Whalen, S.
Talent Development IV, pp. 317-328
Great Potential Press
This article by Samuel P. Whalen examines the fundamental tenet of contemporary educational psychology that learning is enhanced when the match between the skills of the learner and the challenges of the subject matter are optimized. In turn, advocates for talent development and gifted education have embraced the principle of "optimal match" to characterize both the conditions for optimal growth and the ways in which mainstream education fails gifted students. Whalen concludes by considering how Flow Theory can help make the idea of "optimal match" more accessible and useful to educators.
Abstract
A fundamental tenet of contemporary educational psychology is that learning is enhanced when the match between the skills of the learner and the challenges of the subject matter are optimized. In turn, advocates for talent development and gifted education have embraced the principle of "optimal match" to characterize both the conditions for optimal growth and the ways in which mainstream education fails gifted students. However, relatively little research has addressed how the optimal matching process proceeds or how it is facilitated-an issue J. McVickers Hunt dubbed "The Problem of Match," more than 30 years ago. This paper explores issues raised by the "optimal match” construct, and reviews some of the chief proposals for understanding it. It then explores an experiential approach to understanding optimal matching, grounded in Csikszentmihalyi's psychology of Flow Consciousness. The paper concludes by considering how Flow Theory can help make the idea of "optimal match" more accessible and useful to educators.
Introduction
I take the title of my talk today from a phrase that crops up repeatedly in a wonderful work by J. McV. Hunt, Intelligence and Experience, written in 1961. Hunt was among a brilliant cadre of theorists and researchers in the first half of this century who tried to restore intrinsic motivation and volition to a preeminent place in human psychology. Hunt is credited by many with coining the term "optimal match" to capture the situation in which the environment contributes just the right amount and nature of information to stimulate a person to exercise and elaborate her skills-that is, to learn [Robinson, 1982]. He was particularly excited by the potential of Piaget's theory to establish in more precise terms the correspondences between various stages in child development and the degree and content of new information best suited to catalyze intellectual growth. Mining Piaget for insights by which to strike "an appropriate match between the circumstances that a child encounters and the schemata that he has already assimilated into his repertoire," Hunt hoped to clarify principles for "basing educational practice on the natural phases of the child's interaction with the environment..." (pp. 267-268).
Yet Hunt was also aware that the enterprise of "matching" presents some formidable challenges. Together these challenges comprise what he called the "problem of match." Three difficulties in particular gave him pause. First was the hurdle of adequately conceptualizing match at all. Not only did the concept require insight into what elements of both organism and environment were essential to fruitful transaction. It also called for an understanding of optimality that was dynamic and progressive rather than static. That is, it required thinking of "match" in terms of favorable mismatch, between where the child is and where she could be.
A second difficulty extends from the first, involving how to arrange and support such matches-the practice of matching. Even if we successfully specify the articulation of person and environment essential to ignite development, this does not guarantee that learners and settings will cooperate in providing these elements. A range of factors are likely to reside in real-world settings that undermine the fit between person and surround. Further, since successful matching moves different children at different paces to new developmental configurations with altered developmental demands, "teaching for match" means never resting on one's laurels or teaching by rote. Multiplied over several children in a typical urban classroom, Hunt worried that such an ideal of individualized instruction would drive teachers and coaches to exhaustion.
Third, Hunt was concerned that the search for broadly applicable principles of stage-environment interaction not be permitted to obscure or undermine the key constructive role of the child's own experience in shaping catalytic matches (see p. 278). Thus the place of "experience" in the tide of his book. Much like John Dewey, Hunt acknowledged that the history of instructional doctrines was replete with schemes that ignored the specific developmental paces and trajectories of children, leading to mismatch, anxiety and boredom. Even Piaget's ideas did not seem to him immune to such dogmatic application. Instead Hunt emphasized that each child's specific responses to new challenges the way she behaves and feels-should form the primary information guiding the instructor concerned with matching. "This kind of information must come either from clues gleaned from observing samples of his behavior in circumstances like those to be matched to his existing schemata, from hearing him talk about relevant matters, or from knowledge of the ... child's past experiences." (p. 273).
