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. Hello and welcome to our final debrief of the Fueling Creativity in education podcast, season nine. And it has been an incredibly busy full 2024 semester. Cindy and I, we’ve also been doing a little bit of a tour. We’ve had a couple of conferences together where we’ve been able to present and also record some episodes together, which has been really fun. Some of that’s coming in season 10, but for now, all we’re doing, despite this really busy semester, is debriefing on three absolutely brilliant episodes. Final episodes in season nine.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So, Matt, just to recap, we have three guests. The first one is Colin Seale, who has started the company Think Law, which is all about bringing creativity and critical thinking into the classroom with law stories and law experiences. And the second guest is Talia Goldstein, who works is a professor at George Mason University, and she talks about the importance of theater education and the research studies she’s done around theater education and creativity. And finally, we finished it off with a double espresso from Dr. Robert Sternberg, who is a professor of psychology at Cornell. So are you ready to get started on our debrief?

Matthew Worwood:
I am ready to get started, Matt.

Cyndi Burnett:
Before we get started, we should mention that at the end of the year, at the end of 2024, at the end of season nine, we are going to be sending out a survey, and you can also find it in the show notes. So we can help better serve you in season 10 of the podcast. So I want to put that up front. So before you listen to our debrief, you listen to, you go to that survey. It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to complete, and it’s really going to help us position season 10 of the podcast.

Matthew Worwood:
I would say it’s only going to take about two minutes to complete, and in addition to that, you probably could complete it while you’re listening to our debrief.

Cyndi Burnett:
Ooh, wow. Well, multitasking, not really necessary, but sure, that’s what you.

Matthew Worwood:
I’M very sensitive of everyone’s time. I think we should give them 10 seconds right now to go and find the link.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay.

Matthew Worwood:
Unless you’re in a car. All right, let’s get going on the debrief. I’ve gone on a tangent. I’m overthinking it. Okay, Cindy, I feel like I’m always the one kicking off the debrief episode, so why don’t you share your first takeaway from our interview with Colin Seale?

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so I think our interview with Colin Seale is interesting because he really took on the critical thinking perspective. And what I loved about his stories was the fact that he was sharing specific examples of experiences and problems that people have faced and giving students the opportunity to work through those, whether it was in elementary schools where he was giving students fairy tales, or if he was giving real life cases in middle and upper school to help students solve it and look at things from the multiple perspectives and try to make decisions. And I think that’s such an interesting take the storytelling and making those stories relevant for students to really grasp onto it and take on a problem solving attitude.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And I wish I could remember some of the stories I remember. I mean, all of the stories were obviously packaged within a mock trial and a mock trial where, of course, there would be different perspectives and you have to craft the story to advocate for your position. And I remember, I think there was one where, I think, was there a story where someone pulls out the chair for their aunt and I think the aunt falls over as they’re pulling out the chair and sues the student? I think. And so, again, I remember many of these stories often were kind of relatable for, you know, students in K through 12 education. But it was an interesting conversation because, you know, the premise, of course, is you’re arguing that had you not. Had this person not pulled out the chair and invited them to sit, the accident would not have occurred. But likewise, you’re also there to advocate for the fact that the intention wasn’t for the individual to fall over.

Matthew Worwood:
And in fact, you could argue that they wasn’t involved in falling over. And it was just, you know, just to your point, putting together the narrative and having to think critically about the information that exists within that story, elevate certain pieces of information more than other pieces of information, I felt was a very creative act and of course, a highly critical act as well. So there was many things I liked about it. And as you know, I was a big fan of the whole concept of thick law. Anyway, it got Me really interested when we started to speak to Colin at the conference in New York back. Back in April. So I was really happy to get him on the show.

Cyndi Burnett:
I was really happy as well. And, Matt, I just want to give you the theme that I saw in this, because, as you know, I’m a big fan of Wicked the musical, and Wicked, the movie just came out. And, you know, I’ve been urging you to go because it’s phenomenal. I thought it was phenomenal. But there was definitely a theme as I looked at these three about Wicked. And the first one with Colin was really about seeing things from different perspectives, as in Wicked, and I don’t know if you know this yet, but in Wicked, the Wicked Witch of the west is actually doing things because she’s doing good. So, you know, really seeing, you know, going from the wizard of Oz, where she’s depicted as this horrible human, to Wicked is a switch in another way. And I think what Colin does is he really makes that switch in.

