Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This chapter calls into question the ways of creativity development as the main skill of the twenty-first century. Attention is paid to the analysis of key notions and concepts of creativity. This chapter discusses how to enhance creative thinking skills during training in higher institutions. The study presents the results gained from the literature overview. The examples of assignments aimed at creative thinking skills development during training are given. The paper investigates approaches to the construction of tasks to develop creative thinking and criteria for creativity assessment. An analysis has allowed highlighting the positive experience of different experts researched creativity, which can be implemented in future training in Ukrainian higher educational institutions. The findings of this study support the idea that heuristic tasks, creative projects, mind maps, and case study are significant assignments in the enhancement of creativity development that can be supported in the educational process and everyday life.

1. Introduction

Modern society is involved in the processes of globalization and increased industrial competition. Individuals must respond quickly to changes, apply nonstandard solutions, and generate new original ideas. Society needs unusual solutions to familiar problems, new approaches to solving broadly known and investigated problems, as well as new ways of behaving in typical situations. Most professions in the modern world need highly developed creative skills. In the cutting-edge socioeconomic system, experts have always seen creative thinking in various forms. It is associated with scientific discoveries, entrepreneurship, technical inventions, the creation of works of art, and relations with people or public administration.

In the history of creative thinking development, the focus has always been on the mechanisms of its development, its interdisciplinary nature, and the desire of a person to understand his/her abilities with the respect to creative thinking. It is considered at the philosophical, pedagogical, psychological, and other research levels. The past decade has seen a renewed importance in creative thinking development, its special features, and ideas of designing a comfortable environment to enhance creativity. It can happen due to several factors. The first one is that creativity is assigned the role of an instrument in solving diverse and constantly growing interdisciplinary problem-based tasks; the second one is that creativity performs an important function in the process of forming maturity thinking of an individual.

Based on the survey conducted with the World Economic Forum (WEF) [1] that represents more than 7.7 million employees worldwide, creativity and innovation are considered by employers as rising in prominence. Nevertheless, the global recession and the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns in 2020 have brought an uncertain outlook for the labor market and updated the list of the top skills with such skills as resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility, the education field must be ready that by 2025, there will be an increasing demand for skills related to creativity and innovation.

As far as many hypotheses regarding creative thinking development appear to be debatable, current solutions have been seen in strengthening the education systems ready for future challenges with designing training programs that could build a solid foundation to optimize global talent and assist in the development of new abilities in the twenty-first century.

The perspective chapter takes a new look at the issues of creative thinking development. With this in mind, we tried to consider the concept of creativity as a phenomenon, approaches to the construction of tasks to develop creative thinking, criteria for creativity assessment as well as products of creative activity, and how creativity development can be supported in the educational process and everyday life.

2. Creativity as an important skill for future

The term “creativity” has been applied to the overall structure of the personality, his/her uniqueness, and individuality; therefore, it has a significant impact on all stages of educational trajectories of personal development. In the literature, creativity often refers to the creative abilities of a person, which are manifested in creative thinking and feelings, communication, and individual types of activity [2]. It can be used to characterize the personality in general, as well as his/her aspects, products of his/her activity, as well as the process of his/her creative thinking. Creativity is sometimes equated with essential and relatively an independent factor of giftedness. It is hardly reflected in tests to define the level of intellectual development and academic success. In contrast, creativity is more receptive than critical thinking about new ideas. A complex approach to the upbringing of a creative personality covers a wide range of issues related to originality, initiative, and complex problem-solving.

According to Freedman [3], creativity is the indissoluble unity of the ideological, worldview, internal and artistic, it is an essential condition for the personality of a growing individual, versatility, and harmony of his/her development.

At the present stage of social development, a person needs to develop in order to possess in-demand skills needed by the employers. Highly developed creative skills allow a person to continue active learning, be more flexible and easily adapt to changing conditions and requirements, work with innovations, and improve the environment.