In my view, while many new and important ideas have been advanced to enrich our understanding of optimal match, Hunt's concerns remain relevant and important. In particular, the question of how to keep the experience of the learner at the heart of the matching process remains a challenging one. The purpose of this paper is to examine a few of the most promising recent explorations of the problem of match, and to extract a bit of what we have learned about this problem since Hunt's time. In particular I want to suggest some of the applications of Optimal Experience theory (or here, Flow Theory) to both our understanding and practice of optimal matching ([Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi, 1993]. As I hope to suggest, Flow Theory provides some powerful conceptual tools both for understanding the nature of match, and for assessing the degree to which that match is attained.
Six Suggestive Approaches to Person-Environment Match
Across the biological and human sciences, it is difficult today to imagine an account of development that does not address the impact of specific environmental conditions on the making of any species and its behavioral repertoire. At the same time, a fundamental tenet of contemporary developmental science is the potential of human beings to shape and balance environmental factors toward maximal learning and the enhancement of experience. "Optimization," remarks Paul Baltes, "is the hallmark of any traditional conception of development. Development is widely considered as a movement toward increased efficacy and higher levels of functioning" [Baltes, 1997].
Several intellectual traditions have contributed important insights toward understanding what it means to optimize the interaction between people and their surroundings. While the implications of these traditions are not always easily reconciled, and their applications sometimes carry heavy political and ideological baggage, each has had an important impact on emerging understandings of optimal match in the development of talent. Here I briefly highlight six traditions that illuminate critical dimensions of person-environment fit and transaction.
Optimal Stimulation. Let us begin with what might be called the Optimal Stimulation tradition. As indicated in my introduction, this tradition of theory and research represented a sustained effort to redefine human motivation as a mutual transaction between a facilitating environment and an active, sensitive human learner. In a summary of this tradition that I continue to find useful, Theodore Wachs (1977) identified two guiding hypotheses within this tradition. The first, the "preference prediction," states that organisms prefer or approach an optimal level of simulation. This proposition has been tested extensively, especially by students of achievement motivation and risk-taking, and usually verified with some amendments (cf. Atkinson 1958). It is at the heart of Berlyne's (1960) theory of optimal arousal and exploration, Robert White's understanding of effectance motivation (1959), and Fiske and Maddi's studies of variation-seeking.
The second hypothesis, the "enhancement prediction," states that development will be maximized in the presence of stimuli that are optimally discrepant from the individual's current ability level. This proposition has informed a number of research programs focused on defining the degree and nature of discrepancy best suited to catalyzing growth. Early examples include David McClelland's studies of "optimal discrepancy" and achievement motivation, Dember's studies of "pacer" stimulation linked to moderate levels of environmental complexity and novelty, and a range of studies linking superior learning outcomes to moderate degrees of task difficulty [Bennett, 1988.]
One of the early impacts of studies of this "enhancement prediction" was to clarify the degree to which personality differences affect what level of difficulty or complexity will be preferred by any person. Early studies of achievement motivation used the preferred level of difficulty among persons of similar ability to clarify the importance role of expectations about success and failure in determining whether individuals would approach or avoid challenge. Other studies indicated that both reward expectations ("ego" vs. "task" orientations) and beliefs about one's competence and efficacy significantly modulate both task selection and the experience of challenge. In general, both patterns of belief about one's ability and agency, as well as patterns of attention to internal or external criteria of evaluation, have been shown to contribute to whether individuals choose levels of task complexity that accurately test their skills, or alternately, obscure judgments of competence.
More recently the focus of research has shifted to the impact of contextual variables upon the beliefs and motives that mediate the selection of levels of challenge. Work by researchers such as Theresa Amabile, Carol Dweck and John Nicholls has demonstrated that learning conditions that focus children exclusively on external reward or the comparative evaluation of competence tend to inhibit motivation to accurately test levels of competence against moderately difficult challenges. Other research indicates that classrooms and families that emphasize the efficacy of effort, support self-referenced comparison in assessing success, and build skills for setting realistic ("proximal") goals are more successful in socializing children into optimistic attitudes toward challenge [Bandura, 1981; Deci, 1985; Rathunde, 19901. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985) have labeled this set of practices "informational," since they converge to focus the learner on immediate engagement with the task, and build future expectancies of control, choice and enjoyment in the pursuit of challenges.
