SUSS PSY 355 CREATIVE PSYCH SU 2b Fostering Creativity in the Classroom &
Workplace

Fostering creativity in the classroom

Fostering creativity in the workplace

Creative students and their teachers

  • Teachers do not enjoy instructing creative students. Torrance (1962) found that conservative teachers were frustrated by highly creative students who have a reputation for coming up with wild or silly ideas.
  • Lam (1996) found that teachers’ perception of the ideal student did not fit the common characteristics of the creative student, e.g., independent, argumentative, sceptical.
  • the ideal student trait often included honesty, self-discipline, responsibility and obedience.

Motivation from without versus motivation from within

  • Ryan and Guardia (1999) propose that there are two different types of motivation to learn.
    • motivation from without
    • motivation from within

Encouraging students to engage in positive versus negative creativity

  • Psychologists make a distinction between
    • positive creativity e.g., developing a cure for cancer and
    • negative creativity e.g., devising a plan to commit robbery
  • To achieve positive creativity among students, teachers can highlight the accomplishments of moral creators (Ng, 2007). (i.e. as a role model for students).

Motivation from without

  • According to this behaviourist view, a student’s motivation to learn is wholly a function of external forces in the environment (i.e. grades, deadlines).
  • It is the job of the educator to provide extrinsic incentives to motivate the student to learn.

Motivation from within

  • According to this humanistic view, students are inherently active learners.
  • It is the job of the educator to provide students with a learning environment that offers interesting challenges and opportunities to grow.

Controlling style of instruction

  • Although the controlling style of instruction is associated with negative outcomes in learning, many teachers still adopt such a method of instruction in the classroom.

Negative consequences of stifling creativity

  • Creative students experience much difficulty conforming with conventional learning environment which encourages conformity, rote-learning and memorisation (i.e. Einstein)
  • The stifling of creativity in the classroom can lead to negative consequences in education.

Fourth-grade slump in creativity

  • One negative consequence is the fourth-grade slump in creativity (Torrance, 1968).
  • That is, students who reach the fourth grade of schooling experiences a drastic drop in creativity, due to the pressure to conform to rules and regulations.

Under-achievement of gifted students

  • Many of these gifted learners express their creativity which appear to be challenging teaching norms. Teachers may deem it annoying, or even misidentify these students to have learning difficulties like attention deficit disorder.
  • As a result, these creative students may resent the constraining structure of school life, its excessive rules and regulations, as well as the constant pressure for conformity. When such students are pressurised to conform, they may react in a defiant rather than compliant manner.
  • Some of these students may even quit schooling altogether.

Why teachers adopt a controlling stance towards students

pressure from below

pressure from within

pressure from above

  • Teachers possess the dual burden of responsibility and accountability
  • External forces (i.e. principals, parents and media reports) apply pressure on teachers to ensure that students perform.
  • Teachers pass along this pressure to students in the form of a controlling style of instruction.
  • controlling style is culturally-valued,
  • i.e., in general, teachers who use controlling strategies in the classroom are seen to be more competent compared to those who support student autonomy
  • Teachers occupy a powerful social position vis-à-vis students. (Higher up in the social hierachy)
  • Teachers associate control of student behaviour with a proper/structured learning structure in the classroom.
  • In comparison, they associate autonomous support of student behaviour with a haphazard/chaotic environment of learning in class.
  • Teachers assert control by reacting in a controlling way when students become disruptive and difficult to deal with.
  • Creative students are especially vulnerable to this assertion of control by the teacher, as they tend to get bored easily and behave in a mischievous way in the classroom.

Operant Principle of behaviourism.

  • Many teachers endorse the maximal operant principle of behaviourism, which states that rewards will motivate students to learn, and the larger the reward, the greater the motivation to learn.

Personality

  • teachers may possess personality dispositions which are oriented towards control rather than autonomy support.
  • Such teachers tend to be authoritarian and conservative rather than liberal and democratic.
  • They focus on student discipline in the classroom instead of developing the creative potential of students.

