KH Kim

KH Kim
Kim in December, 2015
Born	(1966-10-08) October 8, 1966 Bugye-myeon, Gunwi County, North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea
Nationality	South Korean
Occupation	Professor of Innovation & Creativity
Employer	The College of William & Mary
Korean name
Hangul	김경희
Revised Romanization	Gim Gyeonghui
McCune–Reischauer	Kim Kyŏnghŭi

Dr. Kyung Hee Kim (Hangul: 김경희; born October 8, 1966)^[1] is an award-winning professor of innovation and creativity. She currently teaches at the College of William & Mary, and her research study titled "The Creativity Crisis"^[2] was featured on the cover of Newsweek in 2010.^[3] The study sparked a nationwide debate regarding the fate of creativity in the United States. She is the co-editor of the World Journal of Behavioral Science^[4] and serves on the editorial board of the Creativity Research Journal^[5] and the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.^[6] She is the co-editor of Creatively Gifted Students Are Not Like Other Gifted Students,^[7] the Creativity Network Chair of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC),^[8] and advises the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development.^[9] Kim is a South Korean immigrant who left what she perceived as a conforming, traditional Confucian culture to discover why and how she felt so different from many other Koreans. She has dedicated her career to the research of creativity and innovators in hopes of helping individuals, especially those who feel different, misfit, or viewed as troublemakers, use the power of creativity to achieve their dreams. In 2016, a culmination of her research was published in her book titled The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation^[1](book in Korea).

Early childhood

Kim is a descendent of King Gyeongsun (897–978), the last ruler of the kingdom of Silla. She was born on October 8, 1966 in Bugye, a mountain village, in Gunwi County, South Korea. Her father, Taehyun Kim, and her mother, Bunsik Kim, had five sons and two daughters together. Tragically, two of her brothers died before she was born. Another one of her brothers died when she was a young girl, which had a lasting effect on her. Her parents' families experienced hardships due to the Japanese colonization and then the Korean War. As a result, both her mother and father had to drop out of school at a young age to take care of their siblings. Due to their unfulfilled educational aspirations, Kim’s parents were extremely passionate about educating their own children.^[1]

When Kim was young, her parents rented out rooms in their house to boarders. Kim befriended the wife of a couple who rented a room and enjoyed listening to the stories she told. Although the husband was kind and polite to Kim's family, he abused his wife by beating her and dragging her around the yard by her hair.^[1] Kim was always very curious and asked her parents countless questions about various aspects of her life she had difficulty understanding. She asked her parents why the woman's husband was allowed to beat his wife when she was not allowed to pinch her brother. Her parents' answers to her many questions, like this one, were rooted in Confucianism, which accepted a husband disciplining his wife. Kim compares individuals immersed the subconscious and pervasiveness of Confucianism in Korean society to a fish who is unaware of the water it swims in. This traumatic experience and others like it nurtured Kim's defiance against the unfair world.

School years

When Kim was ten, her seven-year-old brother, whom she was extremely close to, died. His death robbed her of her childhood because the anguish caused her mother to become very ill, which forced Kim to take on the role as the mother of the household. This experience also made Kim question her faith in God because her brother died despite her intense prayers.^[1]

Thirty minutes from Kim's home, on top of the Palgong Mountain, there were two military bases: one American and one South Korean. The U.S. military soldiers gave Kim’s middle school (Bugye Middle School) Ping-Pong tables and awarded her and another boy an academic scholarship for $300. This scholarship motivated the students at her school to study hard, and her teachers encouraged her to continue with her studies so that she could escape the poverty of her village and have the opportunity to help more people like herself.^[1]

During her last year of middle school, her English teacher, Mr. Soon-Hyun Cho, visited her village several times to try and convince her family that Kim should continue her education beyond middle school. Her extended-family village elders were finally persuaded, and Kim was sent to an academic high school. She became the first girl from her village to graduate high school and college. She credits Cho with sealing her fate as an educated woman instead of working at the sweatshops like the rest of the girls from her village.^[1]

