CREATIVE

THINKING

Key words: creativity, openness, curiosity,

playfulness, seeing, thinking, knowledge,

creative consumer

Pirkko Siklander

Adjunct Professor, University Researcher

My windows for creativity

LUO (V) UUS

My windows for creativity

ACADEMIC

As a researcher: Playful learning, teaching and learning

environments; creative collaboration

Projects: CoCreat, Hurmos, MAKE

As a supervisor of theses: Thought-bounces as a collaborative

interaction feature for co-creation of new ideas

Thangaperumal, Pavithiran

As a teacher: Pedagogical modells, Courses: Play, games and

playfulness in teaching and learning, Creative collaboration,

Creative collaboration in media education

Work shops: Playful Lapland

INFORMAL

As a mother of four, two of them

visual artists

As a professional culinarist

”creative cooking”, kitchen

designer As a creative participant

in a family business

As a photographer

Living abroad, traveling

ORIENTATION

1 Introduction to the

topic and activation of

prior knowledge

2 Goal setting

MAIN CONTENT

What is creativity?

How creativity can be

enhanced?

Individual creative

competence

Collaborative

educational context

Creative consumer: how to

make benefit from the

education?

Triggers for creativity

ELABORATION

Creative consumer

(education)

ORIENTATION

1 Introduction to

the topic and

activation of

prior knowledge

2 Goal setting

Understanding creativity as a competence, which can be learned

In studies

Business

In working life

In life

Aim is to explore creativity from a cognitive standpoint, and relate

its meaning to education and business.

”--- childhood play is the origin of adult problem-solving and creative thoughts---” (Banaji & Burn, 2007/2010)

PLAYFULNESS & CREATIVITY?

Bernard Shaw: ”We don’t stop playing because we grow

old, we grow old because we stop playing.” Creativity

decreases with age UNLESS individual is intentionally

creative.

Many famous scientists and artists are remarkably playful

(Fleming, Feynman, Mozart, Picasso): play with ideas,

break the rules, play with physics, play with coloured balls)

(Bateson, Patrick)

Cognitive playfulness (Dunn, 2004)

Drawings: Einari Hyvönen, Photos: Pirkko Siklander

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

… primarily a mental process with

emotional, social and physical

features, which leads to tangible or

intangible outcome, which is original,

ethical, desired, and novel, at least to

creators. (cf. Kampylis et al., 2009)

Which has social value (Ellenmayer, 1993)

We do not focus on how creative people are, but

rather how people are creative in the context, which

affords possibilities to advance their creative potential

(Glâveanu, 2013).

Every person has CREATIVE POTENTIAL, which should be nurtured.

… book finds creativity in each and every moment of our EVERYDAY LIVES.

We are creative when we move around in the streets, dance tango, fool

around with our self-images while shopping for clothes, or resist pre-

given recipes while cooking dinners. We are being creative even in our

bedrooms where we perform the difficult tasks of falling asleep or waking

up through arrays of sleep inducers and alarm clocks, not to speak of the

time we spend in the very state of sleep. All our actions at night—ranging

from what we later call nightmares--or dreams—are arenas of creativity

even if we may barely remember what we have done.

Lene Tanggaard (2014). Fooling Around: Creating Learning Pathways

(also, Andiliou & Murphy, 2010; Tanggaard, 2011)

CREATIVITY IS NOT?

It is not same as being an artist. Artists are often creative, but not every artist.

Is not same as being intelligent, although intelligence may indicate knowledge and

thinking skills.

Is not same as innovation. Creativity means coming up with new ideas, and innovation

refers to changing the ways things are done. Innovations may follow after a creative

process. Innovations are responses for problems.

Creativity is not only individual property, instead it is a collaborative process (McWilliam,

2009; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008; Tanggaard, 2011).

Collaborative activities in problem-solving: our purpose is together achieve something,

but we do not know how (Lindquist, 1989)

Creativity can be fun, but not necessary!

Individual creative

competence

Collaborative

educational context

Triggers for

creativity

Creative consumer:

how to make benefit

from the education?

HOW CREATIVITY CAN BE ENHANCED?