Demirkan and Hasirci [4] identify three main elements of creativity: (1) competence (availability of a knowledge base, experience, skills); (2) cognition (using creative thinking methods, ingenuity, flexibility, perseverance); and (3) motivation (internal and external). Internal motivation deals with a personal interest in solving a problem, a persistent desire to apply knowledge and self-actualize. Extrinsic motivation is connected with promotion and material interest.

De Bono [5] developed a holistic program for the development of creative thinking and highlighted the following basic principles: (1) determination of the conditions for solving the problem, necessary and sufficient to achieve the goal, (2) wish to abandon previous experience in solving similar problems, (3) possession of the ability to notice multifunctional, universal things, (4) interdisciplinary nature (ability to connect the most different, even opposite ideas from the most diverse areas of knowledge and the use of the resulting associations to solve problems, and (5) enhancement of the ability to understand the dominant idea in a given field of knowledge.

Figure 1 depicts the unity of components that from our point of view influences the development of creative thinking, such as logic and cognition, positivity, harmony, and productivity, joy, and professional development. The implementation of these components simultaneously helps students to enhance a wide range of abilities, as for instance, ability to think logically, the ability to overcome stereotypes, the ability to find logical connections between phenomena, objects, facts, etc.

Figure 1.

The unity that influences the development of creative thinking skills.

Botella et al. [6] suggest that the development of a person who can act creatively involves the development of a fundamentally new culture of thinking, its essence is the development of human intelligence using off-pattern learning technologies. In this situation, the emphasis is on the generation of knowledge rather than on the organization and processing of the knowledge.

Corrazza [7] outlines creativity as the ability of students to generate new knowledge through a technologically controlled expansion and transformation of the vision of reality as a future that can be able systematically organized based on the present; thus, creativity is a construction ability in the mode of the thinking process organization. On this point, creativity differs from innovation, as the generation of new knowledge through the use of existing abilities, connections, relations that are interconnected. Creativity presupposes the design of such features based on the already existed skills and abilities (aptitudes, relations). Kant in Ref. [8] believes creativity is a controlled productive imagination that is characterized by spontaneous actions.

Barron and Harrington [9] suggest that creativity presupposes the necessary variety of knowledge, and the initial mental order is a potential collection of all possible orders. Amabile [10] focuses on the idea that the scenario of creative thinking is approximative to the model of mental experimentation, to balance “on the edge of chaos” between the real and the possible.

These ideas have to be taken into consideration by teachers and trainers during the development of the assignments aimed at enhancement of the creative thinking skills.

2.1 Approaches to the construction of tasks to develop creative thinking

While researching the problem of students’ creativity development, experts note that it greatly contributes to the development of the individuality of personality. Creative tasks are described as an original solution to a problem that gradually becomes more complex, where the data and requirements are presented to the student, and he/she must find a solution to the problem using the techniques of creative activity and innovative ways of thinking. Thus, Runco considers creative tasks as the tasks that require the student to be resourceful, when the student finds his/her original solution, applies it, or makes use of certain techniques to create innovative solutions steadily [11].

In general terms, creative tasks can be defined as a system in which many forgetive assignments are ordered and interconnected, built based on a hierarchy of creative methods, and aimed at developing the creative thinking of students in the educational process. According to its structure, the system of creative tasks includes target, content, activity, and effective components [12].

Originality or authenticity relates to understanding and accepting a person’s identity in order to maximize his/her talents. The development of creativity starts with the awareness of individual authenticity and acceptance of a person’s identity as unique originality. Knowledge about technologies, different approaches, methods of development, and strategies of creative thinking perfectly fit into this background.

The content of the creative tasks system includes thematic groups of tasks that are aimed at cognition, creation, the transformation of various objects, phenomena, situations performed by students. The construction of such thematic groups is based on setting students’ own goals, using certain methods, performing some functions that ultimately are aimed at developing students’ creative thinking skills.

The creative tasks system may include a regulatory component that relates to the reflexive actions of students in the process of their study; in this case, the creative tasks system can change in accordance with additional information about the implementation of elaborated decisions, which is gained as a result of the process of implementation, which necessitates control and regulation of their actions.

