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Creativity in Physics: Response Fluency and Task Specificity
I.N.DiakidoyandC.P.ConstantinouCreativityinPhysics
Irene-Anna N. Diakidoy and Constantinos P. Constantinou
University of Cyprus ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to explorecreativity in the domain of physics and, specifically, itsrelation to fluency of responses (divergent thinking)andtypeoftask.Fifty-fouruniversitystudentswerepre-tested on their knowledge of relevant physics concepts.They then were asked to solve 3 ill-defined problemsrepresenting different types of tasks. The appropriateresponses given to each problem were evaluated as totheir number (fluency) and frequency (originality).Task-specific components were found to influence cre-ativity independently and to moderate the effects of general factors such as fluency of responses. Efforts to predictandfacilitatecreativityineducationalsettings,therefore,alsomusttakeintoaccountthewaycreativityis manifested within particular domains and the con-straints that different types of tasks may impose.
Creativity is a complex construct and, although it hasnotbeenwelloperationalized,theimportanceofidenti-fyingandfacilitatingitineducationalsettingshasbeenwidely recognized. The various creativity tests andtraining programs that have been developed over thepast several decades (Barron, 1969; deBono, 1976;Torrance, 1966; Treffinger, 1995) provide testimony toan increasing interest in creativity. Nevertheless, thereisageneralconcernthatcreativepotentialisnotidenti-fiedsystematicallyornurturedintheschoolsthewayitshould be (Baer, 1993; Barron, 1988; Hennessey &Amabile,1987;Hocevar,1981;Sternberg,1996;Weis-berg, 1988). The purpose of this study was to examinecreativity and factors that may contribute to it in a spe-cific academic domain, namely physics. Problem solv-ing represents a dominant activity of experts as well aslearners in the domain. This study examined creativityin the solutions or responses given to different physicsproblems and its relation to fluency, problem type, andconceptual knowledge.Creativity research has been directed at explainingand predicting a complex psychological phenomenonon the basis of evidence concerning factors that arefound or hypothesized to be crucial. However, ourknowledge about the basic components of creativityandthefactorsthataffectitsdevelopmentandmanifes-tation remain more or less fragmented. Creativity hasbeen conceptualized as an ability or characteristic of the person (Barron, 1988; Taylor, 1988) or as a cogni-tive process (Boden, 1992; Johnson-Laird, 1988;Schank, 1988; Weisberg, 1986) influenced by thinkingstyles or personality traits (Richardson & Crichlow,1995; Sternberg, 1988) and associated with divergentthinking (Clapham, 1997; Guilford, 1956; Torrance,1988).The issue we raise, however, concerns the extent towhich a generally decontextualized approach to thestudy of creativity has the potential of providing uswith a unified account of the construct and the factorsthat influence it. Creativity does not occur out of con-text(Baer,1993).Thecontextofitsoccurrencemayberepresented by a particular situation, task, or problemin an academic domain or in everyday life. In this re-spect, most previous research can be said to be con-textualized by virtue of the materials and the tasks em-ployed. However, there is still a need for a thoroughexplorationofcreativity,itsdevelopment,anditsmani-festation within single identifiable domains. Such an
Creativity Research Journal401
Creativity Research Journal Copyright 2000–2001 by2000–2001, Vol. 13, Nos. 3 & 4, 401–410 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
We would like to thank D. Natsopoulos and H. Tsoukas for their in-sightful comments and support, C. Varnavas and C. Bandis for theirhelp with materials and scoring, and E. Theodorou for her help withthedata.Wealsowanttothankthestudentsinourcoursesfortheiren-thusiastic participation and interest in the study.ManuscriptreceivedMay20,1999;acceptedDecember1,1999.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to toIrene-AnnaN.Diakidoy,DepartmentofEducation,UniversityofCy-prus, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia CY–1678 Cyprus. E-mail: eddiak@ucy.ac.cy.
