Matthew Worwood:
Hello and welcome to our final episode in our 2024 listen and learn series. And as a reminder, we put this series together with these episodes that are super duper short, designed to support professional learning for both educators and emerging scholars over the summer months.

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

Matthew Worwood:
And I’m sure if you’ve been listening regularly, you’ll know that we are super duper excited that we now have an emerging scholar in residence, Jimmy Wilson, who’s going to be offering some commentary around this listen and learn series and sharing that on our website, fuelingcreativitypodcast.com dot.

Cyndi Burnett:
And to make things extra fun, at the end of each episode we will share a single letter which is part of a code word for you, our listeners. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to take that word and rearrange it once you have all the letters and then send us that word by the end of August.

Matthew Worwood:
And you’ll send that to questionsuelingcreativitypodcast.com. and not only do we want you to include the code word, but we also want you to share any connections you’ve made during this listen and learn series and how it is maybe informed and you’re planning for the upcoming school year. And we will identify a winner who will receive a special prize from fueling creativity podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood:
I’ve really, really enjoyed this listen and learn series. First of all, I have to say, I totally forgot about the McKinnock article, so it was really fun going back and looking at that. But I’m now really enjoying the fact that during this journey, and I probably provide multiple introductions each episode, but we’ve kind of gone through the field being established in 1950 after a speech by Joy Paul Guilford, and we spoke a little bit about that speech in our first episode. But in essence, we now have a field of creativity emerging. We start to work toward a construct, because as a reminder, we need that construct. We need to kind of have some agreement of what is creativity if we are going to study it or in the situation. When we’ve said, well, when we’re talking about creativity, sometimes we’re talking about the creative person. Other times we’re talking about the creative products.

Matthew Worwood:
Other times we’re talking about the creative process. Process. We did Alex Osborne and creative problem solving and design thinking and things like that. And then, of course, there’s also the creative environment. But our last episode, episode five, we spoke about Epaul Torrance, who I’d referenced, is someone very special to you in your work and connections that you’ve made in your books. And now we’re really focused. We’ve kind of like, to a certain extent, gone off on a little bit of a branch, because we should acknowledge at this time, within this field of creativity, there are different kind of areas of research. So we are very much focused now in the research that’s focused on creativity in education.

Matthew Worwood:
And as we referenced in the previous episode, can creativity be taught? And how might we teach creativity? And you’re going to share with us our final classical piece of literature from this listen and learn series.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, yes, Matt, as you remember from our last episode around EPaul Torrence talking about can we teach creativity? I did mention that some of the Osborne Parnes creative problem solving process could be taught and identified with fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. So just to give you a little bit of background, so Alex Osborne, who we talked about in one of our earlier classic episodes, we talked about his work around the development of creative problem solving, and he teamed up with a man also from Buffalo, Sid Parns. And Sid and Osborne worked together to develop the creative problem solving process, which they started teaching here in Buffalo, New York, where I’m from. And in Buffalo, they started the Creative Problem Solving Institute, which is the oldest conference. And creativity. And in all of that, in the process of all that, in 1972, which was the same time that other article came out by torrent saying, can we teach creativity? Parent and Noller started the creative studies project at Buffalo State, because what they wanted to do is they wanted to see if creative problem solving could be taught, and would it impact different areas. So would it impact their creativity? Would it impact their academics? Would it impact their life? What would they find? And this creative studies project came out over four journal articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior. So this is something I found really interesting.

Cyndi Burnett:
We’ll talk about part one, they said in the university review, and I quote, we have a new society and a new world. What we need is some new ideas. In short, we need to think. Now, Matt, this came out in 1968. Could you hear that being said in 2024?

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, 100%. And I think, you know, without going off on a tangent, I’m going to come back to the article, but I think what’s really important and something that I’ve identified throughout this listen and learn series and you had mentioned it, I think, with Joy Paul Guilford, when he was making reference to these new thinking machines or information machines that were emerging. You know, we as a society are always having to respond and adapt to challenges. I remember President Obama’s, one of his state of the unions address. He said, this is our nation’s Sputnik momentous. So we are constantly having to respond to challenges. Covid, for example, the coming of generative AI and the reason why I think all of these references keep being made is it’s our creativity is what allows us to respond to these situations, to invent new things, going back to our joy. Paul Guilford our ability to invent new things, as well as our ability to solve problems that come about from those new things that we have invented.