The activities in the creative tasks system are represented with the forms of organizing procedures (group, individual, or collective work), optional activities.

The past decades have seen a renewed importance in the development of approaches, methods, and techniques dedicated to the support of creativity. Many researchers, scientists, and scholars proposed various ideas for creativity development (Delphi Method, Synectic Method, SCAMPER Method, etc.) that were implemented in practice due to their specific features.

Table 1 presents a short overview of the highly demanded approaches, methods, and techniques proposed and implemented by different scientists from 1926 to 2006. All those approaches, methods, and techniques are aimed at supporting the creative potential of individuals. An increasing number of studies have found that the main qualities that support creativity in the individual are curiosity, self-confidence, assertiveness, auditory and visual memory, the desire to be independent, originality, and absorption (degree of concentration).

№	Author name	Approaches and methods	Specific features
1	Edward De Bono (1973)	Holistic approach and Six Thinking Hats Method	It aims the development of creative thinking based on the methods from an understanding of how the mind works as a self-organising pattern recognition system.
2	Graham Wallace (1926)	Creative Problem Solving Approach	It outlines the theory that the creative process includes four stages: preparation, incubation, insight, and examination.
3	Bob Eberle (1971, 1997)	SCAMPER Method (Abbreviation for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put, Eliminate, Reverse)	The SCAMPER approach aims at the modification of the object or problem in question. It includes questions that guide individuals in thinking about the problematic pathways that new ideas usually come up with. In the process of obtaining answers, their various properties are studied, new ideas arise, new opportunities for the development or improvement of the object are revealed.
4	Tony Buzan (2006)	Mind Mapping Approach	It is based on the concept of radiant thinking that led to the formation of the technique of mind mapping. It stimulates creativity due to establishing relationships among ideas and developing individuals’ memory and learning potential.
5	Fritz Zwicky (1966-1969)	Morphological Box Method	The essence of the method is to build a matrix (table, box), which lists all the constituent elements of the research object and indicates all possible options for the implementation of these elements. By varying all known options for implementing the elements of the object, you can get the most unexpected new solutions.
6	William Gordon (1969)	The Synectic Method	The idea of ​​synectics is to unite individual creators into a single group for joint formulation and solution of specific creative problems. The method is based on the use of unconscious mechanisms that are manifested in a person’s thinking at the time of creative activity.
7	Olaf Helmer and Theodore Jay Gordon (1964)	The Delphi Method	The emergence of Delphi is associated with an objectively urgent need to improve the methods of group decision-making. Before the advent of Delphi, the most common way of agreeing with different positions and reaching a common opinion was the traditional meeting.

Table 1.

Overview of the highly demanded approaches, methods, and techniques dedicated to creativity development from1926 to 2006.

In Ref. [13], creative tasks (possess a creative nature) can be divided into problematic tasks, problematic questions, simulation, case studies, and tasks of a divergent type, the main feature of such assignments is that they allow several possible answers. Creative assignments require students to demonstrate a high level of autonomy. Smith and Carlsson [14] suggest that in traditional teaching, convergent-type tasks are mainly used: the conditions of such tasks assume only one appropriate answer, which can be worked out by strict logical reasoning based on the use of learned rules, algorithms, laws, etc.

Khutorskoy [15] in 2004 was one of the first to offer the following classification of creative tasks: cognitive, creative, and organizational (or methodological) tasks. In Tables 2–4, we consider the examples of tasks that include instruction, developed abilities, and discussion. The instruction contains a description of the problem-based situation and the task itself. Developed abilities deal with skills and abilities that can be developed or enhanced during task performance. The discussion may include tasks and questions for discussion.

Lesson	Natural sciences
Instruction	Everyone knows that our planet is globe-shaped. But what does it mean?; According to psychological research, many children understand this statement differently. For example, they consider it as a flat circle that floats in the sea or levitate in space. When answering a question about the shape of our planet, they say, “It is round,” and it goes in line with their views.; The task is to provide as many ideas (How does a round planet look like) as possible. They must be wrong conceptually but right according to the logic of presentation. The time limit is from 5 to 7 minutes.
Developed abilities	Ability to generate new ideas, ability to identify and understand the ambiguity of statements, ability to overcome stereotypes, etc.
Discussion	Students share their ideas about how we can imagine the round planet. After students are proposed to discuss the pros and cons of template thinking and creative thinking. Give the example of situations when template thinking is more appropriate than creative thinking and vice versa.

