An investment perspective on creativity, proposed 30 years ago, no longer seems adequate, nor do various revisions of the model made since then. The world, or at least the way many people experience it, has changed and so have the challenges for creativity. In particular, creativity is being used to increasingly greater effect in negative ways and…

The field of giftedness legitimates itself on the basis of correlations of gifted-identification measures with future success that do not mean what they often are taken to mean. When one views the inadequacies of these correlations, the field turns out to be much like the emperor who had no clothes. This essay reviews some of the assumptions upon…

Positive creativity is creativity that makes the world a better place--that makes a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the world. Positive creativity can be a bit of a slippery concept in that, what is positive to one person or one group may be neutral or even negative to another group. Much of teaching young people for…

In this article, I discuss the application of an augmented theory of successful intelligence to identification, teaching, and assessment of the gifted in STEM disciplines. The theory holds that giftedness in STEM (as well as in other fields) can be understood in terms of an integration of creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills.…

This article introduces the concept of adaptive intelligence--the intelligence one needs to adapt to current problems and anticipate future problems of real-world environments--and discusses its implications for education. Adaptive intelligence involves not only promoting one's own ability to survive and thrive, but also that of others in one's…

In this article, I discuss two kinds of giftedness, transactional and transformational. "Transformational giftedness" is giftedness that is transformative. Transformationally gifted individuals seek positively to change the world at some level--in their own way, to make the world a better place. "Transactional giftedness" is…

Serious identification of the gifted started with the work of Lewis Terman early in the 20th century. Terman's model, based largely on IQ, may have made sense in the early 20th century, but it no longer makes sense today. The problems that society needs its gifted individuals to solve in the 21st century require much more than IQ--in addition to…

In this article, the author shares his response to James Hartley's "Reflections on 50 years of teaching psychology". Hartley concludes that the teaching of psychology has changed relatively little over the past several decades. The author states that his way of teaching now is very different from his way of 1975. This essay is about the…

In this article, I review ideas about creativity and its assessment. I open with some general remarks on the nature of creativity. Then I present the investment theory of creativity. Then I describe prompts my colleagues and I have used to measure creativity. Next I describe some of the assessments we have used to measure creativity. The ultimate…

The most important knowledge and skills a college education should develop in young people are those underlying good character, such as integrity, responsibility, work ethic, intellectual curiosity, mental flexibility, and wisdom. When leaders fail, most frequently it is because of issues of character, not lack of knowledge or intellectual…

What is, or should be, the role of ethics in giftedness? In this article, I consider why ethical behavior is much harder to come by than one would expect. Ethical behavior requires completion of a series of eight steps to action, the failure of any one of which may result in a person, even one who is ethically well trained, to act in a manner that…

This article argues for the importance of teaching for ethical reasoning. Much of our teaching is in vain if it is not applied to life in an ethical manner. The article reviews lapses in ethical reasoning and the great costs they have had for society. It proposes that ethical reasoning can be taught across the curriculum. It presents an eight-step…

This article discusses how to teach for wisdom, intelligence and creativity. It briefly discusses how to teach analytically, creatively and practically, and presents examples on each.

This study addressed whether prior successes with educational interventions grounded in the theory of successful intelligence could be replicated on a larger scale as the primary basis for instruction in language arts, mathematics, and science. A total of 7,702 4th-grade students in the United States, drawn from 223 elementary school classrooms in…

Translating ethics knowledge into ethical behavior is much harder than it appears, writes Sternberg. In this article, he outlines an eight-step process that individuals must go through to act in an ethical way--for example, recognizing that there is an event to which to react, taking personal responsibility for generating an ethical solution to…