Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And this is our second. No, our third debrief of season nine. Yeah, it’s. It’s moving along, Cindy.

Cyndi Burnett:
It really is. And this semester is flying by.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes. Moving at a very rapid pace, I suppose, unless we make a conscious decision to slow it down, which sometimes I try and do, and that that typically comes from. Okay. From Friday at 5pm till Sunday at 6pm I’m disconnecting from my computer. I’m disconnecting from all of my responsibilities. Unless you do that, I think it’s very difficult to slow things down. And of course, part of our pace isn’t necessarily just to do with computers, is about this insane parenting culture. But here I am off going off on a tangent.

Matthew Worwood:
That’s what we do, right? We just.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, well. And it’s only at the time of this recording, it’s almost Halloween. It’s almost the end of October, and it’s just a busy time. You know, it’s like my kids just finished their first quarter of school, and we’re looking at grades and, you know, starting to really immerse ourselves in the depths of education and the semester. And I think it’s. It’s just a great time. I love the autumnal looks out here in. In Buffalo, New York.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I’m sure you feel the same, Matt, in Connecticut as well.

Matthew Worwood:
I said to my wife just last week when we was taking one of our boys to a soccer match, I said, one of the things I’m most frustrated about is that we’ve had probably the best fall that I’ve been in the U.S. i think, for about 15, 16 years. The tree color this year is incredible, and the weather has been amazing. We haven’t had a lot of wind, so the leaves up until this weekend have still been on the trees. It has been so beautiful. But, and this is partly to do with what I was referencing, the insane parenting culture. We just got soccer matches all the time. We haven’t really been able to get out and enjoy a nice full day.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think that’s another thing that’s been frustrating me because it has been absolutely beautiful this fall. Absolutely beautiful. One of the favorite things about living in the north is people say, oh, do you like living in the Northeast? I say, I love the seasons. Four distinct seasons. And the fall is beautiful in New England. Beautiful.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, yes. And we are actually destined to have a few more nice days this week going into November. So I am very excited about that. So without further ado, let’s talk about our last three episodes. So we had. First, we had Corey Gray, who talked about culturally responsive teaching. And then we had Edward Clapp come back to us for his second episode with us to talk about his new book on participatory creativity with education. And finally, we had Dorta Nielsen from Denmark and the center for Creative Thinking in Denmark, who talked to us about the work that she’s been doing in schools in Denmark.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, what was your first insight?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I’ll give you the first insight from. From Corey Gray. Having a conversation about, you know, just this cultural responsibility to creativity. And it comes back to this important discussion that we all have unique backgrounds that are going to shape how we interact with information and interpret information and form knowledge. And for all of us to continue to remain mindful of how that shapes how we’re interacting with students in the classroom as well. And, you know, for me, what I found myself thinking a little bit is that as much as I want to recognize my bias and my background, I feel like there’s a piece here where I have to be open and share it. But then you become very vulnerable when you do that. It’s like you’re not just sharing your perspective.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s almost like you’re acknowledging that it might be wrong and then sharing a little bit about yourself as to why you’re interpreting the way that you’re doing it. So even though you can kind of, I suppose, be appreciated for acknowledging your bias, at the same time, as rewarding as that might be, there’s still a tremendous amount of vulnerability that makes it very difficult to go all the way. And I continue to struggle with that a little bit. You know, it’s really hard. So I think being culturally responsive in the. In the learning environment is something we’re all working to achieve at this time, but it’s still also a very vulnerable place, I think.

Cyndi Burnett:
I agree, man. I do think it’s a vulnerable place. And something that really resonated with me that he said Was how do we make sure every student feels seen and acknowledged? And I really think about my classrooms, and when I walk into a class, there’s. You know, normally in a normal classroom, you connect with a handful of students in a way that is stronger than perhaps others, and that might be for specific reasons. Maybe you have similarities. Maybe that person is really excited to be there, and you love seeing your excited student. Or maybe they. They always have something really insightful to say.