After graduating Wonhwa Girls' High School in Daegu in 1984, Kim earned dual bachelor's degrees in German Education and English Education in 1988 at Kyungpook National University in Daegu. While pursuing her master's degree, she became interested in studying the field of intelligence after she had a life-changing experience with a fortuneteller. He told her that she would have two very important children who would contribute to the betterment of the world. The fortuneteller’s premonition led Kim to marry soon and have children, and also pursue another master's degree at Korea University in Seoul. Through her master’s and doctoral programs, she researched how to cultivate individuals’ intelligence through education and the environment, which led her to study Nobel laureates. Marie Curie was the first Nobel laureate who Kim studied, and she became her role model. Kim was astonished to discover that high intelligence is not necessary to accomplish innovation, including winning a Nobel Prize, but that creativity is necessary. Since then, she has focused on researching creativity and methods to make creativity a more central competency in education, industry, and everyday wellness.^[1]

Immigrated to the United States

As an adult, Kim was threatened by the gender expectations of women. To be beautiful, women had to appear fragile and delicate, which was unnatural to Kim. She felt different and often referred to herself as a square peg in a round hole. It was only after she moved to United States that she realized the conflict between Confucian cultural values and the characteristics of creative individuals.

Without knowing a single soul or having a plan, Kim moved to La Jolla, California with her two small children in 2000.^[1] Two months later, she attended a conference for the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY; ), which was designed to help families with limited resources similar to her own parents’ circumstances. At the conference, she met a board member who was conducting research on a HIPPY program at the University of South Florida. The program interested her so much that she spontaneously moved to Tampa in to learn more about it in 2001. In order to maintain her visa in America, she pursued another Ph.D. at the University of South Florida. In the next year, an article about a guest speaker's advice appeared in the University newspaper. The article strongly suggested that Americans should not buy Korean cars on the basis that the Korean government is unstable, and that Korean cars will lose their value quickly. Kim was shocked that people seemed to accept the advice in the article so willingly. This experience motivated her to educate others, so she published a defiant argument against the advice titled, "South Korea: A Stable Country with Stable Business".^[10] Soon after, Kim met Kofi Marfo in his cognitive psychology class, and he inspired her to study creativity under E. Paul Torrance at the University of Georgia and to write research articles to educate others.

The Torrance Center at the University of Georgia

Kim started another Ph.D. program at the University of Georgia in 2002, and for the first time in her life she flourished. In her Korean doctoral program, she had learned and memorized many theories about intelligence and creativity to score well on exams, but at the Torrance Center she was introduced to a whole different approach to education. In her Korean program she was taught the strengths of theories, but at the Torrance Center, she critiqued them and learned not to memorize anything because every day new research shapes new theories. The intellectually provocative atmosphere sparked Kim’s many unique research hypotheses by questioning established knowledge, conclusions, and/or theories. She studied and questioned the validity of Confucianism; the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (the most widely used creativity tests); the theory that only those with high intelligence can be creative; and the theory that creativity steadily increases as IQs do.

At the Torrance Center, E. Paul Torrance and Bonnie Cramond became Kim’s mentors. They recognized her creative potential and provided her with various academic resources, experiences, and brutally honest criticisms. Under their mentorship, the frustrated dreams she experienced in the Confucian anti-creative atmosphere blossomed into her passion, and she developed her expertise in the assessment and development of creativity. Although she became a creativity-assessment expert, her extensive research on creativity assessment was not to just test individuals but to better identify, understand, and develop their creative potential.

Kim focused her research on the influence of creative climates, which are atmospheres and practices that promote the progression of creative attitudes and thinking skills. Climates include relationships among creators, support figures, and organizations, and their developmental environments and processes. The creative climates provide the nourishment and support for creators to reach their maximum potential. She researched the impact of culture and cultural diversity on individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, and minds. She examined how parenting and teaching in different cultures impact children’s creativity development, especially within Jewish and Confucian cultures (including the specific concept of the "tiger-mother"). She found that the cultural differences between the two parenting and teaching styles helps explain why Jews have won 625 times more Nobel Prizes than Asians.^[1]

Kim researched the impact of patriarchal cultural climates, particularly the gender bias toward creative women. She found that patriarchal cultural differences explain why some women fulfill their creative potential and others do not. For example, Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes while Mileva Marić's (Albert Einstein's first wife) creativity was hindered due to overwhelming patriarchal influences.^[1]

Kim researched the impact of school climates on creative high-school-students' dropout rates. She studied school practices that can deter these at-risk students from dropping out including changing school climates and utilizing extracurricular activities to fulfill their creative potential. She further researched the impact of school and home climates on young creative students' tendency to underachieve. She sought to understand why they underachieve and how they can succeed in school and later in life. She found that both innovators and creative underachievers are a product of their climates.^[11]

