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INNOVATION
In acts of creation, the student often aspires to design or make something original or novel. This is a difficult but surmountable task. Ideas need to brew in one’s mind. Related, and more importantly, unrelated thoughts or ideas need to interact with each other, sometimes for extended periods of fallow time. This is when a ‘reaction’ occurs, the outcome of which is an association between entities that were hitherto seen as unrelated.48 These associations are formed when ideas are free to interact with each other, without the watchful and overcautious eye of the mind. This ‘combinatory play’49 occurs when the student is in a state of flow.
To be in a state of flow50 requires the student to be immersed in their learning and to find it not only purposeful or meaningful but also enjoyable. A key characteristic of this immersion is play. The act of play requires, or is accompanied by, deep focus – to be completely absorbed in a task, while simultaneously experiencing immense delight in this engrossment. Playfulness has several characteristics, and chief among them are flexibility or adaptability and curiosity.
Freedom (of exploration) and flexibility have to be built into the everyday learning experience. Play involves letting go of fear and hesitancy and embracing risk; crucial to the act of creation.
- read P. Lloyd and D. Snelders in What was Philippe Starck thinking of? (2003).
- read Albert Einstein in Ideas and Opinions (1954).
- read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).