Learning Metaphors

Learning is a highly complex process about which we know very little. But one thing we know for sure is that people learn in different ways. How can we have a sense of the way our students learn -- just by listening to what they say? A very practical approach is to take note of the metaphors in their language.

What is a Metaphor?

In the innovative and mind-expanding book Metaphors We Live By, linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson say:

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. [Note 1]

We like this definition for a number of reasons. First, it recognises that metaphor is about capturing the essential nature of an experience. For instance, when a student of ours described his situation as "It's like I'm banging my head against a brick wall." the sense of the repetitive, painful and self-defeating nature of his experience was instantly apparent. Second, the definition acknowledges that metaphor is an active process which is at the very heart of understanding ourselves, others and the world about us. Third, metaphor need not be limited to verbal expressions. For us, a metaphor can include any expression or thing that is symbolic for a person, be that nonverbal behaviour, self-produced art, an item in the environment, or an imaginative representation. In other words, whatever a person says, sees, hears, feels or does, as well as what they imagine, can be used to produce, comprehend and reason through metaphor.
Metaphor is not an occasional foray into the world of figurative language, but the fundamental basis for everyday cognition. Lakoff and Johnson state:

In all aspects of life, ... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor. [Note 2]

Andrew Ortony has identified three characteristics of metaphors that account for their utility: vividness, compactness and expressibility. [Note 3] In short, metaphors carry a great deal of abstract and intangible information in a concise and memorable package.
In addition there is a fourth property, and it is the one which most impacts the way students learn. Because metaphors describe one experience in terms of another, they specify and constrain our ways of thinking about the original experience. This influences the meaning and importance we attach to the original experience, the way it fits with other experiences, and the actions we take as a result.

Clean Language

There is a very simple way to discover your student's metaphors for learning -- just ask them:

And when you're learning, that's learning like what?

Whatever answer they give can be further developed by asking:

And is there anything else about that 'X'?
And what kind of 'X' is that 'X'?

[Where X' is the metaphorical or symbolic part of the answer to the original question.]
These 'Clean' Language questions are taken from a method of exploring a person's metaphors devised by David Grove, and are fully explained in our book MetaphorsinMind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling. [Note 4]
In the 1980s, psychotherapist David Grove realised that many of his clients naturally described their symptoms and outcomes in metaphor. He discovered that when he enquired about these metaphors using the client's exact words, their perception of their problems began to change. This led him to create Clean Language, a method of asking simple questions of clients' metaphors which neither contaminate nor distort them.

Metaphors for Learning

Using the above clean questions, we elicited a metaphor for learning from ten adult students:

1. Planting flowers -- A seed is planted in my mind which I nurture with water and sun in the faith that it will sprout and grow.
2. Playing cards -- I divide things into four categories and look for patterns across the suits until the logic and meaning emerges and I know which card to play.
3. Savings account -- I invest the time to accumulate data and information until there is enough interest that I can roll it over into the next idea.
4. Switching on a light bulb -- It's not until the light switches on that I have an insight or an 'ah ha'.
5. Eating -- You need to take in the basic meat and potatoes before you get to the mouth-watering dessert.
6. Being a detective -- It's all about uncovering the facts, looking for clues and asking the right questions until the whole mystery makes sense.
7. Peeling an onion -- I peel off a layer which reveals the next layer to be peeled off. Each time something teIls me I'm get closer to the core of the matter.
8. A quest -- I'm searching for that illusive something and every step I take brings me closer to what I need to know, but I never get there ... it's a continuous journey.
9. Sculpting -- You start with the raw material and shape it into a form that's pleasing to the eye.
10. Wrestling -- I struggle with the ideas until they're pinned down and I've captured them.

These metaphors reveal the diversity of student's symbolic representations for how they learn. They also suggest some interesting contrasts. For example the 'savings account' student steadily accumulates knowledge, whereas no learning will appear to be happening for the 'light bulb' student until the light is switched on. The 'playing cards' student presumably wants all the cards dealt so they can start looking for patterns, but giving the 'detective' student all the relevant information in advance will probably take the fun out of their investigation. The student on a 'quest' needs to discover new things at each step of their journey, while the 'planting flowers' student will want to stay with and continually tend the seed of an idea.
Although we obtained the metaphors for learning through asking Clean Language questions, students are speaking in metaphor all the time. Research shows that everyday conversation makes use of at least four metaphors per minute. [Note 5] Below are examples of metaphorical expressions which are 'hidden' or 'embedded' in language. Can you match the above ten students to the following problems with learning?

a. I've lost my way.
b. I can't digest all this information.
c. There's not enough in the bank.
d. It's got me beat.
e. Just when I think I understand, it all gets shuffled around.
f. I can't make anything out of this.
g. It makes me want to weep.
h. I'm clueless.
i. I'm wandering around in the dark.
j. We can't learn in these conditions.

