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

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

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

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field 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 episode of our winter 2025 listen and learn series. And as a reminder, these episodes are super short, designed to support professional learning at your school.

Cyndi Burnett:
Our goal in this series is to provide a quote from a creativity researcher or educator that we’ve interviewed in season one on the Feeling, Creativity and Education podcast. And we would like to play this quote and then provide you with question to use with your professional learning community as a point of discussion. And if you don’t have a professional learning community, come and join ours at Curiosity2Connect. And the link will be in the show notes.

Matthew Worwood:
Now, as a reminder, we’re also trying to go another level and connect some of this conversation to one, if not two, of our 10 actions for fueling creativity in education. And this clip, this final clip is my clip, one of the episodes that I selected, and it was with Ron Bigetto. Now, I don’t want to kind of spoil it too much, Cindy, but I think you asked me, I don’t know if it was on an episode or it was when we were together at the NAGC conference. But you said, you know, what was one of the episodes that has really had an impact on you and your practice. And I said, Ron Bighetto from season one. And the reason why is because in this clip, you’re going to listen to it. Ron is talking about uncertainty and that there are different types of uncertainty. But one of the things that he has, how he kind of like, positions uncertainty, is that in school we’re typically educating students for the future and the future is uncertain.

Matthew Worwood:
And so we have to learn how we can navigate these experiences of uncertainty. Now, he does reference that there’s kind of, you know, good situations of uncertainty and not so good situations where there’s uncertainty. And he also references, you know, classrooms sometimes we do want to create, you know, quite well established, predetermined learning experiences that have an element of certainty, particularly when it comes to the health and safety of students and maybe things around classroom management in A science lab, for example. But ultimately it’s thinking about how we can facilitate these feelings of uncertainty. Now, I wanted to provide the context of that because this quote doesn’t necessarily have all of the details of that. So if you are interested in learning more about that, I do suggest you go and check out this episode. Because what happens is in this episode, Ron kind of pivots a little bit as he’s talking about this topic and he starts referencing about learning and how learning isn’t always going to deliver great emotions. Sometimes it delivers negative emotions.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s listen to the quote.

Ron Beghetto:
If we recognize that everyone is always and already creative, then it’s just about. So how can we create the conditions whereby people are willing to express and see the value in it? So, kind of going back to Matt’s point of the value of it. And so some of the empirical work that kind of informs my view on this, that I’ve done with my colleagues, in particular Macek Karwowski and some of his colleagues as well, what we’ve been looking at is, and this is kind of the second part of uncertainty by design, this kind of agentic perspective. So if we all experience uncertainty and we all have creative potential, why do some people respond creatively and other people don’t? Why do some people just kind of try to ignore the uncertainty? Because it is not comfortable. It could result in all kinds of negative emotions. Anger, frustration, doubt, embarrassment, all these different things as you’re trying to work through it. And I think that’s also important to recognize that that’s okay. It’s okay.

Ron Beghetto:
That’s the other thing. Why isn’t it okay for young people to have negative emotions in school when they’re really doing difficult work? Why isn’t it okay for them to get angry and frustrated? I think it’s okay to recognize it. And in fact, it’s supportive to let a teacher say, if a teacher approaches a kid that’s really angry working on a really important problem, rather than saying, you know, don’t be angry. There’s no anger in this space that’s not received as supportive, that’s received as controlling.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right?

Ron Beghetto:
There’s motivational researchers that have explored that a support, kind of an autonomous, supportive response would be to say, I see that you’re angry. I can understand that you’re angry. Do you need help? Can we support you in kind of working through this? You want to talk through the problem? Where are you getting stuck? Let’s kind of work through this. I think that is a much more educative and productive conversation than banning anger in schools or frustration. Right. So this is what this, my favorite failure project’s about. It’s about sharing stories of failure, starting with our own, when we’re working with young people or educators and we’re trying to design something new, anticipating you’re going to hit a setback and it might not be fun. So part of those stories is, and we use my favorite failure to kind of paradoxically soften the failure a little bit because you’re going to talk about it as your favorite one.

Ron Beghetto:
So there’s something about it that’s positive. But we talk about what emotions did you experience? You know, and some of those emotions are negative, and that’s okay. And you can experience those emotions for a short period of time or a long period of time. But importantly, what did you, again, what did you learn about yourself? What’d you learn about the problem? Why is it your favorite?

