 |
|||||||
|
HGSE professor and former Project Zero co-director David Perkins discusses his latest book, The Eureka Effect, an exploration of what Perkins terms "breakthrough thinking."
Q: Can you explain "breakthrough thinking"? A: Breakthrough thinking basically concerns creativity—the kind of creativity that involves thinking outside the box. It's thinking that leads to fundamental discovery or invention in science, in historical scholarship, politics, business, or really any context at all. Familiar examples would be the formulation of the theory of relativity, the discovery of perspective drawing, the invention of incandescent lighting, the development of democracy in Athens. In The Eureka Effect, I argue that fundamental discovery or invention involves distinctive patterns of thinking very different from ordinary problem solving. Q: Do you think that creativity is something that comes naturally to people, or does one have to cultivate it? A: Some of it comes naturally, because over and over again, historical figures have emerged from backgrounds that do not seem very advantageous, yet with dedicated effort have achieved fundamental discovery and invention. Thomas Edison and Vincent van Gogh are good examples. But it's an art and a craft that can certainly be cultivated. The same is true for traditional problem-solving. That, too, is an art and craft that can be cultivated even though some of it comes naturally. So it's neither one nor the other. Its sort of like running: anyone can do it, but you can learn to do it better. Q: What inspired you to focus on "breakthrough thinking"? A: I've been thinking and writing about creativity for many years. In the early 1970s, creativity emerged for me as a major area of interest—one of several that I pursued—and I began to do systematic research on the nature of creativity and the psychological factors underlying creativity. The Eureka Effect is the latest expression of that interest. Q: How do you try to incorporate creative, or "breakthrough thinking" styles into your work with Project Zero? A: One thing that colleagues and I do a lot of in Project Zero work is theory-building. And that's one context where breakthrough thinking is very useful. Because in theory-building, you have to ask, 'All right, is the conception we have so far sound? What might challenge it, what might a different perception be? How can we test this? If we were wildly wrong in our current conception, what would we shift to? What's the next best bet?' Questions like that. That doesn't mean that we are always saying to each other, "Let's do some breakthrough thinking." It's much more informal than that, just part of the conversational style in many cases. Q: Would reading books like The Eureka Effect be one way to cultivate "breakthrough thinking?" A: I would hope the book would help. The book is not particularly addressed to teachers and students more than any other population, but it is designed to be educative. It includes activities, puzzles, and tips. It also includes quite a bit of research to support the view of creativity advanced in the book. So it's not a "how to do it" book, but it definitely has a side devoted to cultivating practice. Q: Do you think that young children are capable of practicing "breakthrough thinking"? A: I think fairly young kids are perfectly capable of breakthrough thinking because they can do analogous things. They can enjoy jokes, they can make up jokes, they can make metaphors and analogies and so forth. By the time youngsters are well into school, they are certainly capable of that sort of thing. I don't see any developmental barriers to the early cultivation of this sort of mental flexibility. And, basically, what we are talking about here if one doesn't name it with a buzzword is a kind of mental flexibility. Q: Your research has spanned at least three continents. Have you found that creativity is treated differently in other cultures? A: In settings where I've worked, matters of both creativity and logical reasoning have always been viewed with enthusiasm. But I'm sure that this reflects the kinds of partnerships my colleagues and I naturally enter into. There are certainly communities and groups where certain kinds of innovation are not at all welcome. Paradoxically, other kinds of innovation may be entirely welcome in those same groups. A group that, for instance, is not at all eager for political innovation may be eager for technical innovation, and may be doing plenty of breakthrough thinking on that front, or the other way around. One shouldn't think of creativity as a uniform trait that people possess and project on all aspects of their lives. Very often, people have creative fronts where they have the energy, the enthusiasm, the knack to pursue ideas and activities flexibly. And then they have conservative fronts, even resistant fronts, where they're not at all eager to do much set-breaking, or much questioning. I think we need to view that as a natural part of the human condition, not as an oddity. Q: Could you describe some of your latest research? A: Some colleagues and I have been examining organizational life for several years, studying how organizations learn what it is to be an intelligent organization. Organizational structures and cultures can be more or less supportive of innovation. So there's an example of where this thread lives on. Besides that, I continue to think about and write about individual creativity. Q: What might you offer as a take-home message to guide one's thinking about creativity? A: The Eureka Effect argues that innovative thinking has its own distinctive logic, with four basic branches—roving through many possibilities as in brainstorming, detecting subtle clues that reflect anomalies, reframing problems, and decentering from current fixations. All that's based on an information processing analysis of what's involved. But attitudes are also tremendously important. It's worth thinking of creativity as a disposition, a kind of attitudinal flashlight that we shine toward many things, but not everything. If you look at the lives of creative people, find them questioning much, but they can be ordinary too. They probably buy bread the same way anybody else buys bread. For More Information
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
|
||||||
