creativity: inventing the next you
TRANSCRIPT
James S. Catterall
Professor Emeritus
University of California at Los Angeles
Director
Centers for Research on Creativity
Los Angeles / London U.K.
WWW.CROC-LAB.ORG
CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS LITHUANIA OCTOBER 23, 2012
CREATIVITY: INVENTING THE NEXT YOU
(SUBJECT TO CHANGE – even during this presentation)
LAUNCHING A
RESEARCH CENTER
TO INVESTIGATE
CREATIVITY
PURSUING A CLEAR
SOCIAL DISCOURSE
• What is creativity?
• Can we measure it?
• Can we teach it?
• Do we want it?
• Is it the arts that matter?
• Do employers want more
creativity in employees?
Definitions almost always include:
Things that are new.
Things that have value.
Does that settle things?
Leonardo da Vinci
Marconi
Einstein
Martha Graham
Steve Jobs
What about creativity
among the 99.99 percent?
What does Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
have to say about this!
“Creativity is some sort of mental activity, an insight that occurs
inside the heads of some special people … If by creativity we mean
an action that is new and valuable …, then we cannot simply accept a person’s
own account as the criterion for its existence. There is no way to
know whether a thought is new except with reference to some
standards, and there is no way to tell whether it is valuable
until it passes social evaluation.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Creativity: Flow And The Psychology Of Discovery
And Invention. New York: Harper Perennial (1996).
Csikszentmihalyi:
Focus on Extraordinary Creativity
(It’s advisable to have your own domain peers.)
Professor Catterall’s Domain Peers
Ordinary Creativity
for Learning and Problem Solving
What’s NEW to you?
What’s VALUABLE to you?
Associative and Divergent Thinking
Keys to connection-making and hatching new ideas
Purposeful connecting
Spontaneous connecting
Dreams
A B
CONNECTING AND COGNITION: KNOWING AND COMING TO KNOW
Connectswith
. newcontent
. analogies. metaphors
ExistingCognitiveStructure
NewInformation
NewCognitiveStructure
(Altered, RicherUnderstandings)
Repeat
Brains act and brains obstruct activity –
creative thought involves both
Charles Limb, M.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Imaging studies of
jazz improvization.
Prefrontal cortex – allowing and disallowing neural transmissions
Limbic system – evaluates or relaxes evaluation
Can creativity be taught?
Means, Motive, and Opportunity
Means:
materials
tools
Opportunity:
space
time
Motive:
Joy
Goal
accomplishment
Can we measure
Can Creative Abilities and Motivation be Measured?
Yes – but how well and what’s needed?
The Torrance Test of Creative
Thinking
CRoC’s
The Next Generation Creativity Survey
• ,
• Spe
Connect to C Partnership principles
BRIDGING CRoC AND CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP WORK
Inquisitive
Persistent
Imaginative
Disciplined
Collaborative
NovelIdeas
Fluencywith Ideas
Empowered
Empathic
Quality ofIdeas
PositivePersonal,
Social,Economic
Contributions
To ID formation
Creativity at the Center of Identity Formation
Open topossibilities
GeneratingPossibilities
Resisting Closure- lifelong process
It's a socialprocess – weneed mirrors
reciprocal caring
Inquisitive
Persistent
Imaginative
Disciplined
Collaborative
NovelIdeas
Fluencywith Ideas
Empowered
Empathic
Quality ofIdeas
IdentityBuilding –CreatingOneself
Personal,Social,
Aesthetic,Economic,Attributes
To teachers and ID
Teachers as creative partners
Open topossibilities
GeneratingPossibilities
Resisting Closure- lifelong process
It's a socialprocess – weneed mirrors
reciprocal caring
Inquisitive
Persistent
Imaginative
Disciplined
Collaborative
NovelIdeas
Fluencywith Ideas
Empowered
Empathic
Quality ofIdeas
IdentityBuilding –CreatingOneself
Personal,Social,
Aesthetic,Economic,Attributes
Encouragenovelty
Supportthe
search Don'tcategorize
The timeto makeup your
mindabout
someoneis NEVER.
Placestudents in
collaborativesituations
Banishmockery/
put-downs Assumeall are in
thisprocess
Assumeyou are
too.
Reveal tostudentsthat youare too.
Ques?
Questions
I could go on and on!
But perhaps there are questions?
Blah, blah, blah!
Wrapping Up
Questions or comments?
• Where might research on creativity head?
• Some topics I could not squeeze into this 40 minutes.
Following up:
[email protected] (all addresses for JC go to one place)
Centers for Research on Creativity
www.croc-lab.org
Prof. Anne Bamford, Ph.D. University of the Arts, London U.K.
Prof. Mark Runco, Ph.D University of Georgia
Prof. John Poggio, Ph.D. University of Kansas (invited Affiliate Scholar)
Kim G. Zanti, CRoC Assistant Director