Cyndi Burnett:
In terms of helping students understand a different. A very different perspective. Even when you look at, say, the Wicked Witch of the west in wizard of Oz and say, oh, that’s evil. When you see it in a different way, you know how much you look at it in a different way. So you can see the different depiction of who she is. So you’re going to see a theme in my responses to all three.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, very cool. And absolutely, I totally agree. Well, Cindy, you’re actually touching on what my takeaway from Colin Seals episode was as well is, you know, I think that idea that we. We do see event differently. And of course, those events, how we see those events are going to be shaped by our innate bias, our background, our understanding of past events. And if you just think about law, that’s one of the reasons why we work to try and make sure jurors are not exposed to too much information that’s within the media because we’re trying to make sure that they are only considering the facts of the case, as they say it. And so this concept of getting young people to try and identify the facts of the case feels incredibly timely in our world as well, given the challenges that we have around social media.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right, right. Okay, Matt, let’s hear your number two with Dr. Talia Goldstein.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I mean, that was a. That was a cool discussion. I mean, another incredibly passionate guest that we had on the show. Highly knowledgeable, discussing a topic that you and I obviously greatly value of our background in theater education. But we’ve got someone who’s really Kind of immersing themselves in the research as well. And for me, as you know, I feel like it’s one of those things that you see it, you see the value of theater education, you see the connections to creativity. But I don’t know if I’ve ever really been able to articulate it. And there’s lots of pieces to it, but articulate it in a way that I suppose, dare I say it, sounds a little scientific.

Matthew Worwood:
And I felt that was what Talia was able to do. And I would say that, just to give you an example that can be my takeaway was this idea. I remember Michael Caine said in his biography, he said, when you’re not acting on the stage, or he had been told that he was standing still and didn’t have, like, much of a facial expression when he was learning to act. And I can’t remember an acting teacher or a director said to him, you know, why are you standing like this? You know, and. And because I’ve got nothing to say, I believe he said. And the director said, but your, your character is thinking of lots of things to say, they’re just not saying it. And what it does is it shows the fact that, you know, I remember I took that lesson with me and was constantly thinking about that on the stage. And I’m sure other people do as well, but it was this idea of filling in the gaps in between the dialogue, filling in the backstory of your character, thinking about where they go next after the play has finished.

Matthew Worwood:
All of these things are acts that you do when you’re inventing or playing a character, whether it’s an imaginary imaginative play or on the stage. And there’s a lot of learning that goes on to that. But to bring it back to a takeaway relevant to our podcast and creativity, it made me think, is there connections to a higher tolerance for ambiguity, for example, and the ability to fill in gaps when you don’t have all the information in the problem to make a hypothesis or at least allow an assumption to take the lead on something. I don’t really know yet, but I’m comfortable working on this assumption, even though I know it’s assumption to go forward, to go forward and engage in this process. So that was one example of a few different examples that I sat there and I said, this could be a very specific thing that begins to help me answer the question, but why? What’s the connection between theater and creativity? So I don’t know if you want to follow up on that or share your one, but it was incredible. Conversation.

Cyndi Burnett:
I hadn’t really thought about the ambiguity piece, and I think that is really important in terms of creativity, where mine came in from. And again, we’re going to go back to Wicked is seeing things from multiple perspectives. And her. And I use the word in there, and her acting habits of mind, which I really appreciated having that language. And I’ve sent this to a number of my colleagues who are in theater education, because I think having language to share with people in terms of what the students are learning is really important. But again, one of the things that I thought was interesting as I was preparing for this debrief, Matt, was when we look at Colin Seal, we were looking at Law, and we were seeing things from different perspectives. In theater, you step into this role and you have this empathy for this character, and you’re seeing things from multiple perspectives. So I never really thought about this relationship between Law and theater and that there would be any connection, but there is such a significant connection in helping students look at things from multiple perspectives, which is one of the core competencies of being a creative person, being able to see things from multiple perspectives.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, for me, that’s what really stood out, and I thought it was really interesting. And again, going back to my Wicked example, you’re sort of, you know, when you see the show Wicked, you’re really seeing things from different perspectives, and the whole storyline changes because you’re seeing it from a different perspective. And I think that’s what theater does. Whether or not you’re standing on stage or just going to the theater, I think you can have those same benefits. And I think the other piece that I found really interesting was this Body Awareness piece. So it sort of goes back to what you said in terms of, you know, it’s not just you’re standing there and it’s not your turn to say anything, but, like, what’s happening inside of your body as all of these things are happening. So I would say it’s a yes.

