PROBLEM SOLVING

CREATIVITY
AND
 EDWARD PAUL TORRANCE
• Oct. 8, 1915-July 12, 2003 was an American psychologist
from Milledgeville, Georgia. After completing his
undergraduate degree at Mercer University, Torrance
acquired a Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota
and then a doctorate from the University of Michigan.
• Father of Creativity
• He was professor emeritus of educational
psychology
• He invented the benchmark method for quantifying
creativity
 EDWARD PAUL
TORRANCE
.

It takes courage to
be creative.
Just as soon as you
have a new idea,
You are in a minority
of one.
 ADVANCE ORGANIZER
PROBLEM SOLVING/CREATIVITY
• .

Torrance’s Creativity
Framework
Creative Problem Solving
Fluency (CPS )

Flexibility
6 Stages of CPS

Elaboration

Originality
TORRANCE FRAMEWORK FOR
CREATIVE THINKING
FLUENCY – refers to the
production of a great number of
ideas or alternate solutions to a
problem.

Key words: compare, convert,

define, describe, explain, identify,
label, list, match, name, outline,
paraphrase, predict, summarize.
FLEXIBILITY- refers to the
production of ideas that shows
a variety of possibilities or
realms of thought.

Key words: change,

demonstrate, distinguish,
employ, extrapolate,
interpolate, interpret, predict.
ELABORATION- is the process of
enhancing ideas by providing
more details.

Key words: appraise, critique,

determine, evaluate, grade,
judge, measure, select, test.
ORIGINALITY- involves the
production of ideas that are
unique or unusual.

Key words : compose, create,

generate, integrate, modify,
rearrange, reconstruct,
reorganize, revise.
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING
( CPS )
Creative Problem Solving (CPS)
is an intentional process for
solving problems and discovering
opportunities. It espouses the
use of creativity in the coming
op with solutions which are not
novel but practical as well. In the
1950’s Alex Osborn described
this process as Applied
Imagination.
Osborn’s Checklist, the origin of
Classical Brainstorming is the
root of creative problem solving
( CPS ).
The following, based on Van
Gundy (1988) description, is a
very brief skeleton of a very rich
process, showing it in its full ‘6
x 2 stages’ form:
Stage 1: Mess Finding: Sensitize
yourself for the issues that need
to be tackled.
Divergent techniques include
‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice If…’(WIBNI).
Convergent techniques include
the identification of hotspot
expressed as a list of IWWM’s
( In What Ways Might…’).
Stage 2: Data Finding: Gather
information about the problem.
Divergent techniques include
five W’s and H, ( Who, Why,
What, When, Where and How)
Convergent techniques again
include: identifying hotspot.
Stage 3: Problem Finding: convert a
fuzzy statement of the problem into a
broad statement more suitable for
idea finding.
Divergent techniques include
asking ‘Why? etc.- repeatable
questions and five W’s and H.
Convergent techniques include
identifying hotspot again and
reformulation of problem statement
to meet the criteria.
Stage 4: Idea Finding: generates
as many ideas as possible.
Divergence using any of a
very wide range of idea-
generating techniques.
Convergence can again
involve hotspot or mind-
mapping.
Stage 5: Solution Finding:
generate and select obvious
evaluation criteria and develop
the short-listed ideas then opt
for the best of these improved
ideas.
Stage 6: Acceptance Finding: how
can the suggestion you have just
selected be made up to standard
and put into practice. Possible
techniques include- five W’s and H,
Implementation Checklist.