Journal of East China Normal University(Educational Sciences) ›› 2022, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (11): 25-40.doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2022.11.003

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Psychological Views on Cultivating Students’ Creativity: Goals, Principles, and Strategies

Weiguo Pang   

  1. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
  • Accepted:2022-07-22 Online:2022-11-01 Published:2022-10-27

Abstract:

Creativity is a multifaceted concept which involves creative potentials, creative achievements, creative talents, and many other facets. Basically, creativity can be divided into four types, namely mini-creativity, little creativity, professional creativity, and big creativity. In school context, creativity cultivation should focus on students’ creative potentials, highlight the roles of creative cognition, metacognition, personality, motivation, and domain-specific knowledge. As creativity usually develops from general domains to specific domains, and autonomy and idea generation are the key components of creative processes, school education which aims to cultivate each student’s creativity in everyday classroom activities should encourage students’ autonomy, employ generative tasks, and stimulate creative thinking in specific contexts. To effectively develop students’ creativity, a series of strategies should be employed, which include creating supportive climates, using generative activities, modeling and rewarding creativity, training creative metacognition, setting creativity as separate goals, and providing feedback on creative performance.

Key words: creativity, educational goals, creative processes, autonomy, generation