At de Lange wrote
>Fortunately, in my system thinking I do not only formalise
>creativity, but I also recognise certain manifestations of human
>creativity which sustains creativity, even if we know nothing about
>creativity formally. I have identified five of them up to now, using
>the basic method of phenomenology. They are: dialogue, game-playing,
>problem-solving. exemplar-studying and art-expressing.
Dear At and also especially Artur F. Silva and all others here on the
list,
I could connect At's five manifestations with the Chinese teaching of the
5 elements. I am sure that this connection is very fruitful in the case of
LO, so let me explain:
Together with the dualty Yin-Yang, the 5 elements and two possible cycles
within them are the basis of the traditional chinese health care system.
The 12 meridian (paths of energy flow), on which the points of acupunctur
are situated, and the corresponding organs are linked to these five
elements: wood, fire, soil, metal and water. The two cycles are:
Development cycle: wood "becomes" fire "becomes" soil "becomes" metal
"becomes" water "becomes" wood...
Control cycle: wood "controls" soil "controls" water "controls" fire
"controls" metal "controls" wood...
The pattern is very easy to recognise, if you just draw it on a sheet of
paper with the elements as the corners of a regular pentagon (usually fire
as the top): The development cycle is the pentagon clockwise and the
control cycle is the star in the pentagon.
If you have drawn this picture, try the following correspondence:
wood - art expressing
fire - game-playing
soil - dialogue
metal - problem-solving
water - exemplar-studying
Meditate on the pattern and the cycles. It can tell you really a lot!
I also leave it up to your creativity to link these five manifestations
with the current thread of LO in higher education. I think the Portuguese
experience by Artur F. Silva (LO19405) is a great example on how to design
a course around these 5 elements. And, Artur, if you can read the pattern
and if it speaks to you, and I am nearly sure it will, you will get a lot
of ideas to still improve your course as you have asked for.
At, you explicitely wrote "I have identified five of them up to now". This
"up to now" shows me, that you are not sure whether there are more. The
above pattern indicate, that "5" is as complete in this case as "7" in the
case of the essentialities.
But going a step futher in the correspondence (including the 12 meridian),
I guess that the following should not be difficult to find: 4 types of
game playing (2 Yin, 2 Yang) and 2 types of art expressing, dialogue,
problem solving and exemplar studying each (1 Yin, 1 Yang).
I don't know much about the primary dualty Yin-Yang, but may be it
corresond to At's distinction "the world inside" and "the world outside".
Then, in case of dialogue, the two types could be "listening" and
"talking". But it also could be "dialogue" and "
discussion/debate/dispute" (here I am just guessing).
If this pattern can assist you in creating one or another "Aha!" I would
be more than glad, when you share this with us here on the list.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>