Zorana Pringle [00:00:00]:
There’s this disconnect. This is what the leaders of the world economy are telling us and of major organizations. This is what we need. But there is a disconnect from the world of educational priorities, and I hope that this disconnect is going to be bridged shortly. We are going to start having movement towards including an opportunity to teach creativity in schools.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:35]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:38]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:41]:
This is the fueling Creativity and Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:45]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:50]:
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 [00:01:01]:
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 [00:01:08]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:11]:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And this is our first double espresso episode of 2023. In this episode, we speak with Zorana Ivchevich. Dr. Ivchevich studies how to use the arts to promote emotion and creativity skills, as well as the role of emotion in creativity and well being. At her work, she is associate editor of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and Arts, and the International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving. Dr. Ivcevich received the award for Excellence in research from the Mensa Education and Research foundation and the Berlin Award for outstanding early career achievement in psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts from the American Psychological association.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:58]:
In part one of our double espresso, Zorano discusses how people engage in the creative process and the role emotions play in that process.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:06]:
So let’s begin. Zorana, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Zorana Pringle [00:02:13]:
Thank you for having me.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:14]:
So your research examines how people decide to be creative. What goes on in people’s minds as they begin that journey?

Zorana Pringle [00:02:22]:
Well, I was always fascinated by the fact that there are people, and we all know them, who have lots of ideas but don’t follow up on them. I’ve seen this New Yorker cartoon scene at a cocktail party, and there is a well dressed woman that says to her friends, did you know that Harry was the person who invented the daiquiri? And everybody looks surprised. And she says, but he never did anything with it. And we know people who have never done anything with it, who have very interesting ideas when we talk to them over an espresso or a double one, but they don’t do something with them. They are high on imagination, but the action doesn’t follow through. And I was very much inspired by an article by Robert Sternberg in the early two thousand s, and the title was creativity is a decision. And I had lots of feelings about this article. I was thinking that, well, this doesn’t seem right to me.

Zorana Pringle [00:03:34]:
This doesn’t seem. I was almost angry at it because it seemed that, well, if you are not creative, then you just didn’t make a decision. Well, it turns out it’s not just not making a decision. Making a decision is a very complex process, and lots of consideration go into it, and lots of consideration that are emotional in nature go into it. We know that lots of decisions are influenced by emotions and they end up being emotional decisions. And this is the case for creativity, too. So what we did is, I’m a scientist, so I wanted to study this process. We went to high school students, we said, okay, let’s see what goes in people’s minds as they are deciding whether they are going to share their ideas, or whether this idea goes beyond what’s in your mind, what’s in your head.

Zorana Pringle [00:04:43]:
And we found that there are three big considerations, three big kinds of parts to attitudes about creativity. The first one is anticipating negative social consequences. And what that really means is thinking in anticipation. If I share this idea, if I act on it, people are going to think that I am disrespecting them, or that I am questioning their authority, or that this is silly, or that this is ridiculous, and so on. All of those things we can imagine being self conscious. And then the second part of these considerations in decision is an anxiety. So an anxiety that is internal to the person. Now that I’m anticipating these things from the outside, I am anxious and I want to protect myself.

Zorana Pringle [00:05:49]:
So maybe it’s better to be safe than sorry. And the third consideration is completely different in nature. It is that feeling. Doing something creative is important. It is important to who I am as a person. It is important to what I want to do. And it is a source of pride and growth. And really what ends up happening is that people weigh each of these things in their minds as they are deciding what to do with ideas they might be having.

Cyndi Burnett [00:06:29]:
So that’s really interesting. So anticipating negative reactions, anxiety, and it’s important to do things because we love them. Did I summarize that?

Zorana Pringle [00:06:41]:
Yeah, that’s a great summary. And we have next looked at, okay, this is what’s going on in the mind, but what happens with it? So what is the consequence of it? And we have asked people lots of questions about what they do. And this was specific to the context of their school and what they are doing creatively, or might be doing creatively at school. And we have looked at them sharing creative ideas in class. We have looked at their creative achievement in general, maybe in any context. And what we found is that when we ask questions about their decision making process, their attitudes about creativity at school, specifically at school, these attitudes can tell us what they do at school. So those people who have more of those attitudes of this is important and fewer of those considerations of anticipating negative consequences. They are going to show more creative behavior in their classroom, in classroom discussions, in their assignments, in creative projects they have at school.

Zorana Pringle [00:08:07]:
But that doesn’t generalize to creativity in general. It doesn’t mean that they are not going to be creative out of school, because when we ask questions specifically to the school context, we are learning specifically about the school context.

Cyndi Burnett [00:08:26]:
So, Zorana, for the teachers who are listening, if they have students who don’t see creativity or their creative ideas as important, and they feel that anxiety and anticipation of the negative reaction, what can they do in the classroom to help build up the student, to see the importance and to lessen that anxiety?