Stage-developmental Approaches. A second tradition has focused on specifying stages of development within which steps of optimal progress can be identified and operationalized. In the mid-20th century considerable effort was devoted to specifying the precise pitch and content of pacer challenges based upon Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive stages. Recall that Piaget linked cognitive development to sequences of disequilibration, in which current skills and concepts are brought into conflict with more complex structures, and re-equilibration, in which current schema are elaborated and adapted through exploration of the problem space. Because moderate disequilibration is a pleasurable state, children seek opportunities to experience moderate imbalance. In turn, educators can use this motivational mechanism to catalyze development across stages through construction of problems exhibiting "optimal stage disparity"-typically, problems pitched one stage beyond the child's current level of functioning.
While the specification of these steps is difficult in practice, some research supports this approach to optimal discrepancy. Using a graduated Piagetian classification task, for example, Danner and Lonkey (1981) found that children under conditions of intrinsic reward preferred and sustained interest in problems one step ahead of their current cognitive development. In the domain of moral development, stage disparities of between 1/3 to 2 stage differences have been shown to advance more quickly the capacity of children to reason about moral dilemmas [Kohlberg, 1975; Walker, 19881. Robert Siegler has approached similar issues from an Information Processing perspective, demonstrating that while children can be trained up to precocity in specific cognitive skills, training is most effective on the cusp of developmental stages, and less permanent as the gap between stages widens [Siegler, 1981].
Another perspective on match and growth focuses on stages of psychosocial development. An interesting example of such an approach is found in Jacquelynne Eccles' conception of "stage-environment fit," and its analysis of optimal developmental conditions for young adolescents [Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1993. Eccles draws upon the broader paradigm of person-environment fit theory to first distinguish between contemporaneous and developmental views of person-environment fit. According to Donald Hunt (1975), a comprehensive developmental approach to education requires going beyond supplying whatever structure or support a learner needs at die moment, to also anticipate those challenges and supports most likely to enhance the learners' independence and self-direction in the future [Hunt, 1975]. "In other words, teachers should provide the optimal level of structure for children's current levels of maturity while providing a sufficiently challenging environment to pull the children along a developmental path toward higher levels of cognitive and social maturity." (1993, p. 92).
Eccles then proceeds to diagnose the mismatches between the emergent developmental needs typical of the transition to adolescence, and the unresponsive structures of formal, large-scale, bureaucratic schooling. Examples include poor fit between the teenager's precocious tendency toward social comparison and competitive school dynamics, and mismatch between the teenager's desire for enhanced self-direction and the social control agendas of large high schools. These mismatches can be especially problematic for girls and their sense of academic efficacy. Based upon this diagnosis, Eccles and her colleagues then suggest some parameters for improving the fit between the developmental needs specific to early adolescence and the structure of secondary schooling. Since these needs imply a developmental trajectory, that is, a movement toward greater maturity and autonomy, Eccles incorporates elements of challenge and cognitive mismatch calculated to spur teenagers to struggle for insight, understanding and responsible decision-making. This fit is "in-motion" and in transition, helping to hone and clarify the elements of developmental promise within the inevitable sequences of mismatch between the teen and her environment.
Aptitude-Treatment Interaction. A third perspective with a long research tradition is that of Aptitude-Treatment Interaction. ATI focuses less on universal developmental stages and more on die implications of specific differences in aptitude or skill for the design of effective instruction. More specifically, ATI posits that students who possess different levels of knowledge and information-processing capacity (either generally or in discrete domains) will also prefer different levels of structure and clarity in curriculum. High aptitude students (in effect, "experts") will thrive under "less structured" conditions that provide a framework of knowledge and guidance, but otherwise grant wide latitude to discover and construct knowledge independently. Such students are more Rely to take pleasure in exploring difficult and even poorly structured intellectual problems (Snow, 1992). Novices, by contrast, show greater preference for highly structured conditions that lay out invariant task sequences and clear transitions in learning.
Most ATI approaches do not posit "aptitude" as a rigidly fixed entity, although relatively stable differences in some information processing capacities ("c") may predispose people to prefer more or less structured learning conditions. More generally, though, ATI studies of instruction emphasize the link between sustaining the motivation to learn, and varying the complexity and structure of learning conditions to match the increasing skill of learners. In this sense the ATI approach shares much in common with Bruner's understanding of "scaffolding" and Rogoff's concept of "guided participation" (see below).
