Dr. Matthew Worwood: Welcome to a new season. We’re digging into creativity where it’s tested most under pressure, inside systems, and in the everyday decisions educators and learners make. Join Cindy and me as we preview the conversations ahead, exploring creativity in sport, creative self-belief, classroom dialogue, and what it might take to build something new from within the system we already have.

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

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

Dr. Matthew Worwood: This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: All with the 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.

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  So let’s begin.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: Hello and welcome to another season of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And this is going to be a special season because we’re hitting a few milestones, aren’t we, Cyndi?

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: We sure are, Matt. We are going to be in our 12th season of the podcast. And this year in March, we will be celebrating five years together. We have a kindergarten podcast. 

Dr. Matthew Worwood:I never even thought about it like that. We do. We’ve gone from preschool to kindergarten. I absolutely love the idea of kind of going through the grades with our podcast.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: Yes. And I think we have learned so much in the last five years. And I’m really looking forward to having some new topics on in season 12.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:So am I. But before we do that, do you know we’ve got one more milestone that we passed last week? Do you know what it was?

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:  No, I don’t.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: So last week, which was one of our Gifted Education Listen and Learn episodes, we hit 250 episodes that we’ve published since we started.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:  Wow. Congratulations. And congratulations to you as well. 

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  All right. So we’re doing something a little bit different, aren’t we, for the opening of season 12, because We’ve been kind of, you know, over the last few years, we’ve got more and more strategic on things that we want to cover on the show. And that’s kind of come from past guests that have introduced topics that we’re like, hmm, I want to learn a little bit more about that. I think a great example was when in season one, Brian Alexander introduced this idea of co-bots and thinking about how we’re going to develop the skills needed to interact and engage with technology that’s going to assist us in the process. And that was before ChatGPT or rather OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. But that concept of co-bots was a topic that we said, okay, let’s continue to explore that. And we brought in Jonathan Nolder to talk a little bit about that, as well as David Cropley as well. So sometimes our kind of ideas for topics that we want to cover on upcoming seasons come from past guests. But of course, they also sometimes come from trends as well. Obvious one is generative AI. But they also sometimes come from us, don’t they, Cindy? It’s like, you know what? I’m into this thing. I want to go and check it out.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:  For me, I see someone and they’ve posted something that really shakes my thinking. And I think, oh, we need to bring this person on and we need to talk about that because that’s something we haven’t talked about. And we have talked about so many topics. And I know for myself, you know, I posted on LinkedIn. And if you don’t follow us both on LinkedIn, please reach out to us and connect with us. We also have a Fueling Creativity in Education podcast group, which we’re hoping to be more active this year. But I posted, is there a topic that we haven’t talked about that you would like to see, you know, you know, us discuss. And for so many, they were bringing up topics that we’ve discussed. And I was able to say, oh yeah, we’ve talked about that. Check out this episode with- So-and-so. And it was just really exciting because I thought, oh, have we talked about that? Yeah, we have talked about that. Have we talked about this? Yes, we have talked about this. So I think we are at the stage of, if you think about our podcast being a kindergartner or just starting out school, like really having a solid foundation to really explore any topic in creativity and education. And now we really want to get down deep. So as we think about that and you think about some of the guests that we’ve lined up for this coming season, who is someone that you’re really excited about and why?

Dr. Matthew Worwood: Well, that’s a really good question. And I have a few different ones. So maybe we can go a little bit of a back and forth like this, almost like a debrief episode, but almost like a preface. like a pre-brief episode. Yeah. So the first one, as you know, my middle son is in an academy soccer team. It’s getting intense. He’s like, 10, 11 years old. And, you know, I want to just premise this and I probably will bring it up in the episode, but I want to say about a year ago, I’m watching this game and it’s, as I said, the environment is a case of, we want to win. We want the kids to be doing the right thing. And you sit there and you’re like, what is the right thing in sports? If this is your position, there’s certain things that you do and there’s certain things that you don’t do. There’s different styles that you need to learn, but you need to be disciplined within that position. So in some ways you think, is there a relationship with creativity, doing something different, doing something original? And occasionally what happens is I see these kids and I feel like it’s the kids that just really enjoy being there. It’s like they’ve got no pressure. And you see a couple of these young kids go up and they’ll try and do a bicycle kick. They’re a defender and they go up and they’re trying to do a bicycle kick. And I sit there and I’m like, you know what? they’re expressing their mini-c creativity they’ve obviously been practicing in their backyard and they want to give it a go on the field and there’s something very courageous that I love about that and I sit there and I’m like where else would you do it but but at the youth field because probably when they’re professionals they may not necessarily be able to do it because the stakes are so high and then on occasion you get someone that does a kind of crazy pass but you look at me like I kind of think they know that they’re not meant to do that pass, but they also recognize that they actually, there is an opportunity for them to do that pass. So they do it.

