This thesis attempts to answer a central question in the field of creativity: what creativity looks like in various domains of activities ? Finding a satisfying answer to this question involves answering what 'creativity' is. Therefore, the first chapter is dedicated to establishing a shared understanding of the term creativity. Following this, determining what creativity looks like in various domains is answered in that same chapter with a new theory of cognition, called the Cognitive Space Theory. This theory organizes the content of domains according to ten fundamental cognitive spaces. These cognitive spaces cover a broad range of human creative expressions. In the second chapter, a questionnaire based on the theory is developed and validated. This questionnaire assesses the exploration and mastery of the ten cognitive spaces postulated in the theory. The results of two studies are reported to demonstrate the psychometric properties of the questionnaire. The third chapter uses the latter questionnaire to predict the creative activities and creative achievements of university students in eight different domains ranging from sport to science. Finally, the fourth chapter discusses the implications of the theory applied to education. The chapter concludes with future avenues of research in neuroscience, cognition, and artificial intelligence.

Accidently sent an old version of chapter 4 -- this is the final version of the manuscript and thesis / Background: Creativity is the generation of effective and useful ideas, and it has played an integral role in the field of surgery: new techniques, technologies and practices in surgery originate from generation and implementation of creative ideas. Creativity also plays an important role in clinical problem-solving. It is therefore an important ability in the surgical profession. However, despite its importance, literature on creativity in surgery is limited. Research Question: What is the current state of the literature on creativity in medicine, and how creative are surgeons, as measured by a divergent thinking tool? Study Design: Scoping review & survey with semi-structured interviews. Primary Outcome: Divergent thinking (as measured by the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults [ATTA]) Study Setting: McMaster University Medical Center Participants: Surgeons and surgeon trainees in the Department of Surgery Analysis: Descriptive statistics and regression analyses to explore factors associated with divergent thinking. Discussion: We found only 54 primary studies on creativity in medicine, 3 of which were conducted in surgery. Most of the creativity research was conducted in the field of nursing. Our survey of divergent thinking found that while surgeons had an average level of divergent thinking, they struggled to produce original ideas whilst displaying high levels of fluency and flexibility. Being male was significantly negatively associated with divergent thinking. Surgical experience was marginally negatively associated with divergent thinking, suggesting that the training process may be stifling the ability to generate original ideas. Surgeons reported a stifling of creativity in the surgical training process, which corroborated our findings. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Creativity is an important ability in medicine. We found that creativity is being understudied in the field of medicine –only 3 studies on creativity have been conducted in surgery. Thus, we designed a survey of divergent thinking, a process used to generate creative ideas, in surgeons and surgeon trainees at the McMaster University Medical Center. We use an abbreviated version of the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking (TTCT), the most widely use measure of creativity in the world. We found that surgeons and surgeon trainees have similar divergent thinking levels to the average adult but struggled to come up with original ideas. Being male was linked to lower divergent thinking scores. Years of surgical experience trended towards a negative link with divergent thinking, suggesting that the training process may be stifling the ability to think originally.

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Creative supervision interventions are suggested to be supportive of mental health supervisees' professional development. Yet, empirical evidence of the utility of such interventions is limited. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a creative intervention, specifically visual art, enhances clinical supervision. Enhancement was operationalized using likert scaled questions to measure: (1) participants' level of enjoyment of the art task intervention, (2) participants' perceived level of benefit derived from the art task intervention, and (3) how often participants used art tasks in counseling their own clients. Additionally, "creativity" was correlated to the dependent variables. Creativity was operationalized using the Barron-Welsh Art Scale and the Remote Associates Test. The art task interventions were administered in the clinical supervision of master's-level counseling internship students at two Universities located in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Supervisees engaged in visual art exercises, and subsequent discussions, during the spring 2003 semester of their internship class. Demographic information and likert-scaled responses measuring the dependent variables were reported using percentages. Dependent variables were correlated with creativity levels. Qualitative responses on the Exit Questionnaire were summarized and reported. Results suggested that participants enjoyed and benefited from supervision involving art tasks, and that a statistically significant relationship exists between creativity (as measured by the Barron-Welsh Art Scale) and enjoyment of the art tasks. While more participants overall used art in counseling their clients after participating in the study, the number of times participants used art tasks did not increase. / Ph. D.

