argued that teachers, through high stakes testing and accountabil-
ity, feel increasingly forced to sprint through as much material as
quickly as possible. This need for speed fosters a more teacher-
centered environment. A teacher-centered environment is not con-
ducive for creative experiences because the creative environment
is often not viewed as efficient. However, some researchers (e.g.,
Duckworth, 1996) have argued that student understanding of ma-
terial is better suited when teachers go beyond “right answers” and
cultivate students feeling surprised, puzzled, excited, and comfort-
able with being wrong.
It is important to note that the use of standards and standardized
tests should not automatically be considered bad for education or
creativity. The use of poor standards may very well be, but
standards that accurately reflect the values we seek to foster in
education can be extremely useful. The development of creative
behaviors does not typically fall under current education standards
and are thus not measured on high-stakes tests. Teachers, schools,
and schools of education are therefore working in a system that
does not directly reward them (and may even punish them) if they
focus their attention on creative development.
It is here that creativity researchers are best situated to take
action to close the creativity gap. Creativity researchers are a
unique set who have ample procedural knowledge of the educa-
tional system, an ability to evaluate relevant disparities between
educational actions and societal values as well as to suggest
methods for closing the gap between the two, and how to create
persuasive arguments that will convince all parties involved to
take action. Such a blending of roles between researcher and
advocate may stretch the comfort zones of those who prefer
dispassionate arguments, but relegating the implementation of
research findings to those who are less familiar with the science is
what created the system that thinks brainstorming once a week is
a sufficient creativity curriculum.
There is also the matter of researchers stepping down from our
ivory tower and conducting educationally relevant research. This is
not to knock to basic research; basic research is a vital component
of advancing the field. For example, researching eminent individ-
uals is important; understanding how they develop and how they
are similar to and different from each other and typical individuals
is necessary for society in the long term. However, such research
is less likely to be immediately relevant to the fifth-grade teacher
deciding how to get her students excited about learning the Civil
War, botany, or conflict management.
40 MAKEL
The Language of Creativity
Attempts toward increasing creativity have been conducted by
researchers for many years (for a review, see Nickerson, 1999).
Regrettably, these attempts have largely failed to yield widespread
implementation or utility. Plucker and Beghetto (2003) identified
several roadblocks to what they (and many others) referred to as
“creative enhancement.” Among the roadblocks they listed are: the
emphasis on eminent instead of everyday creativity, the promi-
nence of divergent thinking in the creative process, and insularity
of theory and research. These roadblocks lead to an environment in
which creative production is difficult to increase. Similarly,
Plucker et al. (2004) proposed that the largest hurdle to enhancing
creativity is a faulty implicit conception that individuals are born
creative or not creative (more on this below).
The hurdles of improving creative performance carry over to the
classroom as well, in which asking students to think divergently
continues to be the primary component of creativity (Baer &
Garret, in press; Hunsaker & Callahan, 1995). Such activities can
be viewed as creative, or possibly as a means of creative problem
solving, but fail to encompass fully all facets of creativity. As a
result, it is not surprising that researchers have not found major
creative production increases in students who receive “creativity
instruction” as it is currently implemented (Plucker & Renzulli,
1999). In fact, Beghetto and Plucker (2006) proposed that Amer-
ican education comes at a direct cost to student creativity because
creative behaviors are so discouraged. In an analysis on teacher
preferences, Westby and Dawson (1995) found that despite claim-
ing to like creativity, teachers appear to dislike traits commonly
associated with creative students. Instead, teachers prefer students
who follow rules. Westby and Dawson believed that teachers may
implicitly discourage creativity in their classrooms because such
behaviors often conflict with rule following.
One factor that may play a role in how we view creativity is the
language we use when discussing it. When talking about all the
different conceptions of creativity I often joke that if you were to
ask 10 creativity researchers to define their construct, you would
likely get 11 different answers. My students never seem to find the
joke as funny or as sad as I do. Instead, they find it annoying. As
good products of their educational environments, they want to be
told “the” answer because the tests that define their educational
lives have only one correct answer. They want to be shown (telling
them is too boring) creativity’s definition so they can memorize it
and later regurgitate it. When introduced to the varying concep-
tions and concerns and contradictions (e.g., we do not think diver-
gent thinking is the entirety of creativity, but that will not stop us
from using it as our measure!) they see that there is not a clear
consensus of concept and they confuse it with a lack of clarity of
thinking. To them, not having one “right” answer contradicts
everything they have been taught about education—and they find
that upsetting.
The desire for a consensus conception of creativity among my
students also communicates something else to me. The emphasis
on standards in education is currently shaping into a standardized
knowledge base, rather than a standardized skill or thinking ability.