Zorana Pringle [00:08:47]:
Well, there are a few things that teachers can do. One thing that really helps creativity. If teachers have a goal of teaching for creativity, the first place where to start is choice. Providing choice. With the choice, it’s more likely that students are going to have all of those motivational elements that are helpful for performance and for creativity and for persisting and staying with that creativity. And this can be providing choice in very small ways. To give you an example, for my child’s classroom that we just went through, I have a 7th grader and they are studying the cell in science class. And the assignment had two different options.

Zorana Pringle [00:09:45]:
You could create a slideshow about looking into different functions of the cell, or you can create an analogy based on an interest of yours. And my son is very much interested in cars, particularly fast cars. And he has created an analogy with the functioning of a cell and functioning of a car. And he was very interested in it. He really wanted to spend time on it, and he deeply thought about the functions of a cell. You are stimulating ideas, you are stimulating deep learning, because it’s making a connection with something in real life, and you are creating that sense of importance. This is important to me because in the same time, I’m going to be thinking about cars, which I really want to be thinking about and learn about the cell.

Matthew Worwood [00:10:45]:
So going back to the environment you were talking about the environment and looking at a school environment. How does other theories like social cognitive theory come into play? The example you shared of your son building that analogy, they feel that they can achieve something. Perhaps they have higher self efficacy toward their capacity to make the connection between the cell and the car.

Zorana Pringle [00:11:05]:
The social cognitive theory has given us the concept of self efficacy. What that means is a belief that we can fulfill a certain task, we can achieve a certain task successfully, and it generalizes to creative self efficacy to believe that we can do something creatively. We can come up with ideas, we can develop these ideas and do something. Self efficacy is supported. These beliefs of self efficacy are supported by the environment. The support for creativity is crucial for translating that possibility.

Matthew Worwood [00:11:51]:
And the reason why I asked that question is, I think we’re all very good at coming up with ideas and we’re all good at sharing those ideas during kind of like faculty meetings. And I’m sure in other professional environments people can relate to that, oh, I’ve got an idea, or oh, here’s this problem. We need to address this problem, but quite often it’s quite difficult to find someone in the room that’s willing to kind of grab the idea and actually deliver it. And I’m just wondering if within your research explains why is it that there are some people that are kind of really good at identifying problems and are really good at generating ideas or solutions, but then look for someone else to take that on?

Zorana Pringle [00:12:28]:
It could be for different reasons. So sometimes a person is a great idea generator, but not great in following through, because they are not interested in following through. They do not want to put the effort. And creativity takes a lot of effort, and it takes effort and trial and error. And along each of these steps, you have to recommit, redecide that you are going to engage with creativity. There are some people who make a decision that they’re going to share ideas, but then do not make the decision that they’re going to put the effort. And some people who make that decision, okay, now I’m going to put the effort, I’m going to start in the process. But that’s not the last decision to be made.

Zorana Pringle [00:13:22]:
The next one or the next set of decisions are about, well, maybe you have to try different approaches. Something does not work from the first try. There are frustrations and obstacles on the way at those points. You have to recommit to that decision to not just have ideas, but continue on that long term work of doing something with them.

Cyndi Burnett [00:13:50]:
So how do you teach that process to students? This process of iterations and continuous development, when sometimes you just need to get things done.

Zorana Pringle [00:13:59]:
It takes commitment. The first step is teachers need to be aware and educators need to be aware of the nature of the creative process. And that’s not a small task. We are putting a lot on teachers. We are putting a lot of demands on them. We are putting demands on them to teach the content. We are putting demands on them to manage classrooms, to access every child with different developmental trajectories, with different interests in the material. We are putting a lot on them.

Zorana Pringle [00:14:39]:
Now, teaching them about creativity is another thing that they would need to have in their toolbox. And our teacher education programs are not focusing on creativity yet. And I want to say yet, because I want to believe that this is not forever and that there’s going to be a change. And there are people working towards creating programs that teach teachers about the nature of the creative process. So the first step is for teachers to learn about what creativity is like. There are lots of myths about creativity, and it is not surprising that somebody believes a myth because they are pervasive in our culture. And it is very easy to believe them because they seem to be legitimate when they are coming to us from multiple sides. And once teachers understand the nature of the creative process, then it becomes a challenge of how to model it, how to model it to students.

Zorana Pringle [00:15:52]:
And I truly believe that it would not work if we try to implement teaching creativity to students without starting educating the educators. If you are trying to deliver something without having it learned yourself and having it lived yourself, it’s not going to work. Teachers are showing great creativity in lot of what they are doing, but they might not know these things about the creative process of it not being linear. And oftentimes we even say in our everyday life, creative process is not linear. But what does that actually mean? How do we understand it? How do we understand that there are going to be changes in the process? The idea that you start with might not be exactly the same thing that you end up with, and that is not the sign of you are not good enough, you are not succeeding. This is inherent in the nature of the creative process.

