Paper summary - Creativity As Action: Findings From Five Creative Domains, by Vlad Petre Glăveanu, et al

What I read

In this article, the thirteen authors explore five different creative fields, establish an action framework for synthesis and meaning making, and then identify the differences between creative action in those fields.

First, the authors start by describing that existing research tends to focus on the internal and private things happening during creativity, and the traits of the creator; this misses an opportunity to understand the external things happening during the process, and that knowledge is critical for teaching students. They explain that, as a result of this gap, their goal is to show that creativity is “as action and of creative work as activity,” and that this model would then be applied to various data gathered from creative disciplines.

The authors explain that there is a long history of cognitive psychologists trying to understand the processes through which creativity occurs; these typically have shown creativity as an orderly or logical set of steps. Over time, academic research has grown those steps, and then identified that the creative process is a movement between those stages. Their approach that leveraged action theories is based on the ideas of interaction, that the creative process integrates cognition, emotions, volition, and motivation. It’s a part of life in all respects, and is highly situational; the theory or way of thinking views creativity as part of a larger context of life.

They then further unpack or describe action. It is “defined by its intentionality and the mediation of various systems of tools, signs, and artifacts… takes place in a setting and involves both the organism… and the sociocultural constructed environment… and is facilitated by and facilitates human social relationships.”

The authors leverage Dewey’s writing on human experience and interactions, showing that there is a constant back and forth between doing things and “undergoing” things (reacting to the environment.) Creativity, for Dewey, is at the intersection of the person and the thing being created.

In the next section, and remainder of the paper, the authors explain the study they have used to further explore the role of action theory in creativity. In this study, they analyzed creative work at a micro level, a “mezzo-level,” and a macro-level. Their questions are primarily practical, focusing on the things that happen during the creative process. The study included 60 participants spread across five different domains. Data collection was through interviews, and focused on critical incidents in order to probe further during the interview.

The authors spend a large amount of time discussing their analysis and synthesis method, as this is a large part of their contribution. This process included:

• A thematic analysis, using a frame that was driven by theory and data
• The selection of coding categories (“impulsion, obstacle, doing, undergoing, emotion”)
• The creation of 11 subcategories, found in the data itself
• A second pass of coding by another person
• An analysis of the agreement or disagreement between coders
• A refinement of the coding frame
• A reapplication of the new and refined coding frame
• The extraction of quotes related to the various codes, separated by creative domains
• A summary of the content per domain and code
• The establishment of “general schemes of creative action for each domain”

The final eleven coding elements were Impulsion, Obstacle, Doing (stages), Doing (procedures), Doing (tools), Doing (time and place), Undergoing (material), Undergoing (social), Undergoing (before doing), Undergoing (final result), and Emotion.

The next five sections in the paper show the results of the research, as it leveraged the above data processing, per each of the five categories (art, design, science, scriptwriting, composing.)

In each section, the authors provided a summary narrative of findings, equally leveraging their own description and summary with quotes, and summarized quotes, from the various participants. The summary narrative in each section is broadly structured around the main coding categories of Impulsion, Obstacle, Doing, Undergoing, and Emotion.

In each discipline, a schematic of creative activity is provided, leveraging the same visual and conceptual format of each of the author disciplines.

(The specific section findings are skipped here, as they are the bulk of the paper itself.)

Finally, the authors discuss the results of the research, the implications of the research, and room for further study and evaluation.

The intention of the paper was to contribute towards an “action analysis of creative activity.” Their results confirm and extend results from others who have studied discipline-specific actions. The authors’ research confirmed art and design research precedent, but found and propose differences in the way science, writing, and music composition have been largely considered. They describe that their goal was to try on a single action coding frame for all groups, and to see if patterns emerged. They found a “patchwork of similarities and differences” across the various criteria. They explain further what some of these patchworks consist of.

The authors then describe the impact of the findings on educating others to be more creative.

First, it is proposed that educating children should follow a domain-specific approach, but it’s recognized that children aren’t in a position to select their domain. The authors question what, exactly, should occur during the educational process in order to generate “genius,” and suggest that educators should focus on “undergoing before doing,” rather than on the output of the work that children make, because it recognizes the ongoing and continuous approach to creative growth. The stages that have been established can also be used to structure the way education is structured, too.

Finally, the authors recognize the limitations of the work, primarily that the analysis framework was separated and segmented to analyze the data, but this ignores the feedback loops “between stages,” which was initially described as a fundamental part of Dewey’s work.