Because of this, I have found that students, parents, and educators
often want a recipe for creativity. What ingredients and what steps
are needed to cook creativity? Should this be what we strive to
provide them? Resolving the conflict of conceptions of creativity
to develop “the” conception of creativity is a theoretical matter and
may not be of much importance in practice beyond being a hurdle
in communicating creativity to those outside the field.
Another linguistic impediment revolving around creativity may
not lie just with the word creativity, but with the words we use to
frame our discussions about creativity. Consider, for example, the
language we use to describe how creativity might be increased.
Over the last 25 years, Dweck and her colleagues (e. g., Beneson
& Dweck, 1986; Dweck, 1986; Mueller & Dweck, 1998; Plaks,
Grant, & Dweck, 2005) examined how implicit beliefs about
ability (whether it is fixed or can be improved) influence motiva-
tion and performance. This work may dovetail with the language
we use when discussing creativity. In her work, Dweck (1986)
differentiated between students who hold an implicit belief that
ability is fixed with those who implicitly believe that ability is a
malleable trait. Indeed, Dweck proposed that “the ability to face
challenges is not about your actual skills; it’s about the mind-set
you bring to a challenge” (Hopkins, 2005).
If mindset influences behaviors and performance, what is the
collective mindset of creativity research? As already mentioned,
most discussions of increasing creative production revolve around
“enhancing” creativity (e.g., Nickerson, 1999; Plucker & Beghetto,
2003). “Enhancement” connotes a need to improve performance or
to make “something” better. In popular culture, the word enhance-
ment is used when talking about cosmetic surgery or taking a pill
to improve sexual performance. In the sports world, enhancement
is often partnered with the word artificial because, through things
like steroids, enhancement improves performance by relying on
resources not produced naturally by the body. The idea of enhance-
ment is further coupled with external mechanisms in the field of
bio-engineering. In the forthcoming book, Enhancing Human Ca-
pacities (Ter Meulen, Savulescu, & Kahane, in press) the authors
are concerned about the ethical issues revolving around using
external means (i.e., drugs or technology) to enhance human
performance. Such enhancement can range from surgeries to im-
prove eyesight beyond 20/20 and steroid use all the way to parents
selecting the physical attributes of their future children. In our
language, the word enhancement is practically synonymous with
external additions.
A subtle method of distinction between external improvements
and natural increases in creativity is to view creativity as needing
not enhancement, but needing encouragement. Encouragement—
unlike enhancement—focuses attention on promoting and assisting
what is already there (or could develop given the appropriate
environment), and not artificially adding to present levels. In a
discussion of creative giftedness, Runco (2005) proposed that
pretending, avoiding strict conformity behaviors, and modeling
and rewarding original behavior would “encourage children’s cre-
ativity” (p. 306). It is possible (and probable) that Runco did not
purposefully use “encourage” to make a distinction from enhance
(or vice versa in the case of other researchers), but this subtle
change in emphasis signifies an important shift in the mindset of
how we frame creativity. Given the aforementioned problems
concerning developing creativity in kids, closing the creativity gap
should include changing the view from a need for creative en-
hancement to focusing on cultivating an environment that encour-
ages (or at the very least does not discourage) creativity.
Changing the language of creativity may seem a trivial sugges-
tion but, in a series of studies comparing praise for natural intel-
 SPECIAL ISSUE: CREATIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM
ligence (enhancement-type language) to praise for effort
(encouragement-type language), Mueller and Dweck (1998) found
that praise using enhancement language negatively influenced
students’ subsequent achievement. In addition, students who had
been praised with the enhancement-type language were more
likely to consider intelligence a fixed trait than children who had
been praised using encouragement-type language. These results
suggest that the language used in a student’s environment can play
a large role in student conceptions of ability and student perfor-
mance. It seems reasonable to believe that the same is true for
creativity.
Based on Mueller and Dweck’s research on cognitive ability, we
don’t know whether the current level of creative performance is a
result of undeveloped creative ability (an enhancement view) or
the result of an environment that is not conducive to creativity (an
encouragement view). This simple change from enhancement to
encouragement may result in an increase in the total amount of
creativity produced. Or, at the very least, to avoid conflating
enhancing and encouraging creativity, the more generic phrase
“increasing creative production” should be used.
Creating Creativity
The recent revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson & Krath-
wohl, 2001) went so far as to add “creating” to be a distinct
component of student learning. If a student cannot create then she
has not achieved the pinnacle of learning. Similar to the laudable
goal of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001) to ensure that all
students are minimally proficient in reading and math—There is
real merit in ensuring that all students, regardless of background,
are developing a baseline level of creativity. I will leave the
benchmarking of that baseline level to others to decide. However,
using a “good enough” benchmark as the sole goal of our creativity
efforts would likely yield the same problems that NCLB has
encountered. Namely, in our pursuit of excellence, we cannot settle
for achieving only equality of access and minimal proficiency.