Vocational Development Tradition. Another intellectual tradition with a long-standing interest in the "fit" between individual characteristics and culturally specified roles is that of vocation- al development. Holland's approach to person-environment fit, for example, asserts a strong tendency for certain clusters of personality traits to predominate among the most successful members of different professions. The role of the vocational counselor is to assess the predominant tendencies within an individual's personality (high levels of investigative, artistic and social patterns) and suggest those domains of employment most congruent with this profile (Holland, 1985). Other theories of career choice, most notably those of Ginzberg (1972) and Super (1990), are more developmentally oriented. They present career choice as a process of iterative optimization, in which the individual seeks the best fit among a wide range of parameters, including psychological, social and economic constraints. As Super has noted, "With a changing self and changing situations, the matching process is never really completed" (1990, p. 226).
A promising effort to adapt vocational choice theories to an understanding of talent development is found in recent work by David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow [Lubinski, 1995]. Drawing upon Dawis and Lofquist's Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA), Lubinski and Benbow posit that talent development ensues from learning environments that are well matched both to a student's abilities and preferences [Dawes, 1996]. Learning environments that do not reach for congruence in both task demands and aptitude-termed satisfactoriness-and subjective preference and experience-termed satisfaction-lead toward vulnerable career and life style choices for even the most able students as they approach adulthood. Disputing claims that gifted individuals exhibit unusual multipotentiality, i.e., uniformly high aptitudes and intellectual preferences, leading to career choice difficulties, Lubinski and Benbow cite evidence that the strengths and preferences of gifted students begin to assert themselves early in childhood. Thus they stress the importance and feasibility of assessing both aptitudes and intellectual preferences early and often in the lives of talented students. Such a dual assessment strategy would represent an advance over the present tendency to assess abilities at the expense of preferences, defining talent still primarily in psychometric terms.
The Vygotskian Tradition. Another powerful approach to the optimal transaction of teacher and learner has emerged in recent decades from the seminal theories of the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky [Vygotsky, 1978]. Vygotsky challenged the view that human cognitive development unfolds in universal stages with minimal dependence on social interaction. Vygotsky proposed instead that the majority of children's cognitive achievements emerge only within specific, emotionally close human relationships. Such relationships guide immature learners toward more expert performances valued by their society and culture [Rogoff, 1984].
In turn, Vygotsky reconceptualized intelligence to capture the child's capacity to engage the help of adults and more competent peers to experience higher levels of functioning than she would be able to attain strictly through her own efforts. Learning proceeds as the more competent partner gradually removes the early "scaffolding" of emotional and cognitive supports to allow the novice greater latitude to exercise autonomous competence. Vygotsky referred to the "Zone of Proximal Development" (or Zo-ped) both to specify the precise difference between what the learner could achieve alone (the "actual" level of development) and with help (the "potential" level), and more broadly, to denote the "space" within which learners and teachers negotiate the give-and-take of learning and instruction [Griffin, 1984].
The concept of the ZoPed is particularly helpful in identifying a range of transactional variables that influence whether the evolving trialogue between teacher, pupil and activity is being optimized. Five are cited here. First, the Zoped varies in terms of how richly teacher and learner each represent-and hence understand-the task. Learning situations can vary from those in which the pupil's representation of a problem is considerably less sophisticated, to situations of near parity in which teacher and learner share essentially identical conceptions of the problem and their goals. Second, the Zoped can vary in terms of how effectively the participants comprise an undivided and jointly modulated field of attentions state Wertsch terms inter-subjectivity [Wertsch, 19841. Learning and collaboration thrive when intersubjectivity is deepened and sustained. Intersubjectivity is sensitive in turn to a range of transactional characteristics, including the congruence of goals and problem conceptions, the skill of the teacher in guiding student actions through the use of language and conversation, and the intensity of external distractions.
Third, Zopeds may vary in terms of the influence and control that teacher and learner exert over the state of inter-subjectivity through time. On the one hand it is central to the Vygotskian stance that both teacher and learner are active and powerful contributors to the shared attentional field. Both may be seen as "using" the Zoped to their own purposes, with the child seeking both the experience of competence and a negotiated place within the adult world, and die adult seeking to transmit valued information in ways that are enjoyable rather than conflictual. On the other hand, Rogoff (1993) is clear that the Zoped remains a "guided participation," in which the teacher owns the lion's share of early responsibility for communicating clearly, sequencing activity into manageable sub-goals, and maintaining the pupil's engagement at a "comfortable but slightly challenging level" [Rogoff, 1993].
