Some notions of artistic creativity amongst history of art students acquired through incidental learning

In the West, creativity may be admired and valued but what it means can be elusive. Rather than being the subject of discussion in the classroom, meaning generally develops incidentally. We elicited twenty final-year history of art students’ beliefs about artistic creativity in England using a questionnaire and interviews. The responses provided qualitative and quantitative data about these students’ notions of artistic creativity. Beliefs and clusters of beliefs were identified. Together, these were similar to those of western artists and art academics, but clusters of beliefs showed there were also narrow and deficient notions regarding the product, process and locus of creativity. Teachers in higher education should be aware that students’ responses may give the impression that their beliefs about art are sound when, in reality, they are unsound or narrow. This could have implications for employment, especially in a widening global economy.