Table 2.

The example of cognitive task.

Lesson	Classic literature
Instruction	Everyone knows the story about Gulliver’s Travels.; Imagine yourself in the Gulliver’s place in the country of Lilliput (where your height is as a two or three-story building) and in the country of Giants (where your height is similar to the size of a pen or pencil).; The task is to think about things that can be used as sports equipment in one of those countries in different kinds of sports (e.g., ski, skating, fencing, etc.) The time limit is from 8 to 10 minutes.
Developed abilities	Ability to choose the right method (e.g., exaggeration to imagine Lilliputs and Giants), ability to notice multifunctional things, ability to be flexible, etc.
Discussion	Students present their ideas about things that can be used as sports equipment in one of those countries in different kinds of sports. After students discuss questions: Why did they choose Lilliput country or Giant country or provide arguments in support of chosen kind of sport, etc.?

Table 3.

The example of a creative task.

Lesson	Crafts
Instruction	Students are divided into three or five teams. Each team has got a piece of A4 paper and scissors.; The task is to design the Arch under which every one of the participants can go. The Arch must be uninterruptible (solid). It is forbidden to use glue or other materials to connect a paper. The ways and methods of activity performance are not explained to students.; The time limit is from 8 to 10 minutes.
Developed abilities	Ability to work in a team, ability to generate new ideas, ability to set goals, the ability to realize the results of the learning, etc.
Discussion	Students present their Arches and compare their results with the result of other teams. Whose idea is the most creative, feasible, or tangible? After students discuss How easy or difficult it was for them?

Table 4.

The example of organizational task.

Cognitive tasks are aimed at the building and development of student’s cognitive skills. They include the ability to ask questions, the ability to feel the world around us, to conduct experiments and research, the ability to identify and understand the ambiguity of statements, the ability to overcome stereotypes, to find the causes of the occurrence of phenomena.

Creative tasks provide the enhancement of creative thinking in students: the ability to make a forecast, sensitivity to contradictions, flexibility, imagination, the ability to generate new ideas.

Organizational tasks support the ability to realize and formulate the goals of their educational activities, to organize continuous educational or professional development, the ability to realize the results of the learning, to assess and review the innovative ideas proposed by classmates.

Experiments on tasks for creative thinking development were conducted in 2009 by a group of researchers [16]; let us distinguish the following requirements for creative tasks: (1) openness (the content of a problem situation, heuristic task, case study, or project method has to be widely known); (2) feasibility (tasks take into account the current level of students professional development and age); (3) diversity (the performance of tasks provides different ways of problem-solving or multiple solutions); and (4) congruence (the chosen methods of creative thinking corresponds to the problems set in the task). Besides the requirements for creative tasks development, some conditions are the prerequisites for creative tasks system usage. Among them is the construction of tasks that must be carried out on an integrative basis, when the task allows students to enhance several mental processes at the same time: thinking, attention, imagination, memory; the selection of tasks aims at the rational sequence of their presentation: from reproductive ones, aimed at updating existing knowledge, to investigative that focused on mastering generalized methods of cognitive activity, and then to innovative, which allows considering the studied phenomena from different points of view. The performance of tasks provides the fluency of thinking, consistency, and coherence, the flexibility of mind, the ability to generate hypotheses, that is, to the development of the quality attributes of creative thinking.

2.2 Criteria for creativity assessment

Some experts [17, 18] propose a three-component model of the process of creative thinking that builds three mutual connections: reflection, enthusiasm, and individuality.

Reflexivity distinguishes humans from animals and allowing to form self-awareness, self-esteem, plan through language, analyze, and reflect the world. Enthusiasm is combined with a belief that changing the environment brings a good opportunity for innovative changes. Individuality is specified in the ways the problem is solved.

