7.22.2009

Creativity, Wikis, Personality, & the Finish Line

The Classroom

An Easy Way to Increase Creativity - Scientific American

What makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?

One answer is psychological distance. According to the construal level theory (CLT) of psychological distance, anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves falls into the "psychologically distant" category. It's also possible to induce a state of "psychological distance" simply by changing the way we think about a particular problem, such as attempting to take another person's perspective, or by thinking of the question as if it were unreal and unlikely.

For more on creativity see copyblogger's: Do You Have These 11 Traits of Highly Creative People?

Wikis Get Enlisted in Military Experiments - ReadWrite web

In some ways, these rigidly hierarchical organizations are displaying an real willingness to experiment, compared to the civilian businesses declaring themselves enterprise 2.0.

Things That Can't Be Taught - Roger Schank in eLearn Magazine

It's not possible to teach or train individuals to do things that are not in line with their personalities. This matters because much of what we try to teach in school and train in the real world is really an attempt to alter personality.

The New Finish Line for Learning - Cal Wick, Roy Pollock, and Andy Jefferson in ASTD

To reach the new finish line, training professionals must treat training as a process; drive follow-through, transfer, and application; and better engage managers and participants.

2 comments:

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

Kia ora e Donald!

Thanks for this.

In the section 'Things That Can't Be Taught' I visited Roger's site and left a comment, though I have yet to get confirmation that it has been accepted according to his stringent comment requirements. I'll reproduce it here:

While I agree in part with the post statement 'Things That Can't Be Taught', I believe it is not the whole story. Personality is not the only reason why some things are difficult to teach. As well, my feeling is that personality is not the most important factor when it comes to learning difficulties either.

There are many more reasons for such difficulties and it would be inappropriate to attribute all or even most problems associated with this to personality.

While morality and ethics appear to be cornerstones for behaviour, it's the interpretation of those qualities in the context of the environment of those who uphold them that has the most bearing.

Within what may be regarded as a 'criminal organisation', despite the apparent lack of morality or ethics it is often found that these do exist within the organisation and are adhered to - sometimes on pain of death.

Catchya later

Donald Clark said...

While I thought Roger's post was interesting, I'm also not sure if I fully agree with it. Mischel and Peake did several studies and they always came to the same conclusion: some traits may have an impressive stability over a period of time, yet they have very little consistency across situations. Thus we can basically discount personalities when training and train people to deal with situations. It seems that the task-on-hand is more important than personality.

Indeed, some traits have little consistency over time. Thus the person seems to be learning new traits as he or she adapts to new situations.