Matthew Worwood:
And yeah, no, I love it. And I would also go as far as saying that when we. Because there’s. There’s a. Obviously, the director has a large part of determining the perspective that’s being expressed collectively on the stage when telling a story. But we, as individuals, to your point, bring those perspectives in, I think a very similar way to what I was saying when I think Tyler even used the word acting, is filling in the gaps. And I think filling in the gaps, whether it is generating things that you’re thinking you want to say but not saying them, or it is acknowledging A different perspective that exists in the story. I think that’s also a highly creative act, and I think it’s why we look at imaginative play as being a creative act, because we are constantly inventing new ideas to fill in the gaps in our story.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that filling in. So it’s sensing gaps, looking at things from different perspectives. There’s just so many layers to it. And it actually reminds me a lot of our conversation with Dana Rowe and James Kaufman about theater and creativity and all of these different creativity skills that emerge because of theater. So, Matt, I’ve been really. I don’t think we set out for this, but I think we have a really good bank of interviews around theater education now that we have up on our website. For those of you interested in taking a deeper dive into theater education and the relationship to creativity.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes, I’m glad you referenced that. Yes, we’re referring to them as collections. And I would say all of these conversations, we’ve also had researchers, practitioners, directors. I mean, you know, we’ve had a really good collection of different perspectives on this topic. So, yeah, it’s kind of exciting that we. We’ve got that available on our website. So. Good plug there, Cindy.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, final. And this is going to be a tough one because it was. It was a double espresso. So I think we’re allowed to expand a little bit. But it’s obviously incredible when you have the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with someone like Robert Stuttberg. So I think we should be allowed to kind of offer maybe a couple of different takeaways. But what was your first one from that incredible conversation?

Cyndi Burnett:
So, as I said, there’s sort of a Wicked theme here. And what was funny, you know, we interviewed Robert at the end of October, and it’s coming out now in December, in the middle of December. But he kept referencing Defying the Crowd. Defying the Crowd. And in Wicked, there’s Defying Gravity, which is about Defying the crowd. And one of the things he said was, it’s really hard to not conform. That we. That.

Cyndi Burnett:
That is the most challenging aspect of being creative is to not conform. And we conform because it’s a natural part of us wanting to be social human beings. And in the psychology literature, you know, we want to be able to relate with others. We want to, you know, we don’t want to gaslight ourselves into thinking what we’re thinking is wrong. But what stops us from being creative is we are afraid to not conform. And that’s where the Defying Gravity piece comes in. So I just thought it was interesting as I was listening back to it this morning, about him saying defy the crowd. You know, you have to learn how to defy or be comfortable defying a crowd.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I. I mean, Matt, you and I have had many conversations offline about how challenging it could be to sort of step outside of what everyone thinks. And I know Ipal Torrance also said be comfortable in the minority of one. And I don’t think that’s a very easy thing to do for most people. So what were your thoughts around that?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, no, I would love to build on that. And, I mean, that was one of my takeaways. I’ve got another one that I can share. But to build on that. First of all, if I recall correctly, my takeaway was, you know, he had listed. Listed his different intelligence, creative intelligence, analytical intelligence, practical intelligence, you know, and wisdom. And within creative intelligence, I think there’s a relationship there with creative thinking, the capacity to generate ideas. And then, of course, after that, we have conversations about is creative thinking also selecting those ideas, choosing the best one, implementing those ideas.

Matthew Worwood:
And ultimately, creativity is a lot bigger than this. And my takeaway from that conversation was there was the suggestion that actually to define creativity or creativity is the ability to not conform. And I think that’s probably more relevant at the proceed level. I think it might be easier, for example, to, you know, play a different imaginative game as a child than all the games your friends are playing. But that being said, I also know that there’s a point at which some. Some children who want to continue to be imaginative in their play do eventually conform to playing the popular sport in the playground because that’s what the majority of their friends are doing. And so there’s probably social factors and personality traits that come into that capacity of creativity at that proceed level. And we’ve heard James Kaufman reference it as, well, about.

Matthew Worwood:
You know, I suppose what I’m saying is I’ve started to recognize I. If I’m totally honest with you, I never got this. This conversation that we. That we sometimes early on in the POD podcast, primarily from our guests, where they would talk about, you know, the creative person as being difficult or the child in the classroom is being difficult. And you’ve referenced that. And it never really kind of made me. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. And I think I say this to you a lot.

Matthew Worwood:
And I suddenly realized I use the words I know I’m being annoying, and I use it a lot. And there are some Times where I sit there and I’m like, I generally don’t think I’m being annoying, but I know what I’m saying or what I’m proposing that we do is going to annoy you or the situation, But I believe in it. And I’m not here to say that everything I propose is really highly creative and it’s going to solve the problem, but I do think that I am someone that is comfortable not conforming. And I think I’ve got a history of not always conforming. And I mean, it sounds like now I’m saying I’m like a really creative person. I’m not. Otherwise, you know, I’d be in a very different place. But I’m just trying to say that conformity and that comment has really kind of rattled me, right down to the fact that I think we’re the only one in my son’s class who’s.

