|
Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin and Beñat Bilbao-Osorio report back from the
CRELL Conference “Can creativity be measured?” held in Brussels on 28th-29th May 2009
This conference aimed at exploring whether creativity could be measured in a comparative international manner and if so, if existing large scale surveys could help assess creativity.
The conference was well attended, with first rank scholars in the field of creativity such as Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (Claremont Graduate University), Mark Runco ( Univesity of Georgia) Ed Lorenz (CNRS) or Hugo Hollanders (MERIT). These scholars presented their work, which moves from measuring creativity at the inidivual level, within organisations (i.e. learning organisations that foster creativity) and at the system level (regions or countries, more or less condusive to creativity)
During the conference, there was an intense discussion on what creativity was and at which level could or should be measured.
With regards to what creativity was, several definitions where presented. In general, these definitions shared the need of creativity to be 1) novel , i.e. original; and 2) appropriate, i.e. useful concerning tasks and constrains. When one talks about usefulness, this has to be understood in a particular context, and needs to be based to a reference group, which can be a group of experts, consumers, etc.
Moreover, two characteristics of creativity, or creative processes, became evident during the discussion:
(1) Creativity is domain specific, and therefore creative behaviours are to be found in a person in one particular domain. In other words,there are not “creative people”, unless they are related to a specific field of activity. For example, Eistein was creative in Physics, but not so in music.
(2) Creativity potential and performance are the result of a different set of skills (i.e. analytical skills, divergent thinking) that are also task/field specific.
In terms of appropriate level of measurement of creativity, as long as we assume that creativity (with “small c”) is primarily an individual trait, measurement would primarily focused on the personal dimensions. However, if we believe that Creativity (with “capital C”) is a systemic process, then systemic properties such as the availability and accessibility of information or the encouragement of novelty by institutions such as schools and corporations, could categorise creative societies and creative cultures.
Based on these findings, a policy message that came up during the discussion was that education should be customised as much as possible, as it difficult to develop aggregate policies that could work for all individuals. However, this would come at a high cost, which most (if any) educational systems cannot afford.
|
