**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

#### *Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104919*

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.

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.

#### **Figure 1.** *The unity that influences the development of creative thinking skills.*

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


*Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104919*

#### **Table 1.**

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

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).

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.

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.


#### **Table 2.**

*The example of cognitive task.*


#### **Table 3.** *The example of a creative task.*

*Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104919*


#### **Table 4.**

*The example of organizational task.*

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]:


In the literature [24–26], 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,

#### *Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104919*

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).

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**).

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.

*Perspective Chapter: The Importance of Supporting Creativity Development as the Main Skill… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104919*

**Figure 2.** *Students' attitude toward creative tasks performance.*

#### **Figure 3.**

*The criterion used by students to evaluate the creative tasks.*

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.

**Figure 4.**

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

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

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