Teaching Creativity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
Wednesday, October 08
Irve Dell, Art and Art History; John Schade, Environmental Studies; Howard Thorsheim, Psychology; and Mary Titus, English and Director of the Center for Integrative Studies (CIS)
(co-sponsor: Academic Year Theme - "Science and the Liberal Arts")
The scientist, Carl Sagan, is reputed to have said that "it is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science." The writer, Maya Angelou, has commented that, "…creativity is like electricity. We don't understand how it works…we just use it." Recent research in neuroscience, however, suggests that we may have begun to develop new understandings of creativity.
This session invites a conversation exploring how different disciplines – those in the sciences as well as those in the fine arts and humanities – conceptualize creativity. Do we mean different things by creativity in an art course as compared with a course in environmental studies? Is important for our students to be creative? Can we teach them creativity? If so, how do we do that?
Resources on this topic:
- Jonah Lehrer, Annals of Science, "The Eureka Hunt," The New Yorker, July 28, 2008
See http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/downloads/biggs_solo.pdf for discussion of the S.O.L.O. (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) taxonomy (developed by John Biggs), which has been applied to gauging the level of creativity in students' work.
- Biggs, J. & Tang, C. Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the student does. 3rd ed. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education. (2007)
- Alan Lightman. "A Sense of the Mysterious," Daedalus (September 22, 2003)
