Jane Piirto

Ashland University · Department of Education

This article contains 15 “takeaways” about how to teach organic creativity, from actual teachers with several hundred total years of experience. Teachers of English, physics, Advanced Placement Calculus, science, theater, the visual arts, dance, school administration, school counseling, educational psychology professing, world languages, mathematic...

This chapter focuses on talent development in five domains: visual arts, creative writing, music, theatre, and dance. The framework for discussing these domains is the author’s Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development, which focuses on (1) The Genetic Aspect; (2) The Emotional Aspect; (3) The Cognitive Aspect; (4) Talent in a Domain; (5) The Thorn; (6)...

Abstract This chapter focuses on talent development in five domains: visual arts, creative writing, music, theatre, and dance. The framework for discussing these domains is the author’s Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development, which focuses on (1) The Genetic Aspect; (2) The Emotional Aspect; (3) The Cognitive Aspect; (4) Talent in a Domain; (5) The T...

Cite as: Piirto, J. (1999). Themes in the lives of successful contemporary U.S. women creative writers at midlife: A qualitative study. In N. Colangelo & S. G. Assouline (Eds.). Talent development, III (pp. 173-202). Scottsdale, AZ: Gifted Psychology Press. Invited paper presented at 1995 Third Wallace Symposium on Talent Development at the Univers...

• This chapter describes the practical applications of a theoretical approach to creativity training developed by the author. Called Creativity as Personal Transformation, or Organic Creativity, the approach has been derived from archival qualitative research into numerous biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, and interviews with eminent creators....

This is an article about creativity assessment which was published in the Encyclopedia of Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent.Piirto, J. (2009). Entry. Creativity assessment. In B. Kerr (Ed.), Encyclopedia of giftedness, creativity, and talent (pp.206-209). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

This is a chapter in an edited book about Creativity, Cite as: Piirto, J. (2009). The creative process as creators practice it: A view of creativity with emphasis on what creators really do. In B. Cramond (Ed.), Perspectives in gifted education: Creativity (pp. 42-67). University of Denver, CO: Institute for the Development of Gifted Education. In...

This is a pamphlet containing an explanation of the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development, a theory of talent development by Jane Piirto, Ph.D.

Eminence in women is discussed. This was an article for the Encyclopedia of Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent, edited by Barbara Kerr.

Utilizing the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development as a theoretical framework, this chapter discusses female talent in six domains—visual arts, creative writing, science, acting, music, and dance. Biographical sketches of visual artist Judy Chicago (1939-); poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974); scientist/astronaut Judith Resnik (1951-2012); actor Angela La...

Utilizing the Pyramid of Talent Development as a theoretical framework, this session discusses three modern female visual artists, Alice Neel (1900-1984), Judy Chicago (1935-), and Cindy Sherman (1954-). Genetics, personality, cognitive ability, talent, the environmental Suns, and the “Thorn,” will be discussed. The Pyramid is the only current mode...

This is a presentation I have used to introduce people to the Five Core Attitudes for Creativity.

This is a presentation I made at the Research SIG Crackerbarrel in 2016 at the NAGC Conference. It shows the various genres of research in which I have published my work.

This autoethnography gives a personal and cultural account of my work with the Dabrowski theory. I have administered the Overexcitability Questionnaire (OEQ) and the Overexcitability Questionnaire II (OEQ-II) to 16 cohorts of talented high school sophomores and juniors (N = 600+). I have written about much of this in my books, but the studies have...

Piirto discusses the creative process in creative writers, gleaned from qualitative themes obtained from archival sources—scholarly biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, and published interviews. This chapter discusses the motivation, or intention, to write, which is primary. It discusses the Five Core Attitudes for creators: (self-discipline, ris...

This poetic inquiry was first presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in October 2013. According to the editors, in the introduction, "Karen J. Micko and Jane Piirto's chapter . . . exports how we unearth buried passions, and [asks] how we might help those who are engaged in such an endeavor (an...

As interest in creativity explodes, it has become more complicated to decide how to best nurture creativity in our schools. There are the controversial Common Core Standards in many states. Meanwhile, the classroom has become increasingly digital; it is easier to access information, communicate ideas, and learn from people across the world. Many co...

The creative process in innovators is considered, utilizing five core attitudes—(1) risk-taking, (2) self-discipline, (3) openness to experience, (4) tolerance for ambiguity and (5) group trust; Seven I's—(1) several types of Inspiration, (2) Intuition, (3) Imagery, (4) Incubation, (5) Imagination, (6) Improvisation, (7) Insight); and general prac...

