Abstract
Thomas sets out the context of her study of creativity in art education in the senior years of schooling. She identifies the paradox of creativity, outlining how students are obliged to find creativity within their own intentions and psychological resources while they are advantaged if what they make conforms with aesthetic values in the visual arts. Briefly commenting on the methodology and findings of the study, Thomas explains how creativity necessitates tactful forms of social reasoning on the part of art teachers and students and occurs as a function of misrecognition in the realities of classrooms. Commenting on the upsurge of interest in creativity in contemporary curriculum and standards frameworks and gifted education, she prepares the reader for an anti-reductionist rethinking of creativity.
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Notes
- 1.
While many other influences, acting as a network of causes on the artists’ creativity, could be attributed such as social connections, institutional affiliations, the winning of prestigious awards, and economic resources that facilitated travel to Europe and the UK with the stimulation of a more modernist artistic milieu, these aspects are played down in this narrative. Such a construct is far from unique. It inflects many of those used in art exhibitions and the ways in which artists often narrate their own creative stories.
- 2.
ARTEXPRESS is the annual high stakes exhibition of around 14% of the top scoring artworks made by NSW art students for the state-wide Higher School Certificate Examination in Visual Arts, held at the AGNSW, Sydney, Australia, and other participating galleries.
- 3.
This view continues to underscore discourses in early childhood education, primary and secondary schools, disadvantaged community programs, art therapy movements and common-sense accounts of creativity. It also informs teacher preparation and standards setting in art making, evident in concepts of ‘process’ and experimentation. It remains entrenched in the discourses of art teachers and students and in the ambiguity surrounding assessment (Thomas 2013). Lowenfeld’s (1970) warning continues to reverberate—‘never prefer one child’s creative work over another’ (p. 55). Nonetheless, this taken for granted view collides with current, albeit recycled, prescribed representations of creativity in curriculum and standards frameworks as outlined and, importantly, it underscores the paradox of this study.
- 4.
Brown explains these twists and turns in art education as ‘incommensurable historical moments sharing few common links’ (Brown, 2017, p. 116), the theoretical practices of which have tangible influences, whatever their limits and duration. For example, and of particular importance in the USA, developments in art education have included Discipline Based Art Education (Clark et al. 1989), and more recently, Visual Culture Education (See Duncum 2002; Freedman 2003; Freedman et al. 2013). In NSW art education, Visual Arts syllabuses from the mid 1990s included the curriculum innovation of the ‘Frames’. These Frames are explained as alternative frameworks of meaning offering a basis for repositioning understandings about art without regressing to pluralism. With this framework in place NSW did not align itself with the developments in Visual Culture as represented in North American art education (see Board of Secondary Education 1987; Board of Studies 2016; Brown 1996, p. 7).
- 5.
National and state curriculum standards and frameworks is a term that I will use to apply to a range of curriculum and assessment documents including framework statements, syllabuses, standards frameworks, assessment frameworks etc.
- 6.
While this investigation was a study of a particular case of creativity in the senior art classroom, I fully concur with Berys Gaut’s position on creativity: that it is a ‘scalar’ concept. He says ‘people or achievements can be more or less creative. When one says someone or something is creative…, one sets some threshold of degree of creativity that is satisfied, at which creativity is salient, and this varies with the context: Children have to display less originality to be less artistically creative than adults do, and untrained artists less than professional artists’ (Gaut 2014, p. 270).
- 7.
Elliot Eisner made a significant contribution in art education through his identification of typologies of creative behaviours identifying four types: boundary pushing, inventing, boundary breaking, and aesthetic organising (see Eisner 1966, p. 324). Guilford’s theory of a factorial conception of personality was influential in the development of Eisner’s theory, along with Blatt and Stein’s studies of highly creative individuals and what were perceived as common personality traits. Eisner’s typology was based upon the view ‘that creativity in art does not appear to be premised on a unitary trait’ (1966, p. 324). Similarly, David Ecker advanced a view of problem solving as qualitative problem solving involving qualitative or aesthetic intelligence and experimental behaviour. He stated that this was ‘rarely neat in its steps, but continuous—a means-end progression, sometimes halting or groping. It can be rethought, [can] recommence and move forward’ (Ecker 1966, p. 67). Both Eisner and Ecker were also interested in artists’ shoptalk and their artworks.
- 8.
Robert Weisberg (2006) would strongly disagree with ACARAs approach to critical and creative thinking. He says creative thinking is nothing other than good ordinary thinking directed at some kind of externally or internally imposed problem that needs to be solved and involves the components of remembering, imagining, planning and deciding (see Weisberg 2006, p. 576). For Weisberg, the knowledge that a creative individual possesses and brings to a situation may be all that distinguishes them from a less creative individual (Weisberg 2004, p. 248). Importantly, he identifies the value of deep immersion in a domain of knowledge, which provides the opportunity for the practising, automation, and perfection of skills. The perfection of skills in turn facilitates the carrying out of tasks without draining capacity (see Weisberg 2004, p. 247).
- 9.
South Korea now emphasises the importance of ‘Happy Education’ in seeking to address growing concerns for students’ well-being (Cho and Huh 2017).
- 10.
See Adams and Owens’s excellent critique of creativity and democratic education including the ways in which globalised and homogenised education systems reduce students and their learning to metrics.
- 11.
jagodzinski (2013), in his explanation of creativity as designer capitalism, which is highly relevant to how representations of creativity are being constructed in these curriculum and standards frameworks, makes the compelling point that ‘traditional identity distinctions are no longer useful, but a hindrance, and are limiting factors for profit gain. Everyone is meant to be equal in a neo-liberal democracy provided they can pass the turn-gates of the allowable space of global capitalism’ (p. 115). Nor, as jagodzinski says, are these representations threatened by re-representations but thrive on it, ‘infecting through contagion’ (p. 114).
- 12.
Gagné represents creative as a domain and natural ability but does not view it as innate. He takes the view it can be developed through childhood, maturation and ‘informal exercise’, recognising the influence of generic endowment (Gagné 2010, p. 83).
- 13.
See Merrotsy’s (2017) study of how Gagné’s model is used in policy, other documents and websites.
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Thomas, K. (2019). Introduction. In: The Paradox of Creativity in Art Education. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21366-4_1
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