Creativity is adaptive behavior. At a low and simple level it is exhibited by2-year-old Mary, who, deprived of her pacifier, sees her thumb as an acceptable substitute. Later it is6-year-old Christopher who wants to play Santa Claus on Christmas Eve but does not have access to a commercial Santa Claus outfit. However, he sees how to adapt some cotton for a beard, some shiny black paper for boots, and some red cloth he has seen in a closet for a coat. What emerges, with a bit of help from his mother, is a credible creation of Santa and of a Santa Claus suit. It is a problem or need that causes Mary and Christopher to seek and create a solution as opposed to simply crying or doing nothing. Later there is a teenager who plans a costume party for his friends or the graduating senior who has designed an attractive vita to enhance her summer job search. Wherever there is need to make, create, imagine, produce, or design anew what did not exist before – to innovate – there is adaptive or creative behavior, sometimes called “small c.” On the other end there is “big C” in the invention of a new automobile that runs on both gasoline or electricity, the composition of a new symphony, the discovery of a new drug that reduces the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease, or the production of a new work of art.
There are a host of verbs that are associated with creativity: make, plan, design, construct, solve, erect, compose, invent, discover, search, theorize, write, innovate, see connections, put two and two together, adapt, orga- nize, compose, assemble, integrate, interpret – all indicators of adaptive or creative behavior in given situations. All may be characteristic of relatively low-level adaptive behavior (c) or very high-level creative behavior (C). All of the behaviors yield outcomes or products that undergo some degree of evaluation. At the low adaptive level the evaluation may be as simple as self-satisfaction on the part of the adaptor that it works or satisfies his or her immediate need. At the high end it is often a juried judgment of critics in a field who examine the product and declare its value or lack thereof. The evaluation may also be commercial: does it sell, does the public embrace it?
137
A host of factors affect adaptations and or creative behavior, perhaps none more than intelligence and the knowledge base, but a host of person- ality, cultural, and motivational factors are or may be highly relevant to adaptive and creative functioning, as well as sheer chance or luck. How- ever, the personality and motivational factors may vary in intensity and kind at the different levels of the adaptive-creative spectrum (Ackerman, 2003) and they may interact with the ability factors (e.g., general intelli- gence, specific talents, and achievements to date in the life of a student).
Thus, the personality and motivational factors functioning at the low and adaptive level may be quite different from the factors operating in high- level creative behavior.
It is also essential to recognize that high-level creative production (C) is essentially synonymous with expertise as defined by Bereiter and Scar- damalia (1993) and genius as defined by Simonton (1999) and Miller (1997). All stress that the highest levels of production or achievement are creative.
The purpose of this chapter is not to review and integrate or synthesize the complete psychological and social context of adaptive and creative behavior but rather to examine the role specifically of the knowledge base in adaptive-creative functioning. Inevitably this will involve some attention to other factors that interact with the knowledge base in adaptation and creativity, particularly the roles of reasoning and judgment or evaluation, as they relate to these processes. It should be noted that much of the research and theoretical literature examined relates to big C or high-level creative production, not to low c or adaptive behavior.
knowledge
Knowledge is organized information that has been learned. Wittrock (1992) reminds us that information processing is the acquisition of knowledge. We learn information about a host of phenomena, and the knowledge gained is calleddeclarative.We also learn processes and “how to” skills and they are calledprocedural knowledge.Knowledge is acquired through reading, listening, observing, and experiencing; as it is acquired it is classified or related to previously learned cognitive structures calledconcepts, schemas, systems, and beliefs.
After first arriving via the senses, new information is first held in short- term memory for a brief time while being examined in working memory, where it is classified and then consigned to a conceptually appropriate site in the long-term memory or the knowledge base. The conceptually appropriate sites may include concepts, schemas, propositions, strategies, images, and so on. An organized and fluent (retrievable) knowledge base is essential at all levels of adaptive-creative functioning, but must obviously be the largest and most extensive for high C operations.
Scott (1999) reviewed nine major theories of creativity and found that they all included a specific role for a knowledge base in the creative thinking process. He also clarified the roles of one’s general base of knowledge versus the domain-specific knowledge base that is critical in higher level creative thinking and problem solving as in high level expertise. Scott also argues that the knowledge base is organized into a system that has depth and breadth as well as schemas. So also the domain-specific knowledge base is organized and affords superior potential for solving problems and creative functioning in an area of expertise such as mathematics, biology, or literature and is even more domain specific within those skills.
