Understanding Creativity / Edition 1

by Jane Piirto

Overview

This reader-friendly book is used as a college textbook for courses in creativity. However, it is also interesting just as a nonfiction book with its sections on creativity, information about well-known creative individuals, and the different domains within creativity-artists, writers, musicians, scientists, mathematician, comedians, and more. Learn how the definition of creativity has changed through the years, and view the author's own depiction of creativity, called the "Piirto Pyramid of Creativity." Read about how Bill Gates embodied the classic traits of an underachieving gifted boy, how Van Gogh's artwork was brushed off by art galleries of his time, and how jazz extraordinaire Ella Fitzgerald was denied a job with a Harlem band because she didn't have the looks. The real-life examples described in this book will help parents and teachers learn to spot talent through children's behaviors and know how to encourage them so that their creativity can shine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780910707596
Publisher:	Gifted Unlimited
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JANE PIIRTO is Trustees' Professor in the School of Education at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, where she is the Director of Talent Development Education. She is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and has her undergraduate degree in English from Northern Michigan University. She has an M.A. in English from Kent State University, an M.Ed. in counseling from South Dakota State University, and a Ph.D. in school leadership from Bowling Green State University. She has been a high school teacher, a counselor, a college instructor of humanities, a coordinator of programs for the talented, Principal of the Hunter College Elementary School, and an artist in the schools in Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, and New York City. She has served as a consultant and speaker in Europe, the Near East, Southern Asia, South America, and throughout the United States. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia. Her Understanding Those Who Create has been translated into Chinese. She has published over a hundred poems, short stories, and articles, and thirteen books and chapbooks, among them Talented Children and Adults (2 editions), Understanding Those Who Create (2 editions), "My Teeming Brain" Understanding Creative Writers, Luovuus, A Location in the Upper Peninsula (collected poems, stories, and essays), The Three-Week Trance Diet (novel), mamamama, Postcards from the Upper Peninsula, Between the Memory and the Experience, Silent Midnight Snow Comes Down, Journeys to Sacred Places (poetry chapbooks). She has received two Individual Artist Fellowships-one in fiction and one in poetry-from the Ohio Arts Council, and a grant from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation. She has two grown children and a granddaughter.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

While creativity is the natural propensity of human being-ness, creativity can be enhanced and also stifled. The creative personality can be developed and also thwarted.

Creativity takes certain habits of mind. Creativity is not separate from intelligence or from artistry, but part of the whole. What is unnatural and sad is for it to be repressed, suppressed, and stymied through the process of growing up and being educated. What happens to most of us is that somewhere along the way, and often necessarily, we begin to distrust our creative self. Survival dictates that we subordinate our creative poetic self to a more practical, prosaic self. We go along and forget who we are or who we were. Oftentimes the creative poetic self is recaptured in a creativity class, or in therapy, or at a retreat, or in alone time in a cabin in the woods. The creative poetic self is close to our spiritual, personal self, and when we express our creativity, we express our personal side. This is often dangerous and leaves us vulnerable, and so we snap back to the practical and the prosaic out of defense...

Further, creativity is the underpinning, the basement, the foundation that permits talent to be realized. To be creative is necessary in the realization of a fulfilling life, but with all due respect to Mensa, having scored high on an intelligence test is not necessary. We are all creative. Those who are more creative than others have learned to take risks, to value complexity, to see the world, or their own surroundings with naiveté. They have learned to be creative, or their creativity has not been pushed down, stifled, and diminished by sarcasm and abuse. The restof this book discusses motivation for creativity, how creativity can be enhanced, how people in certain domains are creative, how creativity has been assessed, and how creativity can be taught.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I. Definitions and Processes of Creativity
Chapter 1. Making Sense of Creativity
Chapter 2. The Creative Process
Part II. How to Enhance Creativity
Chapter 3. Encouraging Creativity: Motivation and Schooling
Chapter 4. How Parents and Teachers Can Enhance Creativity in Children
Part III. Personality and Intellectual Characteristics of Creative People in Various Domains
Chapter 5. The Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development Model
Chapter 6. Visual Artists and Architects
Chapter 7. Creative Writers
Chapter 8. Creative Writers: Children with Extraordinary Writing Talent
Chapter 9. Creative Scientists, Mathematicians, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs
Chapter 10. Musicians, Conductors, and Composers
Chapter 11. Physical Performers: Actors, Dancers, and Athletes
Part IV: Creativity Assessment and Training
Chapter 12. Creativity Assessment
Chapter 13. Creativity Training
Appendix A. Creativity Theory
Appendix B. Focus Questions
References
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Colleen Harsin

a unique adventure into the world of creative individuals, past and present...a valuable addition to the field of education.

Northwestern University

Many hidden treasures...an excellent book for anyone interested in creativity.
—Center for Talent Development

Dean Keith Simonton

I know of no textbook on creativity as comprehensive as this one.

Editorial Reviews

I can't imagine a more complete publication anywhere about creativity!
—CAG Communicator

Elaine Wiener

"!!!!!Must Read"

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