9/4/11 The Chronicle of Higher Education - Chronicle Review

By Steven J. Tepper and George D. Kuh

Welcome to the creative era. To fuel the 21st-century economic engine and sustain democratic values, we must unleash and nurture the creative impulse that exists within every one of us, or so say experts like Richard Florida, Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink, Keith Sawyer, and Tom Friedman. Indeed, just as the advantages the United States enjoyed in the past were based in large part on scientific and engineering advances, today it is cognitive flexibility, inventiveness, design thinking, and nonroutine approaches to messy problems that are essential to adapt to rapidly changing and unpredictable global forces; to create new markets; to take risks and start new enterprises; and to produce compelling forms of media, entertainment, and design.

There is no shortage of best-seller hyperbole in such claims. But there is also no doubt that today's economic, social, political, and ecological challenges require something other than traditional, routine responses.

Regrettably, as other countries, like China, look to America as a model for how to educate citizens to be creative, we are undermining creativity in K-12 education through relentless standardized testing and the marginalization of subjects like art and music. Higher education is buffeted by similar pressures, as evidenced by reports like one recently published by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. It calls for colleges and universities to emphasize narrow, skill-based preparation for fields where jobs are plentiful. While well intentioned, such statements are off the mark in terms of what workers and citizens need to survive and thrive in a turbulent global economy.

Simply put, America cannot maintain a competitive position in the world order unless we better understand how to nurture creative talent and put in place policies and practices to do so. Nor can we just leave it to chance that we are adequately training rising generations to assume their roles as creative workers and responsible citizens.

First, we must move beyond the naïvely egalitarian, almost mystical view of creativity advanced by many creativity enthusiasts. This view suggests that to unleash creative capacity, we have only to set up conditions in which creativity will naturally blossom-informal workspaces, nonhierarchical organizations, flexible jobs, opportunities for cross-fertilization, and diverse and hip urban spaces. Such conditions are thought to encourage lateral thinking, brainstorming, and risk taking, all of which set the stage for innovation and entrepreneurship. No wonder creativity is an irresistible solution to our nation's most pressing challenges! It appears to flow like tap water, requiring no significant investment in research or training. To transform our economy, we just have to get out of the way and let creativity grow free, like kudzu.

Existing research suggests otherwise. Creativity is not a mysterious quality, nor can one simply try on one of Edward de Bono's six thinking hats to start the creative juices flowing. Rather, creativity is cultivated through rigorous training and by deliberately practicing certain core abilities and skills over an extended period of time.

These include:

1. the ability to approach problems in nonroutine ways using analogy and metaphor;
2. conditional or abductive reasoning (posing "what if" propositions and reframing problems);
3. keen observation and the ability to see new and unexpected patterns;
4. the ability to risk failure by taking initiative in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty;
5. the ability to heed critical feedback to revise and improve an idea;
6. a capacity to bring people, power, and resources together to implement novel ideas; and
7. the expressive agility required to draw on multiple means (visual, oral, written, media-related) to communicate novel ideas to others.

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Steven J. Tepper is an associate professor of sociology and associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and a senior scholar with the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). George D. Kuh is an emeritus professor of education at Indiana University and director of SNAAP.