Matthew Worwood:
He’s. He’s going to be 14 in February. He doesn’t have a phone. And I’ve told him I don’t have. I use the words, I don’t have a problem not conforming. And I need more time to think about it. But it makes me think all of the things that we might want to do to promote creativity. How do you promote and encourage people not to conform in a society to a certain extent that needs some conformity to function? It’s.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s a really. It’s interesting. It.

Cyndi Burnett:
It is. It’s a. It’s a polarity that I’ve been thinking a lot about in terms of my own work and challenging my own work. And one of the things that he talked about was, you know, he doesn’t stick with the same theory because all theories are wrong. And you start to look at your own work and you go, is this wrong? Is this wrong? And really diving deep into critical thinking around the work that you’ve created. Because, you know, we want to think that the work that we. The creative work that we’ve done is correct as well. So I think that adds another layer.

Cyndi Burnett:
But I definitely think there’s a polarity there that you have to manage. Because obviously, if we’re just defining the crowd all of the time, then we’re not going to, you know, how would you live in the society? Right. We need people. Like you said, we need people to conform to certain things we want. You know, it actually reminds me of Matt. I don’t even know if we should bring this up, but when we were at the conference, there was a space that we were not supposed to be in. And Matt made me go and it made me so uncomfortable because it clearly said, you are not allowed. You know, this is a space that’s reserved for people that reserved it.

Cyndi Burnett:
And Matt said, but this would be a great place to record. And so he said, we’re going to go in there. And it, it made me super uncomfortable to sort of defy the rules because I am a rule follower. So it is really hard for me to break through those boundaries when there are rules in place. And that’s how we sort of govern the world. Right. But at the same time, how much do we govern our own ideas and how do we govern our creativity because of that?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. I mean, we could keep talking about the subject and I think we should in future episodes, but what you’re making me think there is that there’s probably different environments where we’re more likely to be comfortable breaking the rules. And maybe so there could be a situation where I’m uncomfortable breaking the rules. And to what extent is that nurtured? To what extent is it influenced in K through 12 education? Because as we know, we’ve got people who break the rules all the time. And to your point, it’s inappropriate. And I think Sternberg referenced Pageetto and Kaufman’s Clark Kent Superman paper, which I know that you’re a huge fan on, but that’s kind of what we’re talking about right now, right? Like there’s times where you have to be Superman and there’s times when you have to be Clark Kent. So maybe the better question is how do we teach students to identify a situation that requires Superman and then another situation where you can be really productive and helpful, but you need to be Clark Kent? I don’t know the answer to that.

Cyndi Burnett:
I don’t know the answer to that either.

Matthew Worwood:
Okay. Now, Cindy, before we move on though, I’ve got a question for you from Sterberg’s interview, because I know at the moment you are looking at colleges for your son. So you started that process a little bit. And as you know, I teach classes for our first year students and I actually take pride and enjoy making some of these classes a little bit more as a kind of first year experience type class to help students transition from high school to college. But one of the things I found really fascinating was the rainbow study that Sternberg had referenced. And I don’t feel comfortable getting into the weeds of it, but it was obviously looking at kind of predicting first year grades and looking at seeing if creativity is a good prediction for GPA and there looks like within that one year, and I don’t think they had funding to continue that, that study, but it looks like there was a positive relationship where we saw that, you know, students who scored high for creativity tended to also have a good GPA at the end of the first year. And as that conversation went on, if I recall correctly, Sternberg was suggesting that part of the benefit of creativity is adapting to those new environments and helping with that transition from high school to college. So I found it really fascinating of that example of how creativity actually can just assist us in life.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s not just about being productive in your career or being productive in the classroom. It’s about the fact that perhaps creativity can assist us in these awkward transitions that we have in our lives, whether it’s every 10 years, 15 years or whatever. But high school to college is a quite a big life transition. And so I wanted to get your points on that as you’re, as you’re a little bit ahead of me with this, on how you think it might relate to this transition to college, both from beginning to select colleges and get ready for higher education.

Cyndi Burnett:
That’s a great question, Matt. I think for me, it’s all about being a good problem solver and being able to manage the challenges that come at you as a young adult. You know, so my son, who is about to turn 17, you know, as he starts to identify things, to really be able to understand who he is and what his needs are and how he goes about progressing toward that college application. And I was thinking, actually, when I was listening to Sternberg this morning, re listening to it and thinking about that Kaleidoscope project, how if they were looking at my son just for academics, he would do well. But if they were also looking at him for creativity and problem solving and the ability to, you know, create new ideas, I think it would be a very. It would be a different picture. And it’s unfortunate that they didn’t receive further funding on that, because I do think it levels one, it levels the playing field, and it looks at something that is different and adds another layer of being able to say, when you come in, you’re not only going to learn knowledge, but you’re going to be able to do something with that knowledge that is new and useful for our domain. So I think there’s that level in terms of the proceed level, but I think in terms of the everyday level, it’s, you know, how do I eat? How do I, you know, find food, how do I study for this test? There’s so many challenges that come up in that transition.

