Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Table 40.2
Attributes—Implications Chart for Horses as Heroes
Creative Problem Solving 303
Characteristics of My Horse Implications for How it Might Become a Hero
Nasty-tempered
White in color
Likes to eat apples
Once general attributes were identified and labeled on an Attributes Tree, examples of possible
values for each attribute would be added to the branches as “twigs.”
FORCING CONNECTIONS
Once the Attributes Tree was completed, the teacher would have students practice forcing connections
by randomly selecting “twigs” from the Attributes Tree to form story prompt questions
such as these:
How could being a pony enable the horse to become a hero?
How could being nasty-tempered enable the horse to become a hero?
How could being gray in color enable the horse to become a hero?
The teacher would ask for three different possibilities in response to each question. Then
students would practice the same process with additional randomly selected twigs in small
groups. They could use an Attributes – Implications Chart, such as that shown in Table 40.2, to
record their ideas. They would be reminded about incubation and be told to expect an even better
idea to come to them before or when they started work on the stories on another day.
IMPOSING CONSTRAINTS OR ASSIGNING A CENTRAL FEATURE
Sometimes the challenge for students is not a lack of ideas but a surplus. For example, it might
be difficult to get started on the assignment, “Write a poem about nature,” because there are too
many possibilities. Similarly, students might have so many ideas for “horse-as-hero” stories that
it might be difficult to find a focus and get started. That’s when it might be helpful to use the
strategy called Imposing Constraints. Here are two examples of what Imposing Constraints could
look like.
In the “write poem about nature” assignment, the teacher might say that each line in the poem has to
start with the same letter and that she would arbitrarily assign a letter to each student.
In the horse stories assignment, the teacher might assign each group of students a different location
or setting for the story as an imposed constraint: an island, in the mountains, on a desert, in our
neighborhood/town/city, in a park.
An arbitrarily imposed constraint helps students to get started because it eliminates many
possible ideas but is at the same time a source of ideas. In group work, a stimulating imposed
constraint can help the group to focus and get started. If an imposed constraint is to ignite novel
ideas, it is important that it not be logically related to the problem. The locations for “horse-as-hero
stories,” for example, did not include sites such as farms, ranches, or racetracks.