One would like to know how to teach students to think creatively. There are numerous proposals on the subject and a small amount of encouraging data (Cropley, 1992; Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992; Nickerson, 1999; Stein, 1974, 1975; Sternberg & Lubart, 1991). I am becoming increasingly convinced that attitudes and beliefs play a much greater role in determining the quality of one's thinking – creative or critical – than is generally recognized. This is not to suggest that skills and knowledge are unimportant but rather that they are only part of the equation, and by themselves are insufficient to ensure that creative thinking will occur.

The idea that attitudes and beliefs are important to creative thinking – as well as to critical thinking – is not novel; many researchers have expressed it (Andrews & Debus, 1978; Baron, 1991; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Dweck, 1975; Reid, 1987). Unfortunately, research has not yet yielded a reliable prescription for promoting the attitudes and beliefs on which creative or critical thinking depends. It occurred to me that it might be easier to specify how to instill attitudes and beliefs that tend to stifle thinking, because, if the conclusions from numerous assessments of the thinking abilities of many students are to be believed, we collectively seem to know how to do this rather well.

While not wishing to claim to be an expert on how to stifle creativity, I know how I would go about it if that were my purpose.

As used in the psychological literature, reasoning has a variety of connotations that differ in their inclusiveness. At one extreme, the term is used to connote what once was called ratiocination, the process of deductive inferencing. At the other, it encompasses many aspects of thinking, in addition to deduction, that are involved in drawing conclusions, making choices, solving problems, and trying to figure out what to believe. Researchers and educators who have written about the teaching of reasoning have, I believe, had relatively inclusive connotations of reasoning in mind when doing so, and it is reasoning in a broad sense that is of interest here.

SOME DISTINCTIONS

Among many distinctions that have been made regarding reasoning by philosophers and psychologists, perhaps none is more basic than the distinction between deduction and induction. Deduction involves making explicit in conclusions what is contained by implication in the premises of an argument; induction, in contrast, involves going beyond what is implicitly contained in the evidence from which conclusions are drawn. Polya (1954a, 1954b), whose distinction between demonstrative and plausible reasoning is essentially the same as the distinction between deduction and induction, characterizes the distinction as the difference between reasoning that is “safe, beyond controversy, and final” and that that is “hazardous, controversial, and provisional.”

I find the following assumptions about creativity to be plausible if not compelling: (1) Both nature and nurture are important determinants of creative expression; (2) debate over which has the greater effect is generally not very useful; (3) essentially all people of normal intelligence have the potential to be creative to some degree; (4) few people realize anything close to their potential in this regard; (5) creative expression is generally desirable, because it usually contributes positively to the quality of life of the individual who engages in it and often enriches the lives of others as well; (6) the search for ways to enhance creativity - to help people develop more of their potential - is a reasonable quest in the absence of compelling evidence that such a search is futile; (7) the evidence, although somewhat tenuous, suggests that creativity can be enhanced; and (8) how to enhance creativity is not well understood, but there are possibilities that merit exploration.

This chapter deals with two questions that relate directly to the last two assumptions: Can creativity be enhanced, and, if so, how? In stating the assumptions, I have revealed that my answer to the first question is a cautious yes, and that I believe that something useful may be said in connection with the second. I confess at the outset that much of what I have to say is speculative. Much of the literature to which I will refer is speculative as well.