Mark Runco [00:00:00]:
Students may have the capacity to be original, but in certain critical age, they don’t bother with it. They don’t want it. They hide it, because what will my friends think? And this is a big problem on several levels. They may have a good idea and they don’t share it, but they also won’t pursue that idea. They won’t invest it further. So it’s an immediate problem, but also kind of a medium range problem. It can be avoided if students realize the value of creativity and originality, but also have enough confidence to just say no.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:40]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:43]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:45]:
This is the fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:49]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:55]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity, all with the.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:05]:
Goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:13]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:16]:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second part of a double espresso episode with Dr. Mark Ronco. We’re going to get straight into it, and in the second part of this two part interview, Dr. Mark Ronco will be talking about the future of creativity research and an upcoming conference that he has.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:35]:
So, Mark, where do you think we are in creativity and education research, and where do you think we need to go?

Mark Runco [00:01:42]:
I think the educational research on creativity is progressing nicely. I think, as you heard previously, I think there are a number of things educators can do. I think they should be encouraging divergent thinking. They should be modeling it. They should be prepared to tolerate original ideas even if they don’t understand them. And the research is also using these ideas to a certain degree. And the tests of divergent thinking, now that’s kind of a generalization there. Let me just give you one example of that.

Mark Runco [00:02:23]:
I think divergent thinking tests are sometimes misused. I’m very concerned about the neurosciences, for example, which is an area close to my heart as a cognitive psychologist. And many wonderful discoveries are being offered in the neuroscientific research. But you often have neuroscientific publications that use a divergent thinking test, and they’ll put somebody in an fMRI machine, for example, and give them a divergent thinking test, and then give them 1 minute to think of ideas, and they’ll call it creativity. A divergent thinking is not creativity. Divergent thinking tells us about one part of creativity originality. And we know from the research that what you see in 1 minute of divergent thinking is not indicative of what that individual really can do. Now, the neuroscientific research is constrained because they’ve got this expensive apparatus.

Mark Runco [00:03:18]:
But my point is that I think we’re making good headway with measurement and in the research, and some of that’s hopefully spreading down to actual education. I know for a fact that more and more educators are asking about and reading about creativity. They are, as I mentioned earlier, just in a very difficult spot. Groups, students and administration with all kinds of pressure. And in some ways in the US anyway, right now things are actually getting worse with more and more constraint. So educators are in a difficult spot. I think progress is being made, especially in the research and to a lesser extent in the educational practice.

Matthew Worwood [00:04:05]:
So, Mark, I’m really pleased that you said that, because sometimes we can be overly negative about progress in education, and I sometimes still hear people talking about the factory model and us educating for a factory system. But when I go into some classrooms and work with teachers, depending on what context you’re in, there’s some incredible projects, even things like the science fair. You’re talking about divergent thinking. I’ve noticed that educators have taken more time in allowing students to come up with their own ideas and their own original questions to some of the prompts that then lead to a scientific project. And we had an educator, a principal, on last season, talking about inquiry based learning. And so I agree. I do think that there is a lot of progress being made, and I think educators are becoming a lot more aware of when there are opportunities in their classroom environment to promote creativity, to try and facilitate originality in how students perceive or respond to a question prompt. But then also going back to what you said earlier, I think there are certain times where maybe the system is okay when we’re thinking about the math tests, know, if we are in this moment, know knowledge acquisition, then perhaps it’s okay to assess on what that level of knowledge acquisition is.

Matthew Worwood [00:05:30]:
I think in a conversation with Jonathan Pluck, who was actually talking about whether or not there ever is actually a blank canvas, this idea of the fact that we need a level of knowledge in order to help fuel ideas. And I think the idea of incubation, for example, the divergent thinking, the time it takes is because we’re making original connections based on the knowledge that we’ve acquired in the system.

Mark Runco [00:05:51]:
Yeah, I like several things you’ve just said. One is about factual information. And I think back when I was raising my kids. They went to public schools, and I thought their schools were excellent. One reason is because of what you said about opportunities. I felt like the educators were looking for opportunities for their students to express themselves and to think in original fashion. Even though they had a curriculum to follow, they looked for those opportunities. And on the other hand, I don’t think they were doing enough for creativity.

Mark Runco [00:06:28]:
But that’s coming from somebody who devoted 40 years to the study of creativity. I’m a little biased in that regard, but my point is I didn’t really complain about education. I’m glad my kids went to the schools they did and had the teachers they had, because the schools were providing traditional logic, factual information, social skills, some very important skills. When my kids came home, I did what I could to encourage creativity, and I didn’t really need to do that much about factual information. Of course, we read a lot of books, but I would say that I trusted the schools to do most of the factual information, and I’m glad they did that. I probably did more for their creativity, not all of it, but more of it. And so it was a nice balance, and I certainly was not upset with the education my students received, even though it was 80 or 90% factual knowledge and traditional logic and so on. With a little bit of those opportunities, you mentioned my students, and for 22 years I taught at a university where my students were all prospective teachers.

Mark Runco [00:07:39]:
And how many times did I get that question? What can we do, given that we have to have a set curriculum? The first answer I gave was what you said. Look for opportunities, because there are opportunities where you can allow self expression and originality and probably even creativity, even if you’re following a pretty set curriculum.

Matthew Worwood [00:08:04]:
So, Mark, we’re going to talk a little bit about your role as co director of the Southern Oregon Creativity Conference, which is coming up on July 14 to the 17th this year, 2022. So can you tell us more about this event and who might be interested in attending?

