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Metaphorming Your Life:

Using Your Creativity to Achieve Your Goals and Realize Your Potential

by Todd Siler

This article has been adapted from an earlier article by the author for Informal Learning Review ( www.informallearning.com), 2005 and another for the World Knowledge Forum, Seoul, Korea, title "Nurturing a World of Creative People: Realizing Human Potential Through Metaphorming," 2000

Creativity is to learning as change is to evolution. Expressed another way: Creativity is learning! When you learn, you change. When you learn to create, you create change. Imagination and curiosity can challenge and change anything! "Imagination is the beginning of creation," wrote novelist George Bernard of Shaw. "You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." Consider how we all create mental barriers and limits for ourselves where none exist. Then, think about how our biases can become barriers, just as are our assumptions do.

What assumptions do you harbor about creativity? I mean, what is a "creative" person? A painter who thinks like a scientist as he challenges every practice and philosophy of art, which is something the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp once did for a living? A secretary who fixes her typing mistakes by inventing "liquid paper" and then proceeds to manufacture and market this practical fluid for office supplies worldwide, which is something the courageous entrepreneur Bette Graham once did in pursuing her dream? A child who solves a math problem in an unconventional way through visualization? Test yourself. Treat yourself to a moment of self-discovery. Jot down your spontaneous responses to the following basic questions:

What does "creativity" mean to you?
How does creativity benefit your life and the lives of others?
How do you use your creativity to achieve your goals and realize your potential?
What are some of your favorite examples of people or organizations that have used their creativity in remarkable ways? Describe their achievements.

Is Creativity A "Who?" Or Is It a "How?"

Who are creative people? Economists who see hidden patterns in information that link tax rates, subway fares, the sale of Treasury bonds and insurance, credit markets, and even urban gridlock, such as the two 1996 Nobel laureates in economics, William Vickery and James Mirrlees? Visionaries who shape the forces of electricity to create alternating current motors, oscillation transformers, steam & gas turbines, world wireless telephone transmitters, and many other technological inventions, such as the 19th century inventor Nikola Tesla? Or are they 'failures' – a cynical term that was once applied to young Thomas Edison by a teacher who said he was 'too stupid to learn anything.' What do creative people do differently than "uncreative" people; or rather, people who believe they're not creative, even though they are very much so?

Do they listen to the world differently, as the jazz musician and composer Ornette Coleman does? Do they look at the world differently – searching for new meanings, associations, and purposes – as the founder of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, does? What criteria and instruments do we use to measure this "difference"? And, equally important, how do we value this difference in thinking, in creating, in inventing and innovating, and in performance?

Clearly, if we don't recognize the value of creativity and creative people we will struggle to nurture them. How do you let your friends or family or colleagues know how creative you really are? What signs, symbols and stories would you use to help others understand your creative process?

A. Human Creativity Rooted in Symbol Making

Every day we experience how our world of symbols connects our world of thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, knowledge, and experiences. This thought provocateur was conscious of the fact that we live in a world of "real" and "virtual" strings of information that tie everything together. It's easy to imagine how every human being intuitively knows this too. When we peer into the caves of Lascaux in France or Altimira in Spain, we see how these 10-20,000 year-old drawings from the Ice Age reflect our symbolic nature expressed in visual storytelling.

We are all symbol-making creatures. Symbolism embodies just about everything: every object that makes up the natural world; every thing that is part of our built environment, and that enables us to continually build our environments as we envision them (Langer, 1963; Hayakawa, 1990). Our symbolisms inhabit every sign, concept, form and facet of knowledge: from Dr. Seuss's treasury of wisdom to Dr. Stephen Hawking's truly far-reaching science books; from kid's play to complex games of economics that Nobel laureates, such as John Nash, played and studied (Nasar, 1998,13).

