Matthew Worwood:
Hello and welcome to our second episode in our 2024 listen and learn Summer series. And as a quick reminder, episodes in this series are super short and designed to support professional learning for educators and emerging scholars interested in the field of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
In this listen and learn series, we are focused on classic literature from the field of creativity research, which we hope will help offer you a not only historical perspective of the field, but also bridge some connections between this research and teaching and learning environments.

Matthew Worwood:
And in case you didn’t listen to our introduction episode, we have a emerging scholar, Jimmy Wilson, who will be providing some additional commentary from this series and sharing that commentary on our website. Fueling Creativity podcasts podcast.com and to make.

Cyndi Burnett:
Things extra fun, at the end of each episode we will share a single letter which is part of a code that you, our listeners, must guess before the end of August.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you guessed correctly, you will need to email us that code word and include a connection you’ve made with one of the classical articles we’ve discovered and your upcoming plans for the new school year. And we will select one winner who will receive a special fueling creativity in education podcasts prize pack.

Cyndi Burnett:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood:
So in this episode, we bring you an article titled the Analysis of Creativity by Mel Rhodes. And this article is particularly relevant in the field because Mel Rhodes set off on a quest to try and look at definitions of creativity. He didn’t succeed, but the outcome of this article laid very good groundwork in terms of influencing how we perceive and discussed creativity. Now, Cindy, you took the lead on this article, so why don’t you pull some of the pieces that you connected as part of your takeaways?

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt sure. So this article was written in 1961. So if you listen to our last episode of the listen and learn series where we talked about JP Guilford’s inaugural address, where he referenced that there was an appalling number of references. Well, Mel Rhodes sort of picks up this conversation eleven years later, and he says, as a result of JP Guilford doing that, saying, stating that at the inaugural address that now there was in creativity, imagination, or any topic closely related, there were now 300 reference cards to articles and monographs. So you can see that spike, 300 new articles and monographs on creativity, imagination, and any other topic closely related is significant in eleven years, right, Matt? So this was a big jump. So now we’ve got Mel Rhodes, who says we need to have a universal definition of creativity. So what is it? So he goes out and he finds 40 definitions of creativity and 16 of imagination, and he starts cross referencing them, and he’s trying to find a universal definition of creativity, and he does not find one, but instead he finds something called the four P’s. And I would say, Matt, of all the articles, and I think this is actually the only one that.

Cyndi Burnett:
Mel Rhodes. That was significant. But of all articles in creativity, this one is probably one of the most cited articles in the historical perspectives of creativity, because it gives us a framework and a starting place to really look at research related to creativity. Now, I’m going to go over the four P’s with you and Matt. I thought it might be fun to talk about each of these four P’s in relationship to our podcast and some of the things we learned on our podcast. Are you ready?

Matthew Worwood:
I’m ready.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so the first p is all about the creative person, which covers information about the personality, intellect, temperament, physique, traits, habits, attitudes, self concept, value systems, defense mechanisms, and behavior. And that’s a quote directly from the article. So he also mentions that creativity and IQ do not correlate, which we talked about a little bit in our Guilford article as well. So of all of the different episodes we’ve covered around the creative person, which one stands out to you?

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, in terms of the creative person, I mean, I think the important part of this article, it’s obviously a scholarly article looking to operationalize the study of creativity. And so from that perspective, I would probably go to a creativity researcher and maybe go to someone like Mark Runko or perhaps even Todd Lubar, who are looking at studying creative potential in individuals. So coming up with specific tests that, in essence, is probably building on how we can operationalize creativity in the study of individuals. That’s my thoughts.

Cyndi Burnett:
I was thinking about our dear friend James Kaufman, who has done an episode with us just on those sort of traits of being a creative person and how it relates to well being and as a person and the behaviors that we need to embody. I also think about an upcoming episode we have for season nine with Ruth Richards, but we won’t mention that yet. It hasn’t been released. But I do immediately think about Ruth Richards and what you talked about with relationship to the creative person.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ve done over 150 episodes now. So I’m finding myself wanting to find a practitioner, you know, someone like Janine Letford coming to me, and maybe Natalie Nixon, perhaps. I don’t know. I think some of these are still processed. I think the key point right now is it’s interesting just to know that the creative person aspect seems to be, at least initially, with how we’re responding more prominent from our creativity researchers.

