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FLOW-TEORIA
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Flow-teoria:
virtauskokemus motivaation
lähteenä
Yksi kiintoisa perinteisistä suoritusmotivaatio- ja
attribuutioteoreettisista
malleista poikkeava motivaatioteoria on Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyin
(1975; 1996; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi 1988)
esittämä
flow- eli virtausteoria. Tässä teoriassa
tarkastellaan
voimakkaasti sisäisesti motivoitunutta toimintaa,
joka on
riippumatonta ulkoisista palkkioista tai sosiaalisista
yllykkeistä.
Csikszentmihalyi kuvaa eri ammattien ja harrastuslajien
edustajien
sisäisesti motivoitunutta toimintaa autotelisen
toiminnan
käsitteellä. Tällainen toiminta tuottaa
tekijälleen
emotionaalisesti positiivisia kokemuksia, ja korkea
aktiviteettitaso
pysyy yllä käynnissä olevan toiminnan
itsensä
vuoksi, ilman ulkoisia kiihokkeita tai palkkioita (kreikk.
auto
'itse', telos 'tavoite,
päämäärä').
Autoteliseen toimintaan liittyy usein ns. virtauskokemus
eli flow,
joka merkitsee uppoutumista toimintaan sillä tavoin,
että
ikään kuin koko ulkoinen maailma katoaa.
Henkilö
on niin uppoutunut toimintaansa, että hän
unohtaa ajan
kulun ja jopa ruokailun. Hän unohtaa myös
mahdolliset
tehtävään liittyvät ulkoiset
vaatimukset,
kuten "deadline"-ajankohdan eli
määräajan,
jolioin työ on saatava valmiiksi. Samoin hän
unohtaa
sosiaaliset odotukset tai omaan itseen liittyvät
ajatukset
kyvyistään tai taidoistaan. Hän ei siis
tarkkaile
itseään, ei mieti mahdollista onnistumista tai
epäonnistumista,
vaan keskittyy täysipainoisesti itse
tehtävään
(vrt. tehtäväorientaatio) .
Virtauskokemuksen syntymisen edellytyksenä
näyttää
olevantoiminnan vaatimusten sekä henkilön
valmiuksien
ja kykyjen tasapaino. Mikäli henkilö kokee,
että
hänen kykynsä ovat
riittämättömät
toiminnan vaatimuksiin nähden, seurauksena on
ahdistuneisuus.
Jos hän sen sijaan näkee tehtävän
valmiuksiinsa
nähden liian helppona, seurauksena on
pitkästyminen.
Optimaalinen tilanne sisäisen motivaation ja
virtauskokemuksen
syntymiselle onkin, että tehtävän va
atimukset
ovat tasapainossa henkilön valmiuksien kanssa.
Flow-kokemus on varmasti joko harrastukseen tai
työhön
uppoutumisen kautta useimmille tuttu, mutta
kouluopiskeluun ja
oppimiseen tällaista kokemusta harvemmin
liitetään.
Eräässä tietokoneen opetuskäytön
tutkimuksessa
(Lehtinen 1989) kuitenkin tarkasteltiin erilaisten
matematiikan
opetusohjelmien motivationaalista vaikutusta mm.
sisäisen
motivaation ja virtauskokemusten kannalta. Tulosten mukaan
sisäinen
motivaatio ja virtauskokemus liittyivät usein
oppilaiden
tietokoneen käyttöön, mutta yhteys ei ole
samanlainen
kaikille oppilaille vaan riippuu siitä, miten oppilas
kokee
ohjelman ja tehtävien vaikeustason suhteessa omaan
osaamiseensa.
Flow-teorian mukainen, motivaation kannalta optimaalinen
tilanne
syntyykin silloin, kun tehtävät ovat
keskivaikeita eli
tarjoavat oppilaalle riittävästi haasteita,
mutta eivät
ole oppilaan valmiuksiin nähden liian
vaativia.
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FLOW
OF CREATIVITY
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-
creative persons differ from one other in a variety of
ways, but
in one respect they are unanimous: they all love what they
do.
opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing. not
money.
- it is not what people do that counts but how they do it.
the
work become intrinsically rewarding, worth doing for their
own
sake.
- It often involved painful, risky, difficult activities
that
stretched the person´s capacity and involved an
element
of novelty and discovery. This optimal experience is what
I have
called flow, because many of the respondents described the
feeling
when things were going well as an almost automatic,
effortless,
yet highly focused state of conciusness.
- the flow experience was described in almost identical
terms
regardless of the activity that produced it. Atheletes,
artists,
religious mystics, scientists, and ordinary working people
described
their most rewarding experiences with very similiar words.
Descripition
didn´t vary much by culture, gender, or age. old and
young,
rich
and poor, men and women.
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THE
CONDITIONS FOR FLOW IN CREATIVITY
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Nine
goals were mentioned over and over again to describe how
it
feels when an experience is enjoyable.
1.
There are clear goals every step of the way.
- in flow we always know what needs to be done. Rock
climber
knows the next moves to make
2. There is immediate feedback to one´s
actions.
- in flow we know how well we are doing. The Rock
climber finds
out immediately whether the move was correct because he
or she
is still hanging in there and hasn´t fallen.
3. There is a balance between challenges and
skills.
- In flow we feel that our abilities are well matched to
the
opportunities for action.
4. Action and awareness are merged.
- In flow, our concentration is focused on what we do.