CREATIVITY

NEW

EXPERIENCES

OPENNESS

KNOWLEDGE

CURIOSITY

PERCEIVING

SEEING

THINKING SKILLS

(cognitive)

TRIGGERS

POSITIVE

EMOTIONS

CONSCIOUS

EXPECTATIONS

As a personal feature, the most evident is

openness for predicting and indicating divergent

thinking and creativity.

Openness to experiences and new knowledge is

characterized by flexible and inclusive cognition.

Openness is associated with curiosity.

Openness as a personal feature is adaptable, that

is, individuals can consciously practice and learn

openness and increase their creative competences.

HOW CREATIVITY CAN BE ENHANCED?

Individual creative competence: OPENNESS

Individuals high in openness compared to low in openness

PERCEIVING AND SEEING

They see more, seeing is different

and it is conscious

They can perceive and see what is

unseen. They want to see also

hidden meanings, they gather

data by seeing. By seeing they

associate facts, phenomena,

episodes or features, which

usually are not associated, and

probe something new.

Expectations direct seeing, open and creative individuals

want to see more than expected.

Seeing provides different seeing experiences, seeing is

cognitive, not just an act done by eyes, it comprises also

understanding and learning..

Learnable eyes

Individuals high in openness

compared to low in openness

PERCEIVING AND SEEING: how to improve?

Living and studying abroad

Participating in new experiences

Going beyond one’s limits

Being active in participating and thinking

KNOWLEDGE AND THINKING SKILLS

Creativity is basically thinking, and thinking

needs resources.

Knowledge base

Thinking: factual, procedural, divergent,

analytical, reflective, declarative, logical

reasoning, playful and imaginary, and

associative thinking

HOW CREATIVITY CAN BE ENHANCED?

Individual creative competence Decision-

making,

predicting

Taking risks,

crossing

boundaries,

breaking rules

HOW CREATIVITY CAN BE ENHANCED? Collaborative educational context

1) Emotionally safe athmosphere and low power relations; failure-acceptance (Eteläpelto & Lahti, 2008)

2) Emphasis on grades and competition as an external motivation can hinder creativity.

3) Resources: knowledge, hands-on tools

4) Creative and student-centred methods

Discovery learning, problem-solving (Pitri, 2013)

- Open problem ”what if?” Problem definition is challenging than solving it (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008)

- Investigation

- Planning

- Commitment

- Imagination

- Flexibility

- collaboration

HOW CREATIVITY-and playfulness CAN BE SUPPORTED?

Free up time for engaging curiosity and looking for surprices

Avoid time-wasting distractions, such as aimlessly watching television

Finding spaces and places that enhance reflective thoughts and creativity

Cultivate humour and playfulness: reciprocal encouragement can result greated creativity; social signals that are associated with positive moods

Rely on generating novel combinations of thoughts

Diminish boundaries and hierarchies, and create a emotionally safe athmosphere

Allow failures and see them as learning opportunities

Break away from established actions, patterns of thoughts, and behavior, and combine them differently. Find new relations between thoughts and connect the seemingly unconnected

Play fulfills a probing role: Look for adaptable ideas and strategies from play, particularly for problems. Move away from what might look like the solutionand get somewhere that is better.

Open-ended creative problem-solving (Milbrand & Milbrand, 2011)

Creative consumer: how to make benefit from the education?

Creative consumers are end-users, who invent a product or service for their own use, and then start business.

Examples of user innovations: Gary Fisher Mountain Bikes and Marc Gregoire Tefal

End users: “frustrated” users, face a problem or

have a personal need in their day-to-day or

everyday activities. They develop a solution or a

prototype that addresses their needs, and share

it openly before starting for-profit business

- Windsurfing, skateboarding, snowboarding

Hamdi-Kidar & Vellera, 2018

Professional users: use a product and identify

for need for it in their professional life, and

develop own solutions to improve it (previous

professional experience)

HOW INTEREST FOR creative thinking DEVELOPES?

Triggered cognitively! Instrinsic motivation (curiosity, personal interest, positive reactions to the task, positive challeng

Catalyst, trigger, stimulus,

teaser, activator, promt,

cause, spark

Phase 1

Triggered situational

interest

Phase 2

Maintained situational

interest

Phase 3

Emerging individual

interest

Phase 4

Well-developed

Individual interest

Short-term changes in affective and cognitive processing.

What is the trigger? How and why do you perceive it?

Personal relevance

Hidi & Renninger, 2006

Psychological state of interest, focused attention and persistence.