Cyndi Burnett:
But I think one of the things that this has really stretched me to think about is how do I make sure I reach and listen to and feel and showcase every student in my classroom? And how do I show them that they are being heard and that I care that they are learning what they want, what they need to learn. So, you know, not to let them fade into the background, I think, especially in higher education. But I would go across the board, you know, even when I’ve worked with, you know, younger groups of students, you know, there are the star students who you’re excited about, and there are other students who you think, can you just pay attention? But what would happen if we shifted that into, like, hey, Matt, like, I really see you today, and I see the challenges that you’re faced with, and I see the strengths that you’re bringing to each class, and I really like the way you did this, and I like the way you did that, and really making sure that you see every one of your students every day. What do you think about that?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I like what you said a lot there at the end, and I think maybe there’s an opportunity to connect that to Edward Clapp’s episode and participatory culture and our contributions to our group and our contributions. Two ideas. But before we do that, I was going to acknowledge some of the instructional challenges that exist because we have the pressure of time constraints. Whether we like it or not, we all recognize time constraints and then the probable need to develop different types of instructional strategies that allow students to express their uniqueness to the class. And then also probably the handholding for some of those students who might not actually be used to sharing who they are in class and sharing their talents, particularly when it might not always relate perfectly with the content that we’re exploring in a given lesson. So the instructional challenges to that, to me, feel quite overwhelming and vast, despite the fact that we should continue to work to fight those challenges, because the goal is so admirable.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I love the connection you made with Edward Clapp, because I really felt like listening to him talk about participatory creativity again in education and thinking about not only seeing the students strengths, but really having them acknowledge their strengths and acknowledge their place in the idea and how the idea came out. And I just love this in theory. Now, I haven’t tried it in practice, but I certainly would love to try it in practice with a group of students to see whether or not we could really have them identify their strengths and how they’ve contributed to the process.

Matthew Worwood:
And just to pick up on that, there was, you know, and I think it’s important to point out in this second book, it feels more of a practical guide for teachers. You know, the first one seemed a little bit more theory based, where this one seems a bit more of a practical guide. So there were specific strategies, and one of the strategies that we spoke a little bit about was this idea of mapping out the idea and making the connections to who’s contributed what. And perhaps actually that could be one way of doing it is that, you know, there’s an opportunity to hit the pause button during an activity and we can map out the contributions and ideas that people have made to the group discussion. And through doing that, we might be recognizing those individuals and their individual thinking behind where the group landed as well. So that, that is one particular activity that maybe we could try that out. It’s called mapping out the idea. Hmm.

Cyndi Burnett:
I think the other thing that really struck me about Edward Clapp’s episode was the fact that when we talked about you and I working on our book, our upcoming book, the Fueling Creativity book, based on 100 interviews, it really had me thinking about not only our conversations, which are vast, but the conversations we’ve had with our hundred, the hundred people we’ve interviewed on this podcast and their experiences, and then mixing all of that up. It’s like this gigantic pot of soup. And then all of a sudden you throw in AI and all the knowledge that’s out there on the Internet and thinking about how it all contributes to one thing and how different things, like you see things in different ways than I do. So you have a much stronger focus on sociocultural perspectives of creativity based on your doctoral research that you did several years ago. But seeing that from your perspective, I can see how you’re participating in this idea that contributes to our book along with all these other perspectives.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, no, and I mean building a little bit more on Edward Clapp idea. I mean, the concept of the biography of an idea and going and mapping out all of these different contributions that occur, I think is very similar to what we’ve discussed with Jonathan Plucker, is there ever a blank canvas? What’s fascinating with Edward Clapp, and that was a kind of in that debrief that we had after Edward Clapp first introduced this idea of participatory creativity was I know that there were some of your colleagues that kind of pushed on this idea that individuals are not creative. Right. And this idea that we focus just on the ideas and not on the individual, which to a certain extent pushes back on some aspects of creative research, which quite often is so focused on the individual. And Edward Clapp in our latest episode said they don’t cover the four Ps, you know, the product process. That being said, I do think a lot of Edward. Edward Clapp’s work still focus a lot on the environment. And when we’re thinking about environmental factors, we do think about how the audience can influence the ideas to which we generate.

Matthew Worwood:
But I’m going to throw a question to you is that Edward Clapp did, to be fair, present this as a framework to recognize individual contributions in the creative process. But then the same sentence had made the word. It’s anti individualism. Do you remember the word anti individualism? And do you have any kind of thoughts about that?

Cyndi Burnett:
I do have the anti individualism and I remember him talking about that. And I think it’s such a shift from so much of the creative problem solving world that I was trained in. You were trained in as well, more probably from the design thinking, me from the creative problem solving, which is like it’s a process that you go through. You’re learning it as a creative person. I mean, I immerse myself. A lot of my work has been on the creative thinking skills. So really getting outside of the individual and into, you know, not looking at the, at the person, but really looking at the idea and the outcome of the idea as a result of all these things that have participated and all these things that happened as a result of that is such a shift in thinking. And it’s fun to play around with and think about and ponder.

