This issue has long been the focus of debate in educational circles. In this paper Professor Yumino addresses this issue with particular reference to Japanese education today. He illustrates his argument with a series of lesson plan examples.

Domain-Specificity of Creativity and School Education

Abstract

In this article, the concepts of ‘domain-specific’ and ‘domain-general’ creativity and its supporting data are introduced. During thirty years, Baer conducted a series of studies for examining the nature of creativity. And he found that creativity is ‘domain-specific’ rather than ‘domain-general’, and sometimes it is ‘task-specific’. Based on Baer’s findings, it is recommended that creativity education in school should be attained through all subjects. The author proposes and argues the unique means and implication of creativity education in several school subjects, based on the concept of ‘domain-specific/ task specific’.

Learning consists of two phases, ‘Acquisition: Manabi in Japanese’ and ‘Creation: Tsukuri’. Yumino (2012) differentiates strictly between the two, and concludes that ‘creativity’ belongs to ‘Tsukuri’. The characteristics of Manabi and Tsukuri are summarized in Table 1. In order to realize Tsukuri in a certain subject, it is necessary to make clear the key points for realizing Tsukuri. Here, the key points of Tsukuri in four subjects are proposed, together with lesson plans in Social Studies and Science with Tsukuri Questions and Praising Words.

Key words: domain-specific, task-specific, creativity, Tsukuri (creation), Manabi (acquisition), fostering creativity in math, science, social studies, Japanese language

This article highlights the importance of ensuring that any interventions aimed at increasing creativity are appropriate to the culture concerned. It focuses on one aspect of motivation, namely praise, which Professor Yumino regards as essential for promoting individuality and creativity amongst Japanese children and young people, as well as raising their levels of self- esteem and self- efficacy. As he points out, Japan is a group-oriented society and it was only after the Second World War that the concept of individuality emerged. So it is hardly surprising that not everyone has an extensive repertoire of praising words they can use with children and young people. To address this issue, he reports on work in which the idea-generation technique, Brain Writing, is used to increase different groups’ repertoires of praise words.