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Developing Creativity to Enhance Human Potential in Sport: A Wicked Transdisciplinary Challenge
James Vaughan1,2, Clifford J Mallett1,3, Keith Davids4
1School of Human Movement and Nutritional Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Frontiers in Psychology
|October 2, 2019
Summary
Developing creativity in athletes is a complex challenge. This study proposes an ecological dynamics approach, viewing creativity as a system property of athlete-environment interactions, not individual traits.
Area of Science:
- Integrates ecological dynamics, dynamic systems theory, ecological psychology, and social-cognitive psychology.
- Focuses on transdisciplinary approaches to understand human development and athletic skill.
Background:
- Creativity development is a multifaceted 'wicked problem' due to complex human-environment interactions.
- Increasing calls for holistic ecological models to understand the inter-relatedness of ecologies and human behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore an ecological dynamics rationale for creativity in sport.
- To extend ecological dynamics and contextualize non-linear pedagogy in athletic training.
- To re-conceptualize creativity, skill, and talent as properties of the athlete-environment system.
Main Methods:
- Explores conceptual adjacencies between transdisciplinarity, dynamic systems theory, ecological psychology, and social-cognitive psychology.
- Characterizes the athlete-environment system as an ecological niche shaped by sociocultural constraints.
- Applies non-linear pedagogy principles to complex adaptive systems in sports.
Main Results:
- Creative moments, skill, and talent are properties of the athlete-environment system, influenced by dynamic constraints.
- Athlete-environment systems, as complex adaptive systems, foster creative solutions through non-linear interactions.
- Cultivating constraints facilitates exploration of novel affordances, promoting creative development in athletes.
Conclusions:
- Re-conceptualizing creativity supports pedagogical approaches for athletes and teams as complex adaptive systems.
- Pedagogies should emerge from and evolve within the sociocultural context of practitioners and athletes.
- Focusing on athlete-environment interactions and constraint manipulation can enhance creative performance.
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