Browsing by Subject "Creativity"

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Aesthetics at Work: Using Principles of Art and Beauty to Improve Work Engagement
(2014-06-06) French, Jennifer
Organizations today need employees who are creative and innovative, yet most OD and HRD initiatives focus only on technical learning. This project challenges the effectiveness of narrow, skills-based, and transactional design and implementation of employee training programs. The integration of aesthetics into HRD is proposed to improve training and development practices through the integration of imagination and creativity. The implications of aesthetics in HRD are outlined, including more holistic learning programs, improved work engagement, and a legitimate need for artful and art-inspired HRD.
The Creative Mindset In Design Education
(2019-04) Choi, Joungyun
Creativity is an important problem-solving tool in the design context. People who are in design education treat creativity as an important component of their self-identity. Thus, it is imperative to develop and be mindful of creativity in design education. Most traditional design fields focus on creative outcomes that impact revenue, trends, and popularity. However, this current research shows that it is even more important to focus on people’s state of mind (mindsets) and attitude in building their creative ability. Depending on people’s attitudes toward their projects, some design solutions are more creative than others. This research originated from two different types of attitudes and their subsequent outcomes involving students’ mindsets in regard to the decision to be creative in an educational context. The decision to be creative is related to people’s beliefs regarding their psychological traits and abilities, which plays an important role in influencing their own motivation and behavior (Dweck, 1999). According to Dweck’s conceptualization, people hold different beliefs that represent their state of mind and explain their subsequent behavior. Some people perceive their abilities as fixed (fixed mindset: unable to change), while others believe that their abilities are malleable (growth mindset: able to change) (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). This research takes the perspective that the creative mindset is related to a growth mindset toward creativity. The primary research objective of this study is to identify the presence of design students’ creative mindset and how it is manifested in their work. This research also seeks to discover how the creative mindset operates and develops with respect to students’ creative performance by incorporating the concept of the fixed/growth mindset toward creativity. In order to address these purposes, grounded theory was used with a qualitative triangulation. For a good sample selection, the growth mindset concept was applied to define high creative growth mindset students. Throughout semester-long observations and interviews with these high growth mindset students selected from the existing implicit belief survey, the qualitative data established the fact that: 1) The creative mindset involves students’ attitude toward design projects and is manifested as a positive attitude, such as having an open mind and demonstrating readiness at the beginning of their design process; 2) A positive attitude from students’ creative mindset is closely related to learning goals, which is one of the main concepts of the growth mindset; 3) The creative mindset greatly affects the outcome of the design, and more specifically improves one’s design ability, which contributes to student success from a long-term perspective; and 4) The creative mindset can be developed/enhanced through learning. The major findings of this study provide a number of important implications for improving pedagogical strategy, utilizing the concept of the growth mindset within a design education context. Moreover, this study provides directions for future research regarding the creative mindset in design education and suggestions for expanding this study to contribute to other disciplines.
Creativity of interior design Students: understanding the relationship between cognitive style, Personality Style, motivational orientation, and creativity of interior design students
(2014-01) Hirani, Aditi
The present study examined the relationship between cognitive style, personality style, motivational orientation, and creativity of interior design students. Participants included sophomore level students (N = 51) from interior design programs from three Midwestern universities. Four instruments were used, one each for the four variables. It was anticipated that there would be a significant relationship between the three independent variables and creativity of interior design students. Data analysis included correlation analysis, linear regression analysis, and Chi Square with Fisher's Exact test. Significant relationships were found between creativity and variables of Intrinsic Motivational Orientation, Extrinsic Motivational Orientation subscale of Compensation (EMO-C), and the personality trait of Inquisitiveness. The three variables were also significant predictors of creativity. The results indicated that interior design students tend to be ambitious and are influenced by a need to succeed. In conclusion, there is a need to examine the relationship between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Orientation for creativity in the discipline of interior design. Implications for design education included providing alternative class activities and assessment that foster inquisitiveness, curiosity, and reward creativity.