Three poems published by the Ohio Arts Council in an anthology of poems written by Individual Artist Fellowship winners.

This chapter contains 12 poems about various categories of faculty service.

This chapter contains 12 poems about various categories of faculty service.

Faculty members in U.S. universities are charged to perform in three areas: Teaching, Research, and Service. Service includes contributions to the profession, institution, college, department, students, and the community. This chapter contains 12 poems about various categories of service: attending professional conferences, serving as a grant reade...

Don Ambrose, in a thought piece used as a target for commentary on where global education and creative giftedness should intersect in the 21st Century, said: “The murder of creativity comes from dogmatic adherence to accountability initiatives driven by widespread, high-stakes measurement of superficial, narrow abilities through standardized testin...

Creativity can be taught and nurtured, and we can build classrooms in which creativity thrives. This philosophy acts as a central thesis in a new book,Organic Creativity in the Classroom, edited by award-winning author Jane Piirto, Ph.D. This innovative collection of essays explores approaches to teaching creativity from the perspective of experie...

This biographical essay on one of the pioneers of gifted education, Mary Meeker (1921-2003) describes her life and her advocacy for alternative methods to identify giftedness utilizing the SOI Learning Abilities test.

Utilizing the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development as a framework, this chapter discusses talent development in visual arts, music, acting, and dance.

Professional teaching artists offer a unique and vitally important set of skills and perspectives to children and schools. They see and interact with students very differently than most other adults in the school. Their perceptions of students-what they observe and value, and how they respond to and nurture students' abilities-often directly challe...

This essay troubles the definition of creative giftedness, especially as it has impacted gifted education policy. Some states identify creative giftedness through divergent production testing, IQ testing, and the use of checklists. These methods are problematic, not only because of their doubtfulness as means of predicting creative production in ad...

Talent is variously considered an inborn propensity toward achievement in a certain domain, or the end result of a progressive lifespan process which utilizes the expertise of known practitioners within domains. Creativity from talent is an end state and a goal, depending on the domain where the talented person is working. Each domain where talent...

The author recounts a week in October, describing her teaching, writing, thinking, mail, and other activities that relate to her professional and personal work on creativ-ity. This personal creative nonfiction piece also contains poetry and references to her books and lectures. The author chose this form in order to emphasize the autobio-graphical...

Two groups of adolescents (N = 114), 61 identified-gifted adolescents (M = 22, F = 39) and 51 vocational school adolescents (M = 27, F = 26), were compared on the Overexcitability Questionnaire. Each of the five Overexcitability (OE) scores—Psychomotor, Sensual, Imaginational, Intellectual, and Emotional—was subjected to a two-way ANOVA by classifi...

This chapter uses the Five "Suns" of the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development--Sun of Home, Sun of School, Sun of Community and Culture, Sun of Gender, Sun of Chance to organize themes in the lives of contemporary creative writers. The writers qualified for listing in the Directory of American Writers, which utilizes a high publication criteria for...

This file contains the information published by the publisher and the first two chapters.

This is an entry for the Encyclopedia of Creativity, 2nd Ed. The topic is Poetry.

Imagery is also part of the creative process. The term imagery is psychological, the ability to mentally represent imagined or previously perceived objects accurately and vividly. Imagery is an attribute of imagination. Imagery is not only visual, but also auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. Three types of studies of creativity and imagery...

This chapter will discuss the five core attitudes creative people seem to possess: (1) Core attitude of Self-discipline about doing the creative work, which includes the presence of motivation; (2) core attitude of Naiveté, or openness to experience; (3) core attitude of Risk-taking; (4) core attitude of Tolerance for Ambiguity; (5) core attitude o...

In the studies, biographies, and memoirs of, by, and about real creators that form the research base of this book, several other aspects of the creative process seem apparent: (1) the need for solitude; (2) creativity rituals; (3) meditation; (4) exercise, especially walking; (5) the quest for silence; (6) divergent production practice; and (7) cre...

Currently, there is a call for 21st Century Skills, and these skills include creativity skills. This book will, perhaps help in that endeavor. These 21st Century Skills include creativity and innovation skills within a comprehensive skills framework, as suggested by one of the 21st Century Skills think tanks.