What I learned and what I think

This is the first text I’ve read in this paper-reading effort that focuses on a level of detail suitable, in my opinion, to really understand how creativity happens. I’ve felt that the models being discussed were only theoretical and lacking a pragmatic grounding, and were “applied” to a field that some of the authors might not have really understood. This paper doesn’t do that: the model and framework used is evaluated through a real lens with real practitioners.

I’m starting to understand what “action theory” means in the context of academic research of creativity, although I’m not entirely confident I’m getting my head around the intention. As I read this, it seems that an action theory approach simply means focusing theoretical analysis on what is happening, rather than what is being thought about—that the focus is on, well, action, rather than cognition. Through that lens, the connection to embodied connection makes sense to me, and so does the idea of creativity being a shared phenomenon, because actions happen outside of the self. This seems extraordinarily obvious to me, but that’s probably because of my focus of and interest in making, both for myself and when I teach. I’ve always thought “You can’t teach design without making things,” and I’ve said over and over and over, “Stop talking and make things.” This is materially different from“Stop thinking and make things,” but both actually sort of apply equally.

I appreciate that the authors aren’t looking for a “universal theory of creativity that fits across all disciplines,” or at least if they were looking for it, they acknowledge they didn’t find it. There are absolutely shared elements and ways of thinking across all forms of making, but the craft is so different and the material so important that the model distinctions are maybe more important than the commonalities. The patchwork chart is right on.

The biggest learning for me in this article was a methodological one, not one from the findings themselves (which don’t surprise me at all, and probably don’t surprise anyone else who has ever made things.) The method of standing up the initial frame, and then using the frame, is both new and also familiar from the synthesis we do with qual research data on design projects. It’s different in the use of an initial top-down structure. The authors started with impulsion, obstacle, doing, undergoing, and emotion. Where did those come from? Why were they “okay” to use? I need to re-read Dewey, but I don’t remember those elements being explicitly defined in his work; did the authors here interpret Dewey, make their own model, and then use it, and is that a legitimate way to start a framework?

The part that is very familiar is the way categories emerge from the data itself, and that’s always been a part of the process that I feel very comfortable with—starting with the ambiguity, finding clarity in it, and then using the clarity. I am used to the same level of rigor as shows up here, and if it’s considered a “first class” approach to form conclusions, I can work with this process all day long to identify new knowledge and useful content. The data source isn’t experimental, and the authors recognize the sample was “small,” but I’m not sure I agree—60 people seems completely legitimate for a qual program (although that it was spread across five categories does feel a little thin.)

I’m unclear about the findings and, if I was an educator, how I would use them—they don’t seem actionable. As I understand it, the main findings related to education were, with my thoughts:

“Educating children for creativity should consider the domain specific features of creative action.” I completely agree. Teaching “art” may be useful in some sort of survey quality, of showing children that there are lots of options, but if the goal is actually to improve their ability, the education has to be specific and not generalized.

“It is widely accepted today that acts of historical creativity… require many years of training… what exactly happens during these years of training?” I’m not sure how this is really a finding or real question—practice is what’s happening. I think Schoen’s work, along with all of the other main design authors, have established a pretty sound, established, and clear view of how practice, critique, process and method are what “fill in the blanks.”

“How can this period of preparation… be most fruitfully organized to facilitate high-level creative expression?” I’m not sure there’s great accepted academic research into this, but the usually poorly written papers from IDSA’s educator track often talk about the best way to structure design education and design curricula.

“We need to consider creative action as equally continuous and not taking place only when (and if) a highly celebrated outcome is actually produced.” Yes, of course, although at a child’s age, I don’t think parents see that or contribute to it. The thing that is made is hung on the wall, or wins awards. Actually, now that I think about it, a critique in process recognizes this, while a critique of output doesn’t. Design focuses on the first; art usually on the second.

“Under these circumstances, educators should focus on the nature and quality of what we called here ‘undergoing before doing’ – the stage of preparing oneself for creative activity on the long run but also before working on particular projects.” I don’t really understand this; does this mean a teacher needs to spend more time on planning phases? I don’t think that’s the intent here, although it’s certainly a good idea.

“Finally, knowing about the stages of doing in particular domains can help us structure our teaching of artistic and scientific disciplines and make good use of those material and social conditions that facilitate creative expression.” Yes, this is true, but it seems overly similar to the first point—that creativity is domain-specific.

I liked this text and learned a lot about accepted method here. I think I want to go to some sources of interview as an accepted approach, starting with the cited “Hocevar, D. (1976). Dimensionality of creativity. Psychol. Rep. 39, 869–870.” Update: this paper is one page long. I'm picking something else.