ABSTRACT
Advocates for creativity who champion play as the primary vehicle for creativity too often sidestep the role knowledge plays in playing well. Educators must cultivate creativity that is useful and productive, and we do this by first ensuring that a foundational knowledge-base is in place. The core processes for creative expression are reimagining, renegotiating, revisiting, revising, and building from information we have. Indeed, creativity includes both fitting in and sticking out. Such ability to both recognize the limits of what is possible and to identify meaningful opportunities to stretch or break those boundaries are predicated on one’s knowledge-base. Within the classroom, we must reflect on how knowledge in our domain can be leveraged to cultivate rather than to crush creativity.
