Using the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) to enhance instruction and support creative problem solving An Introduction

1. Using the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) to enhance instruction and support creative problem solvingAn Introduction 3rd Annual Watson School of Education AIG Mini-conference March 30, 2011 Edward Caropreso, PhD

2. Synopsis: • NC Standards explicitly identify creativity, critical thinking and problem solving as instructional outcomes. • The Torrance Incubation model (TIM) has been grounded in the theory, research and practice of creative problem solving. • Designed as a framework for teachers to create lesson plans that would develop students’ creative thinking skills while covering content. • TIM can address any content at virtually any developmental level. • Based on the understanding that learning is a process, not an event, and that learning should be designed with more than the classroom in mind. • Effective instruction using TIM will prepare learners to respond flexibly and reflectively to the increasingly complex and rapidly evolving world of the 21st Century!

3. What is the TIM; how does it work? • Major purpose • Design & delivery of “creativity content” • Provides a model for integrating “creativity content” into other disciplines & content areas • TIM can be used separately or in combination with other approaches

4. What is the TIM; how does it work? • Requires understanding the distinction between the creative process of the model & “creativity content” being delivered • Using TIM requires training & developing knowledge, understanding of creativity skills

5. What is the TIM; how does it work? • Three aspects of model use: • TIM features, contents, processes • Creativity content: Skills, behaviors, processes • Content domain integrated with TIM & creativity content.

6. Creativity is not: The domain of a few individuals • Not known to be linked to specific factors or traits • Exclusive of many individuals • Shared by all, varies by many factors • Exclusively “world-altering” • Personal vs Cultural creativity • Importance of distinguishing between these 2 • Need to develop Personal to achieve Cultural

7. Creativity is: • Universal • All people have this capacity, as with intelligence • Continuous • Varies by degree, type, as with intelligence • In Potential (subject to “training”) • Identifiable via types of “performances” • Performance competencies can be developed

8. 2-Factor Model • Novelty: Unique, distinct, “original” responses to environment, experience, circumstances • Usefulness: Serves a purpose; responds to perceived need; solves identified problem/s

9. 4 Factor Model • Fluency: • Frequency of response; actual total number of responses to a stimulus • Flexibility: • Frequency of categories of responses; actual total number of types of responses • Originality: • Statistical infrequency of response for a given individual in a given group at a given time • Elaboration: • Development of responses • Completion of ideas • Integration across ideas • “Marketing” ideas/alternatives

10. The Incubation Model of Teaching:Getting Beyond the Aha!E. P. Torrance & H. T. Safter (1990)

11. TIM: Getting Beyond the Aha!What is the “aha”? • Moments of “insight”“intuition”“revelation” • Moments of “wholeness” or “oneness” • “uniting with everything” • Supra-rational view of creativity • vs exclusively rational interpretation • Non-linear sequence/-ing of creative events

12. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning • 3 Basic Stages • Each stage: Set of Cognitive Strategies • Basic premise: • Must be deliberate activities before, during, & after instruction

13. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning • Deliberate use of specific strategies • Forms a basic delivery system for creativity skills that fully operationalizes how & which skill/s can be deliberately taught, regardless of discipline or content/context of instruction • Metacognitive aspect of TIM • Powerful practice of complex thinking & problem solving

14. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning • Stage 1: Heightening Anticipation • Stage 2: Deepening Expectations • Stage 3: Keeping it Going • Each stage: Designed to promote a particular learning & incubation “function”

15. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning

16. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning

17. The Incubation Model:Information Processing Strategies for Creative Teaching & Learning • Depicted as 3-D model • In practice: Recursive, “spiral” movement • Key to Effectiveness: Flexibility • Encourages Discovery: Learners & Teachers

18. Torrance Incubation Model:Information Processing Model that • Deals with cognitive inputs, outputs • Is interactive, in theory, structure, application • Must willingly, actively engage thinking, doing • Is iterative, recursive rather than linear • Considers the relationship among person, process, product, environment • Considers teaching, learning as interactive • In theory, practice promotes both • Combines rational & supra-rational thinking skills • Intuition plus logic • Is metacognitive, requires processing content+process • Both learner & teacher • Is metaphorical