In a creative, divergent, or problem-solving task the entering process may be clarification of the prospective task or problem by relating ele- ments of the perceived task to similar or related tasks in the knowl- edge base to clarify and define the new task. Further processing may involve retrieving from the general and the domain-specific knowledge bases related or potentially relevant information for the task at hand. Of course, an open, fluent evaluation process operates throughout in which evoked information is judged relatable, useable, and/or potentially yield- ing a new solution, product, conception, invention, work of art, and so on.
Throughout, the creative processing is facilitated by the breadth, depth, and fluidity of one’s domain-specific knowledge base. Given the finding (Ericsson,1996) that in many fields it takes about10years of study, work, and experience to develop a strong domain-specific knowledge base, it seems safe to conclude that the base must be large, well organized, and highly retrievable.
Urban (2003) has recently presented a theory and componential model of creativity that has six elements. The first is divergent thinking and cre- ative processing; the second is general and convergent thinking abilities, including analyzing, synthesizing, a memory network, and perception;
the third component is knowledge in specific domains; the fourth compo- nent is focusing and task commitment; the fifth, motivation, curiosity, and exploratory drive; and the sixth, a set of personal characteristics, includ- ing openness, tolerance for ambiguity, risk taking, autonomy, playfulness, and nonconformism. Urban stresses that these components interact in dif- ferent ways in different individuals but always tend to involve the whole person. For purposes of this chapter it is crucial to note that, based on his lifetime of research on creative processes, Urban proposes that mem- ory functions and the knowledge base are fundamental components of the total process of creative thinking. At the same time the fundamental roles of motivation and personality are crucial in the total creative thinking process.
Simonton, a life-long scholar of genius and creativity, addressed the issues of the bases and origins of creative genius in Origins of Genius:
Darwinian Perspective of Creativity(1999). Creativity, he concludes, is the
production of ideas or products that are original and adaptive or workable.
Creative people leave an impressive legacy if they attain the big C level.
However, at the small c level their creative ideas and products may simply be credited as convenient or locally workable. At any level of creativity, the knowledge base from which one works is a critical component of cre- ative functioning. Simonton notes that formal education is ordinarily the process producing much of the knowledge base, but not the only way. To a great extent creative individuals educate themselves by reading, observ- ing, studying real-world phenomena, and conversing with peers. In school they are often precocious individuals who enter school early, skip grades, graduate early, and win advanced awards for their high-level achievements (Lubinski, Webb, Morelock, & Benbow,2001). Simonton also argues that a knowledge base in the domain of creative functioning is essential. One of the essential processes in creativity, fluency, almost by definition implies that the creative individual has a substantial knowledge base to produce ideas in carrying out the productive activity called iluency.” Simonton con- cludes that “. . . creativity is associated with a mind that exhibits a variety of interests and knowledge” (p.207).
The highly creative mind is loaded with information that seethes and is fluid and organized in a domain of expertise. The knowledge base of the creative mind, the creative expert, the creative genius, is large. It takes10 years to acquire it (Ericsson,1999). It is fluid and fluent, highly retrievable;
it connects information from outside the individual and information within the knowledge base.
The emphasis on a domain of knowledge as the base for creative think- ing is linked closely to the talent or talents that develop in the creative individual’s cognitive operations. Although general intelligence (Carroll, 1996) may characterize the highly able child or youth, specific talents or aptitudes characterize talented youth and young adults. An abundance of research (Gagn´e,1985,1993a,1993b; Feldhusen,2003a,2003b) suggests that emerging talents are both abilities and clusters of declarative and proce- dural knowledge. Thus, the growing creative individual is in the process of developing his or her expertise and potential for high-level creative achievement in a performance domain such as computer science, biologi- cal research, historical analysis of Middle Eastern cultures, classical music composition, sculpture, philosophy, or the psychology of learning. The expertise aspect of high-level creative functions calls for the acquisition of huge amounts of information and cognitive skills that are functionally well organized, well understood, and fluently retrievable in problem solving, designing, planning, inventing, organizing, experimenting, and theoriz- ing. The knowledge base also renders the creative individual sensitive and responsive to phenomena experienced in the world around her. The knowledge base is not inert, stagnant information and potential skills; it is dynamic in that it evokes the awareness of potentially productive linkages between what one sees and what one knows.
