Rethinking creativity and approaches to teaching: the systems model and creative writing

Creativity is a term much used but seldom defined. Given that creativity has been seen as a mystical gift, inherited genius, a form of madness, a series of personality traits or a collective social experience it is easy for misunderstandings to occur when discussing books and creative writing. This paper deals with the development of ideas on creativity, including common misconceptions that have real world implications for cultural production. Despite the common assumptions about creativity and the continuing existence of the inspirational and romantic frames of reference, as well as their strongly held adherence by the general populace, there is now enough research at the empirical and rational level to identify a more useful conception of creativity. For example Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988,1997,1999) contends that creativity is the result of a system of interactions between the individual writer and the broader social and cultural context in which they write. The system is comprised of a domain of knowledge, a field or social organisation that understands that knowledge and an individual whose task it is to make changes in the domain. This systems model of creativity not only contextualises creative writing and the production of books but provides an insight into a rational basis for the teaching of creativity that goes beyond romantically inspired approaches.