19. The Incubation Model:Creative Teaching & Learning • Stage 1: Heightening Anticipation (see p.9) • Strategies designed to guide teacher to motivate & engage learners creatively • Create desire to know • Heighten anticipation/expectation • Get attention • Arouse curiosity • Tickle imagination • Give purpose/meaning • Purpose: Engage learners & connect deliberate psychological readiness to pertinent content

20. The Incubation Model:Creative Teaching & Learning • Stage 2: Deepening Expectations (see p.10) • Digging deeper • Looking twice • Listening for smells • Crossing out mistakes • Cutting holes so see through • Cutting corners • Getting in deep water • Getting out of locked doors • Purpose:Sustain, use motivation to encourage deeper exploration; • Requires alternating between anticipatory & participatory strategies

21. The Incubation Model:Creative Teaching & Learning • Stage 2: Deepening Expectations (see p.10) • Strategies to be implemented in combinations, using any/all as needed • Result in behaviors & thinking beyond basics, requiring complex levels of thought & PS • Sometimes/often resulting “discomfort” requiring “tolerance for ambiguity” by all

22. The Incubation Model: Stage 2 • Digging deeper: Beyond the surface; diagnose difficulties; integrate available information; elaborate, diverge • Looking twice: Defer judgment; keep open; search for information; evaluate-reevaluate information • Listening for smells: sense of congruence; use, integrate information from multiple sensory experiences • Crossing out mistakes: Make guesses, check, correct, modify, reexamine, discard, refine, improve

23. The Incubation Model: Stage 2 • Cutting holes so see through: Summarize; simply; direct, focus attention on relevant, promising, specific information • Cutting corners: Avoid, discard irrelevant information; make mental leaps; make decisions • Getting in deep water: Search for unanswered questions; taboo topics; confront the unimaginable; being overwhelmed by complexity; being deeply absorbed in surrounding events • Getting out of locked doors: Solve the unsolvable; open new vistas; go beyond “more & better” of the same solutions

24. The Incubation Model:Creative Teaching & Learning • Stage 3: Keeping it Going (see pp.11-12) • Having a ball • Singing in one’s own key • Building sand castles • Plugging in the sun • Shaking hands with tomorrow • Purpose: Application & transfer of learning • Continues process of participation, alternating with anticipation related to connections & uses of learning • Learner focus on activities intense enough to sustain engagement after “formal lesson” has concluded

25. The Incubation Model: Stage 3 • Having a ball: use humor, laughter, fantasy; attend to having fun uses of the mind • Singing in one’s own key: personalize information; relate personal experience to information; see implications of information for current or future problems, etc • Building sand castles: use information as the basis for imagining, fantasizing, searching for ideal approaches; going beyond the known, familiar • Plugging in the sun: engage in hard work, follow up on information; find & explore resources • Shaking hands with tomorrow: relate to own future; enlarge, enrich, make more accurate images of the future; search for alternative solutions to future problems

26. The Incubation Model of Teaching:3 Additional Issues • Problem-finding • Pervasive impediment: Assuming the problem is known, therefore, focus on finding the solution • Producing Alternatives • At all levels of problem-solving, increased fluency supports the processes; the more alternatives, the greater the probability of creative solution/s • Originality: Acceptance of being “different” • Adequate time • Play with ambiguity/uncertainty • Heightened awareness of importance • Make legitimate

27. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • The Problem • Recognition, awareness of a situation • Defining the problem • Commitment to addressing the problem • Recognizing the essence of the difficulty • Identifying sub-problems (to manage, solve)

28. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Produce, Consider Many Alternatives • Fluency • Amount • Generating many, varied ideas

29. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Be Flexible • Creating variety in content • Producing different categories • Changing “set” to do differently • Perceive from alternative perspectives

30. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Be Original • Break from the obvious • Beyond habitual thought, action • Seek, encourage statistically infrequent responses • Recognized, support the ability to create novel, unusual perspectives

31. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Highlighting the essence • Retaining sense of importance • Discriminate relevant from irrelevant information • Staying focused on essential, relevant • Refining, synthesizing ideas

32. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Elaboration-But Not Excessively • Add details, ideas • Develop a plan • Implement, “sell” the solution

33. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Keep Open • Resistance to premature closure • Resist “tension” to complete tasks in easiest, fastest way/s • Practice with ideas in variety of circumstances w/o time constraints • Need for & use of time

34. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Emotional Awareness • Acknowledge role/significance of affective experience • Recognizing verbal verbal & non-verbal cues • Responding, trusting, using feelings to understand people, situations • Personal insight/s • Adds to, not replaces, rational-cognitive experience/s

35. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Putting Ideas into Context • Meaningful synthesis of ideas & experiences • Creating “bigger” framework for experience • Personalize, make experience individual • Abstract analysis/synthesis: • Part-part relationships • Part-whole relationships • Generalizations across concepts

36. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Combine & Synthesize • Combine types & modes of information, acquisition, processing & retrieval • Combing relatively unrelated elements

37. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Visualize Richly & Colorfully • Alternative perceptions • Using vivid, exciting imagery • Creating colorful, engaging images that appeal to all 5 senses

38. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Enjoy, Use Fantasy • Future possibilities • Varying point-of-view • Feeling comfortable with the “unknown” • Unconstrained by “reality • Imagine, play, consider what does not yet exist

39. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Make It Swing, Make it Ring • Responding to movement & sound • Kinesthetic & auditory experiences: Natural modalities for children (& experienced adults) • Experience via multiple modalities deepens concept learning

40. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Look at it Another Way: Unusual Visual Perspectives • “See” from different visual & psychological perspectives • Ability to “see in different ways” heightens experiences of innovation & inventiveness

41. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Visualize the Inside • Paying attention to the internal dynamic workings of objects, events, individuals, experiences, etc • “Seeing the insides” can lead to new, deeper insights • Seeing “multiple perspectives”

42. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Extending, breaking through Boundaries • Confronting the “what’s given” limitation/bias • Changing the paradigm or system within which a problem resides • Recognizing that new possibilities always exist • Acknowledging the potential for & ambiguity of the “incomplete” idea, object, etc, & continuing problem-solving work

43. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Using & Enjoying Humor • Integrates or synthesizes physiological, psychological & social processes • Accepting/understanding perceptual, conceptual incongruities • Recognizing & responding to unusual, unexpected combinations, surprises, discrepancies

44. The Incubation Model of Teaching:18 Creative Skills • Glimpses of Infinity • Wonder, dream about possibilities • View events as open-ended • Positive focus on the future • Actively engaging one’s self as part of perceived future for ideas to transcend the present • Developing anticipation for multi-possibility future • Create opportunities for open-ended environments

45. TIM: Creativity Skills/Contents • Beyond the “big 4” factors: 14 additional Skills • Highlighting the essence • Elaborate but not excessively • Keeping open (resist premature closure) • Emotional awareness • Putting ideas into context • Combining & synthesizing • Visualize richly, colorfully • Using fantasy • Using movement & sound • Unusual visual perspective/s • Internal visualizations • Extending/breaking through boundaries • Using humor • Getting glimpses of infinity

46. The Incubation Model:How to Create Creative Teaching & Learning • When integrating creativity into content • 2 Types of Objectives • Content topic knowledge & skills • Creativity knowledge & skills • Select only 1-2 creativity skills to teach • Focused practice • Begin by reworking existing, familiar lessons • Concentrate on incorporating creativity skills

47. The Incubation Model:How to Create Creative Teaching & Learning • After selecting the content • Select a creativity skill that either • Compliments or Contrasts the Content • Manage your attitude, expectations • Keep open to possibility • Build, design & implement • Accept “mistakes”- “cross them out” & revise • Be deliberate identifying expectations, outcomes • Share with students so they know what’s expected • Deliberately incorporate 3 elements & both domains of objectives (content & creativity) • Evaluate, revise, modify as needed

48. The Incubation Model:How to Create Creative Teaching & Learning • Two Lessons • Creativity Skill: Look at it Another Way • Social Studies: Constitutional Rights