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Essay on Creativity:- 1. Meaning of Creativity 2. Definition of Creativity 3. Nature and Characteristics 4. Stimulation.
Essay on the Meaning of Creativity:
The term creativity refers to the ability to produce something that is both new and valuable. Good education, proper care and provision of opportunities to inspire, stimulate and sharpen the creative mind and it is in this sphere that parents, society and teachers make a significant contribution.
One has to help children in nourishing and utilizing their creative abilities to the utmost, and the educational process should aim at developing creative abilities among children. This can be done through teachers and parents who should know the importance of the creative process and the ways and means of developing creativity.
Essay on the Definition of Creativity:
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The term ‘creativity’ or creative process has been defined in many ways:
1. “Creativity implies the products of totally or partially novel identity”—Stagner and Karowski.
2. “Creativity is the capacity of a person to produce composition products or ideas which are essentially new or novel and previously unknown to the producer”— Drevdahl.
3. “Creativity is the power of the human mind to create new contents by transforming relations and thereby generating new correlates”—Spearman.
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4. “Creativity is the ability to see things in a new and unusual light, to see problems that no one else may even realize its exist, and then to come up with new, unusual, and effective solutions”—Papalia and Olds.
Essay on the Nature and Characteristics of Creativity:
a. Creativity is not confined to any individual:
Creativity is not confined to any individual, group of individuals, caste, colour or creed. It is not bound by the barriers of age, location or culture.
b. Creativity is innate as well as acquired:
Although many research findings and incidents favour the suggestion that creativity is a God given gift and natural endowment, the influence of cultural background, experiences, education and training in the nurturing of creativity cannot be ruled out. Thus one’s creativity may be correctly said to be a function of natural endowment as well as its nurturing. It is a combination of responses or ideas in novel ways.
c. Creativity is adventurous and open thinking:
Creativity is not a product of the stereotyped, rigid and closed thinking. It encourages and demands complete freedom to accept and express the multiplicity of responses, choices and ways of action.
d. Creativity carries ego involvement:
There is complete involvement of one’s ego in the creative expression. One’s individuality and identity are totally merged in one’s creation. Here ‘I’ is given more weightage.
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e. Creativity has a wide scope:
Creative expression is not restricted by any limits or boundaries. It covers all fields and activities of human life in any of which one is able to demonstrate creativity by expressing or producing a new idea or object.
Fostering Creativity:
Researches in the field of creativity have suggested special techniques and methods for fostering creativity among children.
a. Brainstorming:
Brainstorming is a strategy or technique for allowing a group to explore ideas without judgment or surety. In practice, the students may be asked to sit in a group for solving a problem, and attack them without any inhibition from any angle with questions having number of ideas and solutions. The students are asked to suggest ideas as rapidly as possible.
b. Use of teaching models:
Some of the teaching models may prove quite beneficial in developing creativity among children.
c. Use of gaming technique:
Gaming techniques in a playful spirit, help the children in the development of creative traits. These techniques provide valuable learning experiences in spontaneous and evaluative situation. Both verbal and non-verbal stimulus materials are used in such techniques.
In non-verbal transactions the children may be asked to build a cube, construct or complete a picture, draw and build patterns, interpret the patterns of drawings and sketches and build or construct something or anything out of the raw material given to them.
Essay on Stimulation of Creativity:
Creating an environment to full growth and development of the creative abilities of children should be focused by teachers and parents for proper stimulation and nurturing of the traits which help to develop creativity, namely originality, flexibility, ideational fluency, divergent thinking, self-confidence, persistence, sensitiveness, ability to see relationship and make associations, etc. are essential for this.
It may be achieved through the following practices:
1. Freedom to respond:
Most often teachers and parents expect routine, fixed responses from children, and thus kill the creative spark by breeding conformity and passivity. We should allow adequate freedom to our children in responding to a situation.
2. Opportunity for ego involvement:
We should provide opportunities to children to derive satisfaction from identifying themselves, the cause of a product.
3. Encouraging originality and flexibility:
Originality on the part of children in any form should be encouraged. Passive submission to the facts, unquestioning mimicry and memorization by discouraging creative expression should, therefore, be checked as for as possible.
4. Removal of hesitation and fear:
There seems to be a great hesitation mixed with a sense of inferiority and fear in taking the initiative for creative expression. The causes of such difference and fear should be discovered and removed and encourage persuasion.
5. Developing healthy habits among children:
Industriousness, persistence, self- reliance (images, ideas, concepts) are ordinarily employed—Garrett.
6. Self-confidence is one of the qualities that is helpful in creative output:
Children should, therefore, be encouraged to stand up against criticism of their creative expression. They should be made to feel that whatever they create is unique and express what they desire to express.