Creativity, Foresight and Innovation: Advancing the American Nurses Association Innovation Enterprise
(2024-03-01) Pesut, Daniel
In this presentation Emeritus Professor of Nursing, Daniel J Pesut discusses the proposition that creative thinking is essential to support innovations in nursing and health care. He define the concept of foresight leadership to advance the development of innovation in nursing and health care and describes a set of resources to activate a community of practice and learning related to creativity, foresight, and innovation in nursing and health care.
“Everything Would Have Worked If It Wasn’T For That Crap Mirror”: The Intersection Of Failure And Creativity In Integrated Stem Education
(2023-05) Stretch, Elizabeth
The sentiment that creativity is the most important skill needed to solve the problems that we face is repeated by different business and industry leaders around the world (Bronson & Merryman, 2010; NEA, n.d.; Nussbaum et al., 2005; Sammio, 2017). The call for creativity has been amplified in response to the problems and obstacles caused by COVID19. Yet, creativity remains the most neglected 21st century skill addressed in STEM education. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to develop strong conceptual connections between creativity and failure within an integrated STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) unit guided by the intersection of failure and creativity framework (IFCF; Stretch & Roehrig, 2021) through a qualitative case study design. Specifically, this study proposed to understand how the structure of an integrated STEM unit and the teacher’s role in implementation of the STEM unit may influence students’ use and application of creativity and learning from failure. The single case study was of a group of four sixth-grade boys engaged in addressing an engineering design challenge. Seven themes emerged from this research that inform the pedagogy and implementation of integrated STEM education. The following themes were identified through analysis of the small group discourse: (1) Creativity ensues in areas that are ill defined within engineering design problems, such as context; (2) As the design problem narrows (through specified content learning or overly defined context) students’ creativity narrows as well; (3) The potential of learning through failure is most prominent during the testing of the design solution; (4) The curricular focus on specific science content and the subsequent narrowing of context in engineering design problem scenarios created one possible design solution; (5) The sequence of lessons within a curriculum created a rigid linear progression through the engineering design process (EDP) with few opportunities for iteration; and (6) The teacher further constrained students’ creativity and ability to learn from failure through missed opportunities. This study provided empirical data to support the need for a modified engineering design process (EDP) utilized in integrated STEM units to promote creativity and innovation in problem solving in STEM.
Exploring the Neural Correlates of Openness/Intellect and Related Constructs Using New and Best Practices in Personality Neuroscience
(2024-05) Sassenberg, Tyler
Personality neuroscience aims to understand the associations of brain structure and function with stable patterns of thought, behavior, emotion, and motivation. One broad personality dimension of interest in this field is Openness/Intellect. This trait describes individual differences in engagement with semantic and perceptual information, and subsumes a variety of societally relevant facets pertaining to higher-order cognitive processing. This dissertation examines the functional neural correlates of a number of facets beneath Openness/Intellect, including intelligence, creativity, and Psychoticism (sub-clinical psychosis proneness). Across three studies, this research aims to expand on past findings demonstrating associations of these traits with functional properties among broad macroscale brain networks implicated in abstract higher-order cognition, all within the context of broader predictive processing accounts of brain function. The first study showcases a functional gradient approach to test associations of creative achievement with functional similarity of higher-order brain networks. The second study demonstrates associations of intelligence, Openness/Intellect, and Psychoticism with various forms of dynamic brain network flexibility. Lastly, the third study explores individual differences in signatures of self-organized criticality in the brain, and how it relates to intelligence and Psychoticism. Through a variety of methods, these findings converge on the notion of Openness/Intellect and its facets being associated with individual differences in abstract information processing capabilities among broad cortical networks. This research provides a more nuanced perspective of the neural correlates of Openness/Intellect by demonstrating how its adaptive and maladaptive facets are related to different and complementary functional properties in the brain. Beyond Openness/Intellect, this research helps provide future avenues for understanding the associations of other normative and pathological personality dimensions with properties of brain function.
