Creativity, Agency and Meaning-Making: Unfolding Developmental Possibilities in Twenty-First-Century Learning Environments

In a day and age when the ability to accommodate uncertainty into one’s lifelong developmental processes has become critical to survival, creativity has garnered an indisputable place in education. Labelled as one of the critical skills of twenty-first-century education, creativity is, however, more than just a skill. It is an attribute of a socio-psychological structure that manifests itself in the continuous interaction between the self, the other and the World, capable of reconciling diverse perspectives and interpretations of the World and opening new meaning-making (and thus developmentally transformative) possibilities. In this chapter, I present a critical analysis of how creativity, as a construct, is approached in educational contexts, as well as the potential consequences for one’s psychological developmental process. Moreover, I emphasize the importance of worldmaking as a key component of educational experiences that, while embracing the uncertainty of contemporary living encourage students and teachers to collaborate in the process of combining old and new meaningful knowledge, critically positioning themselves in the face of individual and collective societal challenges. In this light, I discuss how approaching educational contexts as settings of re-constructive exploration can broaden the developmental possibilities of every person involved in the learning process, specifically by allowing them to question, explore, and actively construct their choices, with indelible consequences on their creativity, agency, and sociocognitive complexity. The psychological, pedagogical and political implications of this paradigm shift are addressed, aiming to contribute to the ongoing debate about how to cultivate creative-nurturing learning environments.