 
approachpotentiallycanleadtoamoreunifiedtheoret-ical account of the construct in a specific domain,which then can be contrasted with theoretical accountsof creativity in other domains and contexts.The validity of such an approach is implicated bythedefinitiongiventocreativeoutcomes.Creativeout-comes are conceptualized to be both novel, as indi-cated by their low frequency of occurrence (Sternberg,1988; Torrance, 1990), and appropriate, as indicatedby judgments of correctness, usefulness, and quality(Amabile, 1990; Johnson-Laird, 1987; Sternberg,1988; Weisberg, 1986). The criterion of appropriate-nessiscloselylinkedwiththedomainandtaskinques-tion, because they necessarily impose constraints onwhat outcomes can be considered appropriate. Knowl-edge of the concepts, constraints, and regularities of adomain must influence the generation, evaluation, andmodification of responses within that domain (John-son-Laird, 1987; Weisberg, 1986). Moreover, Boden(1992)arguedthatifcreativityisthoughttoinvolvethebreaking or bending of rules imposed by the domain,then knowledge of these rules is a prerequisite for cre-ativity in the domain. At the task level, knowledge of relevant concepts and solution requirements contrib-utes to the representation of the givens and to the prob-lem’s solution (Johnson-Laird, 1988). That, in turn,most likely provides the basis for the generation of ap-propriate and potentially creative solutions.Previous research on creativity has focused mostlyoncreativityasageneralabilityorprocess(Hennessey& Amabile, 1988; Richardson & Crichlow, 1995;Sternberg, 1988; Taylor, 1988; Treffinger, 1995). Thisfocus has guided psychometric work in the area—asindicated by the fact that items on widely used creativ-ity tests are relatively domain independent (Barron,1988; Torrance, 1966, 1990)—and has resulted in theexpectation that individuals who score high on generalcreativity tests are more likely to exhibit high creativeachievementinonechosenarea,ifnotinseveral.How-ever, this is not generally the case (Baer, 1993; Feld-husen, 1993; Hocevar, 1981; Nickerson, Perkins, &Smith, 1985), and concern about the tests’modest pre-dictive validities led Feldhusen (1994) to suggest thatcreative functioning in one domain may be unique andpsychologically different from creative functioning inanother domain.The general lack of attention to domain-specificcomponents does not only limit our understanding of creativity,butalsomayhaveseriouseducationalimpli-cations. Creativity test scores may contribute to deci-sions about placement in gifted education programs(Feldhusen, 1994, 1995), and findings, such as the in-fluence of divergent thinking on creativity in general,may shape instructional methods developed to facili-tate it in the school setting (deBono, 1976; Treffinger,1995). Facilitating creativity in school also must in-volve facilitating creativity in specific academic do-mains in addition to promoting general creativity.However, it is highly unlikely that tests and instruc-tional methods designed to identify and increase gen-eral creativity levels will be equally effective when theobjective is to identify and promote creativity in do-mains, such as mathematics and science, in which out-comes, creative or otherwise, depend on the availabil-ity of conceptual knowledge and problem-solvingstrategies.A prerequisite to understanding the extent to whichcreativity is domain specific involves the examinationof creativity in particular, identifiable domains. Thisstudy represents a first attempt in this direction. In thisstudy, university students were asked to solve threeill-defined physics problems, each representing a dif-ferent problem type in the domain: explanation, pre-diction, or application. Open-ended tasks and ill-de-fined problems that allow multiple solutions areassumed to facilitate creativity to a greater extent thanwell-defined tasks and problems (Barron, 1988; Hen-nessey & Amabile, 1987; Sternberg, 1988; Torrance,1988; Weisberg, 1986). Problem type was operation-alized in terms of solution requirements. A problemthatrequiresonetoexplainorfindthecausesofaphys-ical phenomenon presents different constraints withrespect to what kinds of solutions are appropriate incomparison to a problem that requires one to predictphysical consequences or to apply a concept. Accord-ing to our position, we hypothesized that creative per-formance within the domain would vary as a functionof the type of problem encountered.Although it is generally accepted that creativity isvirtually impossible in the absence of some relevantknowledge, it also has been claimed that too muchknowledge can have a negative impact, preventing theindividual from going beyond what is already known(Sternberg, 1988; Taylor, 1988). In this study, to pre-vent simple recall or direct application of knowl-edge—which has been found to hinder creativity(Weisberg, 1986)—the physics problems were unfa-miliar to the participating students. However, the un-
