ABSTRACT
There are many misunderstandings surrounding the topic of creativity. Misunderstandings can also influence people's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors regarding efforts to recognize and nurture creativity in educational settings. Educational studies about creativity have consistently noted that some teachers tend to dislike personality traits they associate with creativity, which might be described as obnoxiousness, nonconformity, and questioning authority. Many people think of creativity only in terms of the outstanding contributions of a Picasso, Rembrandt, Curie, Mozart, or Edison. Many people are creatively productive without being mentally unstable. Highly creative people who have mental illnesses tend to be more productive when their illness has been diagnosed and treated. Creativity plays an important role in the arts, to be sure, but it is also vital in every discipline, including those that make up academic school curricula: writing, literature, mathematics, science, technology, the humanities, and the social and behavioral sciences.