It's easy to find the correspondence, isn't it? [Note 6] Why? For two reasons: first, we generally use common and well understood experiences as the metaphorical basis for complex and abstract information; and second, there is a consistency and logic to the metaphors each of us uses.
You can see that if you want to teach in a way that corresponds to the metaphors of a group of students, you will need a highly flexible approach.

Using Multiple Metaphors

One way to appeal to a wide range of learning styles is to make sure that you use a variety of metaphors. These should have as diverse a structure as possible. For instance, in addition to saying to the class "Can you figure this out?" and leaving it at that, you might also offer a few other metaphorical alternatives, such as:

Who can solve this?
See what you make of this.
What conclusions do you draw?
Who feels they can work this out?
Tell me when you get somewhere.
What can you construct out of this?
Take your time and see what emerges.
Tell me when you've come up with an answer.
Play around with the ideas and see where you get to.
Chew over the information until you've digested the ideas .
Spend some time considering this and it will all become clear.
You'll need to dig below the surface to get the nub of the issue.

In conclusion...

Metaphors embody and define the intangible and abstract, but this process inevitably constrains perceptions and actions to those which make sense within the logic of the metaphor. Metaphors are therefore both descriptive and prescriptive. As students become aware of their own metaphors for learning they can recognise how these limit or liberate them. In this way they can learn from their own learning process!
It also pays to know your own preferred metaphors because they have such an influence on the way you teach. Once you are familiar with your preferences you can begin to stretch yourself by employing new metaphors. For some students your new metaphors will say the same thing in a different way -- but other students will need to engage in a different class of mindbody processing. In addition to teaching the subject matter you will be training your students to process information via a variety of metaphors. The result will be an enhanced ability to think more creatively.


Notes:
1. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p 5.
2. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p.158.
3. Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought (Second edition), p. 622.
4. James Lawley and Penny Tompkins, Metaphors in Mind.
5. Susan R Robinson, Birkbeck College, University of London, 11 November 2000.
6. We pair them: a-8, b-5, c-3, d-10, e-2, f-9, g-7, h-6, i-4, j-1.

(article by  James Lawley and Penny Tompkins, pulished in The Clean Collection)

Preparing for Evalt Work Meeting in Spain

From 6 to 10 of May 2013, the Evalt team will meet in Spain, region of Guadalajara-Castilla La Mancha, for the 5th work meeting. During this period the participants will attend in Guadalajara the Provincial Seminar about women and employment, in Molina de Aragon the workshop on theatre and dancing held by the Portuguese association Contempla Trilhos (coordinator of the project) and in Tartanedo the workshop on creative writing held by Fepamuc-Guadalajara (host of the meeting).

To prepare for the travel, here some shots of the beautiful places.

 Guadalajara - The Municipality Hall

Guadalajara

 Molina de Aragon

 Molina de Aragon - The Castle

 Tartanedo

 

Tartanedo

Obviously we cannot miss Madrid, the capital, where we will land and from we will fly off.

Madrid - Plaza Mayor

The Hunt for the Creative Individual

Creativity can quite simply be defined as the capacity to come up with new ideas to serve a purpose. Creativity is thus one of the most important sources of renewal. Creativity contributes to innovation and improvements in working life, commerce and industry.

No wonder employers want creative employees in areas where it is essential to come up with proposals for new products and services, and new ways of doing things.

The creative personality

Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has conducted a study to develop a personality profile for creative people: Which personality traits characterise creative people?

The study was conducted with 481 people with different backgrounds. The segment consists of various groups of more or less creative people.

The first group of creative people consists of 69 artists working as actors or musicians in a well-known symphony orchestra or are members of an artist's organisation with admission requirements.

The second group of creative people consists of 48 students of marketing.