Fourth, Zopeds can vary according to the relative importance of the activity for the child's ongoing development. The concept of a "leading activity" is used to distinguish occupations that can catalyze qualitative shifts between cognitive stages, and which promote heightened levels of inter-subjectivity [Griffin, 1984]. Teachers vary in how well they read the match between a student's direction of development within a particular domain (e.g. music) and the activities that will propel the student's interest and ability to the next qualitative level. Finally, Zopeds vary in terms of the con- textual or de-contextual nature of the learning situation. Contextual learning occurs in settings and within activities that bear a close resemblance to mature forms of activity. Whether in cooking, woodworking, or music, instruction involves objects and concepts proximal to mature performance, the competence of the teacher is manifest, and the role of teacher is embedded in the broader role of parent, sibling or older peer. Decontextualized learning-and here classroom learning is the usual target of criticism-emphasizes mastery of tasks typically much further removed from adult roles and performance. Student motivation tends to be more external, and issues of control and authority more prominent in the transaction of student and teacher. Here the issue is not whether instruction is "formal" or "informal," but rather whether the activity chosen to lead development bears a compelling relation to a valued performance within an affirming community of practice [Brown, 1997].
Creativity and Eminence. One final resource that I believe has important contributions to make to our understanding of optimal matching is the fast-changing research field investigating creativity and eminence. Here a fundamental shift in emphasis has been emerging for the last quarter-century, away from the more traditional focus on creativity as personality trait, and toward inquiry into the genesis of creative products [Feldman, 1994]. This interest in how innovations are conceived, recognized and propagated has generated two research themes that bear directly on the nature of the optimal match. The first theme involves the distributed nature of creative processes, in which creative products represent the convergence of factors reflecting not only individual people's passions and abilities, but also the priorities of communities of practice (fields), and the intellectual opportunities and constraints presented by the current state of knowledge (the domain). As Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson formulated it, the operative question posed by this systems approach is not "who is creative," but rather "where is creativity" [Csikszentmihalyi, 1986].
If we ask similarly "where is the match," the systems approach suggests to look within the ongoing transaction between the talented person, the requirements and affordances of fields, and the "next steps" dictated by the current order of knowledge itself. At the very least this implies that talented young people need to be prepared to think about their development as much more than the expression of their "natural abilities." It involves getting to know and experience fields of practice as social contexts in which the lines between personal and collective achievement are often blurred and shifting, and others' help is crucial to intellectual progress. Equally it involves becoming oriented not simply to the mastery of current knowledge, but the cultivation of passion and curiosity for where the domain wants to go next. How and in what sequence the budding talents of young people are best introduced to the mature demands of field and domain are questions that the systems approach can help sharpen and clarify.
A second generative theme in the recent literature of creativity involves the potential for (and even the uses of) mismatch in talent development. If creativity is viewed as the ultimate expression of talent then periods of misfit, asynchrony and even regression of skill may play as important a role as "optimal match" in spurring investment in talent. Albeit from a wide range of contrasting theoretical positions, a number of the classical theorists of creativity, including Freud, Dewey and James, commented on the role of dissatisfaction and restlessness as motivation for seeking new horizons and questioning the status quo. More recently Howard Gardner has argued that "...the creative individual is marked...not by a perfect match within and across levels, but rather by strategic mismatches and asynchronies" [Gardner, 1993]. Such "fruitful synchronies" between the creator's vision and sense of order, on the one hand, and the current organization of knowledge, on the other, motivate some people toward extraordinary inquiry and sustained intellectual struggle. Gardner also suggests that creative success may involve a capacity to strategically distinguish productive from unproductive asynchronies.
Similarly Jeanne Bamberger has speculated that gifted musicians often must traverse a "midlife crisis" during adolescence that pits their precocious sensitivity to musical phrasing-the "figural"-against the discipline of learning musical conventions and notation-the "formal" [Bamberger, 1982]. Conflict between these two levels of musical cognition can disrupt formerly routinized skills based upon figural perceptions, leading to frustration and wounded esteem. Struggle toward the synthesis of figural and formal representations of music is essential, however, to the mature development of both skill and sensibility. It is intriguing to speculate if other domains, such as mathematics or the visual arts, present talented students with similar points of crisis, in which elements of apparent regression are essential to higher reconstructions of skill and vision.
Clarifying the "Experience of the Match"
In reviewing these six approaches to understanding optimal match, I am struck by the steadily emerging awareness of the impact of subjectivity and context on our understandings of what is optimal and how the individual becomes involved in optimal processes. From an initial emphasis on the determination of levels of optimal discrepancy or levels of stage disparity, research has gradually clarified that the meanings, anticipations and consequent experiences associated with new experiences play a decisive mediating role in determining the developmental potential of environmental encounters.