Matthew Worwood:
So, Cindy, continuing with the trend of, in essence, I suppose what we’re doing is we’re facilitating a conversation with these clips, while also obviously using questions to prompt that conversation. I think, as I referenced this recognition that sometimes the learning experience and the creative process doesn’t always provoke great feelings. We have positive feelings sometimes at the end of that, when we can see the outcomes of that work. But while we’re working in that creative process or that learning experience, it’s not fun. And we can have the negative emotions that Ron referenced in that clip. So one of the things, my first question is if you think back to your teaching, when were there situations in your class that was examples of good uncertainty, the uncertainty where we’re facilitating or it’s initiating these negative emotions? And when do you think that there might have been situations in your class where there’s a level of uncertainty, but the emotions it’s provoking aren’t necessarily conducive for creativity? That’s my first question.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right. In terms of positive Matt, you know, I taught creative problem solving at the center for Applied Imagination for many years. And Sid Parnes, who we actually did one of our Listen and Learn series episodes in the Classic Scholars, who is one of the sort of founders of creative problem solving, along with Alex Osborne. Sid Parnes used to have this phrase, trust the process. And sometimes when working through complex problems in my classrooms, students would get frustrated because it’s like, why are we doing all this work? Why don’t we just come up with the answer? Why don’t we, you know, why don’t we do this? Why are we doing that it’s like, trust the process, trust the process. And that was sort of the mantra of a lot of our graduate students is trust the process. So I think in that sense it’s really important to understand that it’s going to be uncomfortable when we’re solving problems. It’s going to be uncomfortable when we’re learning things that we don’t really understand.

Cyndi Burnett:
And it’s going to be uncomfortable when we’re creating new things. You know, even with this podcast, you know, you might hear this end episode of what we’ve created, but what you didn’t hear is all the mistakes that we made and starting over and getting frustrated and our editor, Sam, who does a great job in editing all of that out. But sometimes it can be frustrating when you’re working on a project and it’s not going the way you planned. And sometimes you have to step away and just give yourself a break and take a pause. And sometimes you just need to power through it. And part of it is all just really figuring out which one you need to do is take a pause or power through it. And I think teaching your students that skill is so, so powerful. So I think that’s on the positive side, which is trust the process and.

Matthew Worwood:
Just really quickly and to clarify in the conversation. So what you’re saying is, is situations in your classroom environment where you have facilitated a creative problem solving exercise, maybe it’s 60 minutes or maybe it’s a 10 week project, but students are having to go and navigate the difficulties of that ill defined problem where they don’t always know what’s the first step they have to take and what is that immediate answer. And so that is an example. You facilitated that. It creates these negative emotions, but that level of uncertainty that’s triggering those emotions, that’s the good one. So now you’ve got to share that, that negative one, the one where maybe there has been a situation of uncertainty, but the emotions that have come from that probably we should try and avoid in our classroom environment.

Cyndi Burnett:
So I am known to be an implementer, someone who gets things done. I am not known to be a good clarifier and really clarifying details around things. And you might even hear this in the podcast when I’m like, okay, it’s about this. And you’re like, wait a second, let’s, like you said, let me clarify what you just said, right? And so I remember this happened many times. So you know, if, if this happens to you, it’s okay. But I sometimes when I would give my students instructions I wasn’t really clear in my delivery, and they would become frustrated. I don’t understand. What is this about? Can you explain more on this? I don’t get.

Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, I’ve literally had students, like, I don’t get it. What do you want us to do? And, well, I don’t think you need to be rude about it. It made the students feel uncomfortable because they didn’t have a clear path forward. And sometimes I would say, just go with it. Just go with it. And students, because they’re uncomfortable with it, they would get frustrated. Now, I want a certain level of frustration, but I don’t really want really, really, you know, like, I give up kind of frustration in the class. So I would say, just try to work through it, and if you have clarification questions, I will ask them.

Cyndi Burnett:
Or I would say, all right, let me rephrase that in a different way. Or let me show you in a different way. Because in some ways, I need to do better clarifying. In other ways, the students need to be better at asking the right questions. So that’s what I would challenge them with. Like, what questions could you ask that will help clarify the situation? I used to do this activity in class, and it was given to me by Mike Fox, who is one of my former colleagues at the center. And he would give us 10 sheets of paper and a piece of tape. And he would say, it’s a piece of tape.

