"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that created them.” (Albert Einstein)

As we shall see, various writers and researchers have defined “creativity” in diverse ways. “Creativity”, as a contradictory “buzz word” (Hentig, 2000), as a concept as it developed in art and scientific research, poses great challenges for phenomenology and pedagogy. In order to proceed against the often ideologically driven flattening of the word and the scientific construct as a “second-order construct“ (Schütz, 2004) it is necessary to win the phenomenon and the term new. This proposal follows a phenomenological-pedagogical understanding of learning (Meyer-Drawe, 2008; 2010), based on an understanding of “learning as experience” (Schratz et al., 2012) and perceives “creativity” as a phenomenon between productivity and reproductivity, between the “Self” and the “Other”, between order and chaos where they form polarities which allow a scale of intermediate possibilities (Waldenfels, 1999). The purpose of the study is to explore the application and the meaning of the phenomenon of “creativity”, from the point of inspiration through the realization of something new.

Schools are basically situated at the intersection of reproduction and transformation, but as Schratz (1996) points out, the reproduction processes are much more influential. Therefore, in order to capture the many facets of “creativity”, an access “beyond learning” (lernseits) (Schratz, 2009) must be selected. What does this mean? One must become sufficiently detached from the issue in order to create new solutions. We have to look from a different perspective, in the mode of learning, to solve the problem. The main research questions ask how “creativity” is realized throughout the learning process; and in what manner does it affect the student?

The starting point of the study is the paradigm of responsivity (Responsivität), in other words how one experiences the “Alien” or the unfamiliar “Other” (Waldenfels, 2002). “Responding to unexpected demands that disrupt an existing order and change the conditions of understanding and agreement”, it allows an “productive form of response” and we can “find the paradox of a creative response which we have not yet been able to give” (ibidem, 1997, 53; translated by EA). Such experience[s] [are] crisscrossed by fault lines [...] in which movements break open and down and the new comes to the surface” (ibidem, 2006, 9; translated by EA). Further answers to the questions are needed, what the source of the new experience is, and what role is played by the appeal of the physical environment (Meyer-Drawe, 1999), the “Alien” or the “Other” (Waldenfels, 2006).

In one respect, the question of the source of the new is a question about time: Scharmer (2007) discusses in his concept of “presencing” that one cannot learn just on the basis of past experience, but also from the emerging field of the future.

Oser and Spychiger (2005) show, that “negativity” is an important catalyst. The question is how to utilize “creativity” in responding to the unknown? Otherwise there is the danger that the pattern of the familiar is reinforced and exhibits in intercultural learning.

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