First Day (Wednesday: July 2, 2008)

LIVING WITH GIFTS AND TALENTS

Joan Freeman

Middlesex University, London, UK

 
Trying to understand children without concern for their personal worlds is like studying fish behaviour without considering the water.  Although the two life forces of the individual and their cultural circumstances are neither separable nor clear, together they influence how each one approaches life and make the vital difference in his or her life-long achievement.  Certainly, all children develop images of themselves through both their genetic dispositions and their experiences, but there are differences for the gifted and talented.  For them, it often means dealing with the special reactions of others to ideas of giftedness and consequently how they are treated.  How does it affect a gifted ten year-old, for example who is listened to as a fount of gifted wisdom at home yet receives constant put-downs in class as a nuisance ‘know-all’?  This presentation looks at what can happen to the gifted and talented throughout life as they change from babies to mature adults.  It examines how pressures, promises and opportunities influence the way individuals approach the world and how that affects the development of their exceptional potential.

 

Prof. Dr. Joan Freeman, PhD, FBPS, has worked in the area of gifts and talents for more than 30 years.  For this, she has been honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Psychological Society. She is the author of 16 books, translated into many languages, and several hundred scientific and popular publications.  Based on her considerable research, she has presented on the development of gifts in most parts of the world.  Joan is Founding President of the European Council for High Ability (ECHA) and Visiting Professor at Middlesex University, London.

 Educating for Creativity

Robert J. Sternberg

School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University, U.S.A.

 

 Educating for creativity can change for the better the way students think. It is therefore alarming that most schools, if anything, discourage such education.  I will first describe some basic principles of educating for creativity.  Then I will describe results of studies on (a) teaching for creativity and (b) assessing for creativity, showing that concrete empirical data support the viability of educating for creativity. Finally, I will discuss general implications for education and society, including the tragedy of cognitively rigid leaders who put the world in peril on a daily basis.

Robert J. Sternberg is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Psychology, and Adjunct Professor of Education at Tufts University, where he directs the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. He is also Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.  Prior to coming to Tufts, he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and Professor of Management at Yale. Sternberg is President of the Eastern Psychological Association, President-Elect of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology, and Past-President of the American Psychological Association. Sternberg has written roughly 1200 articles and books and has won over $20 million in grants and contracts.  He has won roughly two dozen awards. His PhD is from Stanford and he has 9 honorary doctorates.

 

 Future Possibilities for Education and Learning by the Year 2030

Jerome Clayton Glenn

Director, the Millennium Project (www.millennium-project.org)
World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA)

 

 

2030 is 23 years from now.  Looking back over the past 23 years can give a sense of the rapidity and magnitude of the changes we experience today and that are likely to accelerate in the future. How many would have believed that the Republic of Korea by 2007 would successfully compete with the United States in some areas of the transportation, information, and communications industries? Or that its economy would be larger than Russia’s? The factors that made those changes are accelerating. As a result the changes over the next 23 years will be even greater.  Twenty-three years ago what Ministry of Education had the objective of connecting their school children to the Internet? What Ministry of Education had the objective of preparing students to participate in the global knowledge economy?

Imagine two countries back in 1984. Both were about the same in all things except that one declared a national objective of cooperating with international computer networks to connect their educational systems into an international knowledge system in order to improve education for all in their country. Now, 23 years later – today – which country would be in a better position for the emerging global knowledge economy? And which country would have produced more students ready for today’s complexities and opportunities? Today educational policymakers face the same kind of choices: to look far ahead seeking emerging educational opportunities or just make moderate innovations that appear creative.

What might surprise us today about 2030? If we don’t know that something is possible, then we will not try to make it happen. What are some of the educational and learning possibilities by the year 2030? What might we do today to take advantage of these emerging possibilities? Since the implementation of new ideas can turn out differently than expected, it is also wise to ask what could make them turn negatively as well as positively.