Several authors believed that criteria to assess creative thinking depend on the fields of knowledge and activity [19, 20]. But this claim can be called into question as far as there are some general requirements for the process of creative thinking regardless of the field of science. When assessing creativity, we pay attention to the facts whether students (1) change the structure of internal and external data using additional conceptual differences and make decisions about similarities, (2) restructure the problem, (3) use relevant knowledge, visual thinking for creating new and innovatively using old knowledge and skills, and (4) use a nonverbal thinking model.

We can add to these factors one more as far as in some fields students use an interdisciplinary approach, it means that during their creative activity, they use innovative knowledge and well-known knowledge in other disciplines that can be transferred from one field of study into the other.

When assessing the level of the creative thinking skills, development experts propose students pass the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Guilford’s Alternative Uses Test, or Wallach and Kogan’s creative thinking tests. The tests include assignments for divergent thinking assessment and problem-solving skills. Torrance [21] identified for following criteria for creativity assessment originality, flexibility, fluency, and elaboration. Originality is the ability to generate nonstandard or unexpected ideas, to deviate from the generally accepted pattern. It helps to successfully get out of emergencies. Flexibility is the ability to assess a problem from all sides and apply different strategies when solving it. It helps to quickly grasp connections between different phenomena, establish patterns, find common ground in a variety of things and events. Fluency is the ability to come up with a large variety of ideas at great speed. With high levels of fluency, a person can come up with 20 ways to use an object, for example, an ordinary pencil, in a minute. The last one is elaboration—the ability not only to generate ideas but also to deepen and detail them.

In Ref. [22], our attention is drawn to the idea that the assessment of creative skills can be done through the analysis of the products of creative activity. The analysis of the results of the creative activity products made by students demonstrates a positive trend in the use of heuristic tasks. It suggests we identify the following criteria: the quality of the students’ creative products; motivation and cognitive interest of students in creative activities; the level of time and self-management in creative activity.

When assessing the level of quality of products of students’ creative activity, the attention has to be focused on the following parameters [23]:

1. a range of approaches used to perform a heuristic task;

2. the originality of ideas, their innovative aspects;

3. creatively different approach to solving the problem;

4. the practical value of the creative product;

5. the level of application of subject knowledge, skills, and abilities for the implementation of the original idea.

In the literature [24, 25, 26], there are a surprising number of criteria (about 17) on how to assess the creative product or idea produced by students. Thus, they can be considered as main criteria (such as originality, recency, future potential, flexibility, efficiency, elaboration, etc.) and additional (such as applicability, attractiveness, expressivity, sustainability, etc.). In this chapter, we consider the most influential.

Assessing recency of creative product or idea, the teacher focuses on whether an idea is new if it offers new processes, concepts, methods, and materials. It can be manifested in the expansion of the field of study of the problem. The next one is originality as the most general characteristic for evaluating the product of intellectual creativity. From a practical point of view, an idea is considered original if there is no similar one among those already known to people working in a particular field. Therefore, an engineering idea proposed by an accountant may be original for him and not for an engineer. The future potential of ideas can be manifested in the ability to stimulate to find new solutions.

Flexibility is another important characteristic of an idea. On the one hand, possessing this quality, an idea gives a new look at the problem, a new way of solving it, and on the other, it is capable of change and modification. An idea is considered effective if it can be used to address any component of the problem. Elaboration reflects mainly the aesthetic qualities of the idea. In general, the complexity of an idea is determined by the degree to which it considers various elements—components of the problem—and brings them together into a single whole. Applicability characterizes the degree of convenience of using an idea to solve a given problem. This criterion is close in meaning to adequacy, which is assessed by how much the idea corresponds to the essence of the problem.