Often, teachers will feel that their personal attitude toward creativity enhancement in students is opposite to what the school itself projects. On the one hand, administrators and supervisors are touting “21st Century Skills,” and on the other hand, they are demanding that teachers “teach to the test,” raise test scores, focus on oneshot answers a...

Creators in the arts, sciences, education, and business speak about how they create in terms that I have broken down into the Seven I’s: several types of (1) Inspiration, (2) Imagery, (3) Imagination, (4) Intuition, (5) Insight, (6) Incubation, and (7) Improvisation. I have developed exercises for each of these so that my students can themselves te...

This is an article tracing several theories of talent development and creativity which appeared in the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Creativity edited by Mark Runco and Steven Pritzker in 2011

This is an encyclopedia entry about jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. It appeared in the Encyclopedia of Creativity, 2nd Ed. in 2011.

She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mensa Research and Education Foundation, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Northern Michigan University, her undergraduate alma mater. She has published a textbook (Talented Children and Adults: Their Development and Education, 3 editions), several nonfiction books (Understanding...

When I began working in the field of the education of the gifted and talented, as a county coordinator in Ohio, in 1977, I looked at the categories of giftedness as described in the Marland Report of 1971. These categories were superior cognitive ability, specific academic ability, creative thinking, visual and performing arts ability, and psychomo...

Popular images of male novelists and poets show them professorially clad, in khakis or in tweed sport coats with leather patches on the arms, smoking pipes; or, as in the image of writers like Ernest Hemingway or Jim Harrison, cradling rifles or fly-fishing, wearing horn-rimmed glasses or swaggering beneath cowboy hats: They are writing from the iv...

Investigators of depth psychology turn studies of the psyche toward the unconscious, believing that the ego consciousness typically receives excessive emphasis. When depth psychology is applied to high ability and creativity, often-hidden aspects of human ability come to the fore. These include notions of the collective unconscious, the transcenden...

The present chapter looks at persons who have produced creative products in the visual arts. What are their backgrounds, their personalities, their experiences, and their ways of looking at the world? The chapter uses the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development as a framework and discusses The chapter uses examples of many eminent visual artists and h...

To put it simplistically, there are several ways to approach giftedness. The term gifted itself is problematic, as it has a connotation of elitism. Few adults would dare to call themselves gifted, but they have no hesitation in labeling children as such. In 1993, the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement removed the term gifted and re...

The differences between US (Ohio) gifted and talented high school students and South Korean gifted and talented high school students on the "Overexcitabilities Questionnaire II" (OEQ II) were investigated. The OEQ II was administered to 227 Ohio identified gifted and talented high school students (M = 88, F = 139) and to 341 high school students fr...

Writing and a writer's life are integrally related. In this excerpt from her literary book, A Location in the Upper Peninsula (Sampo, 1994), Piirto traces some of the themes in her life. This article was published in the special issue of Piirto's qualitative research which appeared in the Mensa Research Journal which followed Piirto's receiving of...

Abstract By late 2003, the term “creativity” was used in over 16,500 references to titles of scholarly books and articles. The phenomenon of interest in creativity is a truly postmodern perplexity, for little is tangible, all is one, one is many, everything is true and nothing is true. However, few can get an authoritative and comprehensive handle...

This is the second article advocating and explicating a depth psychological approach to the educate of the talented. In this analysis we take the "thorn" on the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development and relate it to the processes of making, naming, and endearing/mentoring as teachers practice these. The article presents 20 ways that the imaginal, sy...

This chapter details the guidance needs and the counseling needs of talented students. It discusses these topics: Historical Trends in Guidance and Counseling of the Academically Talented Psychosocial and Asynchronous Development Guidance Issues for Talented Youth Gender Difference Concerns for Guidance Intervention Counseling Issues Among Talente...

This textbook is available in 3 editions (1994, 1999, and 2007). The first two editions were published by Merrill/Macmillan/Pearson. The 3rd edition was published by Prufrock. Chapters include Chapter One: Who Are The Talented?. Chapter Two: GETTING STARTED: DEVELOPING A PROGRAM FOR THE TALENTED. Chapter 3: Identification of the Academically Gifted...

Values are commonly thought to be important in the construction of personal and group morality, in personality, and as a basis for living life. The Rokeach Values Survey (RVS) was administered to gifted and talented adolescents in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002. Two groups were compared in this study: Group I, pre-September 11, 2001 (n = 191; M = 64, F...

Using the theoretical framework of the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development, which posits that personality attributes are extremely important in the development of talent, the researchers administered the High School Personality Questionnaire (N=474, M=158, F=316) and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (N=667, M=223, F=442) to gifted and talented high...