Mark Runco [00:08:21]:
Thank you for asking that. Yeah, it’s a wonderful event. This one will be our fifth. I suppose it’s hard to count. We had to cancel completely in 2020, and last year was all virtual. Two years before that, we were all face to face. This year we’re hybrid. So we’ve been all over the place, even from day one, it’s been an amazing event.

Mark Runco [00:08:47]:
We usually have about almost 200 presentations over the four day period. It’s held on the campus of Southern Oregon University, and they happen to have a wonderful venue, one building. So we’re all in one place, we have all of the big names in the field. Last year we had David Cropley and Ron Bagetto and Ruth Richards. We’ve had Bob Sternberg. We’ve had Teresa Mabale, Dean Simonton. This year we have Bonnie Cramman, Anatoli Kirkirkin. It’s an amazing event.

Mark Runco [00:09:22]:
We have all kinds of different formats. These big names give keynote addresses. We also have terrific panels with lots of discussion. And it’s structured. The event is structured so there’s plenty of room for interaction. They’re not all just presentations. There are workshops. We have poster presentations, as I said, all kinds of different formats in terms of who would benefit.

Mark Runco [00:09:50]:
Frankly, just about everyone. That is, anyone with an interest in creativity or where creativity may or does fit into their career. We have clinicians and educators. We have organizational specialists, we have artists. We have people with just an interest in creativity. Presentations really cover well. They’re interdisciplinary. I guess that’s the umbrella term for it.

Mark Runco [00:10:17]:
So someone could come in with one of those interests, organizational or clinical or counseling or education or whatever, and fill their time completely with 200 presentations over a four day period. Everyone is much too busy. And one thing I really need to emphasize is that what everyone loves more than anything else is the fact that we have a presentation. It goes 45 or 50 minutes. We got a 15 minutes break. We got a lunch hour. We’ve got social hours. We hold one social hour at the local museum and one at the local.

Mark Runco [00:10:54]:
It’s called science Works. We have one social hour right on campus. There’s plenty of time for informal conversation and meeting new people and exchanging ideas. And I think that’s the best part of it. This is why last year with the virtual, I was surprised how good it was. It ran smoothly and presentations were good, even online. But we didn’t have that conversation, that downtime. And that really is the best part.

Mark Runco [00:11:29]:
And I hear that from others as well.

Cyndi Burnett [00:11:34]:
So, Mark, we wrap up every show with three tips that you would provide educators to bring creativity into their classroom.

Mark Runco [00:11:42]:
One is, I’m tempted to say, be creative, but I know that I’m going to have a response to that. When I teach a creativity seminar, usually on day one, I have students fill out a little informal survey, and one of the questions is, are you creative? And it’s amazing how many students say no. It’s changed a little bit over the years in the favorable direction, but you have a lot of people who say no. And I think within a couple of days, everybody changes their tune on that and they realize that creativity doesn’t mean that you sing a song or paint a painting or write a novel. They realize what I said about personal creativity. So in a sense I’d say be creative. I guess I would tweak that and say appreciate creativity, because educators who appreciate creativity will probably model that creativity. And I did mention modeling, but also tolerate the divergent thinking of the students and also put a little effort into looking behind students behavior and thinking.

Mark Runco [00:12:53]:
So even if a student says something that’s not a so called correct answer, the educator who appreciates creativity may say, wait a minute, I wonder what my student is thinking there. Maybe it’s creative and I just don’t see it yet. So be creative, look for creativity, appreciate creativity. And I’m going to wrap that all into one thing, a second one, depending on the age at which the students has to do with building confidence and in the research, they call it ego strength. And I think one of, if not the main problem with creativity among students has to do with social pressure and fitting in. And you can probably see why I said depending on the age, this is really a huge problem in the middle and upper elementary grades. It probably explains the so called fourth grade slump. But you also see a dramatic shift towards conventionality and what my friends are doing in thinking, again, up at age ten, maybe a little before and maybe a little after.

Mark Runco [00:14:09]:
And that’s problematic because a strict adherence to convention precludes creativity. It’s basically antithetical to originality. And students may have the capacity to be original, but in certain critical age they don’t bother with it, they don’t want it, they hide it, because what will my friends think? And this is a big problem on several levels. They may have a good idea and they don’t share it, but they also won’t pursue that idea, they won’t invest in it further. So it’s an immediate problem, but also kind of a medium range problem. It can be avoided if students realize the value of creativity and originality, but also have enough confidence to just say no. And I use that phrase intentionally because of the drug policy they had in California and elsewhere years ago. That’s what it was.

Mark Runco [00:15:10]:
It was, I’m going to stand up for myself. I’m just going to say no and resist the peer pressure. The same kind of thing will help them with their originality and their own self expression. And I think I’ll use that as my third point. I could probably go to 30 with this. Rigel. This is my third and last the idea of self expression. You don’t really need to look for unambiguously creative things of your students.

Mark Runco [00:15:41]:
Look for that creative potential we talked about, and look for things that help with originality, and self expression is one of them. And you see self expression. Boy, do you see self expression among preschoolers. I mean, you look at their finger painting and they’re going to do whatever they like with that finger painting. And it’s all them. It’s not style or what their friends think or anything else. Self expression among young individuals is extremely important and leads directly to creativity. It’s something you can see in the youngest child, and it is just so strongly tied.

Mark Runco [00:16:24]:
And you can think about that self expression. Self means me. So again, you’re dealing with something that is contrary to convention and conformity. So I would encourage, especially teachers in the primary grades to appreciate self expression just like its full blown unambiguous creativity.

Cyndi Burnett [00:16:49]:
This concludes our double espresso of the Fueling Creativity and education podcast. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:17:03]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Irwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:17:06]:
This podcast was produced by creativity and education and in partnership with dadsforcreativity.com. Our editor is Sina Yusefzade.