Cyndi Burnet:
So let’s think about the next one. Let’s talk about process, which applies to motivation, perception, learning, thinking and communicating. So some of the essential questions he talks about with the process include what causes some individuals to strive for original answers to questions, while the majority are satisfied with conventional answers. What are the stages of the thinking process? I think about all the work that’s been done in creative problem solving and design thinking and appreciative inquiry, and all the different problem solving methodologies that have been created after this particular. Actually, I’m thinking this is 1961 and the next thing we’re going to reference came out in 1953, which does focus on process. We’re going to heighten the anticipation there and you’ll get to see what that is. But what episodes have we done that you think represent the creative process?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I’m stuck on the fact that we clearly have just made a mistake, but we’re going to keep running with that. In my defense, when we said Melrose next, I was like, wait, when was that? The problem is we won’t talk about it. But the thing we’re talking about next has been republished multiple times, so we quite often forget when it was first published. But I think really there’s lots of episodes with this. Right, because it’s about engaging in a deliberate act to be creative. And in this article, Melrose also makes reference. We should highlight that of Graham Wallace, who went before joy. Paul Guilford had shared his inauguration speak to look at identifying different stages of the creative process.

Matthew Worwood:
And I’m now being challenged to remember them all off the top of my head. The first one is incubation. This verification, incubation. Preparation, incubation, preparation, incubation illumination, verification, verification. That was it. And verification, I believe was, was added as the latter part of his work. But the key point, I think find fascinating is that this idea of deliberate acts of creativity, and of course we see that in businesses, right, businesses are always trying to be innovative and I think we see it within the research, but I think it’s a lot more of a practitioner perspective. And I think that’s why we, we quite often talk about process within the classroom environment.

Matthew Worwood:
And of course, I think a lot of our practitioners have spoken a lot about process as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I think about Morgan Vane and how she uses the design thinking process to help solve challenges. And I think we’ve had a lot of different people, actually, Cheryl Lin Yeo talking about the artistic process and how that helps in solving sort of global issues. I think we’ve had a lot of great episodes on process, actually.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I mean, I think even when you talk about things like, oh, we must teach failure, I would argue that when you say, we must teach failure, we’re talking about a process, right? Like how we respond to failure might be an individual perspective. So someone like Ron Boguetta and Lisa McBain, who’s talking about the feelings of failure, maybe we’re talking about the creative person there. But when we’re talking about the teaching of failure, those types of conversation, even how the clarifying problems, asking questions, these are deliberate acts to which we try and create a more conducive environment or process for creativity. I think this is all related around this topic.

Cyndi Burnett:
Let’s talk about the next P mat, which is called press. And press is actually the environment. So press refers to the relationship between human beings and their environment. So do you have any episodes that come to mind when it comes to press?

Matthew Worwood:
You know what, before we start that I would love you to remind me, what is the word press again? Where is it coming from? Is it. Is it some kind of line connection to environment? I can’t remember.

Cyndi Burnett:
It is about pressing in that we, the environment presses upon it. But his definition of press was, refers to the relationship between human beings and their environment. That’s all he wrote.

Matthew Worwood:
I mean, a sidebar. I can’t help but just think about how many days he took trying to find this fourth p to kind of refer to as environment. But it certainly stuck. And I would say the big connection I want to make with this one, and I’m probably jumping a little bit ahead, but in season one, we interviewed Vlad Glavinu, who has taken Mel Rhodes four P’s and kind of expanded upon it in terms of the five a’s, not going to get into detail with that because that’s no longer classical literature. So if you want to learn more about that, we’ll share a link to that episode in the show notes. But what I would say is that is more of that socio cultural perspective, a recognition that these four things, actually, it’s the interaction of these four things within an environment that actually allows us to have a lot more expansive conversation about creativity. So I think any episode where we’re talking about sociocultural factors, environmental factors, classroom conditions, influence of the curriculum, influence of the teacher, barriers to creativity, I think all of that is part of that press piece, Matt.

