A life-span developmental approach to creativity

There has been growing interest in understanding the life-span development of creativity (Hui, He, and Wong, 2019). Throughout the life course, creativity grows and declines and serves different purposes for different individuals, making creativity development a dynamic process. For example, a preschooler displays imagination by making up songs with interesting rhymes for self-expression. A school-age child develops a keen interest, out of curiosity, in digging deeper into topics such as planetology or paleontology. An adolescent experiments with new ideas in the pursuit of personal expression. A young adult shows independence in choosing his or her career to form a new identity. An established design engineer and his or her team create a new product to make a financial profit or to effect a social impact. An older adult engages in creative narrative expression to reinterpret the meaning of his or her life. Creativity is defined as novel and appropriate behaviors and within a continuum of impact in a field (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999; Piffer, 2012). Creativity engenders society’s greatest achievements, business innovations, and personal . This chapter takes the perspective ofto study the emergence of and changes in creative attitude, behaviors, and experiences in terms of nurturing potential and growth and of exploring the limits and decline of creativity through both theand the . The life-span developmental model of creativity postulates that the types of creativity expressed, how they are measured, and how they are valued vary in different life stages from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and late adulthood. Empirical evidence on the significant factors for the development of creativity across the life-span is also reviewed with reference to the critical issues in each life stage. The discussion also includes educational and practical implications as well as future research directions on creativity research.