- One-pointedness of mind is required by the close match
between
challenges and skills, and it is made possible by the
clarity
of goals and the constant availability of feedback.
5. Distractions are excluded from
conciusness
- we are aware of only of what is relevant here and now.
- Flow
is the result of intense concentration on the present,
which
relieves us of the usual fears that cause depression and
anxiety
in everyday life.
6. There is no worry of
failure.
- While in flow, we are too involved to be concerned
with failure.
The reason that failure is not an issue is that in flow
it is
clear what has to be done, and our skills are
potentially adequate
to the challenges.
7. Selfconciousness disappears.
- In flow we are too involved in what we are doing to
care about
protecting ego. We might even feel that we have stepped
out
of the boundaries of the ego and have become part, at
least
temporarily, of a larger entity. Paradoxically, the self
expands
through acts of selfforgetfulness.
8. Sense of time becomes distorted
- Generally in flow we forget time, and hours may pass
by in
what seem like a few minutes. Clock time no longer marks
equal
lengths of experienced time; our sense of how much time
passes
depends on what we are doing.
9. The activity becomes autotelic.
- There is no reason for doing things except to feel the
experience
they provide.
- Secret to a happy life is to learn to get flow from as
many
of the things we have to do as possible. If work and
family
life become autotelic, then there si nothing wasted in
life,
and everything we do is worth doing for its own
sake.
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THE
5 STEPS OF CREATIVE PROCESS
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1. Period of
preparation, becoming
immersed, consciously or not, in a set of problematic issues
that
are interesting and arouse curiosity.
2. Period of incubation,
during
which ideas churn around below the threshold of
conciousness. It
is during this time that unusual connections are likely to
be made.
Uneexpected combination may come into being.
3. Insight.
"Heureka!"
moment.
4. Evaluation. Person
must decide
whether the insight is valuable and worth pursuing. This is
often
the most emotianally trying part of the process, when one
feels
most uncertain and insecure. This is also when the
internalized
criteria of the domain, and the internalized opinion of the
field
usually become prominent.
5. Elaboration. One that
probably
takes up the most time and involves
thve hardest work.
Edison: creativity consists 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration. |
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ENHANCING
PERSONAL CREATIVITY
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- every person has potentially all the physic energy he or
she
need to
lead a creative life. There are major of sets of obstacles
that
prevent many from experessing this potential.
1. Some are exhausted by too many
demands
2.
Troubles learning how to protect and channel whatever
energy we
have
3. Laziness, or lacking discipline for controlling the
flow and
energy.
4. Not knowing what to do with the energy one
has.
-
there are limits to how many things a person can attend to
at
the same time, and when survival needs require all of
one´s
attention, none is left over for being creative. It is
diffucult
to approach the world creatively when one is hungry or
shivering
from cold, because all mental energy is focused on
securing the
necessities one lacks.
- person concerned with protecting his or her self,
practically
all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the
ego.
- to free up creative energy we need to let go and divert
some
attention from the pursuit of the predictable goals that
genes
and memes have programmed in our minds and use it instead
to explore
the
world around us on its own terms.
Curiosity
and interest
- Creative individuals are childlike, curiosity remains
fresh
during their life.
- when something strikes a spark of interest, follow
it.
- when there is nothing specific to do, thoughts soon
return to
the most predictable state, which is randomness and
confusion.
When there is no external force demanding that we
concentrate,
the mind begins to lose focus. It falls to the lowest
energetic
state, where the least amount of effort is required. When
this
happens, a sort of
mental chaos takes over. Unpleasent thoughts flash into
awareness,
forgotten regrets resurface, and we become depressed.
- Most creative people keep diary, or notes, or lab
records to
make their experiences more concrete and enduring. After
(keeping
the diary) you may begin to see pattern of interest that
may indicate
some domain that would repay exploring in depth.
Enjoyable
experience
- The conditions that make flow possible suggest how to
transform
everyday activities so that they are more enjoyable.
Having clear
goals and expectations for whatever we do, paying
attention to
the consequences of our actions, adjusting skills to the
opportunities
for action in the enviroment, concentrating on the task at
hand
without distractions-these are the simple rules that can
make
the difference between an unpleasent and an enjoyable
experience.
- flow potentials (how to apply flow conditions to loading
the
dishwasher) ->metaskill. Being able to turn any
activity into
an occasion of flow. ->autotelic
metaskill->self-sustaining
chain of reaction of creativity.
Habits of strenghts
- after energy is awakened, protect it. Erect barriers
against
distractions, dig channels so that energy can flow more
freely,
find way to escape outside temptations and
interruptions.
- Einsteins same old clothes. Cuts down the effort
involved in
deciding what clothes to wear, so that his mind can focus
on matters
that to him were more important.
- the more we do things at the most suitable times, the
more creative
energy we can free up. ->ideal patterns->changing
things
around us.
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The only way to stay creative is to oppose the wear and
tear of
existence with techiniques that organize time, space, and
activity
to your advantage. It means developing schedules to
protect your
time and avoid distraction, arranging your surroundings to
heighten
concentration, cutting out meaningless chores that soak up
psychic
energy, and devoting the energy thus saved to what you
really
care about.
The work of
creativity
- Robert Calvin: Creativity consists of anticipation and
commitment.
Anticipation involves having a vision of something that
will become
important in the future before anybody else has it;
commitment
is the belief that keeps one working to realize the vision
despite
doubt and discouragement.
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