Teaching for Transformational Creativity: Fostering a Principled Approach to Creative Action

Educators and researchers in the field of creativity studies have explored ways to provide young people with more opportunities to exercise their creative agency. However, a growing recognition that creativity is not inherently positive, and can sometimes lead to harmful consequences, has resulted in a more nuanced objective. Now, the focus is not just on fostering creative abilities in young people but also on teaching them how to use their creativity in a more principled and transformational manner. This chapter explores the importance of guiding young people toward principled and transformational creative action. It opens with a discussion of creative agentic action, including the kinds of experiences that activate our creative agency, what goes into our decision to take creative action, and possible consequences that follow from those actions. The chapter then discusses how researchers can help educators teach students to take a more principled approach when making decisions about whether to exercise their creative agency. The overarching goal is to encourage young people to engage in transformational creativity. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of this approach for educational practice.