So this is me building up to the idea of I’ve been thinking about creativity in sports a lot. And believe it or not, it’s not a topic that’s really well covered. But that being said, there is a scholar, Daniel Mement, who is a pioneer researcher in creativity and sport. And he’s known for showing how creative decision making under pressure can be developed through well-designed constraints and play. And I think that is going to address or at least provide an opportunity for me to discuss some of the things that I’ve been thinking about as I go about every week watching my kids and his teammates play soccer. So that’s one episode that I’m super duper excited in exploring.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: Ooh, I think that sounds really interesting, Matt. And I think if we look at sport and we look at a particular domain, so let’s take soccer, and we look at the skills that come with that, it makes me think of Teresa Maboula’s confidential model around creativity, around the domain skill set. So being able to kick and run, and you can tell that I’m not a sports person because I don’t know much about soccer beyond that. And then you’ve got the creativity skills, which is doing something in a unique way and taking risks and being open to a play that maybe you haven’t tried before. And then that motivation piece. So I wonder how that will all play out when we speak with him. So that’s going to be really exciting.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: And just to build on that, you’re making me think that we probably might want to inquire about the 10,000 hour rule as well, because I think that 10,000 hour rule, it It’s an interesting one because everyone thinks, oh, I just need to train, train, train for 10,000 hours. And therefore, I’m going to develop those expertise because we know that research gets watered down. But it’s a certain type of training. It’s a certain type of experience. And I believe even within that research, there’s conversations about burnout as well. So, you know, this might be an opportunity to explore that a little bit more. All right. What about you? What guest is coming on the show that you’re excited about?

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: So we’ve been trying to get Carlos Moreno on the show for the last few months, and I’m really excited that we are kicking off season 12 with Carlos. Carlos is the co-executive director of the Big Picture Learning School Systems, which is a whole series of schools throughout the world, and I believe there are over 150 big picture learning schools. Now, what’s really interesting about this model is it’s unconventional. It’s public education, but it also has this wonderful, creative, self-directed, individualized learning spin to all of it. I’m excited about exploring 

pushing the boundaries of public education, because I don’t think we’ve really talked about that. And I think it’s something that we really need to consider, especially in all of our conversations around do we need an evolution or a revolution? And I think his is evolutionary, but it’s also a bit revolutionary. So I’m excited about exploring that with Carlos.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: I love that topic and the idea of it kind of being a little bit of both between evolution and revolution. And, you know, if you think about last season, we did focus focus a lot on alternative models and we covered charter school we got a little bit into school policy and funding but I think Jimmy Wilson did a really good job at the end kind of looking back at that conversation in particular and saying hey you know what there’s there’s pros and cons to both and you’ve got to be a little bit careful you know because going a little bit more one way cannot actually impact the other way so I think that the idea of kind of thinking about all right

Let’s now revisit the system and let’s say, how do we go and push the boundaries of the system, but while making sure that we’re ticking the boxes that the system is saying we should tick? And as we’ve learned, there are reasons why we have those boxes to tick, right?

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: Exactly. I think it’ll be an interesting conversation, not one we’ve had before. So, all right, let’s hear your next one.