There is a tendency for the field of creativity research and development to view the processes of creative functioning, production, achievement, and problem solving as preeminent and to dismiss the roles of the acqui- sition and development of the knowledge bases, talents, and expertise as of peripheral or of no importance or even antithetical to creative function- ing. In contrast it is undoubtedly the case that at all levels of adaptive and creative processing, the knowledge base is crucial and fundamental. One has to know a lot to adapt, create, invent, organize, plan, solve, invent, or achieve creatively.
Pollert, Feldhusen, VanMondfrans, and Treffinger (1969) carried out a study of the role of memory or retrieval of information in creative thinking among4th,5th, and6th graders. Their knowledge tests were shod term measures of retrieval after exposure to lists of words, story details after a story was read aloud to them, and recall of picture details after shod term projected exposure. The Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1974) were used as measures of divergent thinking. A canonical correlation of six memory and eight divergent thinking scores yielded anR of .61, which was significant at the .01 level. Thus it is the case that memory processes, at least from a newly acquired base of information, is related to creative thinking, especially to the fluency functions that were the major significant correlations with the memory functions.
Feldhusen and Goh (1995) did a comprehensive review, integrating the- ory, research, and development on assessing and accessing creativity, and concluded that creative thinking is a complex activity involving cogni- tive skills and abilities, personality factors and motivation, styles, strate- gies, and metacognition skills interacting with external stimuli to produce adaptive-creative behaviors. With regard to the knowledge base they con- cluded as follows: “A knowledge base that is conceptually well-organized and for which retrieval is fluent and efficient in a domain is essential”
(p.242). In a more recent review and analysis of research and theory of adaptive-creative behavior Feldhusen (2002) concluded:
There is no question that the knowledge base, built as long term memory, and developed through selective encoding, plays a key role in all thinking processes, convergent and divergent.
For the creative thinker the initial encoding of information may involve unique categorizations, and selective encoding, the individual’s focus on particular aspects of this information. (p.182)
The knowledge base, of course, is not just declarative information, it is also procedural skills and/or processes. Both are learned cognitive func- tions. That is, declarative knowledge is not, as asserted earlier, a static or passive assimilation in the cognitive structures of an individual. Rather, knowledge, declarative and procedural, is learned cognitions that interact dynamically in the processes of adaptive and creative activity.
learning and development of the knowledge base
The curriculum is the plan for what students should learn, it is the design for the development of students’ knowledge bases. Student learning is implemented through reading, viewing, instructional activities, projects, lectures or teaching presentations, mentors, models, problem engagements and solving, and so on.
In school, teachers orchestrate the learning process and the acquisition of the knowledge bases and make judgments via tests and performance observations about students successes and failures regarding their achieve- ments of the curriculum goals. Students are also expected to guide their own efforts to master the curriculum goals and to judge or evaluate their successes and failures. Some students are highly precocious or advanced in their starting levels of readiness for new instruction and able to learn more rapidly than students of low or average ability.
For highly creative and intellectually or artistically gifted youth the potential to learn or acquire new knowledge is elevated and reflected in their precocity. Thus, they are ready for accelerated instruction.Accelera- tionmay, however, be the wrong term to use to refer to most of the forms that educational acceleration takes (Feldhusen, Van Winkle, & Ehle,1996;
Lubinski & Benbow,2000). Rarely does it refer to instruction that is speeded up. Usually the termaccelerationis used to refer to forms of instruction at advanced levels, or it denotes instruction that aims to be at a level appro- priate to students’ levels of readiness or just above their current or entry levels of achievement or accomplishment (Vygotsky,1978). However, the term acceleration might be appropriate to refer to courses of instruction that are offered in far less time than is typical. Thus, a semester of calculus, biology, history, or American literature condensed to3weeks in a summer program or10sessions in a Saturday morning program may be referred to as acceleration instruction. Critics of other forms of so-called acceler- atedinstruction often complain that grade skipping or early admission to middle or high school might still find the gifted student being taught at the same slow pace as is appropriate for students of average ability. Thus, the ideal may be instruction at a level and pace that is appropriate to the knowledge base of a precocious student or precocity-focused instruction.