Professional teaching artists offer unique perspectives on teaching and learning. Many schools throughout the country, through partnerships with community arts organizations, tap into the talent, experience, teaching skills, and creative processes of working professionals to enhance their arts education programs. One of the most powerful benefits a...

While the field of gifted education has relied on educational, cognitive, counseling, behavioral, developmental, and social psychology, the domain of depth psychology offers special insights into giftedness, especially with regard to individuation. The notion of passion, or the thorn (J. M. Piirto, 1999, 2002), the incurable mad spot (F. C. Reynold...

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 2002, Vol 47(5), 546–548. Reviews the book “Keeping Your Kids Out in Front Without Kicking Them From Behind: How to Nurture High-Achieving Athletes, Scholars, and Performing Artists” by Ian Tofler and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo (see record 2001–01072–000). The author notes that despi...

Tierney is right — the writing in qualitative research is important. In his very wellwritten essay, Tierney decries the boring writing in the social science field, even in supposedly “alternative” texts, and calls for models from fiction. Let me be a little playful and metaphorical here by using an example of how experience is turned into fiction....

Utilizing a qualitative research tne thodology', the researcher presents a portrait of the Jnana Prabhodini School in Pune, Maharashtra, India. Observations, interviews, and document review were conducted. The purpose of the school is to educate gifted and talented students not only for academics, but for motivation to help their state, country, an...

Alternative forms of data representation have been widely recommended, including the writing of poems as educational research. The arts have their own ways. What qualifications do artsbased researchers need to have? How does one judge the quality of the product? Using part of a novel and three of her own poems as illustrations, the author, a qualit...

This article presents the "Piirto Pyramid" framework for identification of talent potential. It explains how the pyramid identifies influences that are significant in the development of talents, including genetics, personality attributes, cognitive ability, talent, vocational, and environmental. Examples using Roy Rogers and Michelangelo are provid...

A visit to the Krishnamurti Foundation International School in Chennai (Madras), India during a study tour of India in late 1998 leads the author to a year of reflection and study of the works of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. In a piece of creative nonfiction, the description of the settings and milieu of 1998 India are evoked. Interwoven wi...

Issues of the body, of the canon, of gender, and of power and class are discussed with reference to postmodern curriculum theory and its application to the current theories in the education of the gifted and talented.

Postmodern curriculum theory provides a framework for educators of the gifted and talented to critique the assumptions of the field from within the field. Five overar - ching themes derived from postmodern literature are discussed. These are presence, origin, unity, denial of transcendence, and constitutive otherness. Five issues are subsumed benea...

This is the entry for "Poetry" that was written by the author for the Encyclopedia of Creativity (Academic Press, 1999).

This is the article on Synchronicity and Creativity that appeared in the Encyclopedia of Creativity in 1999.

The gifted and talented have unique counseling and guidance needs, as do most special populations of children and adolescents. Counseling issues that have been particularly applicable to academically talented students are several. Among them are anger, boredom, creativity, delinquency, depression, dropping out of school, gender related issues, issu...

This chapter from a synoptic textbook on the education of the gifted and talented focuses on predictive behaviors and commonly observed characteristics of elementary and middle-school aged children with high IQs, as well as predictive behaviors and commonly observed characteristics of children talented in science, mathematics, writing, visual arts,...

The present study looked at the lifespan development of 80 women who are contemporary U.S. creative writers. Themes from surveys, autobiographical and biographical essays, published interviews, and reference books were analyzed. Themes in the women writers' lives were characterized by Developmental Events: (1) unconventional families and family tra...

This book describes the nature of creativity and ways to measure it. Types of creatively gifted (artists, writers, scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, etc.) are shown to have distinct life patterns. Ways to enhance and nurture creativity are presented, particularly for children. Adults who struggle with creativity in their childr...

The present study looked at the lifespan development o women who are creative writers. Themes from surveys, autobiographical and biographical essays, published interview, and reference books were analyzed. Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) war administered to the writers and to a comparison group of elementary school teachers. A preference for In...

This was a funded study of the program for the gifted and talented in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, conducted in 1991.

The author rethinks a position she and Higham took in 1984 in an article in Journal For The Education of the Gifted, where she and Higham called for “differential equality” in the education of gifted girls. Looking again at well‐known psychometric, psychological, and biographical research into creative visual artists, mathematicians, and musicians,...