Cyndi Burnett:
I do think that it’s still. The creative person is still involved. As he said, you still have people involved. It’s just a different way to celebrate the idea in looking at the process and the contributions versus just who did this and how did they get there with that creative genius.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think that was the key missing piece of the puzzle for me in this episode because I think it’s about celebrating creativity in the classroom and celebrating individual contributions while recognizing or at least promoting it, that it’s not about individuals. And that way everyone gets to participate in the act of creativity. And so if you think about the problem that I think it might be addressing is that typically in society, you know, Edward Clapp went enlisted. Oh, when you talk, he shared an example of Albert Einstein. We typically look at Albert Einstein and Albert Einstein’s life and we very rarely focus on the ideas to which Albert Einstein created and all of the contributions that made their way into that thinking process. I would argue that obviously Albert Einstein was still a critical individual that should be recognized for being highly creative.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right.

Matthew Worwood:
Because they brought those ideas to fruition. But if we go back to thinking about it from a problem perspective in the classroom is by making less about the individual, less about Albert Einstein, less about, you know, Stephanie or Area Novak, who’s a name I’ve been using for the future creative, who’s in the classroom and just saying, look, everyone has something to contribute, everyone has an idea, everyone has a perspective. So let’s go and facilitate a creative process where we can welcome all of those ideas. Then obviously that’s something that we all cherish, we all want. And I think the idea, the framework behind participatory creativity is to basically try and be better at facilitating that and facilitate it by basically saying, it’s not about you, it’s not about individuals, it’s about us working collectively together as a single group to go and solve a problem. And I think from that perspective, I’ve really started to have a better understanding about the practical uses of this participatory creativity framework, particularly as it relates to a K through 12 learning environment.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love it, Matt, so give me the scoop. What did you think and what did you walk away with with Dortin Nielsen, our creativity practitioner from Denmark?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, that was. That was an interesting one. I mean, it was. I love the fact that you opened it up talking about creative industries, because it’s something that you and I have been talking a little bit about and we’ve been playing around with the future creative. And I’ve been playing around with some different Personas. And because of my background in digital media and design, obviously I’ve been thinking about it from a creative industry perspective. And I typically define creative industries as any type of industry where you are committed as part of your professional work to go and produce new outcomes that address problems. And there’s an intention to be creative in your everyday work as well as the intention to produce creative outcomes in your everyday work as well.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think some industries probably lend themselves more to that. Than others. And I think that’s where we, where we come with creative industries. So I really kind of like Light daughter’s perspective on that and talking a little bit about it. But I think for me, that conversation led to just this idea of a creative mindset. So, you know, yes, you might be working with a group of individuals that are in a creative industry and therefore they kind of are already bought into the creative mindset. So maybe it’s more about talking about specific strategies or tools that they might adopt that they haven’t done so already. But I think when it comes to education, the idea of adopting a creative mindset.

Matthew Worwood:
So maybe it’s not about teaching a specific strategy designed to increase the ideas in the classroom, though super duper useful, but it’s through going and teaching that strategy, the end outcome is potentially a creative mindset. And I found myself thinking about a specific example where my. I may have adopted a creative mindset that completely changed my outlook in English. We called it English at the time, prepping for my gcses, which is our main examinations in the United Kingdom. And I think I was 17 or 18 at the time. And I was forecast, I think, to get a D or a C. It wasn’t, it wasn’t great. And I would really find it difficult to unlock the language in the books and also the messages.

Matthew Worwood:
We’re constantly tasked with trying to like, talk about how the author is expressing a particular concept and the words that they use. I found myself constantly trying to unlock this language, but do it in a way based on all of the examples that I’ve been told by the teacher. And the thing is, it wasn’t my connections, you know, so when you’re there in the exam and you’re suddenly got this new piece of material that you are having to kind of like articulate what you see in the words and what concepts you think are being expressed and why they’re being expressed in a particular way. It’s really hard to go and do that when you’re trying to think about, well, what is the right answer? And also what did the teacher tell me that I meant to write at this point and something happened. I can’t quite put my foot on it, but I. I suppose I adopted a creative mindset because I remember by the time I took my actual exam and I hadn’t been doing well in the exams, something occurred to me. I could make any connection that I wanted, you know, and I. I just had to be good at communicating why I was making the connections that I was making.

Matthew Worwood:
And where they were being made. And at that point, I remember coming up with unique ways of seeing passages from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that hadn’t been discussed in class before. But I suddenly looked to them and I suddenly was open to new possibilities of what’s being expressed in that page. And I was really excited about the material. And I just started writing. Now, I don’t know if I wrote. Wrote it in the perfect way, but I remember going and getting an A in the English exam. And I honestly think it was primarily because I adopted a creative mindset.

