**2.2 Creative attitude**

It denotes personal qualities within individuals. Researchers refer to a range of personality traits, such as openness, that are crucial for fostering creative behaviors [9]. Kim's concept of creative attitudes, however, is broader than creative personalities, as it constitutes inherent and learned personal characteristics [5]. It comes from within individuals and includes a wide range of personal attributes, such as curiosity, passion, courage, persistence, and humor [6]. As individuals develop and display their creative attitudes in a creative climate, they will be able to develop creative thinking.

### **2.3 Creative thinking**

According to the CAT's Cradle, creative thinking requires three patterns of convergent, divergent, and emergent thinking [6]. Divergent thinking denotes a loose pattern of thinking and results in generating novel and original ideas [8]. Convergent thinking refers to a method of thinking and results in assessing the usefulness of the generated ideas. Emergent thinking describes deep thinking, which uses novel and useful ideas, and translates them to creative products. Thus, creative thinking requires cooperation among these three patterns. Furthermore, adopting the three patterns of thinking requires enhancing a range of thinking skills [10]. Divergent thinkers demonstrate skills of fluency (i.e., producing many ideas), flexibility (i.e., generating diverse ideas), and originality (i.e., producing unusual ideas). Convergent thinkers analyze ideas, and emergent thinkers indicate skills of abstract mindset (i.e., considering beyond the obvious) and elaboration (i.e., adding details). Creative thinking patterns and relevant skills are presented in **Table 1**.

The creative climate was traditionally referred to as a classroom in a school. Nowadays, we can argue that a creative climate could be even a room, a kitchen, or a corner down the stairs. Corona pandemic taught us that attending to physical aspects may not be as imperative as ensuring psychological support provided in such contexts. The current chapter focuses on creative climate referring to teachers' and parents' behavior to foster creativity. It also examines such climate in relation to creative thinking skills due to its direct applicability for both educators and learners.


#### *Developing Creative and Meaningful Learning in the Curriculum DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102644*

#### **Table 1.**

*Creative thinking patterns and relevant skills [7].*

A proliferation of research studies has investigated teachers' behaviors and provided abundant instructions and programs [10–12]. However, these studies are either too narrow in the sense that the specified and detailed instructions are not applicable to most subject areas or too costly in terms of time and resources. Nowadays, considering the pressured environment of schools, where teachers are pressurized with credibility and assessments; providing a flexible guideline is vital to develop creativity. One of the most systematic models that offered such a framework is the model of meaningful learning. It was first argued by psychologist Ausubel in 1968 [13]. It was further developed by Howland et al. [14]. According to them, creative learning cannot occur unless meaningful learning takes place. Similarly, researchers argued that creativity is an advanced level of meaningful learning [15]. However, while the researchers repeatedly mentioned the link between meaningful learning and creativity no systematic theory as to explain the nature of such link was argued. The current chapter is an attempt to do so. Providing such an explanation may well serve to teachers and parents in their attempts to develop creativity. Psychologists and educators argued a number of characteristics for meaningful learning [14], which are discussed in detail in this chapter. Each characteristic results in developing certain creative thinking skills, which were emphasized accordingly. Furthermore, although the attempt was to highlight the characteristics in order of difficulties, there is, certainly, no "one

size fits all"! Teachers and parents may well tailor them to suit their subject areas. Similarly, some students may develop creative thinking skills faster than their counterparts do. Indeed, providing such students with encouragement and motivation results in further fostering and deepening their creative thinking skills. The chapter concludes with a summary of research conducted in this regard, providing implications for educators and parents.