Perhaps the most amazing creative faculty we all possess is the ability to make and understand symbols, without which we could not communicate. And this natural "gift of genius" continues to change the way we communicate today. We can even measure the manifestations of this change as evidenced by the sum of human knowledge networked through the World Wide Web. That wondrous technological and social phenomenon enables us daily to do the impossible: spontaneously reach across the world in milliseconds to touch someone or be moved beyond belief. Indeed, the engine of innovation that is powering all this astonishing change is none other than our individual and collective creativity through which we meld and manifest our many intelligences. But what is actually changing?

Consider how sophisticated filmmaking and Virtual Reality gaming soar far beyond the written and spoken word. Words have become backseat-drivers to evocative, symbolic images and objects that propel our imaginations faster than light and sound toward new possibilities of understanding and communicating our life experiences. For instance, Disney's Pixar Animation, Antz (2000), entices us to discover the universe of "morphed" symbolism that expands our minds with entertaining visions of life-reality-nature through multi-sensory storytelling. Consider the ways in which we use technology to create and share new knowledge through our communities of individuals—in particular, how we "nature people to be better than they would otherwise be and help them grow to be the best that they can be," to quote the pioneer in knowledge management, Robert H. Buckman (Buckman, 2004, 142).

And, of particular relevance, consider the way we display and demonstrate our knowledge in our boldest, most visionary art, science, and children's museums, and in our progressive cultural centers, and in our leading formal and informal learning organizations worldwide (Tufte, 1990; Wurman, 1990 & 1999). In keeping up with this relentless evolutionary process of change, the best learning organizations and museums are constantly striving for new ways of reaching people through participatory activities that prompt lively discussions, and engaging hands-on learning experiences.

B. Metaphorming: Ageless Skills, Powerful Contemporary Tools

It is in this context of change that I call your attention to the ageless concept and practice of "Metaphorming," which enables learners of all ages to creatively apply one's knowledge and imagination in endless contexts or situations to achieve their goals. The vehicles of communication they create to express their ideas and reach their goals are none other than physically represented symbolic models, a sampling of which I have provided in Section F to convey what these multi-dimensional constructions are and how they work in real-life. In a nutshell, Metaphorming is all about using our world of symbolic imagery and structures to help us discover and understand things, invent and innovate, and communicate to the best of our abilities (See Figure 1)

Figure 1: Metaphorming the internet

For instance, when you look from an art historian's perspective at ancient Egyptian, African, and Chinese artifacts created over eons, you can clearly see how humans have experienced the world as 3-D objects and structures, constructing mental representations and physical models of it to record and interpret our experiences. As the author Edwin A. Abbott reminds us in his satirical Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), we live in the world of "sphereland" not "flatland."

Since childhood, I've been absorbed in this intense search to understand creativity, like John Cleese's comical "Black Knight" in Monty Python questing after the Holy Grail. I wanted to know the nature of the human mind: to glean how we create, learn, invent, collaborate, and communicate. Out of that wellspring of passion and obsession came the Metaphorming process. Nearly three decades ago, I coined the words "metaphorm" and "metaphorming" to describe these timeless creativity and communication tools that anyone can use to realize one's potential. Metaphorming is derived from the Greek words meta which means "between," "after," "beyond," "transcending," and phora, or "transference." It refers to moving one's mind beyond the constraints of verbal thought, transferring from one object to another a new meaning or set of associations. More importantly, it is also about exploring the physical reality behind any metaphorm with the idea of making a discovery or innovation and applying it.

Figure 2: Singapore, "Metaphorming Business"

Metaphorming is the act of connecting metaphorms. What's a metaphorm? It's a combination of the full range of symbol making and using tools—metaphor, analogy, sign, symbol, story, allegory, premise, model, and much more (Siler, 1996, 10). Ultimately, everything is a metaphorm! And we can use metaphorms to understand just about everything. Figure 2, for example, shows a businesswoman from Singapore who used a garden metaphorm and model to describe her plans for getting her newly formed company to blossom this year. As she explained to a group of educators the transition stages her company is likely experience during the course of the year, she tied her financial projections for growing her company to the "fragrant" facets of her symbolic model. Once she completed her presentation, she tossed her colorful notes like apple blossoms on the floor, and hinted to her audience how these seed-like notes could be recycled. It was a pure form of performance art, without the formalities of making and evaluating the aesthetics of her construction or its presentation. In facilitating these sessions, I always make a point to remove all value judgments and other inhibitors. It makes the ease of creating and discussing the models that much more enjoyable (Siler, 1998).

