ABSTRACT
Nearly forty years ago the Plowden report argued that the primary school should lay special stress ‘on discovery, on first-hand experience, and on opportunities for creative work’.1 Following that, it was not uncommon to see advertisements for college of education lecturers inviting applicants whose teaching ‘would offer those taught opportunities for creative activity’. Despite the blatant overworking of the term, and consequent attempts by philosophers to elucidate and pin down a variety of distinct species of creativity, it is still frequently encountered and it still, more often than not, has no clear or precise meaning. Giftedness, for example, itself one of the most confused concepts to have emerged in educational discourse, is often taken to incorporate creativity. Similarly, research into effective teaching (see Chapter 13), will often refer to students’ creativity as an index of success. But in both cases, usually, no attempt is made to analyse the concept. Instead, uncritical reliance is placed on some standard creativity test. It seems, as was once too truly remarked of IQ tests, that creativity is what creativity tests test.