How Choices Between Flexibility And Persistence During Idea Search Processes Contribute To Creativity
(2022-09) Wu, Yihan
Creative problem solving is a dynamic process during which individuals need to constantly navigate toward their goal through an ill-defined solution path. Theoretical and empirical endeavors suggest that individuals need both flexible and persistent approaches to succeed in creative tasks, yet little work has given attention to how to measure flexibility and persistence during the ideational search process. Three studies were devoted to this question.(a) The first study presents new process-based measures of flexibility and persistence and validates how well they can predict creative performance in several typical laboratory-based creativity tasks and in an ecologically valid complex design task. (b) The second study introduces an instructional intervention to examine the effects on creative performance when participants are given external prompts to shift more frequently or to dwell longer. The findings suggest that – after controlling for pre-existing dispositional differences in divergent-thinking ability across conditions – participants who had the autonomy to choose when to shift (flexible approach) or to dwell (persistent approach) performed better, or similarly to, participants who were externally prompted to shift more frequently or to dwell longer. (c) Building on the emerging literature on the context adaptivity account of metacontrol biases towards either flexibility or persistence, Study 3 tested how varying task contexts shape an individual's tendencies toward flexibility versus persistence. It revealed both interindividual metacontrol biases and intraindividual variation in response to changing task-related constraints. Together, this work enriches our understanding of how an individual's choices between flexibility and persistence during the creative problem-solving process, and their subsequent performance, are guided both by individual differences and environmental factors such as task contexts and task goals.
Identifying variations in thinking about the nature of science: a phenomenographic study
(2010-05) Keiser, Jonathan Charles
It is hard to imagine how one can be scientifically literate without understanding what science is about. One of the central elements of science education reform efforts over the last twenty years has been ensuring that students have a deep understanding of the nature of science (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 2008). However, research suggests these efforts have done little to improve students’ understanding of the nature of science (Sutherland et al., 2007). Much of the current research is aimed at evaluating the correctness of students’ conceptions or classifying conceptions according to philosophical positions (Bell et al, 2003; Khishfe 2008). This study attempts to build off that work by using an emergent phenomenographic research approach to identify variations in high school chemistry students’ thinking about the nature of science, using open-ended written response data from a six-item questionnaire that probes the following aspects of the nature of science: • Purpose of science • Tentativeness of scientific knowledge and the nature of theories • Creativity & imagination • Aim & structure of experiments This analysis yielded 39 primary level codes, which were then collapsed based on similarity into 14 categories of description. These categories reflect a wide range of understanding about science. Further analysis highlighted relationships between the categories and suggests two different orientations toward the nature of science. Some high school students orient their thinking about science in terms of an activity driven to prove or make certain, characterized by a collection of facts, whereas other students orient their thinking about science in terms of a finding out activity that results in discovering new information. The results of this study reveal more nuanced conceptions within these four aspects of the nature of science. Implications for science education and future research are discussed.
Influence of leader behaviors on creativity: a comparative study between South Korea and the United States
(2013-06) Hwang, Seog Joo
This study investigates what are the relationships between different leader behaviors (i.e. supportive, participative, and controlling leader behaviors) and follower creativity, and whether the relationships differ between South Korea and the United States. Although creativity research suggests that supportive leader behaviors tend to enhance follower creativity, and controlling leader behaviors are likely to inhibit follower creativity, the majority of the research was conducted only in Western contexts. However, cross-cultural leadership research notes that the effectiveness of certain leader behaviors is contingent on cultures. On the basis of theoretical linkages among the constructs, a conceptual model and hypotheses were established. The sample was drawn from academic advisors and their graduate advisee students, whose study fields are Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math at four South Korean universities and a large U.S. university. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. The results suggested that none of supportive, participative, and controlling leader behaviors had significant relationship with follower creativity both at South Korean universities and at the U.S. university. However, participative leader behaviors were found to have positive relationship with intrinsic motivation, an important creativity-related factor, of all student groups in the study. In terms of job satisfaction, supportive leader behaviors were important to student groups at South Korean universities whereas participative leader behaviors tend to increase, and controlling leader behaviors tend to decrease job satisfaction of student groups at the U.S. university.