Figure 3: Metaphorming companies
Figure 4: Metaphorming 5D Symbolic Modeling

My article serves to briefly introduce you to the Metaphorming process, which uses everyday materials to build free-form, multi-dimensional symbolic models, or "5-D" models (see Figure 3.) (Note that mathematical physicists and string theorists have labored over the past twenty years to provide some compelling evidence that suggests there may be as many as 11-dimensions to physical reality, if not more!) The models serve as a "common language" for improving human communication, promoting understanding and realizing human potential (Siler, 1996, 27-42) (See Figure 4.)

Symbolic modeling—that is, using any material to create a physical model that can represent the essence of any concept-- is part of our natural communications system. The more I experimented and played with their all-purpose utility, the more captivated I became about broadly applying these tools and methods to everyday life. They seemed to function like engines of creativity, invention, innovation, learning, and discovery that also happened to power our communication systems. Equally noteworthy, you could "fuel" these engines with any content or subject matter, using them to get you to a higher level of understanding very fast—almost as fast a Maserati can move you from 0 to 90 mph in a matter of seconds.

C. Building on the Long History of Making Models

Even a cursory history lesson about "making models" will convince you that, indeed, this is a common "best practice" in various learning systems. If you were to use the Internet and Google the words "making models," in 0.33 seconds you would find 1 - 10 out of 22,700,000 links to websites that dwell on this subject. Everything from decision-making models to How-To arts & crafts projects and activity kits will satisfy your curiosity about making models. By inventing the term Metaphorming many years ago, I meant to differentiate the type of intuitive, metaphorical, symbolic, model building that Metaphorming teaches from all other forms of model making that we find blossoming on the Vines of Human Communication.

Technically speaking, Metaphorming refers to methods and apparatuses that enhance cognitive functioning and its manifestation in physical form and translation into useful information. Missing from this heartless description is affective functioning. That's the emotionally messy, unspoken part of cognition that happens to make symbolic modeling so engrossing as a process of self-discovery and empathy.

In short: there is an expansive history of model building in its myriad forms and expressions that spans across the contexts of art & architecture, science and mathematics, economics and business, engineering and manufacturing technology, and so forth. I always welcome the opportunity to deliver formal lectures on how the activity of "making models" has helped shape and influence all cultures and civilizations for eons. Here, you may want to check out the science thinking skills initiative, titled "Making Models," on the website for Museum of Science of Boston. Accompanying the announcement for their initiative is this profound passage from Seymour Papert's Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980):

"Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about learning: anything is easy if you can assimilate it into your collection of models. If you can't, anything can be painfully difficult . . . What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned those models. Thus the 'laws of learning' must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form."

Symbolic modeling corroborates Papert's intuition. As individuals construct their models, one can glimpse the many ways in which we 'acquire logical and emotional forms'—and creatively manipulate these forms—with some intent or purpose in mind. Note the intensity of the intent in the faces of these venture capitalists in Figure 6 who are focused on figuring out how to best manage their portfolio of technology companies.