Matthew Worwood:
I share that story because daughter had specifically said that when they’ve been trying to adopt some of these creative thinking strategies in their school, they had seen improvement not just in certain classes where they thought they would see the improvement. They also had seen improvement in classes like math as well. And so in the conversation we spoke about, is that not necessarily a strategy that was being applied to math, but just a creative mindset? And that’s that story was what I thought about that. I had suddenly found a credit mindset and it had elevated my grades.

Cyndi Burnett :
I think for me, the door to episode going back to the creative industry is circling back to that. The reason why I wanted to get into that is because a lot of times when I’ve spoken with and I get to air quote, because we’re also on video creatives, you know, creative industries people are. They don’t want to hear about, like, I don’t want to hear about a deliberate process like that. That’s not what we do, you know. And when I’ve gone to scientists and said, oh, let me tell you about this. The work that artists do is they’re natural creative. They say, I don’t want to. That’s fluffy for me.

Cyndi Burnett:
And. And so I think what I have always tried to do is find that language that bridges the gap between the science and the. And the creative arts. Right. And I have found some people are. Will literally not speak to me about it because they feel like they have an inherent creative process as a creative. And I have found other people, particularly in the performing arts, and I think people in the performing arts are typically a little bit more open to different perspectives because that’s what you do as a performing artist, as we have talked about in the past, is really open yourself up that there might be different perspectives. And I remember when I was early on teaching at the center for Applied Imagination, and one of the theater professors came to me, he’s like, this process that you’re teaching the students, right? Now, this is the process I use in directing my shows, this creativity process.

Cyndi Burnett:
It’s a deliberate process. And he’s like, I’ve created a deliberate process, too. And I think it’s just important to recognize that, you know, we all have a creative process that we use, and then we take on this creative mindset, as you mentioned, and those things help us in participating in creative acts. So sort of wrapping all those three things together in a nice little bow, you know, thinking about our own creative process, how we have a creative mindset as individuals, and then how we contribute to that through participatory creativity gives us our wonderfully delightful outcome. Hopefully, that transforms the world. And we’ll get into that when we talk with Robert Sternberg later on in the season.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, that was brilliant. I appreciate that. Cause I think I went off, I tried to do what I typically do, which is that I try and sneak in two takeaways in one large sound bite. And for those of you who are watching, you’ll see that I pulled a really annoying face with my. Because I knew that I’d done that. But I think without the creative mindset to begin with, it can be quite hard. And I think any type of creativity training. I think my big takeaway was the creativity training, the act of being, hey, look, you can be deliberately creative that I hope can yield to more creative mindsets and students.

Matthew Worwood:
And, you know, my example is that it can be applied in areas where you might not necessarily think it could typically be applied.

Cyndi Burnett [00:21:28]:
Well, Matt, I think that wraps up this debrief, and we’ve got three more episodes before our end of season nine. And congratulations on 100 interviews, by the way.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes, we have hit 100 interviews. It is really good. And listen, we’re also excited the fact that you had alluded to it. We’ve got Dr. Robert Sternberg, who’s going to be finishing off the show with a double espresso. That was a really cool recording, right?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, yes. So stay tuned. In a few more weeks, you’ll hear Dr. Sternberg, and we have two more great episodes for you before then. And then we’ll head into our special Thanksgiving episode. Oh, we’ve got a very, very special.

Matthew Worwood:
We do. We don’t want to tell you too much, but we’re still super duper excited about it. And in fact, that special episode that’s coming up, it’s just different. We might have some more of those episodes as well before we finish up the year. So I think there’s some exciting, exciting things happening on our podcast. Cindy.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah, I think we’re wrapping up season nine with a big ball of confetti.

Matthew Worwood:
We are. We are. And listen, before you go, if you haven’t already, please go to our podcast fueling creativity podcast.com because we have been doing a lot more of a better job getting more of our episodes up there. You reference over a hundred interviews. We’ve almost got what, 200 episodes of the podcast now. Yes. And I think we’ve got them all up there including our debrief episode. So I think if you visit a page and you find a page and it’s got the episode you like, you also have a video of Cindy and I doing the debrief as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Thanks so much for joining us today. I’m Dr. Cindy Burnett and my name.

Matthew Worwood:
Is Dr. Mattie Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is Curiosity to Create and our editor is Sam at.