ABSTRACT
In a world of expanding human demand, resulting from rapid technological and political change, the need for creative activity to find solutions to personal, social, technological, community and global problems is increasing. At the personal level, creativity is known to have physical, psychological and spiritual benefits (Carson, 1999; Horan, 2011; Richards, 2001) which, when enacted at the community level, serve to enhance intellectual, economic, environmental and social capital. In foreshadowing the vital impact of creativity research on humankind's well-being, Guilford (1967a, p.13) propounded that “creativity is the key to education in its fullest sense and to the solution of mankind's most serious problems”. Further, it has been shown that students taught and assessed in ways that value their creative abilities demonstrate improved academic performance (Sternberg and Lubart, 1996; Sternberg, 2008; Sternberg, Torff, and Grigorenko, 1998). The importance of creativity in achieving such an outcome is perhaps nowhere more relevant than in the learning and teaching of mathematics in schools. In this chapter, the author reveals why this is so important, discussing student participation rates, “perfinking”, the need for change, and the impact of constructivist and enactivist theories on using creativity to solve mathematics problems.
