The paper demonstrates the sociological research findings concerning the students’ ideas of creativity based on the questionnaires and testing of the students of the natural science, humanities and technical profiles at Siberian Federal University over the period of 2007-2011.

The author suggests a new method of semantic association analysis in order to identify the latent groups of notions related to the concept of creativity. The range of students’ common opinions demonstrate the obvious trend for humanizing the idea of creativity, considering it as the perfect mode of human existence, which coincide with the ideas of K. Rogers, A. Maslow and other scholars. Today’s students associate creativity primarily with pleasure, self-development, self-expression, inspiration, improvisation, spontaneity; and the resulting semantic complex incorporates such characteristics of creative work as goodness, abundance of energy, integrity, health, freedom and independence, self-development and spirituality.

The obtained data prove the importance of the inspiration experience in creative pedagogy; the research outcomes along with the continuing monitoring of students attitude to creativity development can optimize the learning process. The author emphasizes the necessity of introducing some special courses, based on the integral approach (including social, philosophical, psychological, psycho-social and technical aspects), and aimed at developing students’ creative competence.

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