It should also be noted that for students who are artistically precocious, opportunities to accelerate their instruction in terms both of level and pace are more readily available because of the typically more individualized instruction in the arts.
conclusion
It seems clear that adaptive-creative behavior needs the input in memory that is called the knowledge base. Knowledge is information and skills that
are well understood, articulated, retrievable, organized, and so on. One cannot disagree with Sternberg (2003) when he argues that “. . . a large, well-organized knowledge base seems necessary” (p.7). However, he also argues that analytical, creative, and processing skills are essential in all adaptive-creative thinking, and they are surely what is otherwise called theprocedural skillsthat like declarative knowledge, are acquired through active learning experiences. Although there is unquestionably a need for much input time devoted to input of declarative knowledge or information through reading, listening, observing, and experiencing, it is also clear that there is a large-scale need to be learning simultaneously the procedural, thinking skills of comprehension or understanding, analysis, synthesizing, or creating, and judging or evaluating. From the teacher’s point of view the curriculum delineates the declarative and procedural knowledge stu- dents are to learn, but from the student’s point of view the curriculum is all the knowledge he or she consigns and organizes in long-term mem- ory for later retrieval and use (application) in adaptive-creative tasks and applications.
References
Ackerman, P. L. (2003). Cognitive ability and non-ability trait determinants of exper- tise.Educational Researcher, 32(8),15–20.
Bereiter, C., & Scardamaha, M. (1993).Surpassing ourselves: An inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise. Chicago, IL: Open Court.
Carroll, J. B. (1996). A three stratum theory of intelligence: Spearman’s contribution.
In I. Dinnis & P. Tapsfield (Eds.),Human abilities, their nature and measurement (pp.1–17). Mahwah, NJ: Eribaum.
Ericsson, K. A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.),The road to excellence(pp.1–50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ericsson, K. A. (1999).The road to excellence. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Feldhusen, J. F. (2002). Guidelines for grade advancement of precocious children.
Roeper Review,24(3), Spring2002. (Originally published inRoeper Review, 9(1), 1986, pp.25–27).
Feldhusen, J. F. (2003a). The nature of giftedness and talent and the pursuit of creative achievement and expertise.The Journal of the National Association for Gifted Children (United Kingdom), 7(1),3–5.
Feldhusen, J. F. (2003b). Reflections on the development of creative achievement.
Gifted and Talented International, 18,47–52.
Feldhusen, J. F., & Goh, B. E. (1995). Assessing and accessing creativity: An inte- grative review of theory, research, and development.Creativity Research Journal, 8(3),231–247.
Feldhusen, J. F., Van Winkle, L., & Ehle, D. (1996). Is it acceleration or simply appropriate instruction for precocious youth?Teaching Exceptional Children, 28(3), 48–51.
Gagne, F. (1985). Giftedness and talent: Reexamining a reexamination of the defi- nition.Gifted Child Quarterly, 29(3),103–112.
Gagne, F. (1993a). Constructs and models pertaining to exceptional human abilities.
In K. A. Heller, F. J. Monks, & A. H. Passow (Eds.),International handbook of research and development of giftedness and talent(pp.69–87) New York: Pergamon Press.
Gagn´e, F. (1993b). Sex differences in the aptitudes and talents of children as judged by their peers and teachers.Gifted Child Quarterly, 37(2),69–77.
Lubinski, D. L. & Benbow, C. P. (2000). States of excellence.American Psychologist, 35(1),137–150.
Lubinski, D. L., Webb, R. M., Morelock, M. J., & Benbow, C. P. (2001). Top1in10,000:
A10-year followup of the profoundly gifted.Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 718–729.
Miller, A. (1997).Drama of the gifted child. New York: Doubleday.
Pollert, L. H., Feldhusen, J. F., Van Mondfrans, A. P., & Treffinger, D. J. (1969). Role of memory in divergent thinking.Psychological Reports, 25,151–156.
Scott, T. E. (1999). Knowledge. InEncyclopedia of creativity(Vol.2, pp.119–129). New York: Academic Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1999).Origins of genius. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (2003). What is an expert student?Educational Researcher, 32(8),5–9.
Torrance, E. P. (1974). Torrance tests of creative thinking, norms-technical manual.
Lexington, MA: Ginn and Company.
Urban, K. K. (2003). Toward a componential model of creativity. InCreative intelli- gence(pp.81–112). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978).Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wittrock, M. C. (1992). Knowledge acquisition and comprehension. In M. C. Alkin (Ed.),Encyclopedia of educational research(pp.699–705). New York: Macmillan.