While pursuing her Ph.D., Kim worked as a statistician at the university testing center and worked on setting standards for state-mandated tests for the Georgia Department of Education. As a statistician, Kim discovered errors that reduced reliability and validity of many creativity tests including Korean tests. She reported errors of the Korean Torrance Tests to the Scholastic Testing Services, Inc. that had granted the agreement to a Korean publisher. This led the publisher to revise the tests according to her report. But those who believe in Torrance's legacy, including Kim, have disagreed with the Korean publisher because that publisher commercialized the tests for only financial gain and claimed to be affiliated with the American Torrance Center. This led the directors of the American Torrance Center and the Scholastic Testing Services to issue public statements that the Korean publisher has no right to use the Torrance name. This motivated Kim to develop original creativity tests that are not only for financial gain.

Kim also worked as the coordinator for international programs at the Torrance Center. With Cramond, she trained national and international groups and individuals how to assess creative potential. Some of the training groups were Korean educators and educational administrators who were selected by the State Department of Education offices for their outstanding achievements. The offices invested hundreds of thousands of dollars for each group to be trained overseas. Most of the Korean trainees were eager to learn about what made America creative. However, some of them considered the trip an opportunity to vacation abroad. Kim sent letters to high-ranked Korean offices, reporting her assessments of each training group because she did not want Korea to waste its people's tax money. Unfortunately, however, her letters were left unread. Even worse, when a few of the irresponsible leaders of training groups became influential, they stopped sending trainees to her. This led Kim to focus on her research instead of training programs, until her book, The Creativity Challenge, was published.

Professoriate

Upon earning a Ph.D. in 2004, Kim began teaching at the University of Georgia in 2005. Soon thereafter, she divorced her husband in South Korea. She wanted to stay in the United States, be independent and not controlled by either her in-laws or Confucian cultural customs. Despite the previous mistreatment from her in-laws, she deeply respects them as her children's grandparents. In fact, she thanks her in-laws for "abusing her so thoroughly" because she believes their mistreatment led her to become strong and successful in the United States.

After teaching for three years at Eastern Michigan University, Kim began teaching at the College of William & Mary in 2008.^[12] She has remained a South Korean citizen.

The Creativity Crisis

Kim examined how creative thinking is different from intelligence, and her meta-analysis indicated only a negligible relationship between the two.^[13] This suggested that everyone can be creative if they are in a climate that nurtures their creative attitudes, which enables their creative thinking, including developing expertise—the full and complete knowledge and skills of a particular subject—in their curiosity, preference, or interest. She further researched the relationship between the two by examining their changes over time. Because the Flynn Effect showed IQ scores had increased worldwide, if creative thinking and intelligence were similar concepts, then creative thinking would have also increased. However, she found that creative thinking ability has actually decreased since 1990. Her study^[2] spurred a groundbreaking Newsweek cover story in 2010,^[3] which quickly led to what the press has labeled “the creativity crisis”. After many years of further research, Kim has published The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation. In this book, she provides causes of, reactions to, and consequences of this crisis, including the trend of American education toward test-centric climates and against creative climates.^[1]

The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation

Before The Creativity Challenge, Kim had only written about creativity for a specialized academic audience. But in hopes of reaching a broader audience, she chose to write for the everyday reader. She used gardening metaphors to illustrate the simple and powerful steps to innovation: CATs. Her research indicates that children are pruned and wired ("bonsaied") to be un-creative, preventing them from reaching their full potential, and that those who appear different, misfit, or viewed as troublemakers are punished. Her CATs include:

1. Cultivate creative Climates (soil, sun, storm, and space climates)
2. Nurture creative Attitudes (innovators' 27 characteristics)
3. Apply creative Thinking skills (inbox, outbox, and newbox thinking)

The Creativity Challenge^[1] shows how individuals and organizations can cultivate creative climates to nurture creative attitudes and apply creative thinking skills to achieve innovation.

Current research

Based on her CATs, Kim is currently inventing online interactive creativity tests using her patent-pending technologies. The future tests can be done anywhere in the world and scored automatically, instantly, and objectively—not only with numerical scores, but also with feedback including a profile analysis on one's creative climate, attitude, and thinking skills. Her research has demonstrated that creativity transforms the good into the best, and her goal is to help with identifying—instead of bonsaing, victimizing, or criminalizing—creative potential, so that the world can follow in the footsteps of those who inspired, encouraged, taught, challenged, and mentored the greatest innovators in history. History has shown it only takes a few individuals, minorities, misfits, or troublemakers to make striking advances for the betterment of humankind.

References

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