Academic Writing is tough

Torrance, Thomas, Robinson (1994: 379) claimed:

Academic writing is difficult. It requires a complex combination of generating ideas, selecting the ideas that are appropriate to the writing task, translating these into text and polishing the text to produce a presentable document.  In doing this the writer has to attend not only to his or her own thoughts, but also to the content and style conventions of the community for whom the piece is being written.

Torrance, M., Thomas, G. V. and Robinson, E. J. (1994). The writing strategies of graduate research students in the Social Sciences. Higher Education, 27(3), 379.

Dreaming of my PhD topic

Been struggling for months to synthesize an appropriate scope and topic for my research. The following 3 quotes on Creativity mysteriously compelled me to articulate them somewhere, somehow.

Loemker (2006) posits

It has often been claimed that genuine creativity is largely if not entirely a matter of inspiration- the sudden, involuntary, and inexplicable outpouring of innovative ideas and action. In many expressions of this thesis, including Plato's, the sacred instance- a spirit or muse- while in other versions it is the unconscious mind. The antithesis to such inspirationist theses is the rationalist doctrine that all creativity is ultimately reducible to a form of calculation or more or less deliberate problem-solving.

Aristotle "What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."

Amabile et al (1996) "Creativity is a starting point for innovation, the first is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the second."(http://www.grouppartnerswiki.net/index.php?title=Innovation)


SO... the overarching question is....
What does Creativity - Teacher & Learning - Teachers' Self-Perception - efficacy of students' learning all have in common?

Possible Topic 1 (1st July 2010):

The focus of study would be to examine teachers' self perception of their creativity based on their own pedagogical skills, knowledge and experience. My proposed intervention would be to study the effects of training and implementing a curriculum design model based on Torrance Incubation Model (Torrance & Safter, 1990) that fosters creative thinking skills and thereafter study how the experience of the subjects (teachers) reflect on their own creative learning process and their ability to infuse more creative teaching skills in their classrooms.

Possible Topic 2 (1st July 2010):

 To study the qualitative affordances of how teachers can apply creative thinking skills in the following three domains that are adapted from Swartz & Parks (1994, p.9) approaches to teaching thinking :

a. Teaching of Creative Thinking: Direct instruction in creative thinking in non-specific subject discipline context. Eg. Interdisciplinary Project Work                          

b. Teaching for Creative Thinking: Use of creative teaching methods (i.e. pedagogy) which promote creative thinking in curriculum contexts.

c.  Infusion Approach: Direct instruction in thinking in subject-specific content. Eg. Science.

                              

References:
Amabile, T. M., R. Conti, H. Coon, J. Lazenby, and M. Herron. "Assessing the Work Environment for Creativity." Academy of Management Journal 39, no. 5 (October 1996): 1154-1184.

Loemker, L.E. (2006). Encyclopedia of Philosophy. USA: Macmillan Reference.


Swartz, R.. & Parks, S. (1994). Infusing the teaching of critical and creative thinking into content instruction. CA: Critical Thinking Press & Software.

Components of Creativity

As we were mulling through some of Torrance's thoughts, we came across a similar idea. This adaptation of a diagram provides a fairly clear explanation of the components of creativity.

SCAMPER-ing about Nature

The papaya on my lunch plate was too good to for my gastronomic consumption.

Nature is an instant source of inspiration. Reminds me how SCAMPER can be a fun tool for brainstorming.

S -

Substitute/Simplify

Substitute part of your product/process for something else.

C - Combine

Combine two or more parts of your problem to achieve a different product/process or to enhance synergy.

A - Adapt

Which parts of the product/process could be adapted to remove the problem?

M - Modify/distort

Change part or all of the current situation, or to distort it in an unusual way to come up with new ways of working.

P - Put to other Purposes

Reframe the current solution/ product/process to other purposes, and think of what to be reused from somewhere else in order to solve existing own problem.

E - Eliminate

Remove various parts of the product/process/problem and consider how it will now unction in a new situation.

R - Reverse/Rearrange

Re-work the problem/product/process in reverse or in a different order or angle or perspectives.

i bring...

TOday, i bring passion, exploration and perseverance to everything i do.

Time to move on JOhnny.... go johnny go go go...

...

today I bring a smile, eagerness and determination to make "it" work...
how about you>?

The wonders of Post-Its!

Post-its are great innovation tools- used most widely in Brainstorming sessions, the following are examples of how the uses may be extended.

Tara Bisset, my dear Canadian friend (who came to Singapore on my Birthday-25 Feb 08) modelled for department's webpage on Why Study Creativity- http://www.buffalostate.edu/creativity/whycreativity.xml

A proud 'client' I facilitated in Central Park, New York on 13 July 08 was led through self-inquiry with a convergent tool- Card Sort. 

She had to decide if she were to stay on in Manhattan to work in real estate or focuss on completing grad school or to go into her pasion as a full time dancer or to run her own business, or joining the Peace Corps for as an entreprenurial idea for helping people in different countries, or to go to Virginia to dance for a modern dance company, or moving back home to Buffalo.  Quite a lot of difficult options indeed. Yet, the use of Card Sort as an evaluative tool worked wonders! For a well 'facilitated' session, it earned me a good US$50 to take bus back to Buffalo. :)

Or my overnight Brainstorming session in the Bath at 3am that helped reworked my Vision paper the next morning- a comical scene of freaking my Italian friend Luciano at 6 in the morning when he saw how i conquered the bathroom.

Or something as simple as a bring-about reminder to boost memory http://health.howstuffworks.com/10-ways-to-improve-memory.htm?j=18136605&e=yeojohn75@hotmail.com&l=753884_HTML&u=212486333&mid=26979&jb=0

Or simply a no-frills yet massive Artwork with delightful touches up close and and personal. An art exhibit in Cathay (Nov 08)