Yes / Creativity and innovation in any organization are vital to its successful performance. The authors review the rapidly growing body of research in this area with particular attention to the period 2002 to 2013, inclusive. Conceiving of both creativity and innovation as being integral parts of essentially the same process, we propose a new, integrative definition. We note that research into creativity has typically examined the stage of idea generation, whereas innovation studies have commonly also included the latter phase of idea implementation. The authors discuss several seminal theories of creativity and innovation and then apply a comprehensive levels-of-analysis framework to review extant research into individual, team, organizational, and multilevel innovation. Key measurement characteristics of the reviewed studies are then noted. In conclusion, we propose a guiding framework for future research comprising 11 major themes and 60 specific questions for future studies. / Grant IN-2012-095 from the U.K. Leverhulme Trust awarded to the first author and by British Academy Grant SG110409 awarded to the second author.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The general purpose of this review is to summarize the research and literature in the field of creativity from 1946 until the present time. The Terman studies of the 1920s helped education take a giant step forward by giving it a measuring device that would greatly assist in differentiating the individual abilities of children. The value of the intelligence test certainly cannot be questioned. Current thought and research, however, seem to indicate that intelligence testing and concomitant attitudes are not doing the complete job of revealing our talented individuals. [TRUNCATED] / 2999-01-01

Analysing human creativity has always been a difficult undertaking. The reason for this is the vagueness of the term creativity itself. Philosophers and Researchers have tried to unveil the secrets behind creativity since centuries. Besides some principles e.g. defined by Finke, Ward, and Smith, there is no holistic understanding about term creativity and there will always be discussions between researchers of different disciplines about how creativity is achieved. Current approaches try to understand creativity through studying the creative artifact or the creative human himself. These approaches have not lead to any promising results. Instead of focussing on creativity itself, it is more promising to look at the creative process of creators. Through this, it is possible to analyse what happened during the creation of an artefact. The aim of the analysis is the identification of certain behaviours within the creative process, which lead to very creative results or in opposite hinder creativity. The gained knowledge is used for the creation of patterns, describing this specific behaviour. The analysis of the creative process is not only interesting for artists, but also for engineers, researchers, students and many others. Important target groups for this approach are schools and universities. Being able to early recognise problems in the learning curve of a student will enable a directed support, in order to improve the student's performance. Until now, the main problem for analysing the creative process of a creator is the lack of information on how an artefact was created. Most creators tend not to make many notes during their creative phase, even if there are famous exemptions like Beethoven who left behind a huge amount of notices and marked changes in his work. Hence, the challenge is the development of a powerful framework, which can cope effectively with the recording and presentation of this creative process, in order to enable detailed analyses. Modern computer technology fosters the recording of the creative process of a person. Much of today's creative work is achieved with computers and powerful software applications. Computer networks and the internet enable new ways of collaboration. The creation of a flexible, collaborative tool-set is the ideal approach for the mapping and analysis of the creative process. A novel approach, based on these ideas, was developed by the members of the Creative Technologies Research Programme at the Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL). The central aim of the approach is the mapping of the human creativity with so-called creativity maps. A creativity map is basically transition system, which allows to store and represent the creative process as well as to hold each version of the artefact. The developed De Montfort Creativity Assistant (DMCA), is a collaborative, web-enabled state-of-the-art software framework, realising the theoretical concepts. This thesis represents a substantial contribution to the research project. The focus of the presented work lies on the analysis and the support of the creative process. Several novel techniques for the analysis of massive data sets have been developed. The presented techniques enable a domain-independent analysis and support of the creative process. This is huge improvement over previous concepts, which are highly specialised and focus on the creative artefact itself. The presented approach required the development of several novel techniques. The major contributions of the presented research are: - Behavioural Patterns Enable the description of constructs inside the creativity map. These constructs represent the creative behaviour of the creator. - Techniques for a Computer-supported Information Extraction A pattern description language enables the computer-supported information extraction from creativity maps. - Knowledge Repository Knowledge, gained through the analysis processes, is stored centrally and shared with other creators in order to stimulate further growing of knowledge. - Concepts for the Analysis and Support of the Creative Process Novel concepts allow the structured analysis and support of the creative process, regardless of the creator's domain. All developed techniques have been implemented in several tools, which aim to enrich the DMCA with the ability of a computer-supported analysis and support of the creative process.

