What's a Concept?

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY   

Larry Michael Stultz, Ph.D.

Since receiving my M.A. from Purdue University and launching what would turn out to be a twenty-five year career in commercial graphic design and advertising, I have remained driven to understand and be able to duplicate the creative passion and the intuitive sense of design demonstrated by my major professor.  The intrigue of “creativity” as something I possess and something I can share with others began a journey that has led me to this Teaching Philosophy statement and to my completion of the doctoral program in Educational Policy Studies: Social Foundations of Education at Georgia State University.

Through the writings of educators and industry professionals, personal trial and error, and observation, I have developed a keen interest in creative thinking techniques and applications.  I have seen not only children and students, but also business owners, full-time mothers, and reticent seniors brighten to the possibilities, the passion, and the intuitive self-direction that can come from realizing a freedom to think creatively.  I have watched Tibetan monks create and then burn intricate butter sculptures and call themselves at peace.  I have seen inner-city public school children in New Orleans paint brightly colored circles and squares on chairs and call themselves “Ya-Ya.”  I’ve seen an old woman make a strange tasting saltine pie and, beaming, call me to the table.  I have seen creativity take many forms from many types of people, and the pride is the same.

After working in the design, publishing, and advertising industry for many years, an opportunity to begin a part time teaching career presented to me. I also began offering workshops to small groups, demonstrating the creative thinking process with a mixture of philosophy, spirituality, exercise, and discussion.  The transition from industry professional to committed educator came more rapidly than I had predicted when student course evaluations credited me with imparting new ways of looking at things, new abilities in conceptual thinking, and renewed desire to make creativity a career.

Teaching diverse sets of students in vastly different environments has caused me to define a more specific, and I believe more useful, study of creativity.  I have worked with bright-minded students whose goals are to be employed by the most famous design studios and advertising agencies in the world.  I have taught rural, mountain region students with few resources, an arts’n’crafts creative heritage, and an incredible desire to learn how to make life better than the family has ever known.  I have worked for over a decade in classrooms with a diverse blend of international, regional, suburban, and inner city cultures.

While nearly all of my students can produce charcoal drawings, color theory projects, and graphic design assignments, and most like to demonstrate a creative lifestyle and attitude, I am much more interested in how creativity becomes manifested. After many years’ interest, study, and application in the field of creativity, a fascination with the “concept,” with conceptual thinking, dominates me and brings focus to my personal and professional direction.

I am not specifically concerned with the qualitative or quantitative, the evaluative descriptions of a creative product.  I am very interested in the conceptual thinking process as a combined application of creative and critical thinking in pursuit of ideas that matter and can be put to use by individuals, groups, and organizations.  I am interested in how we as educators, organization leaders, and administrators support and validate the cultural identity, voice, and agency of people we work with and people we serve.

Cultural and social experiences affect, even form, one’s definition, perception, acceptance and manifestation of creative thought.  Teaching creativity must be interpretive and sensitive to cultural and socio-economic factors outside the educational environment.

My goals include personal and professional growth in my affect on my students, continued dedication to education administration for positive and humane change, and research and publishing on creativity and the conceptual process.  It is my ultimate goal to understand human beings, cultures, and social structures enough that I can be of use to all students in planning, building, and experiencing creative adventure.

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