Educating the creative workforce: new directions for twenty‐first century schooling

This article sets out reasons for arguing that creativity is not garnish to the roast of industry or of education—i.e. the reasoning behind Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's insistence that creativity is not only about elites but involves everyone. This article investigates three key domains—scholarship, commerce and learning—to argue the importance of moving creativity from the margins of formal education to its centre. First, the article elaborates the scholarly work being done to bring definitional clarity to the concept of creativity, moving it from the realm of mystery, serendipity and individual genius to a definitional field that is more amenable to analysis. It then provides evidence about the extent to which creative capacity is being understood to be a powerful economic driver, not simply the province of the arts and the hobbyist. Finally, it examines new learning theory and its implications for formal education, noting both the possibilities and pitfalls in preparing young people for creative workforc...

[1]  Richard E. Caves,et al.  Book Review , 2001 .

[2]  R. Florida.  The Rise of the Creative Class , 2002 .

[3]  D. Perkins.  The Mind's Best Work , 1981 .

[4]  J. Brown.  New Learning Environments for the 21st Century: Exploring the Edge , 2006 .

[5]  Mitchell Wade,et al.  The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace , 2006 .

[6]  M. Pryke.  Cultural economy: cultural analysis and commercial life , 2002 .

[7]  Erica Mcwilliam,et al.  The problem of ‘the problem with educational research’ , 2006 .

[8]  M. D. Bois-Reymond.  Youth - Learning - Europe: Ménage à Trois? , 2004 .

[9]  Managing Youth Transitions in the Network Society , 2001 .

[10]  Mantz Yorke.  Employability in higher education: what it is, what it is not , 2006 .

[11]  M. Csíkszentmihályi.  Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity , 1998 .

[12]  J. McMillan,et al.  Life Satisfaction of Young Australians: Relationships between Further Education, Training and Employment and General and Career Satisfaction. Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth Research Report 43. , 2005 .

[13]  D. Holt.  Consumption and Identity at Work. , 1997 .

[14]  Stuart D. Cunningham.  What price a creative economy , 2006 .

[15]  C. Dweck.  Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Essays in Social Psychology. , 1999 .

[16]  Jamie Peck.  Struggling with the Creative Class , 2005 .

[17]  Tori Haring-Smith.  Creativity Research Review: Some Lessons for Higher Education , 2006 .

[18]  J. Zull.  The Art of Changing the Brain , 2023 .

[19]  Richard Florida,et al.  Managing for creativity. , 2005, Harvard business review.

[20]  A. Koestler.  The Act of Creation , 1964 .

[21]  Guy Claxton,et al.  Building Learning Power: Helping Young People Become Better Learners , 2005 .

[22]  D. Simonton.  Creativity. Cognitive, personal, developmental, and social aspects. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[23]  Penelope Curtin,et al.  Employability skills for the future , 2004 .

[24]  Frank Furedi,et al.  Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism , 2006 .

[25]  John Buchanan,et al.  Beyond flexibility: skills and work in the future , 2000 .

[26]  K. Robinson.  Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative , 2001 .

[27]  Stuart Cunningham,et al.  From Cultural to Creative Industries: Theory, Industry and Policy Implications , 2002 .

[28]  Jane Kenway,et al.  ‘Creative destruction’: knowledge economy policy and the future of the arts and humanities in the academy1 , 2004 .

[29]  R. Burt.  Structural Holes and Good Ideas1 , 2004, American Journal of Sociology.

[30]  Richard Bingham.  Public policy, innovation and the need for creativity , 2006 .

[31]  Charles Leadbeater,et al.  Living on thin air : the new economy , 2000 .

[32]  T. Flew.  Creativity, the ‘new humanism’ and cultural studies , 2004 .