The use of consistency criterion in assessing the value of an idea is often surprising. We used to think that our thoughts are always logical. However, it makes sense to use the criterion under consideration to identify how an idea meets the “rules of the game,” that is, correlates with generally accepted scientific facts. But using this criterion alone is not enough to determine the value of an idea. A bright logical idea should also correspond to the recency criterion, which will distinguish it from other equally logical ideas. An idea corresponds to criterion attractiveness if it attracts the attention of people who are considering it or those who are influenced by it. In addition, the sense of beauty is usually associated with attractiveness. Expressivity is understood as the clarity of the presentation of the essence of the idea. An expressive idea is better and easier to perceive. The teacher has to explain to the students that even a valuable idea can be rejected if it is not presented in an appropriate form. Sustainability criterion can consider that if a presented idea is complex or holistic, is it perceived as a single whole, as a system.

Thus, we state that the level of creativity possessed by students can be assessed from different points. The teacher can assess the creative thinking skills of the students or the product or idea as a result of creative activity. Further analysis showed that creative thinking isn’t just a random splash of new ideas, it can bring tangible and effective output. Highly developed creative thinking skills help students achieve better results in transforming the environment, effectively and competently respond to modern challenges. These results offer vital evidence that the ability to think creatively is also based on knowledge and experience, and, therefore, it can be an object of focused training that can be assessed and enhanced.

2.3 Research methodology

To achieve the goals of the chapter, we have used complex interconnected methods of scientific research. The theoretical methods used in the chapter are the generalization of psychological and pedagogical literature to consider the concept of creativity as a phenomenon, the comparative analysis to explore approaches to the construction of tasks to develop creative thinking, the content analysis to identify criteria for creativity assessment as well as products of creative activity.

The empirical methods used in the chapter are the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the survey to stipulate the positive or negative effects based on the implementation of the model of creativity development in the educational process.

To illustrate the positive and negative effects of the implementation of the model of creativity development implementation in the educational process, the survey was carried out among 150 bachelor students of different specialism who study at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Ukraine).

To stipulate the impact of the model of creativity development in the educational process, the study was carried out among teachers of English work on the Department of English Language for Humanities in Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Ukraine). A total of 45 teachers of English were recruited for semistructured interviews. Interviews were conducted informally.

Representatives of the students (SG) group were asked to express their attitude to different kinds of creative tasks proposed by teachers, to identify the difference between the standard tasks and creative tasks, to identify difficulties that occurred during tasks performance.

Representatives of the teachers (TG) group were asked to express their views concerning the aims, principles, components, methods, technologies, activities, and results integrated into the model of creativity development in the educational process.

The study employed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected from the survey, interview, and observations.

Considering the data provided in Figure 2, we can see that almost all students possess a positive attitude to the performance of the creative tasks. Nevertheless, almost all students demonstrate a positive attitude to the performance of all creative tasks, the most positive attitude students demonstrate to the creative project’s performance (about 90% of students).

Figure 2.

Students’ attitude toward creative tasks performance.

At the same time, some students demonstrate a negative attitude to the heuristic tasks (about 44% of students). One of the students said the following about difficulties:

“The tasks were unusual. I feel uncomfortable because I spent a lot of time while thinking whether the solution was right or not, was it feasible or not, etc.”

When students have discussed the difference between the standard tasks and creative tasks, they mentioned such criteria as attractiveness, diversity, originality, and future potential of results (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

The criterion used by students to evaluate the creative tasks.

Seventy-five percent of respondents believed that variability or diversity is one of the important features, and its level is higher in creative tasks. Fifty-five percent of respondents said that level of attractiveness in creative tasks is not much higher than in standard tasks.

One of the respondents said:

“I feel much more responsible for the results when performing creative because they can be used in my future profession.”

Students who participated in the survey emphasized the need for creative tasks to develop their ability to creative thinking, to personal growth, to provide innovative activity, and to generate new ideas.

During the interview, teachers mentioned that they believe that among technologies to support creative learning must be used situational learning technology, game technology, project technology, problem-based learning technology, and inventive problem-solving technology.

The ideas expressed by teachers are well consistent with the Creative Learning and Technologies Strategy [27] that suggests that blended technologies effectively provide digital resources to support learning; flip learning; communicate with students; encourage active learning and collaboration.