The remaining participants in the study are managers, lecturers and students in programmes that are less associated with creativity than marketing.

The creativity researcher mapped the participants' personality traits and tested their creative abilities and skills through various types of tasks.

Seven creativity characteristics

In his study Martinsen identifies seven paramount personality traits that characterise creative people:

1. Associative orientation: Imaginative, playful, have a wealth of ideas, ability to be committed, sliding transitions between fact and fiction.
2. Need for originality: Resists rules and conventions. Have a rebellious attitude due to a need to do things no one else does.
3. Motivation: Have a need to perform, goal-oriented, innovative attitude, stamina to tackle difficult issues.
4. Ambition: Have a need to be influential, attract attention and recognition.
5. Flexibility: Have the ability to see different aspects of issues and come up with optional solutions.
6. Low emotional stability: Have a tendency to experience negative emotions, greater fluctuations in moods and emotional state, failing self-confidence.
7. Low sociability: Have a tendency not to be very considerate, are obstinate and find faults and flaws in ideas and people.

Among the seven personality traits, associative orientation and flexibility are the factors that to the greatest extent lead to creative thinking.

"Associative orientation is linked to ingenuity. Flexibility is linked to insight," says the professor. The other five characteristics describe emotional inclinations and motivational factors that influence creativity or spark an interest in creativity.

"The seven personality traits influence creative performance through inter-action," Martinsen points out.

Less sociable

The study shows that the artists who participated scored much higher on associative orientation than the other participants. They have a substantial need for originality and are not particularly stable emotionally.

The personality profile of the marketing students was quite similar to the artist profile and also differs from the other participants in the study. The artists in the study also scored lower values for ambition than the others and are not particularly sociable either.

"An employer would be wise to conduct a position analysis to weigh the requirements for the ability to cooperate against the need for creativity," Martinsen believes. He also emphasises that creative people may need help to complete their projects.

"Creative people are not always equally practical and performance-oriented, which is the reverse side of the "creativity medal.

Journal Reference:

Øyvind L. Martinsen. The Creative Personality: A Synthesis and Development of the Creative Person Profile. Creativity Research Journal, 2011; 23 (3): 185 DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2011.595656

Source: ScienceDaily

Link Between Creativity and Mental Illness

People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, there being a particularly salient connection between writing and schizophrenia. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet, whose large-scale Swedish registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.

Last year, the team showed that artists and scientists were more common amongst families where bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is present, compared to the population at large. They subsequently expanded their study to many more psychiatric diagnoses -- such as schizoaffective disorder, depression, anxiety syndrome, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, autism, ADHD, anorexia nervosa and suicide -- and to include people in outpatient care rather than exclusively hospital patients.

The present study tracked almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives, identified down to second-cousin level. Since all were matched with healthy controls, the study incorporated much of the Swedish population from the most recent decades. All data was anonymized and cannot be linked to any individuals.

The results confirmed those of their previous study, that certain mental illness -- bipolar disorder -- is more prevalent in the entire group of people with artistic or scientific professions, such as dancers, researchers, photographers and authors. Authors also specifically were more common among most of the other psychiatric diseases (including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome and substance abuse) and were almost 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

Further, the researchers observed that creative professions were more common in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa and, to some extent, autism. According to Simon Kyaga, Consultant in psychiatry and Doctoral Student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the results give cause to reconsider approaches to mental illness.

"If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient's illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment," he says. "In that case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost. In psychiatry and medicine generally there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavour to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid."

The study was financed with grants from the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Psychiatry Foundation, the Bror Gadelius Foundation, the Stockholm Centre for Psychiatric Research and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.

Journal Reference:

Simon Kyaga, Mikael Landén, Marcus Boman, Christina M. Hultman, Niklas Långström, Paul Lichtenstein. Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2012.

Source: ScienceDaily.com 

"Drama & Sailing" in Rome

The sunny weather of October second week has been the perfect climate for the third workshop of the Evalt project. The location, Lake of Bracciano, has been kissed by a bright and warm sun that facilitated all the outdoor activities of the transnational team of the project.

In Rome from 3 to 7 of October 2012, after 2 days of cultural exchange the group moved to Trevignano for the methodological practice of the workshop delivered by Tecnopras. The topic was Drama & Sailing.

