Introducing Bilingual Creative Education to the UAE School Curriculum

Abstract

The major theme of this chapter appears at the intersection of two large fields of scientific inquiry: creativity and bilingualism. The research in this area is thin on the ground, for very little attention has been paid to the potential impact of bilingual practice on an individual’s creative potential. In the monograph Multilingualism and Creativity, I have presented an overview of the existing empirical studies demonstrating that both children and adults who speak more than one language have a predominant advantage over their monolingual counterparts, in various creativity tests. The monograph also presented specific aspects of bilingual practice that strengthen certain cognitive processes underlying creative thinking. Those aspects reflect bilingual individuals’ proficiency in languages they speak, the age at which they acquired their languages, an ability to alternate and mix different languages, and the sociocultural and emotional contexts of acquisition and use of their languages. The monograph made an unequivocal conclusion that bilingual development may facilitate individuals’ creative potentials. This rather promising conclusion leads us to consider how this effect can be realized in education.