Making a Conducive Environment

Though intelligence and natural talent play a major role in creativity, even the greatest creative geniuses in history would likely never have been without having grown up in environments which fostered their genius.

R.S. Nickerson provides several key points for enhancing creativity through creating a nurturing environment.

- Establish Purpose and Intention - Get students to see creativity as a goal.

- Build Basic Skills - Students need a solid basic educational background.

- Encourage Acquisition of Domain-Specific Knowledge - Though knowledge doesn't guarantee creativity, most noteworthy creative work is done by creators with a strong knowledge of the subject they create in.

- Stimulate and Reward Curiosity and Exploration - Try to foster a sense of wonder about the world, as most creative people tend to be curious.

- Build Motivation (Especially Internal Motivation) - Encourage internal motivation toward the task rather than the goal or end product. Students who feel successful tend to have stronger internal motivation and thus have more success.

- Encourage Confidence and a Willingness to Take Risks - Try to eliminate the fear of failure and ridicule as a means to encourage students to take risks. Successful experiences will boost confidence.

- Focus on Master and Self-Competition - Encourage the goal of bettering oneself, as long term performance improvements will be greater and seen by a a larger number of students than if social competition is encouraged.

- Promote Supportable Beliefs about Creativity - Create self-fulfilling prophesies of students having success because they believe in their success.

- Provide Opportunities for Choice and Discovery - Allow choice and personal experience to be a part of the learning process. Let them make discoveries which are real to them.

- Develop Self-Management (meta cognitive) Skills - Encourage the intentional monitoring and guiding of their own behavior and academic and creative quality to learn their strengths and weaknesses and focus themselves accordingly.

- Teach Techniques and Strategies for Facilitating Creative Performance - Encourage problem solving and use creative strategies toward these problems. Encourage analogy and idea sharing, and allow for idea incubation.

- Provide Balance - Even freewheeling creative environments need structure for students to succeed. Give rules, but provide reasons for the rules.

- Teach by Example - Ideas, attitudes and values which are essential for creativity and academic success are often learned from examples. Teachers need to model fair-mindedness, openness to evidence, a desire for clarity, respect for others' opinions and reflectiveness.

If teachers can make students believe in their creative abilities, teach habits and techniques toward improving creativity, and foster an environment that encourages curiosity, risk-taking and reflection, then students will have vast improvement in the range and quality of their creativity. Likely, they will improve academically as well, since these techniques of creative enhancement tend to fit the image of good teaching in general.

Also, as the presentation below illustrates; sometimes a little silliness needs to be allowed.

Nickerson, Raymond, S. "Enhancing Creativity," In Sternberg, Robert, J. Handbook of Creativity, (1999), Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.