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  Well, Monix, as you know, it’s about bridging the gap. We like bringing in classroom practitioners as well as researchers. And Michek Kowalski, who actually has been referenced on the show a few times, I think even in season one, Ron Begetta was talking a little bit about his work with Michek Kowalski. And, you know, he’s a leading creativity researcher whose work on creative self-beliefs and creative identity helps us understand how people and students can see themselves as creative and why that matters. And I think this idea of looking at creative self-efficacy, creative identity, I think it’s a really important topic right now because I think in some ways it connects to some of the things, even some of the things that you’ve shared and post on LinkedIn, the idea of passion,

motivation, which we connected with Teresa and Marbellae. But this current generation, which sometimes gets a little bit stick of whether or not they have those passions. If they don’t have the passions, it’s not their fault, right? So let’s have a little bit of a conversation about what we can do maybe to ignite some of those passions. And maybe the idea of kind of self-efficacy and creative identity might be one way to do it, at least from a creativity perspective.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: I think that’s interesting because I don’t know if we’ve really talked about creative identity and creative efficacy deliberately. So I think it’s sort of been tacit throughout many of our episodes, but not deliberate. What do you think?

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  Yeah, no, I do. I mean, you know, to your point, it’s not necessarily deliberate. Sometimes we don’t always use certain terms. I mean, you could argue that sometimes when we have conversations about failure, right? And, you know, how failure, we just wrote a chapter on this for our book, but how failure can, you know, or our ego, I was telling a story about how my ego got dented. We all kind of have an ego and that’s kind of how we see ourselves as part of our identities. When our ego is rocked, or impacted, our identity is challenged. We find ourselves reflecting saying, am I as good as I thought I was? Or do I really belong here? So we don’t always use the word creative identity and who knows to what extent we’ll specifically be talking about this. But this idea of self and self-efficacy and our capacity to believe what we can achieve, I think another thing is that it might fall within that growth mindset as well. It’d be interesting to see where we go with that. But to your point, we haven’t had an episode really focus on that and it’s so important for our students.

Yeah. All right. Your second one.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: All right. My second one that I just want to share is with a woman who runs the Constructive Dialogue Institute. Her name is Caroline Mell. And my husband, Andy, who has listened to all the episodes, as you know, he said we should have her on the show because he’s been working with her and he’s found her work really important. And I think having constructive dialogue in the classroom is going to be an essential skill that we’re not talking enough about. And it relates so closely to creativity. We want our students to have constructive dialogue with one another. We want them to be open-minded. We want them to debate and not have conflict.

We want them to listen to ideas and give ideas time. And there’s just so much overlap between having constructive dialogue and creativity. And that’s an area that I don’t think we’ve explored at all. So I’m really excited about bringing her on the show because I want to explore how teachers could embrace this in the classroom.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: When you shared this episode with me, I think in early December, I got so excited. I’m pumped for that, for all the reasons that you’ve just shared. I mean, we’ve got a chapter in our book that’s coming out in the summer around facilitate discussions. Is that what it’s called? Yeah. We called it facilitate.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: Initiate discussions.

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  Initiate discussions. And to that point, right? Like, so the word initiate, we’ve been very strategic on those words that we use. So it’s about initiating discussion in the classroom. And I’ve been very strategic on those words.

I’m someone who enjoys conversation as well. And we know there’s a lot of research about how we go and learn, further our understanding for those conversations. So if we don’t necessarily have the skills to have difficult conversations, how do we really further our empathy towards other people? We speak about design thinking, for example, go and better understand how a situation is impacting another person. That requires questions, but also follow-up questions. And you may find yourself disagreeing with what’s coming back, but you have to kind of really understand it, wrestle with that if you’re in a position to construct knowledge that you can then apply to the design of a real-world solution. So similar in some ways to what we said around creative self-efficacy and creative identity, we’ve had lots of conversations about discussion, questioning, and why it’s important. But to your point, I know I’ve seen it in my classroom that students really, really struggle to engage in dialogue that is, to your point, difficult, difficult topics, difficult conversations. And do you think that’s something, I mean, I understand, do you think we’ve lost it? Like, is it gone? Is it not being taught?

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: I don’t know. That’s a great question. Have we lost it? I think we need to ask our friends on LinkedIn to see if they think we’ve lost our ability to have constructive dialogue. I think It’s very easy. And it’s funny, Matt, I was just putting together some reels for our YouTube page. And if you’re not following us on YouTube and Instagram, so we’re now putting all of these short reels. So if you haven’t listened to an episode, you can go listen to a little clip it of one of our episodes. But someone was just talking about, hold on, let me think of who it was. Tess. Tessa. I remember the name. Oh, look at you, remembering names.

