Record Detail

Creativity supports the advancement of all disciplines, providing both individual
and societal benefits. Most individuals can demonstrate and improve their creativity; therefore,
understanding the creative process is of particular interest to facilitate deliberate development
of creative thinkers. Despite copious research of the creative process, the work tends to be
fragmented without a unified, general theoretical foundation. Historically, creative process
research has examined the steps that creative people use, while overlooking how people learn
these steps and the mechanisms behind the process. This paper proposes to situate the creative
process within broader theoretical framework of self-regulated learning (SRL). This merger
emphasizes that the creative process can be learned and that creative process strategies may
inspire general learning strategies. Further, the SRL framework provides an organizational
structure that illuminates gaps in current research and provides inspiration for new measurement
techniques. Current assessment methods are often unable to determine how people
regulate themselves throughout the creative process, specifically how internal psychological
processes, external behaviors, and explicit strategies influence the creative process; however,
SRL measurement techniques, like SRL microanalysis interviews, may provide an opportunity
to identify intervention casual mechanisms, extend experimental studies, provide consistent
variables to compare across disciplines and studies, and help practitioners assess students’
creative process.