What Would Dr. Torrance Do?

Educators interested in giving traditional teaching methods a “makeover” should check out this article by education scholar and Torrance devotee, Dr. Berenice Bleedorn. Go to www.amcreativityassoc.org. 

Remembering E. Paul Torrance by Fredricka K. Reisman

It was October 1969, my first year on faculty in the Division of Elementary Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, when I had a visitor at my office door. It was Dr. Paul Torrance, then Chair of the Division of Educational Psychology to welcome me to Georgia. We developed a wonderful research collaboration and grew to become trusting friends, remaining so until his death on July 12, 2003.

 

Paul always said “Maybe so” when I came to him with an hypothesis; whether I had proposed that the Piaget conservation tasks were convergent and therefore may yield misleading results with creative children, or when I posed that slow learners — not only the gifted and talented — can be creative. I could see his brain churning as he sat next to my desk in my small office in Aderhold Hall, while he generated the title of the upcoming presentation of our research that I would present at the First World Congress on Future Special Education at the University of Stirling in Scotland in July 1978. When we would apply for grants or other challenges, Paul’s usual expression was “Luck to us!” with a lilt in his voice and a twinkle in his eye.

 

Paul was also a wonderful co-author on our recently published trilogy on Learning Mathematics Creatively (2002). I shall always cherish our many phone conversations and voluminous email exchanges during our long distance collaboration. Paul’s 60 years of research formed the structure for gifted student programs in schools worldwide. His Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking first published in 1962, are widely used today as are his over 1100 publications both for applied research as well as original research.

 

The American Creativity Association has honored Dr. Torrance with its annual E.Paul Torrance Graduate Student Research Award presented for outstanding graduate dissertation or masters thesis. Thus far, the doctoral studies of six students from Drexel, UGA, and Columbia have been recognized.

 

Great teachers are hard to come by. I was drawn to Paul (with whom I took every doctoral level course) by his kindness and integrity — and found my greatest teacher! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obituary captured my memories of Paul: “He saw genius in school troublemakers and encouraged children (and I add adults also) to think beyond…”

 

 

Fredricka K. Reisman is a professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.