To answer these questions, the Millennium Project reviewed futurist thought to design a Real Time Delphi which collected the judgments of 213 experts around the world, selected by the Nodes of the Millennium Project.2

This study assessed 19 possibilities: 1. National programs for improving collective intelligence; 2. Just-in-time knowledge and learning; 3. Individualized education; 4. Use of simulations; 5. Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent people from growing unstable and/or becoming mentally ill; 6. Improved individual nutrition; 7. Genetically increased intelligence; 8. Use of global on-line simulations as a primary social science research tool; 9. Use of public communications to reinforce pursuit of knowledge; 10. Portable artificial intelligence devices; 11. Complete mapping of human synapses to discover how learning occurs and thereby develop strategies for improvement of learning; 12. Means for keeping adult brains healthier for longer periods; 13. Chemistry for brain enhancement; 14. Web 17.0; 15. Integrated life-long learning systems; 16. Programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate; 17. E-Teaching; 18. Smarter than human computers; 19. Artificial microbes enhancing intelligence

These possibilities present a broad array of policy choices and options which can inform the policy-making process. Each possibility was rated by an international panel in terms of its likelihood. What steps should policymakers consider today? To answer this, the respondents were encouraged to provide judgments about factors that could help or hinder the possibilities, and assuming they occurred, to conjecture about consequences that might follow.  The panel’s estimates of the educational situation in 2030, and a distillation of the pattern of both positive and negative features of these possibilities will be presented.

JEROME CLAYTON GLENN is co-founder and director of the Millennium Project, the leading global participatory think tank supported by international organizations, governments, corporations, and NGOs, which produces the internationally recognized State of the Future annual reports. Mr. Glenn has 37 years experience in futures research for government, international organizations, and private industry in science & technology policy, economics, education, defense, space, forecasting methodology, international telecommunications, and decision support systems.Glenn is the author of over 100 future-oriented articles in publications such as the New York Times, Nikkei, ADWEEK, International Tribune, LEADERS, Foresight, Futures, Technological Forecasting, Futures Research Quarterly, and The Futurist. He has authored or co-authored 15 books, including Future Mind: Merging the Mystical and the Technological in the 21st Century (1989 and 1993). His recent studies include Education and Learning 2030 for the Government of Korea, Science and Technology scenarios 2025 for the Office of Science, US Department of Energy, and   State of the Future 2007.

 

 Second Day (Thursday: July 3, 2008)

 True Differentiation Using a Technology Based Application

of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model

Joseph S. Renzulli

Director, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, Connecticut University, USA

“Differentiation” is the contemporary buzzword in curriculum and instruction, but the reality is that most teachers simply do not have the time necessary to do it well!  Remarkable advances in instructional communication technology (ICT) have now made it possible to provide high levels of enrichment services to students who have access to a computer and the Internet.  This presentation will describe a theory based and research supported program plan called the Schoolwide Enrichment Model and an Internet based application that is built on a learning theory that focuses on the development of creative productivity through the application of knowledge rather than the mere acquisition and storage of knowledge.  The program, called the Renzulli Learning System (RLS), goes beyond the popular “worksheets-on-line” or courses on line that, by and large, have been early applications of ICT in most school situations.

 

 The Renzulli Learning System is a comprehensive program that begins by providing a computer-generated profile of each student’s academic strengths, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression.  A search engine then matches Internet resources to the student’s profile from fourteen carefully screened data-bases that are categorized by subject area, grade level, state curricular standards, and degree of complexity.   A management system called the Wizard Project Maker guides students in the application of knowledge to teacher or student selected assignments, independent research studies, or creative projects that individuals or small groups would like to pursue.   Students and teachers can evaluate the quality of students’ products using a rubric called The Student Product Assessment Form.   Students can rate each site visited, conduct a self-assessment of what they have gained from the site, and place resources in their own Total Talent Portfolio for future use.

 Teacher functions allow downloading of hundreds of reproducible creativity and critical thinking activities as well as numerous off-line resources for lesson planning and curricular integration.   Management functions allow teachers to group students by interests and learning styles, place teacher-selected resources in student portfolios for classroom or special project use, and oversee all student activity including where and when the students have been on-line using the RLS.  The system can be used at home and during the summer, and parents can view their own son’s or daughter’s work on the system.  The principal or designated project manager can also examine all activity taking place in a given building or program.

