Using a model of domain learning to understand the development of creativity

Abstract

Creative thinking is a process through which individuals generate ideas that are simultaneously novel and meaningful within a given social context. Historically, psychologists have closely studied the general creative capacity of young learners, as well as the domain-specific creativity of experts. However, the developmental trajectory from children’s general creativity to experts’ domain-specific creativity remains largely unmapped. In this article, we work to address this issue theoretically by drawing on one established conceptual framework of academic development, the Model of Domain Learning (MDL). The MDL contains specific hypotheses about how learners’ declarative and procedural knowledge, motivation, and performance within a domain change as they learn, and we here delineate our hypothesized ways in which creative thinking could be expected to concomitantly progress throughout that development. We suggest that domain creative thinking develops from a largely self-referenced process when domain knowledge is low, to a more highly socially-referenced process as domain knowledge grows. In addition, we argue that creativity can both support, and be supported by, domain learning and offer specific suggestions for incorporating creative thinking into instruction at each stage of domain learning. We also show that, as learners develop academically within a domain, creative thinking requires a progressively greater investment of time and effort, which contributes to the riskiness of creative innovation and the rareness of creative experts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Riemann’s hypothesis is considered one of the most important unsolved problems in pure mathematics, and is one of the ‘Millennium Prize Problems’ for which the Clay Mathematics Institute has promised 1-million-dollar prizes for a solution (Carlson et al., 2006).

Additional information

Funding

This work follows all ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association.