How teachers can be more autonomy supportive in class

Awareness of the different pressure

  • The teacher should strive to be less controlling towards students, by gaining an awareness of those forces that push him towards a controlling style, i.e., the pressures from above, below andWithin.

Desire to support autonomy

  • The teacher should also cultivate the personal desire to support student autonomy in the classroom by learning to appreciate the benefits of this mode of instruction for both students and teachers.
  • Specifically, when students receive autonomy support in the classroom, they become intrinsically motivated, creative, flexible, passionate and persevering learners who take delight in the intellectual joy of discovery

Example: Muhammad Yunos

  • Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, is an example of such a moral creator.
  • Yunus discovered that very small loans could greatly assist poor people, e.g., But traditional banks were not interested in making tiny loans to the poor.
  • So Yunus invented the concept of microcredit (lending to the poor) and set up the Grameen Bank to make loans to poor people.

Employee creativity

Three theories of employee creativity

Key findings on employee creativity

Interactionist approach

  • from this perspective, employee creativity is directly associated with the interaction between person and situation.
    • The person component refers to individual attributes like originality, risk-taking, etc.
    • The situation component refers to environmental attributes like the organisational culture, leadership style, etc.
  • Ideally, both components should intereact harmoniously to allow for optical employee creativity.

Systematic approach

  • From this perspective, creativity is a function of three components namely:
    • the characteristics of the employee
    • the characteristics of the context
    • the interactions between these two sets of characteristics (person x situation)

Componential model of
creative performance

  • This model posits that a creative employee consists of:
    • Strong domain-relevant skills
    • Creative-relevant processes and
    • Task motivation.


What is employee creativity?

  • Employee creativity refers to the individual’s capacity to generate ideas that are both original and useful to the organisation that he works in,
  • e.g., a suggestion to improve the work process or a major development of a new service

How can it be measured?

  • a variety of objective and subjective methods should be employed when assessing creativity

Psychological test

  • Psychological tests like the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking can be used to assess the divergent thinking ability of the employee

Complex work-tasks

  • Complex and open-ended work tasks can be used to assess his creative problem-solving skills.

Appraisals

  • Supervisors and co-workers can provide a subjective assessment of employee creativity.

Past achievements

  • Past achievements can be used as Objective measures to gauge creativity
  • I.e. patent disclosures, research papers, technical reports and even ideas submitted to employee suggestion schemes.

Task motivation

  • According to Amabile, the most crucial component is task motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation.
    • Without task motivation, one is not aroused or challenged to tackle the task, reducing the odds of developing a creative solution to the problem.
    • if one is high in task motivation but low in the other two components, then one is likely to display creativity.
      • This is because one is aroused and challenged by the task to read up more about it (domain-relevant skills) as well as think of different ways of approaching the problem (creativity-relevant processes).

Context and motivation

  • Contextual characteristics affect employee creativity via their impact on intrinsic motivation
    • Controlling context leads to a decrease in intrinsic motivation
    • Informational context promotes intrinsic motivation

Different contextual characteristics

  • it is necessary to take into account the interaction amongst different contextual characteristics.
  • This is because employees are more likely to interact positively with the contextual variable when other related contextual variable(s) is simultaneously present.
  • For example, an employee is more likely to generate wild ideas during a brainstorming session when:
    • when he sees other colleagues engaging in such behaviour (contextual characteristic 1) and
    • the supervisor approves such behaviour (contextual characteristic 2)

Task: Designing complex jobs

  • complex/interesting/enriched can stimulate creativity rather than simple/boring jobs.
  • According to the Job Characteristics Model (JCM), an enriched job consists of five core characteristics:
    • skill variety
    • task identity
    • task significance
    • autonomy
    • feedback.
  • When employees tackle an enriched job, they are likely to feel aroused and challenged by it. In turn, this will enhance their creative performance on the job.
  • Oldham and Cummings (1976) found that employees who were creative, performed a complex and challenging job and received supportive rather than controlling supervision displayed the most creativity at work.