 Prof. Dr. Joseph Renzulli is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut where he also serves as director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented.   In June 2003 of he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.  His work has focused on the development of theories and research related to broadened conceptions of human potential, the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people, and on organizational models and curricular strategies for differentiated learning environments and total school improvement.  A focus of his work has been on applying the pedagogy of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students and using technology to promote high-end learning.

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This session focuses on several made-in-Canada projects in which Creative Problem Solving and mentoring have been employed effectively with at-risk populations: Lost Prizes turned around the lives and increased the productivity of many talented but troubled dropouts; Northern Lights increased the graduation rates of needy Native youth; and Second Chance markedly reduced recidivism among Native inmates. Current mentoring initiatives ­ targeting students at risk for school failure, dropping out, alienation, and gang involvement ­ are also considered.

 

Prof. Dr. Ken McCluskey, Dean and Professor of Education at the University of Winnipeg, has had 25 years experience as a school psychologist, Special educator, and administrator in the public school system. A recipient of the Canadian Council of Exceptional Children's "Joan Kershaw Publications Award"‌ and his institution's Teaching, Research, and Community Service Awards, he has written over 100 professional articles and chapters, and is the author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books, including The Doubtful Gift: Strategies for Educating Gifted Children in the Regular Classroom, Lost Prizes: Talent Development and Problem Solving with At-Risk Populations, and Enriching Teaching and Learning for Talent Development.

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The Science of Creative Thinking

Steve Smith

Department of Psychology, Texas A & M University, USA

Although the concept seems vague and elusive to most people, creativity can be studied scientifically. Creativity encompasses many different cognitive structures, such as conceptual combinations, preinventive forms, and mental sets, and processes, such as analogical transfer, restructuring, abstraction, and remote association. There is no Unitary "creative process;" the science of creative cognition deals with the complex interacting components of creative thinking, as is done in other areas of cognitive experimental science, such as memory, language, or decision-making. Dr. Smith will consider these cognitive elements of the creative process, focusing especially on cross-disciplinary principles of creativity and innovation, and he will address several common paradoxes of creativity.

Dr. Smith will describe experimental studies of creative cognition, many focusing on the question of how creative ideas pop into one's head. His approach has focused on the theory that moments of insight represent escape from initial fixation, and that fixation can be caused by implicit memory processes that are difficult to deliberately overcome. So-called 'incubation effects' can be caused by escape from fixation, when seductive but obstructing approaches initially used are finally forgotten. Dr. Smith will also describe studies that align experimental methods across levels of complexity, ranging from naturalistic settings to controlled laboratory conditions; such alignment permits laboratory studies to make more ecologically valid conclusions.

Steven M. Smith is a Full Professor of Psychology, and a founding Member of the Creative Cognition group at Texas A&M University. He is the author of four scholarly books on creative cognition, and more than seventy articles in cognitive psychology (see

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/stevesmith/

Dr. Smith is the Director of Research for the Institute for Applied Creativity, an interdisciplinary group at Texas A&M University. Dr. Smith has conducted many experimental studies examining aspects of creative thinking, focusing especially on the ways that mental impasses can be caused and how those impasses can be resolved. With his colleagues he defined and developed laboratory methods for examining aspects of the creative process. His interdisciplinary work, which bridges his research on creative cognition to creativity in engineering design, business, and computer science, has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Smith and his colleagues have published numerous research articles on theoretical and applied aspects of creative thinking, and he has given invited addresses on the subject around the world, including England, Spain, and China. His books on creative cognition include Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications (1992), The Creative Cognition Approach (1995), Creativity and the Mind: Discovering the Genius Within (1995), and Creative Thought: An Investigation of Conceptual Structures and Processes (1997). Dr. Smith's applied research in creativity, funded by the National Science Foundation, has dealt with creative conceptual design in engineering, and with information discovery in computer science. His research on the creative design process has examined design fixation, incubation effects in ideation, and alignment of creativity research across levels of complexity and ecological validity.