Interior Impressions: Printed Material in the Nineteenth-Century American Home
(2018-10) Michelon, Christina
This dissertation considers how makers, especially women and children, were using mass-produced images clipped from periodicals, advertisements, and other printed sources to assert their own agency and individuality via collage-like practices in their homes during the nineteenth century. I use a wide array of “printcrafts” – my term for objects made from prints – that mediate between uniqueness and mass production, handicraft and industrialization, destruction and creation. My case studies include scrapbooks, decoupaged (print-covered) furniture, chromolithography, and board games. The project grapples with domestic craft’s relationship to affluent white femininity while using print to understand the relationship between the home, industrialization, and creativity in the modern era. By focusing on the ingenuity and “making” done by nineteenth-century homemakers, this project recovers an artistic past that has been overshadowed by more canon-driven studies of art and emphasizes the innovation and importance of centuries-old craft practices, such as collage, years before they were co-opted by twentieth-century avant-garde art movements.
Personal Experiences of a Capsule Wardrobe
(2019-06) Bang, Haeun
In recent years, various capsule wardrobe projects have been emerging in the U.S since the great interest in sustainability has increased with the growth of fast fashion. The ultimate goal of a capsule wardrobe is to urge people to purchase fewer apparel products of higher quality so that they will not discard them so frequently and easily. Moreover, creating different daily outfits through playing around with limited items of the capsule wardrobe provides people with an opportunity to enhance their creativity. The purpose of this study is to examine the personal experiences of a capsule wardrobe and how this daily practice of creating and dressing with limited clothing items can have an impact on creativity and sustainability. This study seeks to explore the motivations, benefits, and limitations of engaging in a capsule wardrobe project as perceived by a sample of volunteer participants. This study had seven female volunteer participants who were junior or senior students in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. All of them were living in Minnesota and had lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years. They had no previous experience of creating and managing their capsule wardrobes. In this study, multiple data collection methods including an online survey, creativity tests, daily journals, and pre-and-post interviews were used to achieve methodological triangulation. Based on the online survey and daily journals, merged patterns for creating different ensembles with limited items were found. The data from creativity tests, daily journals and pre-interview were analyzed and interpreted to discover how the daily practice of dressing with a capsule wardrobe affect one’s creativity. Findings from pre and post interviews were used to examine the benefits and limitations of a capsule wardrobe perceived by participants of this study. This study suggests feasible and accessible solutions to waste, pollution and over consumption. Since there are few studies on how dressing strategies can influence one’s creativity and how the capsule wardrobe can empower individuals to reduce their impact on this planet, the researcher believed that this study would have significant meaning educationally, academically and socially.
A study of grade level and gender differences in divergent thinking among 8th and 11th graders in a Mid-Western school district.
(2011-10) Roue, Leah Christine
This research study compared gender and grade level differences in divergent thinking among middle school and high school students in the Midwest, in an attempt to determine whether gender or grade level-based differences exist in divergent thinking. The instrument used was based on the Wallach and Kogan Creativity Test (WKCT). There were 166 public school students in the study from the 8th and 11th grades. The results were analyzed in an effort to answer two research questions: Are there gender differences in fluency, flexibility, or originality of a response? Are there grade level (age) differences in fluency, flexibility, or originality of a response? Quantitative and qualitative reporting is used.
Teaching Dance Concepts: Moving Toward an Inclusive and Innovative Future
(2015-05) Shinar, Anat
This research paper explores how dance education can contribute to continuing education and careers for students in all sectors, through its training in creativity. The paper also examines how conceptual dance education creates environments for inclusion and accessibility. Analyzing research in dance education, dance history, and business trends, I follow the concepts of space, time, effort, body, movement, and form, and demonstrate how these prepare students for careers that require creativity.

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