The workshop combined the two activities in a continuuous base on the same educational metaphors, firstly developed by the Drama session (in the morning) and implemented afterwards by the Sailing session (in the afternoon). With the project management of Cristina Miliacca (psychologist, trainer, Tecnopras project coordinator), the training activities were delivered by Sabrina Lilli (educator, theatre director, actress), as regards Drama, and Stefano Bertoldi (trainer, sociologist, skipper), for what concerns Sailing.

Clicking HERE it is possible to download the educational materials of the workshop from Evalt website.

The initial briefing of the workshop

Dramatization of sailing metaphors

Dramatization of sailing metaphors

Sailing session

Preparing for the meeting in Rome, 3-7 October 2012

Giovanni Paolo Pannini "Capriccio panoramico di Roma con il Colosseo,l'Arco di Costantino e il Tempio di Castore e Polluce"

Canaletto "Veduta di Piazza Navona, Roma"

William Turner "Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino"

  Ettore Roesler Franz "Ponte rotto"

Meeting in Siauliai, June 2012

The third meeting of Evalt project has been held in Siauliai from 6 to 10 of June 2012. The agenda foresaw moments of discussion - in order to monitor what has been accomplished until now and to agree the next actions to take - and two workshop on expressive arts (decoupage and painting) and crafts (making soaps, bread, etc.) as tools for education of disadvantaged adults.

 The group at the opening moment of the meeting

The workshop on expressive arts: in blue jersey, the trainer

Liuda Radzeviciene (in red) and Lina Miliuniene (in black) of the Lithuanian team, coordinator of the meeting

Moments of the workshop

 Moments of the workshop

Developing the Innovative Mind

From 20 to 23 September 2012, in Coronado, CA (San Diego), Marriott Coronado Island, the 2012 EdTA Annual Conference will take place. The Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) is a national nonprofit organization (with approximately 90,000 student and professional members) whose mission is shaping lives through theatre education.

The 4Cs of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication are the cornerstone 21st century skills that every college- and career-ready student needs to possess. A professional theatre educator has the "job" to cultivate and model these lifelong traits. To do so, he/she must be innovative, in the classroom and on the stage. In the 2012 EdTA Conference it will be explored the broad challenges that today’s theatre teacher educator must meet in order to succeed in our ever-changing world.

 

Conference 2012 will feature:

• Opening keynote speaker, Ben Cameron, known for his dynamic and compelling presentations on the value of the arts.

• Presentation of findings from the first national landscape study in more than twenty years of theatre teachers and school administrators on the state of theatre education, conducted by EdTA and Utah State University.

• Overview of the Next Generation Arts Standards Project.

• Practical workshops and educational opportunities to augment educator's skills for the classroom.

• Opportunities to network and exchange ideas with other educators. 

• Inspiration from the newest class of EdTA Hall of Fame inductees.

 

To see what else the conference has to offer or to find out more about the host city, explore the link: http://schooltheatre.org/events/edta-conference/

 

Which key to educational success?

New research carried out by Newcastle University challenges the idea that raising aspirations is the key to improving the education of children from low-income families. Liz Todd, Professor of Educational Inclusion at Newcastle University, led a multi-disciplinary team that reviewed projects designed to raise aspirations and change attitudes as part of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded study. 

The project looked at whether the issue of low educational attainment by children from poorer backgrounds can be solved by schemes that aim to change aspirations and attitudes. 

The review found that while some interventions showed some change in attitudes and had an impact on educational attainment, there was no evidence that one led to the other.Importantly, the review found that low-income families already have aspirations for their children to go on to higher education but often other barriers can get in the way of them realising these ambitions. Liz Todd also found that teachers, policy makers and other education professionals underestimate the ambitions of young people and the aspirations that families have for their children.

Professor Todd said: “For more than 10 years national and local policy has focused attention on raising aspirations. But there is no evidence that if you want to impact on the attainment of lower-income pupils that changing attitudes and aspirations is the way to go. There is an urgent need to change direction.” She added: “It’s not that aspirations aren’t important. It’s not about turning them on but keeping them on track. It’s highly unlikely that any child starts school wanting to be unemployed.”

The research identified a number of programmes where there are strong indicators of success. It found that the most effective way of helping children from low-income households to achieve their ambitions is engaging parents in their children’s learning and in their own learning and in providing a range of support for children such as mentoring. Parents need to understand how the education system works and what choices are available for their children and, critically, how they can work with schools to help their children reach their full potential. It also stated that we need to develop approaches that don’t blame families and children for the effects of poverty on their education.