Nuolat besikeičiančiame pasaulyje visuomenei tenka atsakyti į naujus iššūkius, todėl gebėjimas veikti kūrybiškai ir siekti naujovių yra labai svarbus tiek asmens tobulėjimui, tiek socialiniam ir ekonominiam šalies vystymuisi. Kūrybingumas tampa labai aktualus žmogaus veiklos aspektas, kurį reikia skatinti ir ugdyti. Magistro darbo „Kūrybingumo ugdymas mokant fitodizaino“ tikslas ištirti suaugusiųjų kūrybingumo ugdymo galimybes mokant fitodizaino. Empirinio tyrimo uždaviniai: ištirti pedagogų ir mokinių nuomonę apie kūrybingumo ugdymo galimybę, mokant fitodizaino, išsiaiškinti ugdytinių kūrybingumo apraiškas bei atskleisti jų kūrybingumą, komponuojant kompozicijas. Tyrimas atliktas taikant anketinės apklausos, pokalbio bei ugdomosios veiklos stebėjimo metodus. Empirinis tyrimas atskleidė mokinių nuomonę, kad floristinių kompozicijų komponavimas lavina vaizduotę, sudaro sąlygas saviraiškai, moko rasti naujus sprendimo būdus. Pedagogai mano, kad mokant fitodizaino kūrybingumas ugdomas, nes ugdytiniai kurdami kompozicijas ieško naujovių bei originalumo, tobulėja kaip asmenybės, kurdami išreiškia savo jausmus. Mokinių nuomone, kūrybingumas atsiskleidžia, nes jie pastebi originalius darbus, apmąsto būsimą kompoziciją, kūrinio mintį ir nuotaiką perteikia kompozicijos raiškos ir harmonizavimo priemonėmis. Pedagogai pritaria, kad kūrybingumą ugdytiniai išreiškia kompozicijos raiškos ir harmonizavimo priemonėmis, taip pat įgytais gebėjimais, įgyta patirtimi bei medžiagomis. Tačiau... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / In a changing world society has to react to new challenges, that is why, an ability to act creative and search for new possibilities is so important, not only for development of a human being but also for social and economical development of a country. Creativity is becoming a topical aspect of human being activity, and has to be encouraged and educed. Task of the master thesis “Creativity in education teaching phytodesign“ is to analyze the possibilities of creativity of adult people by teaching them phytodesign. Empiric problem of analysis: to investigate the opinion of teachers and students about the possibility to educate creativity by teaching phytodesign, to explore the outpouring of students’ creativity and to show their creativity in making compositions. The analysis was done by questioning, conversation and using methods of observation educational process. Empirical survey showed that students are of the opinion, that making of floristically compositions, exercises the imagination, makes the expression easy and teaches to find new ways out. According to teachers opinion, creativity is developing, because students are looking for new possibilities and original ways of expression while learning phytodesign, they improve like personalities, because by creating something new, they are expressing their own feelings. Students come to a conclusion, that creativity opens, because they see original compositions, they ponder about their own composition and convey its‘mind... [to full text]

One question raised when creating, evaluating and appraising art work is 'How do we know what we know?' This exegesis attempts to answer this by establishing the important role intuitive knowledge plays in decision making in general, and within the author's own art practice specifically. The study reviews some of the literature on intuition from philosophical and psychological perspective in order to validate intuitive knowledge and intuitive decision making within contemporary art practice. However, just because intuition may drive the process, it does not mean that the product of intuitive practice is necessarily good or has any value. Consequently, the importance of aesthetics, and the values of integrity, honesty and truth are explored from a philosophical perspective. These are discussed in relation to the art practice of other artists from this century as well as that of the writer. Having constructed a philosophical framework to work within and be guided by, the final part of this study documents the development of the practical work and how this framework influences the art practice and the outcomes of that practice. It is hoped that the results of the study will reassert the validity and relevance of this form of art practice and philosophy within contemporary art practice. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Visual Art)