Metaphorming is a unique synthesis of many pedagogical theories, philosophies and tools that have become "best practices" in learning. Literally and figuratively speaking, it builds on the Constructivist approach to learning, in which learners of all ages construct or build their own understanding of the world of things (information, knowledge, concepts, etc.), based on the meanings they give to the things they experience. This approach arcs back to the days human beings inhabited caves and struggled to make sense out of that beautiful, yet unpredictable and terrifying, world we encountered. Ultimately, in our efforts to understand anything, we engage the process of understanding as Constructivism suggests: by making use of our mental models of things, which help make our life experiences personally meaningful to us and memorable. (Russell, 1999)

D. Applications: A Primer

I have used the Metaphorming process over the past decade with a world of "metaphormers" (lifelong learners) who have participated in The ArtScience® Program (Siler, 1995 & 1998) and the Think Like a Genius® Program (Siler, 1999, 279-294). They include museum professionals, K-12 and college students, teachers, parents, administrators, business developers, cultural leaders, professional artists, scientists, engineers, authors, and many other curious characters representing a spectrum of human endeavors. Both programs offer tools, resources, and experiences to help individuals discover and apply their creativity in purposeful ways.

Having worked with educational systems most of my professional life, I have grown to accept this insight ventured by that legendary Italian astronomer Galileo who observed: "You can't teach people anything. They must discover it within themselves." That is what Metaphorming treats us to: This self-discovery. This journey inward. This exploration of the world. This way of making sense of life through creative learning experiences (Siler, 1999 & 2003). This pleasurable way of understanding things (Feynman, 1999), and knowing how we understand (Morrison, 1984).

I have selected a number of photographs to illustrate this article of people building and unpacking (describing, explaining and interpreting) their symbolic models to give you some idea of how metaphormers create and share new knowledge; generate ideas and entertain their possibilities; stimulate breakthroughs and discoveries; and invent and innovate—using their models to foster understanding. Unfortunately, when you are looking at these symbolic models, you cannot hear the lively discussions between all the people and their passions, interests and issues. It is like showing you a black & white photograph of a colorful hologram, which is a moving multi-dimensional image. The photo flattens the dimensionality of the object. In any event, I urge you to turn your imagination on and listen for the voices in these photographs. Listen for that parent who used his model to describe his struggles in connecting with his kids. Listen for that business executive bemoaning her difficulties in connecting with her direct reports. Listen for that school teacher harking back to the days when it seemed so much easier to connect with students because there were less distractions and complexities cluttering relationships and clouding teaching agendas.

Regardless of "where someone is coming from," everyone is able to meet at some intersection of understanding. In effect, the models enable everyone to momentarily transcend their social, cultural, intellectual, or educational barriers and prejudices that tend to divide our worlds. The upshot is: Metaphorming fosters creativity, discovery, invention, innovation, and collaborative learning through the making of symbolic models. Exploring any model in-depth by posing insightful questions engages our creative process in ways that help us flow with our potential instead of fighting it or ignoring it.

Metaphorming can be used to explore the very concept of creativity itself in all of its richness. Some of the most exciting workshops I've had the pleasure of facilitating explored the nature of creativity, among them: the American Association of Museums; the Association of Youth Museums; the "Rage & Resolution" workshops at the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood, Colorado; the Gang-Related Intervention Program (G.R.I.P.) with the Lakewood Police in Colorado; and many others (Siler, 1997). In 2002, I embarked on a project with the Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas, where I had the good fortune to work with Dr. Al DeSena, the former director of that organization. Al and his staff set about envisioning ways of getting learners to consider the possibilities of creative learning and applying their insights to enriching the exhibits at EP. We experimented with the Metaphorming process, envisioning ways young explorers could model their learning experiences and questions. One particularly memorable staff development workshop I facilitated at Exploration Place was presented in tandem with my two close friends and colleagues, Drs. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. Applying the thirteen creative thinking tools from their book Sparks of Genius (2000), Bob and Michele cast their discussion and tasks in the context of the Exploration Place. They invited the staff to identify the creative skills embedded in exhibits, such as the Wright Brothers and the Invention Process, theater shows and programs.

For several hours, three topics and groups (with several teams of 4 assigned to the topics) engaged in the Metaphorming workshop in which we collaboratively constructed 5-D Models in response to these focal questions:

1. What does it mean to be a "center for creative learning"?
2. What does it mean to be an "attraction for tourists and residents"?
3. How can we make the "Express Yourself Center" more self-guided? (Pick a concept / issue and Metaphorm it!)

