Creativity for 21st Century Skills Creativity for 21st Century Skills How to Embed Creativity into the Curriculum Jane Piirto Ashland University, Ohio, USA SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-94-6091-461-4 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-462-1 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-463-8 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands www.sensepublishers.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2011 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. DEDICATION To Steven, Denise, and Danielle (of course) v CONTENTS Preface..................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements............................................................................................... xiii Author Biography................................................................................................. xvii 1. Creativity for 21st Century Skills ......................................................................... 1 2. Five Core Attitudes............................................................................................ 13 3. The Seven I’s: Inspiration.................................................................................. 43 4. The Six Other I’s ............................................................................................... 89 5. General Practices for the Creative Process ...................................................... 117 6. Working Creatively Within an Institution ....................................................... 143 Appendix A: The Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development.................................... 157 Appendix B: Focus Questions for Classes Using this Book ................................ 165 Notes .................................................................................................................... 169 References............................................................................................................ 177 Index .................................................................................................................... 187 vii PREFACE I’ve been teaching since 1964, when I was a young mother and graduate assistant in the English department, while getting my first master’s degree. My take on creativity enhancement comes from a many-factored background that few who write in the education and psychology area have. I have been a teacher, an education and English professor, a school and college administrator for all levels, from pre-K through doctoral dissertations and I’m also a published and award-winning poet and novelist. That artist/education/ professor background has led me to some experiences and conclusions about the creative process that may be a little different from those you usually read about in books like this, and which have in turn led me to writing this book.1 In 1977, I was working on my first book-length scholarly tome, my dissertation, and the placement office called up and asked me whether I wanted a part-time job in the education of the gifted. I jumped at the chance to make some money, as my university doctoral fellowship had run out. For my interview, I went to the library and read up about gifted children. During the preparation for the interview, I looked at the federal categories of giftedness. These were (1) superior cognitive ability, (2) specific academic ability, (3) visual and performing arts ability, (4) psychomotor ability, and (5) creative thinking ability. Now this experience is where the dissonance that precipitated this book began. How are people “gifted” in “creative thinking,” I asked myself? I understood about very smart people, people who were better at one school subject than another, people who were gifted at visual arts, theater, music, and dance, and people who were good at various individual sports, but creative thinking? I asked myself, “Aren’t smart people creative? Aren’t people good at academic subjects creative? Aren’t visual and performing artists creative? Aren’t athletes creative? Why is there a separate category for creativity? Aren’t all children creative, unless they’ve been abused or something?” Hold that thought. The Dissonance Between My Creative Life and My Paying Job For extra money, while getting my Ph.D., I had applied and was accepted by the Ohio Arts Council to be a teaching artist as a Poet in the Schools in the National Endowment for the Arts “Artist in the Schools” program. My dual life as an artist and as an education scholar had begun, as I published my first creativity article, and my first article submitted to a scholarly journal, in the Gifted Child Quarterly, on incubation in the creative process, and later presented my first creativity study at a national conference, a survey of my fellow writers in the Artist in the Schools program about their lives and their creative processes. This was soon after I began my career in the education of the gifted and talented. ix PREFACE Over the next thirteen years I was a county program administrator and coordinator in Ohio and Michigan, and the principal of New York City’s Hunter College Elementary School, the oldest U. S. school for gifted children. I published scholarly articles and conducted small studies, all the while being active in writing and sub- mitting literary work as well. This dual life, as both an artist and a teacher of teachers has given me a different view of creativity than that of most of the people who are experts in the psychology of creativity. I had an earlier master’s degree in English, and another in guidance and counseling, but I was making my living in the K-12 schools as an administrator. The field of the education of the gifted and talented has one of its focuses on creativity, on teaching for creativity, and on researching creativity. There is a Creativity division in the National Association for Gifted Children organization, and the special interest group for the American Educational Research Association is named Research on the Gifted, Creative, and Talented. After I began working in rural Ohio as one of the first coordinators of programs for the gifted in Ohio, I got myself trained in many of the current (and still ongoing—not much has changed since the 1970s) creativity training programs – Creative Problem-Solving, Future Problem-Solving, Odyssey of the Mind, Lateral Thinking. I began to think about my own creative process. I learned firsthand from California’s Mary Meeker about the Structure of the Intellect2, and became one of her first advanced trainers, going around the country giving workshops on Guilford‘s theory of intellect, and on divergent production—fluency, flexibility, and elaboration, synthesis, and the like.3 Then I would go home and write my literary works, send them out for possible publication, and receive many rejections and enough acceptances to keep me going. My own creative life contained little of what I was learning about how to be creative in those workshops I attended, no matter how fun and how informative they were (and are)— little of brainstorming, SCAMPERing, generating of alternative solutions, creative thinking hats, or creative problem-solving, as described by the flow chart handouts I had been given.4 The creative process as described in educational and industrial psychology, was (and still is) fixed upon strategies I never used when I was doing my own creative work (nor did anyone else I knew—artists or educators). In fact, the creative process that business and education used was based on models that were designed for industry, and not for creators in other domains. Several companies have as their purpose to consult with industry to help business people be more creative. However, these strategies gained wide acceptance and practice in the educational world. One technique widely taught is the Creative Problem Solving process, which is workshopped, taught, and researched at the Creative Education Foundation, which was founded in the early 1950s by advertising manager Alex Osborn, who published his famous book, Applied Imagination, in 1953, and who was a co-founder of the Institute after the book became a best-seller and he was able to leave advertising to focus on creativity education.5 The Institute has conducted research on creativity testing and has published books by well-known educators and thinkers in creativity, giftedness, and spirituality. Their workshops are widely attended and they teach x PREFACE creativity at schools all over the world. Thus. a model intended for business was intentionally and successfully modified for schools. I believe one cannot teach people to be creative without having experienced the creative process in a transformational way. What I’m going to teach you in this book, I’ve taught to many adults, mostly educators, in several states and on several continents. I believe teachers who say “I am not creative,” who haven’t even tried to be creative, who are reluctant and shy about their own creative personalities, selves, and practices, will not be able