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 ACTIVE LEARNING AND PASSIVE STUDENTS

Douglas A. Bernstein

Education Advisor, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, UK

This is a talk for faculty and/or graduate teaching assistants who are looking for ways to combat the passivity of students who expect to do no more than sit and listen during class. A variety of classroom active learning methods will be suggested for use in teaching introductory to advanced courses.

Douglas A. Bernstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 27, 1942. He attended public schools there before completing his bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh in 1964.  He received his masters and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Northwestern University in 1966 and 1968, respectively.  From 1968 to 1998, he was on the psychology faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he taught classes ranging from 15 to 750 students, and served both as Associate Department Head and Director of Introductory Psychology. In the early 1970s, he spent three years as a visiting faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, Courtesy Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida, and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Education Advisor to the School of Psychology at Southampton University. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

His research career, which initially focused on the modification of smoking behavior and later on the measurement and treatment of anxiety, was supported for several years by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Dental Research. From 1986-1992, he was a member of the State of Illinois Clinical Psychology Licensing and Disciplinary Committee.

Over the years, his interests have turned increasingly toward the teaching of psychology, and toward efforts to promote excellence in that arena. These efforts began in 1978, when he spoke at the First Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology. He joined its program committee in 1979, and eventually became committee chair.  In 1994, he founded the APS Preconference Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, and in 2000, he helped plan the First Annual Summer National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology. From 1989-1991, he served on the steering committee for the APA National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education and, in 2001, on the advisory panel to the APA Board of Educational Affairs Task Force on Undergraduate Psychology Major Competencies. Most recently, he served for two years as the founding chairman of the Steering Committee for the APS Fund for the Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, and he remains a member of that committee.

His teaching awards include the University of Illinois Psychology Graduate Student Association Teaching Award and the University of Illinois Psi Chi award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, both in 1979, the Illinois Psychology Department’s Mabel Kirkpatrick Hohenboken Teaching Award in 1993, and the APA Distinguished Teaching in Psychology Award in 2002.

He has co-authored textbooks in Introductory Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Criminal Behavior, and Progressive Relaxation Training, and he has co-edited books in Applied, Developmental, and Introductory Psychology. He has also contributed chapters to Teaching introductory psychology: Theory and practice (edited by Robert J. Sternberg, 1997), The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (edited by William Buskist and Stephen Davis, 2002), and (with Sandra Goss Lucas) The compleat academic: A career guide, edited by Henry Roediger, John Darley, & Mark Zanna, 2002). With Sandra Goss Lucas, he wrote Teaching Psychology: A Step by Step Guide.   He occasionally offers workshops on teaching techniques and on textbook-writing for prospective authors. As a hobby, he collects student excuses.
www.douglasbernstein.com

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Recognizing and Nurturing Creativity:

Powerful Tools for Managing Change

Donald J. Treffinger

President, Center for Creative Learning, Inc., in Sarasota, Florida, USA

The contemporary Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model, drawing on more than five decades of theory, research, and practice, has evolved into a powerful, multi-faceted system for enabling individuals and groups (of all ages and in all settings) to think creatively and critically, solve complex problems, and deal effectively with the realities of rapid change. This presentation addresses methods and tools that build on research and provide practical guidance for individuals and groups in education, business, or other organizations.

 

 Prof. Dr. Donald J. Treffinger, President of the Center for Creative Learning, Inc., in Sarasota, Florida, is an internationally known researcher, writer, teacher, and presenter in the area of creativity and Creative Problem Solving, as well as in the area of gifted and talented education. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 books and monographs, including Creative Problem Solving: An Introduction and Creative Approaches to Problem Solving, and more than 300 articles. Dr. Treffinger has served as a member of the faculty of many colleges and universities, including Purdue University, the University of Kansas, and Buffalo State College. He has been the recipient of the National Association for Gifted Children's Distinguished Service Award and the E. Paul Torrance Creativity Award. In 2005, Dr. Treffinger received the Risorgimento Award from Destination ImagiNation, Inc., and the International Creativity Award from the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children. Dr. Treffinger has served as a reviewer for many professional journals, as editor of the Gifted Child Quarterly (1980-84) and as Editor-in-Chief of Parenting for High Potential, NAGC’s quarterly magazine for parents (2000-07).