Forthcoming: Series on Creativity
Hello everyone, I’ve started collecting writings and research on human creativity. I have a particular interest in how it is develops during childhood as well as into adulthood, and whether we can nurture it. Intriguingly, it appears to be a recently re-emergent area of interest within psychology, as a number of high quality handbooks on the topic arrived in the last few years.
We will dive into topics such as:
What is creativity, and how do we assess it?
What’s the arc of creative activity across the lifespan?
Can it be taught and developed? And if so, at what ages? How can parents, educators, and communities support it?
From what I can tell at the moment, the construct of intelligence appears to be of less interest within the field of psychology. This is not to say its importance is declining, or the veracity of it has been questioned, so much as interest in it. As a theoretical entity, intelligence has matured to a point where perhaps interest in it has plateaued. It’s a standard topic in many psychology textbooks, including texts on psychometric measurement and testing, and what is there hasn’t changed much in the past 30 years since I was an undergraduate. In contrast, the information on creativity in recently-published psychometric textbooks on creativity appears to have already changed, just in the past few years.
I’m eager to get started on this and I hope you can join me on the way.