Which factors keep you triggered?

Meaningfulness

Psychological state of intrest as well as for enduring and re-engagement

Positive feelings, knowledge and value, generation of curiosity

Which factors make interest more intrinsic?

Triggers for creativity: business

Hamdi-Kidar & Vellera, 2018

In business is more likely to occur when the rational search for profit and economic benefit does not dominate.

Instrinsic motivations

Dissatisfaction

Passion or challenge, self-fulfilment, desire

Personal belief in the success of the project

The role of social relations

Financial benefits

Triggers for creativity: education

Berbera, 2018; Catala, Theune, Gijlers, & Heylen, 2017; Siklander et al., 2017

Story-telling (digital), children

Films (architecture)

Weak signals in visual form for future thinking

Problems, challenges

Another person equipped with knowledge / expert

Collaboration, peer feedback

New knowledge

Digital technologies

Novelty

ELABORATION

Aim was to explore creativity from a cognitive

standpoint, and relate its meaning to education and

business.

Where is your future as a creative consumer,

professional users?

What is your next step to enhance your creativity?

READ & WATCH & LISTEN

Andiliou, A. & Murphy, P. K. (2010). Examining variations among researchers' and teachers' conceptualizations of creativity:

a review and synthesis of contemporary research. Educational Research Review, 5(3). 201–219.

Antinori, A., Carter, O. L., & Smillie, L- D. (2017). Seeing it both ways: Openness to experience and binocular rivalry

suppression. Journal of Research in Personality 68, 15–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2017.03.005

Bateson. P. (2015). Playfulness and creativity. Current Biology, 25,12–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.009

Donnellon, A., Oll9isa, S., & Middleton, K. W. (2014). Constructing entrepreneurial identity in entrepreneurship

Education. The International Journal of Management Education, 12, 490–499. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2014.05.004

Eteläpelto, A. & Lahti, J. (2008). The resources and obstacles of creative collaboration in a long-term learning community.

Thinking Skills and Creativity 3(3), 226–240.

Glâveanu, V. P. (2013).

Hamdi-Kidar, L. & Vellera, C. (2018). Triggers entrepreneurship among creative consumers. Journal of Business Research, 92,

465–473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.018

Hidi, S & Renninger, A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111–127.

Jaquith, D.B. (2011). When is creativity? Intrinsic motivation and autonomy in children’s artmaking. Art Education, 64(1), 14–

19. DOI: 10.1080/00043125.2011.11519106

READ & WATCH & LISTEN

Milbrand, M. & Milbrand, M. (2011). Creativity: What are we talking about? Art Education, 64(1), 8–13.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2011.11519105

Pitri, E. (2013). Skills and dispositions for creative problem solving during artmaking process. Art Education, 66(2), 41–46.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2013.11519215

Plucker Beghetto & Dow (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potential, pitfalls, and future

directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 83–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3902_1

Renninger, K. A. & Bachrach, J. (2015) Studying triggers for interest and engagement using observational methods. Educational

Psychologist, 50(1), 58–69. DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2014.999920

Robinson, K. (2007). Do schools kill creativity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY (Use critical eyes glasses, when

watching this. Tanggaard has posed counter arguments in her book, 2017)

Siklander, P. Kangas, M., Ruhalahti, S., & Korva. S. (2017). Exploring triggers for arousing interest in the online learning. In L.

Gómez Chova, A. López Martínez, I. Candel Torres (Eds.) INTED2017 Proceedings (pp. 9081–9089). 11th International Technology,

Education and Development Conference, March 6th-8th, 2017 — Valencia, Spain.

READ & WATCH & LISTEN

Tanggaard, L. (2011). Stories about creative teaching and productive learning. European Journal of Teacher Education, 34(2), 219 –

232, DOI:10.1080/02619768.2011.558078

Tanggaard, L. (2014). Fooling Around: Creating Learning Pathways. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Retrieved from

http://pc124152.oulu.fi:8080/login?url=

Tanggaard, L. (2017). Rethink creativity. The Learning Teacher Network. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13-1aWPZTYc

Zimmermann, J. & Neyer, F. J. (2013). Do we become a different person when hitting the road? Personality development of

sojourners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(3), 515–530. DOI: 10.1037/a0033019