Five years. Tessa Forshall was talking about biases and she said, “It’s very easy for us when we hear something that, and then we hear something different that we believe the first thing that we hear.” And I just thought that was really interesting because I find myself doing that sometimes that I hear something and then I hear something opposing and I’m like, “Wait, that’s not, that’s not truth.” Because whatever the first thing I heard was truth, right?

And so I think we have to be careful of those biases and we have to think about what we might be missing and we need to be open to diverse viewpoints. And I think social media and media in general has polarized us in not just political ways, but in all sorts of ways to, you know, as it accommodates what we want to see, right? So I asked to show it cute pictures of sloths.

And then suddenly I’m seeing all these videos of cute sloths, right? So when we look for something, then we continue to find what we want to see. But how often do we look at, you know, things that go beyond that, particularly with our viewpoints?

Dr. Matthew Worwood:  Yeah. And obviously we won’t go down the social media conversation too much, right? But to your point, those social media algorithms, we know, right? that in the past, sometimes we have been presented, and I think this is really relevant to this, with things that are annoying because things that annoy us and frustrate us quite often get us to engage in the platform. And that’s something that is definitely new for this generation. And they’re having to contend with that because they might not always know that, hey, you’re in essence, you’re being baited right now to go and engage. And it’s using, it’s fueling the motivation to be engaged through anger and hatred. You know, what…

It’s, what’s in my mind right now, and it might be a fun conversation to unpack a little bit more is, you know, all that unstructured play where we engage in conversation. You know, I’m sitting there, do you want to know? Guess what? If I’m thinking, how did I develop difficult conversations as a really young kid, eight or nine? Do you know what it was? What? It was…

fierce debates in math class about whose soccer team was the best team. I mean, we’re talking about, and sometimes whose was the worst, you know, my team was like really down there, but I was always trying to debate the Wimbledon fan, Barry Collins, you know, and try and explain that my team is at least better than Wimbledon and we’d have a back and forth. And so we would actually have to exchange ideas in that banter about why one team is better than the other. And what’s wonderful about that scenario is that technically they’re probably both terrible.

Right. And likewise, when you’re in banter about a team that they’re both, you could argue both teams could be the best. Who’s the best out of Manchester United and Liverpool, for example, that’s a really fascinating conversation because it comes down to, well, how are you evaluating who’s the best? How are you evaluating who’s the worst? And that exchange of dialogue, you build a framework to which you have that conversation. And maybe that’s some of the stuff that we’re not doing at a young age. And we’re probably not doing it in the classroom as well. And maybe that’s some of the reasons why we’re struggling with addressing that polarization that I think is being facilitated by things like social media. Right. I went off on the bandwagon. I’m just so excited about that episode. I really am. I mean, that’s awesome.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: Yes, it’ll be great. Well, Matt, I think it’s about time for us to wrap up, but we have a lot of other exciting interviews as well, but we won’t give it all away just yet. So just to highlight the essence, those were our first four episodes, and we look forward to season 12 and seeing what happens with our little kindergartner here.

Dr. Matthew Worwood: Yeah, I love that kindergarten piece. And to finish off, the reason why we wanted to just kind of go through some of those guests, and this is the first time we’ve done it, is that we want to invite you. If you’ve kind of like got, you know, from these initial conversations Cindy and I have, you could hear these are going to be what’s forming some of the questions that we’re going to have on the show. But if you’ve also got questions or topics that you think that you’d like to bring up with these four folks, please reach out to Cindy and I via questions at fuelingcreativitypodcast.com or on our LinkedIn profiles. We would absolutely love to hear from you. And that means that you, our listeners, get to shape the conversation a little bit as well. So please consider that as you kind of move through the season. And until then, we encourage you to follow us, check out our website so you can see all of our collections, because maybe we have covered a topic that you just missed. And it might be a topic that you’re really excited or passionate about.

So we look forward to working with you on season 12 of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. My name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett: And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Warwood. Our podcast assistant is Anne Fernando and our editor is Sheikh Ahmed.