At the same time it is clear that what is experientially optimal or preferred by the person at any moment may not be optimal from the vantage point of developmental progress. We know a great deal now about dimensions of self-experience that mediate what level of challenge will be sought and preferred. We know less, however, about the experience associated with the match itself-how it feels to achieve an optimal match-nor how this experience might impact the on-going success of the process of matching.
In my view Csikszentmihalyi's Theory of Optimal Experience provides a framework and vocabulary for understanding the experiential nexus between the active person and the facilitative environment. Optimal Experience Theory proposes that the quality of experience of the individual learner should be an essential criterion by which we judge the efficacy of educational challenge. Yet it also emphasizes that our most powerful experiences of engagement are shared, both in that they draw us into transaction with activities which match our capabilities and interests, and draw us into association with other learners who share our interests and commitments. In balancing these two emphases-individual experience and social context-the perspective of Optimal Experience Theory is consonant with a number of recent proposals to shift education in the direction of talent development (Feldhusen, 1997).
In a series of studies beginning the early 1970's, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi examined the motives of creative persons across many disciplines. He found that creators across varied fields report the same quality of experience, and that this enjoyable Flow experience in itself motivates people to seek new challenges. Flow denotes a state of immersed concentration in which attention is centered, distractions are minimized, and the person attains an enjoyable give-and-take with her activity. In this state people report that they lose track of time and their daily problems, forget hunger, pain and fatigue, and pass from a stance of control and "efforting" into an attentional mode sometimes described as "active effortlessness." Above all, Flow seems to unite and harmonize crucial facets of experience that are otherwise at odds in daily life-dualities such as work v. play, discipline v. freedom, competence v. challenge. Drawing upon systems theory, the term psychological complexity was adopted to characterize how the psychic order of Flow reflects a productive tension between two fundamental principles of learning: the tendency toward integration, denoting constancy, interrelation and constraint, and tendencies toward differentiation, denoting change, uniqueness and specialization [Csikszentmihalyi, 1984; Csikszentmihalyi, 1993].
To date, Flow studies have clarified the expression of psychological complexity at three levels beyond the immediate experience of Flow itself. The first level involves the structure of activities that give people Flow experiences. On the one hand, such Flow activities integrate attention by posing high challenges, setting clear goals and rules about performance, and providing prompt, unambiguous information about success and failure. Yet the same activities differentiate experience by offering multiple opportunities for choice, control and self-expression. Thus Flow activities allow performers to vary the level and pace of challenge to sustain a close fit with their skills, and customize the activity to one's interests and strengths. As in any good game, a sense of freedom and fascination emerges in Flow activities as the rules create multiple directions for action and exploration.
At a broader level, contexts such as school and family can help create more Flow experiences by establishing rules and mutual responsibilities, yet also offering them member opportunities to exercise independence and self-expression. Finally, human beings socialized within families and schools that nurture Flow tend to develop habits of self-regulation which combine an openness and zest for new experiences with a capacity to focus attention and set realistic goals. To complete the circle, this complex personality supports and motivates individuals in exploring new sources of Flow for themselves and others, through the creation and transmission of culture and the solution of complex problems [Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi, 1993; Deci, 1985].
How Does Flow Theory Approach the Nature of the Person-Environment Match Itself?
Questions about the nature and enhancement of the transaction between learner and activity, as well the characteristics of environments that facilitate optimal match have been central to the study of Flow. More than twenty years of research and continued adjustment of the theory have some important lessons to teach about the locus and meaning of optimality in person-environment transactions. At a general level, this research permits two conclusions about the links between Flow and the dimensions of optimal match as explored by other theoretical traditions. First, Flow research indicates that there is indeed a correspondence between the enjoyable quality of experience associated with Flow and the attainment of a balance between moderately discrepant challenges and the skills of the person. A range of studies using the Experience Sampling Method demonstrate that the best overall convergence between positive affect and high levels of concentration occurs when both perceived challenges and skills are above the person's normal level and in close balance [Csikszentmihalyi, 1988.] In this sense Flow theory conforms generally to the classical "preference prediction."
