Creativity and education: A bibliometric mapping of the research literature (1975-2019)

The scientific study of creativity begins in the mid-twentieth century. Progressively, creativity has become an educational imperative and its study in educational contexts has generated a wealth of research from different theoretical and empirical perspectives. This bibliometric review aims to undertake a systematic mapping of the research trends within the field of creativity in education contexts over the last 45 years using metadata extracted from the Web of Science database. Major findings of the study are: (1) research on creativity and education is an emerging area of inquiry that has experienced exponential growth since the 2000s; (2) research in this field is produced by a cadre of scholars in a few institutions and countries, mostly in the United States and other English speaking countries, although researchers from several Asian and European countries are also contributing to the advancement of the field; (3) there is evidence of research collaboration among scholars in the field, but collaborative networks occur mostly within national borders or between scholars in nearby countries; (4) research on creativity and education is relatively interdisciplinary and emerges from the knowledge produced in the educational sciences and several branches of psychology; (5) four general themes have been addressed in the literature on creativity and education in the last 45 years: teaching and learning of creativity; psychoeducational correlates of creativity; the role of creativity in organizations; and the cognitive and affective processes influencing creativity. The findings are discussed and the implications for the future development of the field are highlighted.