Professor Todd said: “If our education system is to give children and young people the best chance of achieving their goals, it is essential that they and their parents are offered different kinds of support when needed and not simply encouraged to have higher aspirations.We know that most young people value their education and want it to continue in order to get a good job when they leave school. The barrier for many is realising their ambitions."

Source: Phys.org

Metaskills: bringing learnt skills to life

What about Skills?

Skills are specific things we know how to do, like how to make origami, how to weave, how to paint, and so on. They are generally things you learn by doing, rather than by reading about in abstract. Sure, you can gain knowledge about them by reading general theory, but you have to actually get your hands dirty to get any level of mastery at all. The more skills you have, the more intelligent you become: the subconscious mind is always searching for patterns and analogies, and the more skills you have, the more sources there are for the subconscious mind to find these things. Thus, proficiency in one skill lends itself to solving unexpected problems, sometimes even without our being explicitly aware of it.

Metaskills are abstract skills which have to do with other skills. For example, an autodidact is a person who has the metaskill of being able to self-teach him or herself new skills without an outside teacher. A teacher is a person who has the metatalent to teach skills to others; here I speak of someone who is a teacher of a wide variety of things, not necessarily a teacher who focuses on one single topic. Teaching one single topic, like calculus, is a skill, but the ability to learn an arbitrary skill and then teach it to others, that is a meta-skill. Generalization is a metaskill where you look at a wide variety of skills and figure out the common underlying patterns. Specialization is one where you can take a skill and focus it more precisely, to get a new skill which is a special case of the broader original skill.

Skills Training and Metaskills Training

Skills training involves performing a skill over and over. As you perform a skill, your subconscious mind constantly tries to figure out how it can help you. At first, it doesn’t know how to help you at all, and you have to consciously think about every littlest detail. In time, the subconscious takes over more and more of the workload, allowing you to perform the skill with less and less conscious attention. This is sometimes referred to as muscle memory; you can do the skill without even thinking about it. To get to this point, you have to perform the skill quite a bit. Each time, it comes a little easier. Once your subconscious has completely taken over the performance of the skill, it shifts toward finding ways to optimize and improve the skill, and that’s how you evolve from a mere expert into a master.

Training a metaskill is the same. Just because a skill is meta, doesn’t make it any different from any other skill. The difference is that we don’t usually consciously train our meta-skills because most people don’t even recognize them as skills. Besides that, training a meta-talent is more difficult than training a skill, because you can’t as easily fall into a pattern of repetition. Whereas you can do basketball training by throwing a basketball through a hoop a whole lot of times, you can’t, for example, teach yourself calculus a whole lot of times. In order to train the meta ability of being an autodidact, you must consciously seek out new things to teach yourself. If mastering chess requires playing ten thousand games, then mastering autodidacticism requires teaching yourself ten thousand different skills.

The benefit of mastering a skill is that you get to use that one skill. It makes a contribution to your overall intelligence by giving you that much more referential material from which to draw patterns and analogies. By learning Japanese, I’ve gained the ability to talk to Japanese people in their native tongue. The benefit of mastering a metaskill is that you can get new regular skills more easily, or make better use of the regular skills you already have. When you train a skill, you are making a long term investment; when you train a meta-skill, you are making a “long long term” investment. You’re making an investment into your ability to make or profit from other long term investments.

The Reflexive Nature of Metaskills

The great thing about a meta-skill is that it’s reflexive. It’s something you apply to skills; but it is a skill, therefore, you can apply it to itself. For example, consider a master teacher who can skilfully teach every skill she possesses: in particular, she can teach how to teach. A master autodidact can, in principle, teach himself any skill: in particular, he can teach himself any metaskill. (In a very real sense, master autodidacts are like gods. They can do basically anything. I consider myself something of an intermediate level autodidact.)

Here’s another example of a metaskill. Skills analysis is the ability to take any skills you know, and break them down, analyzing them and figuring out exactly how they work. For different skills, it requires a different mastery of skills analysis to break them down. For example, just about anyone can analyze the “skill” of flipping coins. But it would take a very good skills analyst to analyze the skill of playing the harp. Skills analysis is itself just another skill, so in theory, a good enough skills analyst could break it down and analyze it.

