Jing-Jyi Wu
Foundation for Scholarly Exchange&National ChengChi University （Fulbright Foundation）
In a recent issue （September, 8, 1999）, Newsweek featured a cover story entitled “Now, Please Think: As Americans Embrace Testing, Asians Pursue Creativity.” Indeed, in Chinese societies throughout Asia （including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan）both governments and the private sector are stressing the importance of recognizing and nurturing creativity in Chinese students. This implies that creativity in Chinese students, which can be likened to crouching tigers and hidden dragons, is still undiscovered and needs to be developed. Therefore, the crouching tiger needs to be enticed and the hidden dragon awakened. Why is this so? The author argues that educational policy and practice in almost every Chinese society neglect and/or discourage students’ curious exploration and independent thinking, intrinsic motivation, and other nine factors that are conducive to creativity. Drawing from the research in Taiwan, the author suggests five ways to identify creativity in Chinese students and recommends that in order to nurture creativity, educators and researchers : (1)create a goal structure that values creativity, (2)base activities on a creative lifestyle, (3)employ multiple intelligence theory as a framework to cultivate creativity, (4)adopt the confluence approach and maintain interdisciplinary perspective to study creativity, (5)gradually shape a creative culture that allows informal and implicit learning of creative behavior, (6)select appropriate gatekeepers when necessary, (7)tolerate and respect diversity and individual difference, (8)create opportunities for experiential learning and flow experience, (9)infuse creativity into the curriculum and make use of project-based learning, (10)teach both creativity-relevant skills and domain-relevant skills, (11)emphasize both multiple and authentic assessment of individuals, teams, and(12)always remember that mentoring is more effective than controlling.
Keyword: Creativity、Chinese Students、Creativity Education