By Candace Hackett Shively
Focusing on fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration skills gives teachers
and students an effective shortcut to developing creativity together.
Grow Creativity!
Creativity matters. The world needs creative thinkers, scien- tists, engineers, leaders, and
contributing workers. Yet research
repeatedly shows that creativity is
schooled out of us.
A shared vocabulary and lens for
creativity helps teachers and students
know what it means to “be creative”
and where to start. J. P. Guilford’s
FFOE model of divergent thinking
from the 1950s offers four dimensions
to describe creativity:
Fluency
Flexibility
Originality
Elaboration
If you think you don’t have time to
incorporate creativity development
into your curriculum, consider that
FFOE makes time spent on projects
worthwhile because creativity is sup-
ported, deliberate, and meaningful
while still connected to the cur-
riculum. Promoting and analyzing
creativity becomes a simpler matter of
using the terms and involving the stu-
dents, not teaching separate lessons
or developing new materials. In fact,
your student projects may already be
building creativity but may just not
have a vocabulary to talk about it.