The novel “Cheaper By The Dozen” tells the tale of the family of Frank Gilbreth, a self-described “Efficiency Expert”. He devoted his life to finding ways to make various tasks more efficient. He even invented a general system of “therbligs”, small undecomposable units of work, for analyzing general tasks. In fact, he was pioneering the “time and motion study” metaskill, which takes skills and finds ways to make them more efficient. What if someone was so good at time and motion study that they could apply it to itself, and find ways to make time and motion study itself more efficient? Then they could apply it to itself more efficiently, and make it even more efficient, and so on. How efficient could it get?

The Continuum Between Skills and Metaskills

I’ve actually been speaking of just “skills” and “meta skills” to simplify the discussion. There’s actually an entire continuous spectrum between the two. Take computer programming, for example. Programming computer games in Java is a specific skill. Programming arbitrary java applets is a slightly more meta skill, which includes the ability to program games, if you’re so inclined. Being able to program websites in arbitrary languages, learning the languages as you need ‘em, is a more meta skill. Going even more meta, you have the skill of programming any program, not just websites, in any language, learning the languages as you go.

One way to train a metaskill is to figure out the spectrum below it, and start low on the spectrum and work your way up. For example, if you want to learn to be a master teacher, you might start by simply learning how to teach your favorite subject, say, singing. Once you’re good at teaching people how to sing, you might generalize it to teaching people performance art in general. And from there, it’s not as big a jump to teaching people any arbitrary skill that you yourself possess. The master of a meta-ability probably got that way by applying the technique “by accident”, without actually being consciously aware of what was going on.

(published with kind permission of the Author, Sam Alexander, www.xamuel.com)

Turkish delights

Here is the video reporting moments from the meeting in Turkey (29 February-5 March 2012): work, culture and leisure time in Istanbul and Sapanca.

Thanks to Jesùs de la Fuente from Guadalajara, who shot the movie.

Break the chains

This is the second short movie shot in Istanbul during the 1st workshop of the EVALT projects and produced by the participating educators (acting, direction, shooting, editing): Time of crisis.

Topic: problems can be overcome when the person reacts proactively and changes his/her own mental and behavioral stereotypes that reduce the possibility to grow.

Synopsis: a teacher has lost his job and is in a depressive mood. Everything is black and there are no future perspectives in his mind. But he has the strength to react and expresses publicly his will to go beyond the crisis.

Galatasaray Hamam

During the workshop held in Istanbul in March this year, the participants - all volunteers working in education with disadvantaged groups of adults in Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain - experienced the methodology of movies applied to adult education for empowerment and for the development of soft skills.

After having attended a theorical introduction about the method and a presentation on the methodological guidelines, delivered by the hosting partner Şişli Teknik ve Endüstri Meslek Lisesi, the participants were divided in two groups and had the opportunity to create a short movie for education, from the elaboration of an idea and a scenario, to shooting the movie. Time to play around with was not so much, but at the end two short movies were produced.They are not professional, on the technical point of view, because everything (acting, directing, shooting, editing) has been done by the participants, who are educators in sectors other than filming.

Here is the first one: Hammam is glue for friendship.

Topic: the difference among languages is not a barrier if persons have good attitude towards each other, have a will to understand other people and try to use other channels to communicate.

Synopsis: tourists from Lithuania, Italy, Spain and Portugal are in Istanbul and want to go to Galatasary Hamam. They don't speak English and ask information to a Turkish person, who is not willing to help. Second scenario: same situation but with different attitude by the Turkish person.

Meeting in Istanbul, 29 Feb-5 Mar 2012

From 29 of February to 5 of March 2012, the EVALT partners have met to attend the 1st workshop of the project, coordinated by Şişli Teknik ve Endüstri Meslek Lisesi.

The workshop was about the use of movies in adult education, in particular movie-therapy and shooting short films. The participants have had the possibility to experiment personally how to elaborate a scenario and to produce a short movie with educational purpose. The movies will be soon available in EVALT website.

Below some pictures from the meeting.

Tolga Vuranok presenting the workshops and the Turkish colleagues

The Portuguese team

The Spanish team and part of the Italian team

The Lithuanian team

Creative Growth through Art

Creative Growth Art Center is an organization, located in California, that serves adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities, providing a professional studio environment for artistic development, gallery exhibition and representation and a social atmosphere among peers.
For more information, news, activities, artists, click here!