Cyndi Burnett:
And it’s funny because as much as I feel like I’m trying to prepare my son for going away, it is still. There’s still going to be things that we didn’t realize were going to be challenges. So preparing them for college and those challenges that they’re going to face, even. Especially the ones that we aren’t even aware that they’re going to face. Right, the ones that come up and that cognitive flexibility that has to come as you go on and start to live an independent life. Because ultimately that’s what we want from our kids. I mean, yeah, it’s great that they come back and visit us and, you know, spend time with us. And we want them to be, you know, functioning adults who have careers or jobs or, you know, and able to live on their own and independent from us.

Cyndi Burnett [00:26:17]:
So it is a hard transition. It’s like letting go of this and trying to help them. And I think the way we can help them best is through problems, you know, helping them to solve problems in creative ways.

Matthew Worwood:
You’re making me think back, and we don’t have time to probably ponder this, but I’ll just throw it out there and maybe we can come back to it another time. But you are bringing me back to a thought I had this morning. Could we ever be successful without engaging creativity? And I’ve been trying to create different scenarios in my head. And the reason why I’m making the connection to what you just said is that level of independence, that there’s a point at which we do need to be able to be independent. And I think there is some individuality to what you’re saying. We talk a lot about the need to solve big problems. Sternberg spoke about transformational creativity. And obviously when we’re talking about those things, of course we’re collaborating, we’re working with people across the world.

Matthew Worwood:
But then also to function, to succeed in everyday life, there’s a need to, I think, also be creative as an individual as well. So that I haven’t answered that question, but I was trying to think of careers and thoughts of whether or not you could be successful without some level of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, it depends on if we’re going back to the four C’s theory. Many see creativity as happening all the time. I mean, I don’t think you can get out of life without having to learn new things. I don’t think you function. So my answer is yes, you need creativity.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, we knew this would be a long debrief because we had Robert Sternberg and really what we did, I think is just pose new questions because that’s what guests like Sternberg do is they kind of like make your buy and go. But it’s been an incredible season nine. I mean, we’ve challenged our creativity. But from the first guest to the last guest of this season, to the debriefs that we’ve had together, to our first in person recording for our Thanksgiving special, it’s been an incredible season and I’m, I’m so pumped and excited for season 10. Before we get into season 10, we probably do need to make a couple of shout outs. We’ve got an episode next week with our emerging scholar, Jimmy Wilson. And Jimmy’s going to be kind of providing his debrief, his takeaway from that perspective of an emerging scholar. We’re keeping the theme perspectives.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ve got Matt and Cindy’s perspectives. Oh, we love Matt and Cindy’s perspective, as least we hope you do. But we also think it’s important to bring on the perspective of emerging scholars in the field. And that’s something that Jimmy Wilson is going to be doing next week. And then after Jimmy Wilson, Cindy and I have decided to go on a journey where we’ve got to go back and identify some of our favorite episodes from season one as our kind of off season shows. And we’re just doing season one, Cindy. Right. Season one only.

Cyndi Burnett:
I don’t know, I might pick something from a different. Maybe the first three seasons.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, you went to the three. But I figure if we do season one and season two, then the following year we could do season three and season four. Otherwise, before we know it, until season one and season two. Yeah. And that’s 20 episodes. There was some good stuff in those, those 20 episodes. Yeah. So that’s what we do in the off takes.

Matthew Worwood:
They’re a little bit shorter episodes, but yeah, we’re good to go. We better mention the survey again. Cindy.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. Please do the survey. We beg you.

Matthew Worwood:
Please, please do it. Please do it.

Cyndi Burnett:
Please, please. If you listen to any of our episodes and you, you’ve enjoyed it, please listen. You know, we really, really want to take your feedback. Oh, and Matt, we forgot to tell them the best part. We’re giving away lots of prizes. We don’t know what they are yet, but there’s going to be a lot of prizes we give away. So there’s another reason to do our survey.

Matthew Worwood:
You’re going to get caught. Yes.

Cyndi Burnett :
Or there’s a good chance they’re going to get Enterprise.

Matthew Worwood:
Okay. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is Curiosity to Create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.