The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives, edited by Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Shortly after starting graduate school, I was browsing the bookshelves of the campus bookstore. I stumbled across this book and decided to give it a quick skim. A half hour later, I walked out of the store with the book tucked under my arm, having just used some of my very limited resources to buy it. It was definitely my smartest grad school purchase! That there was serious scholarly attention paid to creativity amazed me, and the chapters gave me a new appreciation for human creativity, its potential to drive societal change, and its importance as a key educational outcome. It was the first scholarly book I read cover to cover, and the depth of conceptual and empirical work blew me away. In particular, chapters by Paul Torrance, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Howard Gardner stood out, representing the breadth of approaches to studying this important construct. I soon refocused my interests in the direction of creativity, where they have remained to this day, 30 years later. Professors Sternberg, Torrance, and Gardner also became correspondents during those pre-internet times, and as we exchanged letters, they became important sources of encouragement and inspiration, for which I remain grateful.
Jonathan A. Plucker’s recent Kappan articles:
- The evidence base for advanced learning programs
- Rethinking how we identify “gifted” students
- Should individual U.S. schools participate in PISA?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan A. Plucker
JONATHAN A. PLUCKER is the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at the Center for Talented Youth and a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. He serves as president of the National Association for Gifted Children.
