Search

This manifesto, discussed by 20 scholars, representing diverse lines of creativity research, marks a conceptual shift within the field. Socio-cultural approaches have made substantial contributions to the concept of creativity over recent decades and today can provide a set of propositions to guide our understanding of past research and to generate new directions of inquiry and practice. These propositions are urgently needed in response to the transition from the Information Society to the Post-Information Society. Through the propositions outlined here, we aim to build common ground and invite the community of creativity researchers and practitioners to reflect up, study, and cultivate creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

At the root of problem solving, Tishman and Clapp assert, is a sense of agency. The impetus to engage with a problem starts with a sense that it's possible to reshape something by directing one's actions purposefully. The authors--who participated in a long-term project observing how the "maker movement" is being implemented in schools--believe practices connected to maker-centered learning increase students' sense of being capable of shaping their world through tinkering, designing, building, and redesigning objects or systems. They identify skills teachers should nurture to make students aware of the designed nature of the world and increase students' feeling of agency.

Throughout the past decade, the maker movement has become a cultural force, and maker-centered learning has grown in popularity. At the same time, the arts have remained marginalized throughout the educational sphere and limited scholarship recognizes the connections between the maker movement and arts learning. To explore this connection, we conducted a thematic analysis of interviews with maker educators and thought leaders, and we found that these educators rarely used arts and aesthetics-related terminology when speaking about the benefits of maker-centered learning. However, when these terms were used, they fell into three categories: objects, thinking skills and processes, and environments. We suggest that establishing a language of aesthetics in maker-centered learning might help arts and maker educators see themselves reflected in one another's work. Further, making such an aesthetic connection might provide young people with a deeper understanding of the beauty to be found in the made world.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses topics in the issue, such as art education, the social aspects of art and aesthetics, and the social aspects of technology.