Is there a hidden bias against creativity?

CEOs, teachers, and leaders claim they want creative ideas to solve problems. But creative ideas are rejected all the time. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people have a hidden bias against creativity. We claim to like creativity, but when we’re feeling uncertain and anxious—just the way you might feel when you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem—we cannot recognize the creative ideas we so desire.

Generally, people think creativity is good. Before starting this study, the researchers checked that with a group of college students. “Overwhelmingly, the data showed that students had positive implicit and explicit associations with creativity,” says Jennifer Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania. She carried out the new study with Shimul Melwani of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University.

But in experiments, people’s perceptions changed. In one experiment, the researchers made some people think about uncertainty—by telling them they might get some extra money after the study based on a random lottery. Other participants went into the study without that priming. They were all given a test that shows how they group concepts together. The people who had been made to think about uncertainty were more likely to subconsciously associate words like “creative,” “inventive,” and “original” with bad concepts like “hell,” “rotten,” and “poison.” In the other condition people associated creativity words with things like “rainbow,” “cake,” and “sunshine.”

“If I ask you right now to estimate whether or not you can generate a creative idea to solve a problem, you’re not going to know,” Mueller says. That feeling of uncertainty might be the root of the problem. When you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem, you worry that you can’t come up with a good idea, that what you do come up with might not be practical, or that your idea might make you look stupid. “It feels so bad sometimes trying to be creative in a social context,” Mueller says.

This uncertainty may make leaders reject creative ideas. “But sometimes we need creative ideas. If you’re a company that makes radios and suddenly nobody’s buying them anymore, you don’t have a choice,” Mueller says—you have to come up with something new. Her research suggests that rather than focusing on the process of coming up with ideas, companies may need to pay more attention to what makes them reject creative ideas.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Experiencing different cultures enhances creativity

Creativity can be enhanced by experiencing cultures different from one's own, according to a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (published by SAGE).

Three studies looked at students who had lived abroad and those who hadn't, testing them on different aspects of creativity. Relative to a control group, which hadn't experienced a different culture, participants in the different culture group provided more evidence of creativity in various standard tests of the trait. Those results suggest that multicultural learning is a critical component of the adaptation process, acting as a creativity catalyst.
The researchers believe that the key to the enhanced creativity was related to the students' open-minded approach in adapting to the new culture. In a global world, where more people are able to acquire multicultural experiences than ever before, this research indicates that living abroad can be even more beneficial than previously thought.
"Given the literature on structural changes in the brain that occur during intensive learning experiences, it would be worthwhile to explore whether neurological changes occur within the creative process during intensive foreign culture experiences," write the authors, William W. Maddux, Hajo Adam, and Adam D. Galinsky. "That can help paint a more nuanced picture of how foreign culture experiences may not only enhance creativity but also, perhaps literally, as well as figuratively, broaden the mind.

Source: EurekAlert!

Complete article: When in Rome… Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity

Photos from the kick-off meeting

Some work moments from Evalt's kick-off meeting in Lisbon
24 November 2011


Plenary time


Discussing the project workplan

Coffee break

Sharing gifts

Posted by Lina Miliuniene

Evalt project launched in Lisbon

A new project on creativity has been launched in Lisbon last 24 and 25 November.
Five European organizations working with adult learning have met for the kick-off event of EVALT (Empowering Volunteering in Socially Disadvantaged Groups of Adult Learning).
The project has been funded by the European Union, DG Education, in the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme, Grundtvig Partnerships, and will be concluded the 31st of July 2013.
The partnership is coordinated by the Portuguese association Contempla Trilhos. The other members are Fepamuc-Gua from Spain, Siauliai University from Lithuania, Sisli Technical Secondary School from Turkey and Tecnopras from Italy.
The project EVALT consists on attribution of competences in the area of creativity and methods of training, based on art therapy and arts (music, painting, cinema, theater...), to adults wishing on a voluntary basis, develop a working with groups at risk of social exclusion, with the aim of improving the capacity of intervention and leadership of volunteers. Consequently, the volunteers can improve their interventions with groups and institutions who applying that kind of collaboration, promoting the enrichment of services and actions.

Website: www.evalt.eu