402Creativity Research JournalI. N. Diakidoy and C. P. Constantinou
 
derlying physics concepts were judged by the stu-dents’ physics instructors to be within the students’capabilities. In addition, a conceptual knowledge pre-test was administered to establish the extent to whichthe underlying concepts were familiar and to allowfor the examination of the effects of prior knowledgeon students’ responses. We expected knowledge of the relevant underlying concepts to support creativityin the domain.Guilford (1956) proposed that divergent thinking,as opposed to convergent thinking, is a basic compo-nent of creativity. This hypothesis has been con-firmed by research that has required participants toprovide multiple responses (Richardson & Crichlow,1995; Torrance, 1988), and it has dominated creativ-ity testing and training (Clapham, 1997; deBono,1976; Hocevar, 1981; Torrance, 1966). In fact,Torrance’s (1966, 1990) work on creativity testinghas relied on the premise that divergent thinkingqualities—that is, the ability to produce a large num-ber (fluency) of different (flexibility) ideas that areunusual (originality) and richly detailed (elabora-tion)—are indicators of creativity. However, the im-portance of divergent thinking was disputed byWeisberg (1986, 1988), who argued that the ability togenerate a large number of responses does not ensurethat any of them will qualify as creative or original.This study examined the contribution of divergentthinking as represented by the number of appropriateresponses given to each physics problem. Appropriateresponses were considered to be those that fell withinthe domain of physics and that did not appear to orig-inate from fundamental misconceptions with respectto the underlying physics concepts. This operational-ization of appropriateness and the nature of the prob-lems utilized allowed us to obtain a range of re-sponses from each participant and for each problem.In this study, creativity was operationalized as re-sponse originality. The responses to each problemwere scored as to their total number, their acceptabilityor appropriateness as indicated by the constraints of the domain, and their originality as indicated by fre-quency of occurrence in the sample. This method of scoring follows the guidelines and procedures com-monly utilized in creativity research (Vernon, 1971).However, Davis (1989) drew attention to the fact thatoriginality scores that are based on the sum of the fre-quency weights assigned to responses (see Torrance,1990) are a direct function of the number of responsesgiven. As a result, there may be a confounding of theoriginality measures with the fluency measures, whichin turn may magnify the influence of divergent think -ing functions. Therefore, in this study, fluency andoriginality were separated by computing originality astheaverageofthefrequencyweightsoftheappropriateresponses given by each participant to each problem.This departure from standard procedure may result inan underestimation of the strength of the relation be-tween divergent thinking and originality. On the otherhand,italsoallowstheexaminationofthecontributionof divergent thinking to creativity without any con-founding influences.
MethodParticipants
The participants were 54 University of Cyprus stu-dents majoring in education. The majority of the stu-dents were women (
n
= 50) and in their 3rd year of study (
n
= 40). Their college performance was averageorabove,comparedtotheperformanceofalleducationmajors. Their grade point average (GPA) ranged from7.00to9.00,withameanof7.52andahighestpossiblegrade of 10.00. At the time of the study, 45 of the stu-dents had completed a university course in physicalscience as part of their program requirements. Theiraverage grade in this course was 6.91.
Materials
The target physics problems were selected from apool of 40 ill-defined problems constructed by two ex-perts, both of them university professors of physics.All of the problems on this list were classified intothree problem types on the basis of their solution re-quirements. Some problems required that solvers ex-plain possible mechanisms behind a phenomenon;some required that solvers predict what will happengiven a physical situation or a sequence of events; and,finally, some problems required that solvers find waysof using an item or device. These problem types were judged independently by the two instructors of thephysical science course as not being representative of the problems found in textbooks and course assign-
Creativity Research Journal403Creativity in Physics
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