Equality of access and minimal proficiency are not an end, but a
means to the excellence end. The task is to strike the right balance
between ensuring equity while striving for excellence by integrat-
ing creativity into the classroom. Robert Kennedy (n.d.) is often
attributed with popularizing an old question by asking, “If not us,
who? If not now, when?” No group is better suited to help achieve
these goals than creativity researchers and there is no time like the
present. It is our only hope.
References
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for
learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of
educational objectives: Complete edition. New York: Longman.
Baer, J., & Garrett, T. (in press). Teaching for creativity in an era of content
standards and accountability. In R. A. Beghetto & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.),
Nurturing creativity in the classroom. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we
learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 612–
637.
Beghetto, R. A. (2007). Ideational code-switching: Walking the talk about
supporting student creativity in the classroom. Roeper Review, 29,
265–270.
41
Beghetto, R. A., & Plucker, J. A. (2006). The relationship among school-
ing, learning, and creativity: “All roads lead to creativity” or “You can’t
get there from here”? In J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity and
reason in cognitive development (pp. 316 –332). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Beneson, J. F., & Dweck, C. S. (1986). The development of trait expla-
nations and self-evaluations in the academic and social domains. Child
Development, 57, 1179 –1187.
Ceci, S. J., & Liker, J. K. (1987). A day at the races: A study of IQ,
expertise, and cognitive complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychol-
ogy: General, 116, 90.
Ceci, S. J., & Roazzi, A. (1994). The effects of context on cognition:
Postcards from Brazil. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Mind in context: Inter-
actionist perspectives on human intelligence (pp. 74 –101). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Duckworth, E. (1996). The having of wonderful ideas and other essays on
teaching and learning (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American
Psychologist, 41, 1040 –1048.
Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books.
Florida, R. (2005). The flight of the creative class: The new global
competition for talent. New York: HarperBusiness.
Gardner, J. W. (1961/1995). Excellence: Can we be equal and excellent
too? New York: Norton.
Heckman, J. J., Stixrud, J., & Urzua, S. (2006). The effects of cognitive and
noncognitive abilities on labor market outcomes and social behavior.
Journal of Labor Economics, 24, 411– 482.
Hopkins, G. (2005). How can teachers develop students’ motivation—And
success? Retrieved November 1, 2008, from: http://www.educationworld
.com/a_issues/chat/chat010.shtml
Hunsaker, S. L., & Callahan, C. M. (1995). Creativity and giftedness:
Published instrument uses and abuses. Gifted Child Quarterly, 39, 110 –
114.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can
undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology, 75, 33–52.
Nickerson, R. S. (1999). Enhancing creativity. In R. J. Sternberg, (Ed.),
The handbook of creativity (pp. 392– 430). New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
No Child Left Behind Act, 20 U.S.C. §6301 (2001).
Nuneś, T. (1994). Street intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Ency-
clopedia of human intelligence (Vol. 2, pp. 1045–1049), New York:
Macmillan.
Nuneś, T., Schliemann, A. D., & Carraher, D. W. (1993). Street mathe-
matics and school mathematics. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Plaks, J. E., Grant, H. E., & Dweck, C. S. (2005). Violations of implicit
theories and the sense of prediction and control: Implications for moti-
vated person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
88, 245–262.
Plucker, J. A., & Beghetto, R. A. (2003). Why not be creative when we
enhance creativity? In J. H. Borland (Ed.), Rethinking gifted education
(pp. 215–226). New York: Teachers College Press.
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity
more important to educational psychologists? Potential, pitfalls, and
future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39,
83–96.
Plucker, J. A., & Renzulli, J. S. (1999). Psychometric approaches to the
study of human creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The handbook of
creativity (pp. 137–152). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Quotations of Robert F. Kennedy. (n.d.). Retrieved December 30, 2008,
42 MAKEL

from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical⫹Resources/Archives/ Westby, E. L., & Dawson, V. L. (1995). Creativity: Asset or burden in the
Reference⫹Desk/Quotations⫹of⫹Robert⫹F.⫹Kennedy.htm classroom? Creativity Research Journal, 8, 1–10.
Runco, M. A. (2005). Creative giftedness. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E.
Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (pp. 295–311). New York:
Cambridge University Press. Received November 11, 2008
Ter Meulen, R., Savulescu, J., & Kahane, G. (in press). Enhancing human Revision received December 8, 2008
capacities. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Accepted December 8, 2008 䡲