An initial review of the literature on creativity and Covid-19 pandemic: Implications and propositions for alternative ways of educating

Creativity is an essential skill and, as such, its development and education are particularly valuable in early childhood, especially because children’s preschool experiences have a strong impact on their future skills. The COVID-19 pandemic has undermined every educational system around the world and the term “creativity” has been used as synonymous with the search for alternative strategies for being able to reach children at home and offer them the same quality of education. This study aims to explore the literature on creativity published in eight months of the pandemic (from January to August 2020) and identify alternative opportunities and ways of educating. The search produced 6 relevant articles that include both the keywords “creativity” and “COVID-19” or “coronavirus”. These were investigated in qualitative terms to find commonalities within the body of each paper that allowed us to make some initial considerations of the impact of COVID-19 on creativity, especially for early childhood education. The papers collected were organized in three groups to be discussed together: three articles were gathered in a generic group, two were gathered in a specific group and one article in a focused group. A positive perspective on the pandemic is considered because of the creative reaction of people to a global emergency, the challenge and opportunities of distance learning, and the possibility for children to be creative even at home by playing open-ended games that help them to process this unusual situation. The analysis of the results illustrated in this emerging literature will need further study and consideration. Its study highlights the fact that creativity is a constant element that characterizes everyone, every day, especially in these situations, as creativity does relate to problem solving.