Matthew Worwood:
So for me, I think it’s great, another connection, but I’m kind of getting used to it now. And I think in 50 years time when people are listening to our podcast, indeed they’re going to be saying the same thing.

Cyndi Burnett:
So the first part of their research study, the Creative Studies project, is they wanted to look at all the past research that has been done, and they found things like extended effort in idea production resulted in a greater proportion of good ideas among the later ideas produced, which is something that we just talked about in Torrence’s article. They looked at groups producing ideas on a creative problem solving tasks produce more good quality ideas when adhering to the deferring judgment principle, which came out of the McKinnon study, that deferring judgment openness piece. So in this creative studies project, what they wanted to look at was a four semester sequence where they tested creative application of academic subject matter, non academic achievement in areas calling for creative performance, certain personality factors related to creativity, and selected tests of mental ability. So they had 350 students apply and 150 were placed in an experimental group, and then the other 150 were in a control group. Now, what’s really exciting when I read this again, because it’s been a while since I’ve read these articles, is that JP Guilford, Epaul Torrance and Don McKinnon, who we just did those three classic articles on, they were all on the board for this research. So that was getting set up. That was part one of the study. Part two were the results of this two year program.

Cyndi Burnett:
And these courses showed significant differences over comparable controls and ability to cope with real life situational tests, including not only the production of new ideas, but also around their evaluation and development, which I thought was really, really interesting because it wasn’t just about creative thinking. But it was about the evaluation as well, because we know that with creativity, it’s not just about coming up with ideas, it’s about evaluating those ideas in affirmative ways. It also showed large gains in their own productive creative behavior. So they were doing more creative things. So then they had the creative curriculum, and they showcased this. And I have matt right here. I don’t have the COVID to it, but I do have the actual curriculum they used in front of me, which is called the guide to creative action book. And I wish I still had the COVID but this has all of the information in it, and if we have time, we’ll go through an exercise.

Cyndi Burnett:
And finally, their findings and conclusions of the creative studies project showed that 90% of the students checked the top two categories for the probability of applying what they learned in the program into their future lives and for the extent to which this program would prove valuable when compared with their college courses. So 90% of checked those two as applying what they learned and proving to be valuable. And they wrote, and I love this, the person who fails to use his potential may become psychologically unhealthy or mentally ill, and the creative person and the psychologically healthy person may be one and the same thing. And we see that so much in the work that we talked about with James Kaufmande when he did that episode with us on his book around the healthy person and the creative person and the similarities between the two. So that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to point that quote out.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I mean, this is incredible. And what I would say to educators listening and, you know, maybe there’s some educators that are kind of just joining us on the podcast, is that when we’re talking about this recognition that there are steps, strategies, a process, actions, whatever you want to call it, but a method to which you start from one place with the intention, the goal, to come up with something new and valuable, which is a creative outcome, and for it to fit the social context, solving the problem that you’re trying to solve. We can talk about design thinking. We can talk about methods around instructional design. We can talk about the scientific process. You know, you’re talking about the capacity to evaluate the outcome, right? There are ways to which we go about validating the outcome. I think what’s important here is that within things like creative problem solving, and some of the steps that have been identified is that these are strategies that can be applied to multiple domains. This can assist us in being creative no matter where what it is that we’re doing.

Matthew Worwood:
And I recognize there’s sometimes a little bit of a debate around domain specificity and domain general. Maybe we’ll come to that in our listen to learn series in the winter. But this is why you and I have this podcast, right? Is to try and basically promote ways to help students be more creative in the classroom. Because this classical literature is one of many studies that have demonstrated the fact that we can do this and we can do this successfully. And to your point, if we can learn to take this skill and begin applying it in other aspects of our life, we can continue to go on being creative in our future as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love it, Matt. So I think we should wrap up with one of the activities from the original curriculum. What do you think?