Cyndi Burnett:
And he would sort of pull this tape out, and it was like 12 inches. And he would say, I want you to create a structure that showcases creativity. And students would take their 10 sheets of paper and the exact size that I pulled out, piece of tape, and they would go build the structures. Well, inevitably, some students would start to ask questions, and they would get really frustrated, like, well, can we use scissors? Can we use more paper? Can we use more tape? Can we use this? Can we use colored markers? Can we. And. And that get them to go and ask questions. But for some students, they got frustrated. Well, you didn’t tell us that.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, that was part of the process, is for you to ask more questions. And some of them would get really frustrated. Like, I don’t understand where we’re supposed to build here. It’s like you’re building a structure. So, you know, in some ways it was a good thing, in some ways it was a bad thing, but it really forced the students to understand. And I would always do this, like my freshman class up front in the first two weeks of the semester, that they had to ask me more questions if they really wanted a clear path forward. And I would always, like, joke about, like, the only thing I’m married to is my husband. So you can try to change my mind on something, but you have to present a good case of what you want.

Cyndi Burnett:
But that opening activity that made them really uncomfortable would challenge them to ask more questions whenever I present a new material. So it was really helpful in the long run.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think what you’ve done with the last piece you referenced is that you’ve come up with a strategy, a tool to help students navigate through some of the difficulties you can have with the learning experience and telling them what to do in these circumstances. For example, ask clarification questions. And it’s funny because I run into the same problem as well. Early on in my teaching, my assignments weren’t always clear. And it can be really hard communicating complex projects to students we know from the learning sciences. This is one of those situations where you actually, I think this is a great example. You don’t want frustration. Like, do you really want students to be problem solving for over an hour with new technology? Like, don’t get me wrong, I value problem solving with new technology.

Matthew Worwood:
But is that potentially creating frustration and agitation before they even begin your assignment? And if your assignments only designed for 30, 40 minutes, you don’t want them having difficulty with technology. Now, of course they do. That’s part of life. But that’s the type of thing that I’ve seen in my. In my classroom environment. I do want to reduce the agitation that students can experience when things aren’t working well with the learning management system. I do want to reduce the amount of issues students are going to face when, you know, an application is not working as designed. I do want to reduce the number of issues students have when I administer assignments, and I think those negative emotions typically aren’t conducive.

Matthew Worwood:
And they do come up on my set survey sometimes that when there’s been lots of technical issues or lots of ambiguous assignments that aren’t very clear, students haven’t responded very well. And I’m not convinced, for me anyway, that that is the type of uncertainty that’s helpful for the learning experience. But the first example you shared, as we discussed, is the type of uncertainty that I think we do want to facilitate. So ultimately, the question that I have for our listeners, for their conversation, is when we’ve kind of got a good understanding that there are different examples of uncertainty. I’ll throw another one. I know that students can be uncertain about their final presentation when I’m saying you’re going to be presenting to stakeholders. I don’t know what stakeholders that are going to be in the room. I don’t know what questions that they’re going to ask.

Matthew Worwood:
And right now I’m still working on the format, but I want them to navigate the fact that so long as they know their material and they’ve got a good narrative for their presentation, they’re going to be fine. And they’ve got to have faith in themselves that they’re going to be fine. And likewise, when they step into that room, there’s going to be a sense of uncertainty, fear, panic. And I do want them to navigate that. And I tell them up front, these are the types of feelings that I want you to get comfortable with that discomfort. But there are those examples where we don’t want that. So what I would say is how are you deliberately facilitating situations of uncertainty that can help students be exposed to these negative emotions? And then an example as you shared, what strategies are you giving them to help facilitate, to help them navigate through that process? But likewise, what are you doing to minimize the situations of uncertainty that you don’t want in your classroom and are probably creating emotions that actually aren’t conducive to your overall learning objectives or learning experience that you’re trying. So that’s, that’s what my, you know, that’s our final conversation of this winter 2024 listen and learn series.

Matthew Worwood:
Cindy, do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to Create is a non profit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So just as a reminder, this is our fourth professional learning community conversation that we have posted up on our new website, fuelingcreativitypodcast.com so if you if you would like to have this conversation with your colleagues and you would like us to come and facilitate it, go and check out our website and fill out the form.

Matthew Worwood:
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 Atkins.