Creativity—A Framework for the Design/Problem Solving Discourse in Technology Education

Subjects for which aesthetics and creative performance are critical curricular dimensions (such as art, physical education, music, and technology education), and which are accommodative of students across the range of intelligences (Gardner, 1999) are not readily or completely captured by content standards. Therefore content knowledge in these fields that target student achievement as conventionally conceived must be complemented by treatment of more subjective and elusive goals such as the development of connoisseurship, appreciation, or creative insight. With the publication of standards for the subject (International Technology Education Association, 2000), the need for focus upon creativity in technology education has been made more urgent than before because of the prominence given to the teaching and learning of design. Four of the standards (8, 9, 10, and 11) address design directly. Technological design is a medium through which dimensions of children's creative abilities can be stimulated and augmented. This creative potential of design teaching can be seen in the work of Druin & Fast (2002), where Swedish children who are included in the design of technology reveal inventive dispositions in their journaling. It can be seen also in the work of Arguably, stimulating creative impulses in children through design and problem-solving activities is as grand a goal of curriculum as is the achievement of particular design-based, measurable outcomes. But how do we get children to improve upon the quality of their designs? What makes one design solution more elegant than the other? There are no easy answers here because creativity does not quite respond to the accustomed inquiry questions that we pose in discussion of curriculum, instruction and assessment questions in technology education. As Bruner (1962) pointed out, creativity is a silent process which by its very nature will not be responsive to the processes ordinarily employed to determine content standards. Instead, it requires its own set of questions, including examination of its nature. This article seeks to stimulate a conversation about the inculcation of creativity as an important goal of technology education, and as a concomitant of