Naturally, everyone's models contained personal definitions of "creativity." They addressed how creativity benefits our individual and collective lives, and showed how creativity can be used to realize our life goals and ideals. Most importantly, they showed how we can use our creative powers to solve our most pressing problems, such as violence, war, poverty, pollution, drugs, gangs, cynicism, and other plagues of society.

Participants were also asked to write three paragraphs on why they thought we overlook the importance of creativity in our lives? Why do we undervalue the contributions of creativity? Is it because we do not know what creativity is? Is it because we can not see the creative process at work; it is invisible? Is it because we can not measure creativity in the same precise way that we verify and quantify a bank account?

One of the most fundamental questions we all need to model concerns the historian Arnold Toynbee' statement: "To give a fair chance to potential creativity is a matter of life and death for society."

As you reflect on Toynbee's statement, ask yourself these questions: Is creativity also a matter of life and death for every human being? Do you think a person can live a personally meaningful and productive lives without being creative? Can a person succeed at anything without being creative? (Siler, 2000; Biederman & Siler, 2005)

E. Discovering the World Beyond "Show-and-Tell"

If you asked anyone, "Tell me what creativity means to you," you are likely to get a wide range of elusive, ambiguous descriptions that leave you in the dark. If, however, you give a person some basic building materials and invite him or her to "Show me what creativity means to you. Make a model that represents all the things creativity is for you," the response to that invitation may surprise you. With little guidance on your part, this person will get busy playing with the materials and constructing a mosaic of thoughts about his creative process.

And, if you had asked the individual a slightly different question, "Show me how you use your creativity to solve a problem or achieve a goal," the model would contain an amalgam of imagery and objects that intimate the many ways this person applies her creative process in tangible ways with concrete outcomes. After the metaphormer has marched you through her model—pointing out the key components and meanings of it—suddenly you realize how much deeper you understand this person. Her model has helped you peer below the surface of her words to see her inner world and how it works. The model raises your awareness about this individual's understanding of creative life, which she has expressed so brilliantly. She did not just tell you, she showed you what she was thinking. And these thoughts not only made sense to you, they conveyed some fundamental insights into the creative dimensions of every human being (Siler, 2002 & 2003).

As personal as these models are, they are remarkably universal. When you "search for unity in their hidden likenesses," as the historian and polymath Jacob Bronowski would encourage you to do (Bronowski, 1956), you are rewarded with this profound higher awareness: Symbolic models link all of our lives across space and time, as well as bridge cultures and intellectual development. In effect, the models served as a global common language for showing and sharing everyone's thoughts, feelings, ideas, knowledge, points of view, values, and beliefs.

Figure 5

F. Applications: Specific Examples

The symbolic models presented in this article (graphic illustrations) are examples of metaphorms that have been used to communicate a spectrum of concepts from A to Z. For instance, Figure 5 presents a symbolic model created by a teacher who wanted to express her thoughts on why learning is fun. She was trying to convey to students and parents the various facets of learning that are not always apparent to everyone, and yet they are fun, fascinating and essential to the intellectual development of every human being.

As this teacher told us the meanings of her "Model of Great Learning Experiences," she related her personal experiences of memorable learning events, which she felt enriched her life immeasurably and went far beyond the conventional contexts of school work. The evocative photographs and objects she populated her model with hooked our attention and prompted us to recall the times we were inspired without realizing we were learning.

The more she described how she applied her great learning experiences to improve her friendships, relationships, health, wellness, sense of happiness, the more meaningful her model became for herself and others. By the time everyone finished conversing about these learning experiences, we all ended up sharing a deep common understanding of how essential learning is for every aspect of our lives and well-being. With little effort, everyone was freely "re-purposing" her model—applying it to many contexts or situations in their own lives. Their interpretations imbued it with layers of meanings.

