Dear  Charles

I  follow the  discussion for a while. I  focused on creative  
education in interactive media and communication design specifically  
last 10 years.  Innovation and creativity is always confusing issues  
in my area  as  well.  My recent  articles may help to lighten your  
questions:

Ozcan O., Yantac E. "Breaking the Rules in Interactive Media Design  
Education",Digital Creativity, Routledge, UK, 2009
Corlu M., Ozcan O. "The Meaning of Dyslexics' Drawings in  
Communication Design ", Dyslexia, John Willey & Sons, Ltd., UK, 2009
Corlu M., Ozcan O. "The Potential of Dyslexics in Communication Design  
Education ", Journal of Behavioural Neurology, IOS Press, NL, February  
2008, Vol:18 Number:4 pp. 217-223

and also please see:
Ozcan O., Akarun L., "Mathematics and Design Education", Design  
Issues, MIT Press, 2001 Vol:17, no:3, pp.26-343


Oguzhan Ozcan
Head of the Department of Interactive Media Design
Istanbul Yildiz Technical University

On Jul 20, 2009, at 6:28 PM, Charles Burnette wrote:

> Colleagues
>
> With the increasing commoditization of design research and practice  
> I have grown concerned about how we are educating for creativity and  
> fostering creative personality characteristics in our students.
>
> Many on the list may not know about the seminal research by Donald  
> W. Mackinnon "The Personality Correlates of Creativity: A Study of  
> American Architects" undertaken at the Institute of Personality  
> Assessment and Research, University of California Berkeley as part  
> of a larger investigation of creativity in the arts, sciences and  
> professions.
>
> 40  creative architects among 124 identified and ranked in three  
> levels of creativity by professors, editors and peers, were invited  
> to Berkeley for a week of testing. Mackinnon's  summary after this  
> exhaustive testing stated goals that, in my opinion, we should seek  
> in ourselves as well as the students we educate.  He wrote:
>
> "If I were to summarize what is most generally characteristic of the  
> creative architect as we have seen him (sic), it is his high level  
> of effective intelligence, his openness to experience, his freedom  
> from petty constraints, and impoverishing inhibitions, his aesthetic  
> sensitivity, his cognitive flexibility, his independence of thought  
> and action, his high level of energy, his unquestioning commitment  
> to creative endeavor, and his unceasing striving for creative  
> solutions to the ever more difficult architectural problems he  
> constantly sets for himself". end quote
>
> Are we consciously addressing these correlates of creativity?  
> Shouldn't we be?
>
> Charles Burnette
> [log in to unmask]
>
> MacKinnon D W. The nature and nurture of creative talent.
> Amer. Psychol. 17:484-95, 1962. [University of California, Berkeley,  
> CA]  Cited over 195 times between 1962 and December 28 1981
>
> In Search of Human Effectiveness: Identifying and Developing  
> Creativity (Paperback)
> by Donald W. MacKinnon, Creative Education Foundation, 1978