Matthew Worwood:
I think we should. But before we do, I want to point out one point. I’m very jealous of you right now because let’s go over this. You had an original version of Alex Osborne’s book, right? Then you had the monkey from one of the torrents tests, and now you’ve just pulled out this book. Totally jealous, totally unfair. I think your location of Buffalo is probably assisting you a little bit, but I’m going to let it go. But I have noted it and I think I’m going take some time to fight. Go on eBay this weekend, see if I can find some of these really cool artifacts from the film.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, make you a little bit more jealous right now, Matt, because I also, and this is not going to come out till the eighties and nineties. I will show it to you. I have the original poster of the Torrance manifesto for creativity and children. And it’s signed. Yes, by Paul Torrance.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, now I’m really jealous. I’m going on eBay. As soon as we finish this episode, I’m going to go on eBay. I’m going to try and come up with some better things, cooler things. All right, let’s do one of these activities from this ancient book, and hopefully you spill a coffee over it.

Cyndi Burnett:
Thank you. We’re going to do an activity from the guide to creative action. Matt, are you ready? It’s provide a listing of odd or impossible ideas on how to improve something. It is suggested that this and the next two exercises be done in subgroups. So an impossible idea on how to change something. What is an impossible idea on how to change something?

Matthew Worwood:
You want to go and sleep on the fireplace while the fire is lit to keep warm. Wow, that was impressive.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right?

Matthew Worwood:
I’m about to go camping, Matt, that.

Cyndi Burnett:
Was a great, great example of something impossible and how to improve something. So what could we do with that? How could we modify that to make it work?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, we have to probably find something that isn’t going to catch fire and maybe go on top of it. And probably also, I mean, engineering isn’t my strong point, but make sure that it doesn’t get too hot. Somehow. We need to get rid of the heat. Maybe we can get NASA involved. I mean, they’ve made things that have gone through, you know, orbit, I mean, not orbit, come back into reentry.

Cyndi Burnett:
That sounds like a really interesting idea. And we’d love to hear from you how you would improve Matt’s idea on sleeping on a fireplace. To help improve your sleep.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, help, help improve the sleep and keep warm. And as I said, I’m about to go camping and I think over the fire today, I might send you some, some ideas as well, Cindy. But I think this, I love the fact that we’ve set it up. And I’ll tell you what, why don’t you, if you can, as a reminder, this is the end of our episode. We’re about to give you our final letter. And if you’ve got a solution to this, maybe you just share the final code word and instead of making a connection to your, to the upcoming school year, you tell us a solution for this. I think that’s a really cool activity that you set us up with, Cindy. So thank you.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right, let’s give him the final letter.

Matthew Worwood:
The final letter is e for Edward.

Cyndi Burnett:
Exceptional egg, excellent egg.

Matthew Worwood:
But.

Cyndi Burnett:
That’S it.

Matthew Worwood:
Energy. Energy. Some of our best guests about amazing energy.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes.

Matthew Worwood:
Let’s end it here. And what we want to let you know is that next week, Cindy will be helping me introduce my film that I published about six months ago, this project called Teacher Roundtables. And what’s great about that, I think in the context, is it’s a lot. It’s a conversation about us talking about the pandemic, but with a group of teachers. But as a reminder, it’s less about the pandemic and more about kind of celebrating the creativity that came about from that. And then after that film, which we are just going to, obviously share the audio of, we will be launching season nine of the fuelling creativity podcast and, of course, welcome us back to the new academic year. So I really do hope that you’ve had a great summer. You’ve been able to disconnect.

Matthew Worwood:
We still got a couple of weeks. But I do know, based on teachers in my network, that they’re starting to get excited to get back in that classroom and they’re starting to get their mind around that. So we wish you all the best and, you know, maybe go through and check some of our episodes out thinking about how you might be creative for the upcoming year, because you’ve still got a couple of weeks to plan for that.

Cyndi Burnett:
And don’t forget to send us your code word@questionsuelingcreativitypodcast.com. dot. Enjoy the rest of your summer. I’m Doctor Cindy Burnett, and my name.

Matthew Worwood:
Is Doctor Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett :
This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.