Patricia+Stokes


 * CS50. Patricia D. Stokes ** – //Playing with numbers/Beating the odds on math achievement in American kindergarteners//

May 28 Saturday 1:30-2:30 PM HM 150

Being creative in a school setting involves solving a problem in a novel way. The aim is to demonstrate how playing with numbers in highly patterned ways permitted kindergarteners to create multiple solutions to the same problem. Actual classroom materials (a grid with moveable base-10 numbers and symbols) will be used to show how kindergarteners (easily and enthusiastically) master addition (double and single digit), subtraction, place value, word problems, and number line estimation. Affiliation/Bio: Barnard College, Columbia University, Professor of Psychology, pstokes@barnard.edu. Patricia Stokes teaches and does research at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her expertise on creativity is hands-on: pre-psychology, she painted at Pratt, wrote advertising copy at J. Walter Thompson and was a creative group head at Ted Bates & Co. Her approach is that of a practitioner, practical and incremental. Related research projects focus on variability: establishing habitual levels and examining the effects of these levels on transfer in college students (Stokes et al, 2008, //JEP: Human Perception and Performance//); examining the effects of age and curriculum on variability in problem solving among children (e.g. Stokes et al. 2008, //International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving//). Other projects involve applying her constraint model of creativity/novelty in the classroom (Stokes, 2010, chapter in //Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom//) in the arts and business (Stokes, 2005, //Creativity from Constraints//).