Figure 6: Strategic planning session

 

Figure 7 shows elementary school children envisioning the future, and how they can create the world they envision. When you study these optimistic, buoyant models, you glimpse how there is hope for the future, because you can see it in everything children hope happens through their efforts.

Figure 7

For many visually-oriented people, words fall flat in richly representing the layers of emotions that are an integral part of our thoughts. In fact, they strike us as being 1-dimensional in nature. This should hardly be surprising, considering that a word or single line drawn on a piece of paper is, technically speaking, a 1-dimensional form. Now you know where this frustrated expression came from: "Don't give me that line, again!"

Figure 8

Figure 8 shows the importance of adding as many dimensions to your acts of communication that the human brain has to offer. The more multi-dimensional your communications are, the better you can engage those whom you wish to communicate with and be understood at a deep level.

This diagram also presents a snapshot of the concept and practice of making 5-D Models. We see aspects of this "multi-dimensionality" in connection with the creative act of making models in the arts and sciences, in mathematics and engineering, in business and industry, in education, etc. I've made this point in my books (Siler, 1990; 1997) and articles (Siler, 2002, 15-19; 2003, 285-296) and programs, such as the Metaphorm !t Program (Siler & St. John, 2004), which focus on helping people think, create, and communicate to the best of their abilities.

Most of this material conveys how symbolic models enable people to communicate concepts and ideas, problem-pose and problem-solve, and do their innovation-related work more quickly and effectively. As we learn to make models and discuss our ideas through the models, we may find we can express our creativity in ways we never imagined were possible (Nissley, 2004, 294 & 299-303).

For those inquisitive metaphormers who care to understand more about the internal processing of these models—specifically, the way their own brain forms webs of associations to link the information in personally meaningful ways through a process called "elaborative encoding" (Schacter, 1999)—they're encouraged to explore the scientific literature on the biological basis of learning and associative memory (e.g., Mednick,1962, 220-232; Fink, 1996, 626-8). They're also directed to noted theories of learning and creativity (egs, Dewey, 1934; Piaget, 1953; Montessori, 1967; Root-Bernstein, 1987, 17-21; Sternberg, 1989; Singer, 1990; Vygotsky, 1990; Bruner, 1991; Gardner, 1993; Goleman, 1993; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).

I hope to continue developing this exploratory work and applying it to organizations such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, Korea, and the Civil Society Institute in Newton, Mass., with whom I share a mutual passion and mission—namely, to provide products, services, tools, resources, and learning experiences that improve human communication and promote understanding.

Clearly, creativity plays the leading role in powering every human endeavor that has something to do with learning. The more deeply we understand this, the more likely we will be able to fulfill our quest to realize human potential.


References

Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. 1884. Reprint: New York: Barnes & Noble, 1983.

Biederman Patricia Ward & Todd Siler, Changing Ourselves and the World: Creativity and A Strong Civil Society. Newton, Mass.: Civil Society Institute, 2005. (This book is currently being adapted to the CSI website www.civilsocietyinstitute.org.)

Bronowski, Jacob. Science and Human Values. New York: Harper & Row, 1956.

Bruner, Jerome S. Acts of Meaning (Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Buckman, Robert H. Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Darnell, Eric and Tim Johnson. Antz. Palo Alto, California: Dreamworks SKG, 2000.

Dewey, John. Art As Experience. (Based on Dewey's lectures on aesthetics; William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932.) New York: Perigee Books/Penguin Putnam Publishers, 1980.

Feynman, Richard. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1999.

Fink, G.R. et al. "Where in the brain does visual attention select the forest and the trees?" Nature 382 (1996): 626-8.

Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.

Hayakawa, S.I. and Alan R. Hayakawa. Language in Thought and Action. 5th edition. With an Introduction by Robert MacNeil. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1990.

Langer, Suzanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Mednick, Sarnoff A. "The associative basis of the creative process," Psychological Review 69 (1962): 220-232.

