Creativity has been considered in terms of process, product or person and-has been defined as the interpersonal and intrapersonal process by means of which original, high quality, and genuinely significant products are developed. In dealing with young children, the focus should be on the process, i.e., developing and generating original ideas, which is seen as the basis of creative potential.
For a proper understanding of children’s creativity, one must distinguish creativity from intelligence, and talent. Some experts expressed concern about whether creativity in young children could be differentiated from other cognitive abilities. More recent studies have shown that components of creative potential can indeed be distinguished from intelligence. The term “gifted” is often used to imply high intelligence. But some scientists have argued that intelligence and creativity are independent of each other, and a highly creative, child may or may not be highly intelligent.
Creativity goes beyond possession and use of artistic or musical talent. In this context, talent refers to the possession of a high degree of technical skill in a specialized area. Thus an artist may have wonderful technical skills, but may not succeed in evoking the emotional response that makes the viewer feel that a painting, for example, is unique. It is important to keep in mind that creativity is evidenced not only in music, art, or writing, but throughout the curriculum, in science, social studies and other areas.
Most measures of children’s creativity have focused on ideational fluency. Ideational fluency tasks require children to generate as many responses as they can to a particular stimulus, as is done in brainstorming. Ideational fluency is generally considered to be a critical feature of the creative process. Children’s responses may be either popular or original, with the latter considered evidence of creative potential. Thus when we ask four-year-old to tell us “all the things they can think of that are red”, we find that children not only list wagons, apples and cardinals, but also chicken pox and cold hands.
For young children, the focus of creativity should remain on process: the generation of ideas. Adult acceptance of multiple ideas in a non-evaluative atmosphere will help children generate more ideas or move to the next stage of self-evaluation. As children develop the ability for self-evaluation, issues of quality and the generation of products become more important. The emphasis at this age should be on self-evaluation, for these children are exploring their abilities to generate and evaluate hypotheses, and revise their ideas based on that evaluation. Evaluation by others and criteria for genuinely significant products should be used only with older adolescents or adults.
1. What is important for young children to develop their creativity?
2. The main purpose of paragraph 2 is to ________.
3. Why does the author site the example of an artist?
4. What ability does “ideational fluency” (Para.4) refer to?
5. How should adults induce creativity in children?
A.Their intelligence and talent.
B.The process of developing original ideas.
C.A higher degree of technical skills.
D.Better understanding of children’s creative potential.
A.express concern about whether intelligent children are creative
B.explain the connection between intelligence and creativity
C.illustrate that intelligence and creativity are not related at all
D.prove that highly creative children are usually intelligent
A.To emphasize how important creativity is to an artist.
B.To illustrate how an artist should use creativity to attract his viewers.
C.To show that an artist usually has both technical skills and creativity.
D.To support the idea that creativity and technical skills are different.
A.The ability to produce many ideas about a topic.
B.The ability to generate ideas as fast as possible.
C.The ability to make full use of the intelligence.
D.The ability to distinguish between intelligence and creativity.
A.Teach children to be able to evaluate their own ideas.
B.Responding to children’s ideas in a non-judgmental way.
C.Remind children of the importance of others’ evaluations.
D.Ask children to correct their ideas whenever they are wrong.