Cyndi Burnett:
It reminds me of the episode we did with Zviko Kanyuka on using plain imagination to engage active citizenship, where she took her students in Africa and she taught them how to use a process. So we got the process there to create an environment for learning. So she had them design their own classroom. So that really hits upon the physical environment, which we don’t talk about that much on the show, but I think it’s still really relevant to the press.

Matthew Worwood:
P. And Cindy, actually, you’ve reminded me that I think Wendy Ross’s episode around serendipity, there’s specific moments when we say, okay, as you start to struggle with the process, become open to your environment and look around to your environment for these serendipitous moments of creativity. And as soon as you start thinking about yourself and how you’re interacting with people and objects in your environment, I think we’re also in a conversation around press. So I think that episode as well is very relevant.

Cyndi Burnett:
And the final p. Matt is product, which refers to a thought which has been communicated to other people in the form of words, paint, clay, metal, stone, fabric, or other material. When we speak of an original idea, he says, we imply a degree of newness in the concept. When idea becomes embodied into a tangible form, it is called a product. We really don’t talk that much about product. We spend probably most of the time on our podcast talking about process and person. But does any episode spring to mind when it comes to product?

Matthew Worwood:
I think there’s a couple. I think, first of all, when we’re talking about project based learning environments, looking to solve a problem, and then you start getting into conversations about the solution and how you may evaluate that solution and thinking about how that solution interacts with the people impacted by the problem, I think you’re starting to flirt around with product unless, as I said, you’re looking at that five, a factor around sociocultural theories. The other one, to be more specific, is when we’ve actually spent episodes talking specifically about the product. So some episodes that pop to mind. Adrian Gordon, when we’re talking about music and music class and how music can bring a community together, I think that’s very much a conversation about the product, the outcome. Quite often in today, we talk a lot about outcomes, and I think also, I hope I pronounce it correctly, because I’ve done so many episodes where I referenced it and pronounced it incorrectly. But the. The Cheerio board, when we’re talking about the world record, Guinness World Record breaking Cheerio board, am I pronouncing it wrong?

Cyndi Burnett:
A Cheerio board, is not it? No, it’s a charcuterie board.

Matthew Worwood:
Charcuterie board. The charcuterie yes, the charcuterie board.

Cyndi Burnett:
I’m going to make you a Cheerio board today.

Matthew Worwood:
Much cheaper. Well, Cheerio cereal. I don’t know. Still food.

Cyndi Burnett:
I loved that episode, Richitell. And I cite it often because I think it’s such a great activity that he took something small and turned it into something big with his students. And building the largest charcuterie board with Peter Richettel. That was a great episode.

Matthew Worwood:
And setting the goal to break a world record. Of course, that’s a conversation about the product, because now you got an easy way of evaluating it. Either broke the record or it didn’t. Right. And you are. Absolutely. I’ve identified a way of measuring that product. Yes.

Matthew Worwood :
These are all great episodes.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, we’ll leave with a quote that I love from this article. And he said, now is the time for every teacher to become more creative. That was 1961, so I think we’re saying the same thing in 2024.

Matthew Worwood:
We are. We are. I mean, I like playing devil’s advocate. I think one of the things that we as creativity advocates do is that we want the word creativity to be used. And if we were to unpick examples of creativity in the classroom, we’re seeing every day, and teachers are engaging in acts of creativity every day. And arguably, to a certain extent, there’s different types of training programs designed to support them, to be different, to change, to solve problems. So that’s something for us to think about. But, yes, we as creativity advocates, we want more of it and just shows how much we value it.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, I think this concludes the second listen and learn series. Do you want to do a drum roll for the next letter?

Matthew Worwood:
I would do the drum roll, and you’re going to share the next letter. So do Drumroll.

Cyndi Burnett:
Oh, orange.

Matthew Worwood:
Orange. Octopus.

Cyndi Burnett:
Organized.

Matthew Worwood:
October.

Cyndi Burnett:
Olive.

Matthew Worwood:
Let’s finish it up there, because I’m not organized with any other words.

Cyndi Burnett:
We’re going to finish up with.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, okay. Opportunity. I’ll set you up for an opportunity.

Cyndi Burnett:
Openness.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, be open. I like it. Very good one. My name is Doctor Matthew Worwood, and.

Cyndi Burnett:
My name is Doctor 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.