Transformational leadership

  • Gumusluoglu and Ilsev (2009) found that transformational leadership has a significant effect on employee creativity at both the individual and organisational level

Goals: Setting creative goals
(Creative goals vs productive goals)

  • it is important to explicitly set creative goals
  • Based on research findings, Shalley (1991) argued that once a creativity goal was assigned, participants were primed to focus their attention and effort on this creative objective. Hence they displayed higher levels of creativity compared to those who were not assigned a creativity goal.
  • On the other hand, when only a productivity goal was assigned without a creativity goal, this caused participants to narrow their attention to the productive dimension of the task while ignoring other potential dimensions such as creativity

Personality: How person and situation interact to facilitate or inhibit employee creativity

  • Openness to experience may predispose one to be creative, but whether one behaves in a creative way depends on the work situation.
    • For instance, when open employees receive positive feedback on their work this may enhance their enthusiasm and creativity.
    • On the other hand, negative feedback on work may dampen their enthusiasm and creativity.
  • Conscientiousness will inhibit employee creativity under certain conditions at work.
    • Specifically, when co-workers are unsupportive of fellow employees behaving in a creative way, and supervisors closely monitor the behaviour of subordinates, then employees who are high on conscientiousness tend to actualise their conformist and deferential tendencies, displaying a low level of creativity as a result

Influence: How less creative employees can behave more creatively

  • Using social cognitive theory, Zhou (2003) argued that observing co-workers who display creativity at work may lead the uncreative employee to engage in creative activities as well.
  • But for this to occur, the supervisor should refrain from a close monitoring of the employee while at the same time provide developmental feedback to the employee.

Minority dissent, group participation and team innovation

  • De Dreu and West (2001) hypothesised that team innovation is due to the interaction between group participation and minority dissent.
    • Specifically, minority dissent would enhance divergent thinking in the group.
    • But for novel ideas to be transformed into innovative products and services, there must be a high level of participation in decision-making by individual members of the workgroup.
  • This was reflected in their studies where it was found that there were more innovations under high levels of minority dissent rather than low levels of minority dissent, but only when there was a high degree of group participation.

Different types of creativity

  • According to Unsworth (2001), there are two basic dimensions to creative problemsolving.
      1. The first dimension concerns the question of why an employee engages in a creative task. can be internal or external reasons.
      • e.g., he wants to do it -Internal
      • e.g., the organisation wants him to do it- External
      1. The second dimension deals with the type of problem faced by the employee which can be closed or open.
        • A closed problem refers to a well-structured and clearly-defined task, e.g., the employee modifies a certain aspect of the work process based on a set of prescribed guidelines.
        • An open problem refers to an ill-structured and vaguely-defined task, e.g., the employee has to find, invent or discover the problem first, then work out its solution.

Methods of transformational leadership

  • Transformational leaders achieve these goals in the following ways:
    • charisma
    • individualised consideration
    • inspirational motivation and
    • intellectual stimulation

Characteristic of transformational leadership

  • A transformational leader behaves in the following way.

Responsive creativity

  • In responsive creativity, the employee tackles a creative task which is externally-driven and closed,
  • e.g., the employee is asked by his boss to deal with a particular problem that has arisen.

Contributory creativity

  • In contributory creativity, the employee tackles a creative task which is internally-driven and closed
  • e.g., the employee assists a fellow colleague to think of a solution to a specific problem which he is not directly involved in.

Expected creativity

  • In expected creativity, the employee tackles a creative task which is externally-driven and open,
  • e.g., the employee is part of a work improvement team which is given the generic task of improving the work processes in the organisation

Proactive creativity

  • In proactive creativity, the employee tackles a creative task which is internally driven and open,
  • e.g., the employee comes up with a new invention based on his original research at work.

Awarness

  • Second, he creates in subordinates an awareness and acceptance of the wider purpose and mission of the organisation

Encourage

  • Third, he encourages individual employees to look beyond narrow interests to the greater good of the group.

Interest

  • First, he broadens and elevates the interests of employees