Matthew Worwood [00:17:01]:
I don’t know if it’s a challenging question, but it’s addressing the elephant in the room. I think from a system perspective is that we know that teachers are quite often very burnt out and time is always a challenge. And Cindy and I have spoken a lot about the tremendous creativity that exists in the teaching profession. But the idea of teachers going through that process of constantly iterating, identifying new problems coming up with new solutions, sometimes bringing in new technologies, having to learn all those new technologies. Some teachers, I’m not saying I agree with this, but some teachers, it almost feels like it’s an add on. They’re not getting anything of it. It’s somewhat risky because if it doesn’t work out and they don’t hit the learning objectives and they’ve deviated from the script, then they’re kind of responsible. So how do you try and bring those types of teachers working in that type of environment more into thinking about, look, you should engage in this creative process because you are an incredibly creative educator.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:02]:
And the more you engage in your creativity, the more likely it is that you’re going to be in a better position to cultivate and facilitate creativity in your students. What type of cell do you do for those types of teachers in that environment?

Zorana Pringle [00:18:12]:
I love that you’re bringing issues, systemic issues, because we should not just put it on teachers. Teaching profession is incredibly challenging. Creativity, like anything else that is human activity, is not an isolated event or task or an activity. It happens in a social environment. And even sometimes prototypical examples of creativity sometimes deceive us into thinking more from the individual standpoint. You think of an artist or you think of a composer, and you think of them in their studio doing something completely independent from the outside world. But even those examples are not really true. They are really stereotypes, because there is no creation outside of the social context.

Zorana Pringle [00:19:14]:
Even if you are an artist, even if you are a composer, you are going to be inspired by things from your environment. You are going to be interacting with your environment. They are going to provide opportunities to show your work and develop your work. And the same thing is the case in education. There, the social environment is the school environment, the system, the most immediate system that teachers operate in. And then they are embedded in others. They are embedded in the community system. And we know that different communities have different influences on education, and then they are embedded in the national education system.

Zorana Pringle [00:20:02]:
And all of these systems are influencing what teachers do. So the immediate environment of the school is influencing what teachers do by determining what they can do, what they are allowed to do. There are schools where teachers have to follow very specific steps, and they cannot deviate very much from it. In those environments. Essentially, no matter what level of individual creativity teachers have, they cannot do very much. They are not allowed to do very much. And we have to acknowledge that. We cannot just say teachers should.

Zorana Pringle [00:20:47]:
Teachers also have to be given permission to do it. And so the leadership is school leadership, district leadership, and then hopefully, state and national leadership in what are priorities for education will have a great influence on what teachers end up doing. It is not just on the teacher.

Cyndi Burnett [00:21:12]:
I completely agree with you on that. SERRaNO and I often talk with people and they say if we could just get some policies changed that would allow us to have that space and time to work with students in creative ways and to bring in the creative process. And if it was part of the mandates, then things would change. But until then, you just have these little pockets of teachers who are really passionate about creativity and bringing it into the classroom. So I always say, well, I try to help those that come to me and say, I need help with this and can you show me some techniques and can you give me some strategies? Because at this time, as you said, we don’t have it yet, but I am hopeful that we will have it in the future. I just don’t know what needs to change in order for the policy to change.

Zorana Pringle [00:22:01]:
It seems that the time is ripe for having policy around creativity. The World Economic Forum, every five years comes up with a list of top ten skills for the future economy. And right now, the latest list that is labeled skills for 2025, includes out of ten. Five of them are related to creativity and problem solving. So half of it, and there’s this disconnect. This is what the leaders of the world economy are telling us and of major organizations. This is what we need. But there is a disconnect from the world of educational priorities, and I hope that this disconnect is going to be bridged shortly, that we are going to start having movement towards including an opportunity to teach creativity in schools and to have standards for teacher education that would include them being educated and what creativity really is like, so that they can then transmit it to their students.

Matthew Worwood [00:23:20]:
Going back to something you said about, and a lot of the things we’ve spoken about is, number one, the environment. There are systems that obviously influence the environment, but the environment can also influence or at least push back on certain systems. But the one thing that I see consistent when I’m interacting with teachers, no matter in the environment, is when they’re coming from schools where what they do, they then have opportunities to share it. And you had spoken earlier, you’d referenced the idea of sharing. And to me, I really see creativity come alive within a community of teachers. When they’re working together, they’re bouncing ideas back and forth, they’re sharing the challenges that exist in the classroom environment. They’re responding to those ideas. Oh, I’m going to try that I’m going to try this.

Matthew Worwood [00:24:01]:
Show me how this works. Show me how that works. How do you address this issue? And there are schools where their professional development sessions, they provide opportunities for teachers to engage in those types of discussions. And I think even within the system, I think there are opportunities for us to provide more space for teachers to interact together to celebrate and share their creative ideas.

Zorana Pringle [00:24:27]:
Very much agreed. And these are some steps that are taken in some places, they are not spread everywhere, and they can serve as models for how to create communities of learning and how to create ways to teach creativity.

Cyndi Burnett [00:24:46]:
So that concludes part one of this double expresso episode with Zarana Ivshevich. In part two, we’ll discuss strategies to support students as they navigate to the emotional side of creativity in the K through twelve classroom. This episode was produced by creativity and education in partnership with warwoodclassroom.com. Our editor is Sina Yusefzade.