Creativity in the Making - Vygotsky’s Contemporary Contribution to Crativity

Moran & John-Steiner / 25 1970) use nominations from supervisors, colleagues or other social gatekeepers to determine who is most creative in a field and which works are most creative: who is deemed most creative is dependent on the norms of the time.

Many current researchers agree with this basic model. Cultural psychology has built on this theoretical foundation, positing that people are intentional beings motivated to build intentional worlds from the meanings and resources they gather from their sociocultural environments (Shweder, 1990). Since historical context is always changing, there can be no universal representation of internal and external development dynamics (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996). In addition, Wertsch (1991) has elaborated on the mechanisms of mediation that make this possible, and Rogoff (1990) has examined apprenticeships as vehicles for this individual-culture exchange. Gardner (1991) recognizes that culture was pervasive in development, including creativity, and that, in fact, we would be hard pressed to understand development without taking culture into account. Wells (2000) asserts cultures provide overlapping activity systems in which each individual engages in only a subset. Cole (1998) concurs: “culture is exteriorized mind; mind is interiorized culture” (p. 292). In fact, Cole and Scribner have expanded Vygotsky’s basic culture-mind model to include intermediate levels: Cole emphasizing mesogenetic-level institutions and Scribner calling for a level of individual societies (Scribner, 1985).

Tools and signs “[A]n essential mechanism of the reconstructive processes that take place during a child’s development is the creation and use of a number of artificial stimuli. These play an auxiliary role that permits human beings to master their own behavior, at first by external means and later by more complex inner operations.”16 Creativity involves anticipating what could be and putting that vision into a symbolic form that can be shared so as to affect the present and the future of others (Vygotsky, 1999). It is an organizing capacity that is inherently social, which is why creative products are not only novel but must also be appropriate to the cultural context (Gardner, 1993, 1994b). Creativity brings more of the vast human potential into actuality. Although not based on Vygotsky but on the Gestalt psychologists’ (Wertheimer, 1954) and Wittgenstein’s (1953) notions that sense perceptions are ambiguous and that meaning is derived from the functional use of a sign, Kaufmann (1996) suggest a mechanism for this possibility-into-actuality process. It is based on the fact that perceptual content includes dormant interpretations, interpretations beyond what is required in the particular situation in, or reference frame through, which something is perceived.

Signs, psychological tools and artifacts are the media through which mind and culture communicate. Already existing tools and symbols are the embodied thought and ideas of people who have come before us in history. When