Montessori, Maria. The Absorbent Mind. New York: Dell, 1967.

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Museum of Science of Boston website: http://www.mos.org/exhibitdevelopment/skills/models.html

Nasar, Sylvia. A Beautiful Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone Books, 1998. 13,14.

Nick Nissley, The "Artful Creation" of Positive Anticipatory Imagery in Appreciative Inquiry: Understanding the "Art of" Appreciative Inquiry As Aesthetic Discourse, in Constructive Discourse and Human Organization Advances in Appreciative Inquiry, Volume 1, pp. 285-309. New York: Elsevier Ltd., 2004. Note in particular: "Proposition 3: Artful Creations Serve as Symbolic Constructions that Act as Metaphorical Representations of Organizational Life," pp. 294 & 299-303.

Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1980)

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Russell, Bob. "Experience-Based Learning Theories," The Informal Learning Review, 1999-0304-a (http://www.informallearning.com/archive/1999-0304-a.htm)

Root-Bernstein, Robert. "Tools of thought: Designing an integrated curriculum for lifelong learners." Roeper Review 10 (1987): 17-21.

____. and Michele. Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Schacter, Daniel L. "Implicit Knowledge: new perspectives on unconscious processes," in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89 (1999).

Siler, Todd. "Think Like a Genius® Program for Business: Engaging Everyone In An Organization To Think, Learn, Work, and Perform To the Best of Their Abilities Through Metaphorming® " in Prem Kumar (ed.) Organisational Learning for All Seasons: Building Internal Capabilities for Competitive Advantage. Singapore: National Community Leadership Institute, 2003.

____. & St. John, Charles. The Metaphorm !t Program: A Faster, Better Way To Brainstorm and Build Teams Englewood, Colorado: Think Like a Genius Publications, 2004; www.metaphormit.com

____. "Metaphorming Your Company: Leading with the Next Generation of Brainstorming Tools," in Leader To Leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass / A Wiley Company, 2002.

____. "Tapping the Creative Powers of the Gifted and Talented: The Future of Education in a Global Civil Society," keynote address published in the Proceedings for the 14th World Conference on Gifted and Talented Children, Barcelona, Spain, 2002.

____. "What does learning mean to you? And what makes a great learning experience memorable?" at www.edge.org/documents/whatnow.html, 2002

____. Hand to Hand, "Twelve Keys That Open Our Treasure Chests of Creativity and Civil Society," a reprint of T.S. keynote address at the Association of Youth Museums InterActivity 2000 Conference, May 11, 2000.

____. "Think Like a Genius® Process," in Peggy Holman & Tom Devane [eds.], The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1999.

____. Think Like A Genius: Use Your Creativity In Ways That Will Enrich Your Life (Bantam Books, 1996).

____. "The ArtScience Program," 7th International Conference on Thinking: Borderless Thinking: A Keynote Series. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Educations, 1998.

____."Envisioning the Future of Education," in Donocan R. Walling (ed.), Under Construction: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Postmodern Schooling. Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa, 1997.

____. "ArtScience: Integrating the Arts and Sciences To Connect Our World and Improve Communication," in Keynote Addresses: Houston, Texas: National Arts Education Association (NAEA), 1995; and "The ArtScience of Metaphorming," 1995: 31, 32.

Singer, Jerome L and D. G. Singer. The House of Make-Believe: Children's Play and the Developing Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1990.

Sternberg, Robert J. Creative People at Work: Twelve Cognitive Case Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Tufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1990.

Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990.

Wurman, Richard Saul. Information Anxiety. 1990.

___. et al. Newport, RI: TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) Conferences, Inc, 1999; www.ted.com


About the author

To learn more about Todd Siler, Ph.D., go to http://www.thinklikeagenius.com/highband/todd_sil/

Email: tsiler@thinklikeagenius.com


©Todd Siler 2005

Posted by permission of the author
March 2005 by New Horizons for Learning
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