CESep13

=Everyone can think creatively!= // (part of the Fall 2013 [|Collaborative Explorations: Creative Thinking for All] series) //

A Collaborative Exploration (CE) that explores how to help people—ourselves included—appreciate the idea that everyone can think creatively. >> on hangout for 1 hour each week in September at a time and day to be arranged to suit those who apply. The URL for the first hangout will be provided only to those who apply, which entails making a commitment to attend that 1st session and at least 2 of the other 3 hangouts.
 * //In brief, CEs are an extension of Problem- or Project-Based Learning// and related approaches to education in which participants address a scenario or case in which the problems are not well defined, shaping their own directions of inquiry and developing their skills as investigators and prospective teachers (in the broadest sense of the word). (For more background, read the prospectus.)
 * //If you want to participate, read more.// (Eventually you'll get to the link to the form for applying.)
 * //If you want to know what a CE requires of you//, review the expectations and mechanics.
 * //If you are wondering how to define a meaningful and useful line of inquiry// on the topic above, let us present a scenario for the CE and hope this stimulates you to apply to participate. We will then let CE participants judge for themselves whether their inquiries are relevant.

Imagine a "guidebook" to help you appreciate the idea that everyone can think creatively and to help you help others appreciate that idea? The end-product of this CE are drafts of entries to this guidebook, which might take the form of text, maps, schemas, mp3s, or something else (in one or more entries). These entries should introduce and organize key resources, i.e., key concepts, issues and debates, references to research, quotes or paraphrases from those references, interactive activities and personal habits, people and organizations to take note of, appropriate stories.
 * Scenario**

Some questions that might stimulate your inquiries:
 * How much have well-worn sources from the 80s and 90s been superseded by more recent research and writing; how much do they hold up? (Is it right to criticize a course or a handbook on creativity for using old references? Can we show long-term creative thinking instructors ways to update their teaching?)
 * Could the creative process be thought of less as adding creative practices and more as taking away of the obstacles that have come into place and obscured natural creativity, recognizing and removing creative blocks, restoring capacities for play and fantasy?
 * How much does the creative process need to involve "context," e.g., establishing one's surroundings as a "studio" or "incubator" to make a space where creative behaviors come easier. What is known about how creative spaces, communities and historical periods came together?
 * To the extent that the creative process involves the capacity to manage, seek out, even welcome struggle and failure, how can we feel more comfortable and supported in allowing failures to happen?

//suggested sources or entry-points to be added in due course//

> a) tangible: drafts of entries to a "guidebook" to help the reader appreciate the idea that everyone can think creatively and to help the reader help others appreciate that idea; and > b) experiential: being impressed at how much can be learned with a small commitment of time using the CE structure to motivate and connect participants.
 * Intended outcomes of this inquiry** are of two kinds:

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