013368
Subject Lecturer: Bob Pithers
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CREATIVITY and its importance
of being an Chinese Language teacher.
study questions in the section
of creativity
McCrae, Arenberg and Costa
(1987) examined 825 well-educated men aged 17 to 101 at regular intervals
between 1959 and 1972. They were required to perform different
divergent-thinking tasks involved associational fluency, expressional fluency,
ideational fluency, word fluency and consequences. They were also given the
vocabulary test from the WAIS.
While it is believed that
vocabulary test and all of the measures of creativity were verbal in nature,
participants showed distinct scores on the measures of creativity and
vocabulary.
The study also revealed that
there is a decline in creativity with age just the same as fluid intelligence.
However, the correlation between age and performance on creative tasks only
showed a modest range (-0.10 to –0.30).
One of the problems raised in
the test is that McCrae and his colleague administered the tests under
standardized conditions with strict time limits. Hence, the slower processing
speeds of older adults were put in disadvantages.
From the context views,
creativity in the adulthood is influenced by a number of cognitive,
neuro-biological, and social changes. Jean and Michael Romaniuk (1981)
suggested incentives for productivity may influence an individual’s creativity.
For examples, tenure and pressure to publish an academic document, shifting of
job positions as well as changing the career goals or job security may boost
creativity, or opening of new research fields may also influence creative
accomplishment.
For the motivational viewpoint,
people generally show a lack of interest in generating new ideas as they age.
Instead, they are more likely to make use of the existing knowledge to help
practical daily lives or to help evolving their cultures.
The need to be creative is
generally decline with age because of psychosocial. When an individual ages, he
the need to be wise may replace the need to be creative for practical reasons.
He concluded this by observe
the individual occupying the position of power and leadership with a number of
social, political and religious institutions, and the individual who create or
revolutionize existing ones.
He made the typical age of a
pope of the Roman Catholic Church as an example, the age when the position
assumed to him is approximately double the age at which Jesus of Nazareth ended
his ministry.
It is common to see young
person to create new institutions and to revolutionize existing ones, but when
they grow older, they are going to occupy position of power and leadership.
They are to be in the positions that have to make wise decision in order to
maintain the institution.
Genius is the factor beyond
creativity and intelligence, while creativity and intelligence are necessary
but not sufficient condition for the development of genius.
Geniuses may not be good in
solving problems but they are curious and relish in problem finding. They
approach their work with a sense of childlike enthusiasm and obsessiveness.
They gain fundamental insights by asking questions that are childlike in
nature, and eager to search deeper.
Geniuses seemed to be able to
synthesize different modes of thought to produce their work. For example, a
composer should have the creativity to “see” how music “looks” and a painter
should have the creativity to imagine sounds as symbols.
It seemed that a genius must
posses is a critical amount of knowledge about a particular domain to make a
genius-like contribution. Too much as well as too little knowledge and thought
are is also a problem to genius. Therefore, geniuses would be likely to appear
at their thirties.
If the conclusion that a fairly
positive result is an outcome in the area of ageing and creativity, it could be
a rather positive news for a Chinese Languages Teacher in a secondary school.
If generally speaking,
creativity develops in the young adolescence, at should be at the secondary
school age. The responsibility of a teacher is to boost their curious in the
subject, and lead them to think in a multi-facet manner.
In case that an exceptional
creative student is identified, he could be able to maintain his creativity
through his life; and when the ordinary creativity developed in the early
adolescence ages, it can keep growing till its peak in the adulthood. No matter
when the peak appears, making use of the creativity in his early can help to
manage daily lives, with accumulated experience and acculturation, intelligence
grows and lead the person to a wise person in his adulthood.
Teachers in a particular
subject would like to discover a genius in that subject, however, it is a fact
that most of the people are not genius. When it is fail to identify genius, a
teacher still have to bear in mind that the major social function of education
is to produce our generation who could be contributable to our society.
importance of
creativity as being a chinese language teacher
Understanding creativity is important
in being a teacher, and it is particularly important to language teachers. In
the curriculum of Hong Kong, Languages subjects consist of different aspect,
but most of them require practical skills rather than utilizing creativity.
However, the understanding of an imaginary fiction, the use of metaphor, the
composing a story or even a poem, they are tasks require imagination and
creativity.
In most of the writings or
compositions, students can only think of the most simple things, and reluctant
to use various kinds of metaphor even though they did learn them before. One of
the reasons they reflected is that they could not think of things that are out
of their lives, and they could not think of a metaphor to describe the matter
they were describing.
Lack of creativity is actually a main
issue in the secondary education in Hong Kong, not only the languages subjects,
but also the sciences subjects, teachers keep saying that lack of creativity to
make new hypothesis, and only memorizing the existing job of the recent
scientists would only lead to a decline in development. The same appears in
different subjects.
Parents keep complaining that their
children are in lack of creativity, and could not manage even the mother
language to express themselves. The public keep blaming the existing
educational system could only damage and limit creative thinking, and produce
zombies that could not contribute to our future development.
The Educational Reform proposed by the
Educational Department in Hong Kong in 2001, emphasized on the developing and
exploring creativity of students, and it is obviously the responsibility of the
teachers. In the Guidelines the Educational Department provides, it encouraged
languages teachers to use concept map or mental map to help students to develop
a story before actually write it. However, even the mapping is required, most
of the students can only draw linear pattern instead of radial pattern.
The problem here is to help student to
think divergently as well as convergently, the former can help developing
creativity and the latter can help turning the creativity into practical use.
Therefore, in order to help exploring the potential of the students, the first
thing for a teacher to do is to understand “creativity”, how it is measured,
and the way to help development of it.
reference
Hoyer, W. J., Roodin, P.A. 2003,
“Adult Development and Aging”, 5th ed., McGraw Hill College, Boston,
Ch 8, pp.333-340
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