| Summary: | Creativity is a critical skill for the 21st Century Learner. To meet the demands of a technological and globalized future, students need the ability to think critically, problem solve, adapt and innovate, all characteristics of creative individuals. With this understanding, worldwide, nations are quickly revolutionizing their education agendas by adding a "creativity mandate." However, creativity mandates have yet to manifest in mainstream education, where traditional models
of teaching and learning persist. This qualitative case study investigates how creativity can be developed in the traditional classroom. Using Amabile's (1996) Componential Theory of Creativity as a framework, this study looks closely at how creativity can be fostered through a progressive learning environment, a Makerspace, where "making" replaces the typical standards based instruction of a 5th grade class. At the same time, the study investigates whether students meet their
traditional 5th grade curricular outcomes when learning in the Makerspace environment. Further, the context of the study was uniquely situated in an international school in China, where the population was culturally diverse. Western educated students (American, European, and Latin) and East Asian educate students (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) worked and learned alongside each other using an American curriculum. Cross-cultural studies have determined notions of creativity vary among these
groups. In addition to the above, the study examined how these differences in creativity, as a result of background educational experiences, impacted the development of creativity within these groups.
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