Taken together, the results from teachers’ interviews suggest that creative abilities can belong to a certain component of creative competence and can be supported with specific tasks and activities.

Thus, Figure 4 helps us to demonstrate the interconnections between components, abilities, and tasks.

Figure 4.

Interconnection of components, skills and abilities, tasks and activities during creativity development.

These findings help us to design the model that will support creativity development in the educational process.

2.4 How creativity development can be supported in the educational process and everyday life

Some Ukrainian researchers claim that the effect of learning activity decreases, primarily due to unproductive methods of teaching [28]. In our opinion, it happens because the necessary methods are not developed and strengthened enough.

In many institutions, the interdisciplinarity is not developed, the lack of educational actions in various situations, the most difficult tasks are not practiced enough, the more complex methods are not used, which often leads to unsuccessful activities. Due to this, students are not satisfied with activities, on the one side, they consider them as obstacles that are hard to overcome.

Traditional teaching contains, mainly, explanation and illustration elements, when the teacher poses problems based on his/her own experience and indicates his/her own ways to solve them. With this type of training, the criterion component becomes the determining one. This approach organizes educational processes based on the predominance of reproductive activity, with detailed results. Due to the said above, it is necessary to gradually change teaching methods in order to intensify the learning process, increase motivation for learning. Thus, our idea is to implement the model of creativity development in the educational process using creative projects, mind maps, case studies, and heuristic tasks (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

The model of creativity development in the educational process.

The main difference between the model proposed and the traditional teaching model is that the teaching method used in the model is close to the assimilation of knowledge. While in traditional teaching, the assimilation of knowledge goes on a reproductive level with some minimum elements of creativity, the proposed model presents different creative tasks that correspond to a creative level of teaching.

Teaching and learning using the creative project method, mind maps, case studies, and heuristic tasks in contrast to the traditional one are a complex type of interaction system, in which the management of students’ activities plays an important role. For example, in the creative project method, the level of problem items in the above method is set by two-level characteristics: the complexity of questions, problem-based tasks, and assignments. Their quantity and quality are taken into account as far as the ratio of four independent types of tasks: reproductive, cognitive-practical, reproductive-search, and creative.

Teaching and learning using the creative project method, mind maps, case studies, and heuristic tasks in the model reflect the following structure: research and sustainable research (problem-based statement, hypothesis advancement, testing, and idea generation); study of the case and discussion (identification and comparison of points of view); mind mapping and simulation in the subject-content (imitation-game) and heuristic assignments.

The essential characteristic of the specified teaching model based on such activities as the creative project method, mind maps, case studies, and heuristic tasks is the reflective activity of students in intellectual and emotional-personal terms. The focus can be shifted from a procedural training plan into a context-based one and can be carried out in the following areas: special training in search procedures, the formation of a reflective thinking culture; special training in the processes of mastering and applying new techniques of the method of creative design; the formation of a discussion culture; special development of the emotional and personal side of educational activity associated with its role components; an emotional and intellectual reflection of the course of training, including simulation and heuristic modeling.

3. Conclusion

Our work has led us to conclude that one of the priority vectors of modern higher education is the development of a creative personality, the formation of readiness for professional mobility, social and creative activity. In the twenty-first century, creativity is the central, pivotal characteristic of a competitive personality. Students with a constant and conscious interest in creativity, who realize their creative potential, can successfully adapt to the changing conditions and challenges of life. In the future, such students can easily create their own individual style of activity, they are more capable of self-improvement and self-realization in professional activities.

In this chapter, we have outlined that a student’s creative thinking is a type of thinking that manifests itself as an integrative feature of personality. This chapter underlined the importance of criteria for creativity assessment as well as products of creative activity. The evidence from this study suggests that the results-oriented use of heuristic techniques, mind maps, project methods, and case-study enhance creativity development.

These findings add to a growing body of literature on the issue of how creativity development can be supported in the educational process and everyday life. Future studies on the current topic are therefore required experimental research in order for the proposed model of creativity development in the educational process to be verified by a larger sample size.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Department of English Language for Humanities and Faculty of Linguistics, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.