Second, Flow experiences have been linked with a range of positive developmental outcomes for adolescents and adults, both in terms of psychosocial well-being and in terms of competent performance and talent development (for reviews, see Whalen, 1998; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). In this sense Flow theory is consistent with the classical "enhancement prediction" reviewed earlier.
Third, Flow research clearly argues that it is quality of experience that mediates whether any specific match between person abilities and environmental conditions will enhance performance or develop a Went. That is, matches between person attributes and environmental affordances are optimized not primarily according to the outcomes they produce, but rather according to the order they produce in consciousness and the "world" of meanings they evoke in the person. Any attempt to match persons to the environmental stimulants that "ought to" enhance their skills is not likely to succeed unless it adjusts to optimize the experience associated with that match.
Fourth, research indicates that Flow is not simply a "feel good" experience, but a state of mind. It is the experience of acute, active, and undivided concentration, exactly the state of undistracted attention that teachers hope for in learners. Further, the experience of Flow creates information that matters. Indeed, far from a solipsistic state, Flow brings the person into a more thorough-going and mindful engagement with the world, particularly the "world" of opportunities potentially available within complex domains of talent. Flow thus reflects the establishment of a heightened informational exchange between person and activity, in which action creates feedback to skill that is both interpretable and actionable, and the activity in turn is elaborated and complexified. In short, the experience of Flow creates information that melds actor and activity into one transactive system. In this sense Flow may be seen as the experiential dimension of the Zone of Proximal Development.
Fifth, the quality of experience associated with Flow helps account for the self-motivating and self-reinforcing dynamic associated with Optimal Match. Research in “walls” that isolate people from transaction with other people and interesting activities come down. The resulting exchange of information expands the world of opportunities in ways that motivate further challenge seeking and strategic action.
How Might Flow Theory Illuminate the Process of Optimal Matching?
In addition to helping us understand the experience of match, Flow theory and research contribute ideas that can help guide and adjust the matching process. First, the evidence is encouraging that flowing can be both teamed and taught. Research indicates that contexts that support a complex blend of orderliness and freedom provide learners with more facility at finding catalytic challenges, wresting information from failure, and sustaining "worlds" of interest.
Second, the research suggests that people who are more successful at bringing about optimal match are actively "reading" two sources of information: The evidence of optimal experiences in the learner, and the fluctuation and tension between flow-supporting features of the context. I refer to this mode of attention to the experiential information emerging from any person-environment match as "flow-thinking," and assert further that for competent Flow-thinkers, the arrangement of conditions for optimal experience becomes in itself a source of satisfying intrinsic rewards. Such an attentional focus is by no means "touchy-feely" or exclusively student-centered. In fact, its practitioners may well have a gruff personal style, and be seen by learners as "uncompromising" in their devotion to craft. What matters is that this species of passion can communicate to talented students that domains Re physics or history can yield both enjoyment and lifelong meaning, and are worthy of discipline and serious commitment. This is communicated both as uncompromising commitment to the potential of the student to contribute to the domain, and conviction about the potential of the domain to enhance meaning in the learner's life.
What can further research into the Optimal Match teach us about Optimal Experience?
My reflection on the current state of thinking about the Optimal Match has made me aware of at least two sets of questions that need to be pursued further in understanding what "Flow" is and what role it might play in learning. The first set of questions involves the possible link between optimal experience and the development of heightened sensitivities to particular modalities of experience, such as music or mathematics. If a link exists between developmental promise in separate domains and Flow experience, then it might be possible to devise assessments of developmental promise that integrate aspects of Flow and psychological complexity. This hope has already been operationalized in settings like the Key School's Flow Activities Room, but rigorous proto- cols and analytic procedures for tracking links between preferred activities, their dominant intelligences, and the quality of experience reported in those activities have yet to be developed. A "Flow Activities Assessment" linking optimal experiences in daily activities to future career preferences and talent-related influences is now under development at the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University Whalen, 1997].
A second question involves the possible links between Flow (especially the notion of "active effortlessness") and other dimensions of complex learning, including challenge-seeking, frustration, and deliberate practice. Assuming as is reasonable that Flow is only part of a broader ecology of learning experiences, how does Flow "fit" with other moments of struggle with difficult material, or periods of dissatisfaction with the current state of one's mastery? Is the capacity to find one's way back to Flow through strategic and sustained effort part of the mix that differentiates "fruitful" from less useful a-synchrony? These are questions that we hope to explore in the next five years within our accelerated classes at the Center for Talent Development.
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