The goal of this article is to review work on mind wandering, metacognition and creativity in order to consider their relationship with cognitive flexibility. I introduce a model of the role that mind wandering and metacognition have in the generation and exploration of novel ideas and products in the creative process. I argue that managing the…

The development of agency is often described as critically important for all students. Countless school mission statements speak of the need to help young people become independent thinkers, for example. Colleges and universities expect high school graduates to be self-driven learners. And business leaders are forever calling upon K-12 education…

To promote the development of greater creativity in my students' design work, I created an online tool--called Reflective Inquiry (RI)--that accompanies all of my open-ended assignments and that I require students to submit with each project. The RI is composed of a series of prompts that students must respond to, almost daily, to explain and…

This article presents an initiative that is based on active learning pedagogy by engaging elementary and middle school students in the toy design and development field. The case study presented in this article is about student learning experiences during their participation in the TOYchallenge National Toy Design Competition. Students followed the…

This introductory article discusses a blind-variation and selective-retention model of the creative process developed by Donald Campbell. According to Campbell, creativity contains three conditions: a mechanism for introducing variation, a consistent selection process, and a mechanism for preserving and reproducing selected variations. (Author/CR)

This article explains the difference between concepts and skills in music education. Concepts about music cannot be taught; they are acquired through meaningful experiences. These experiences are typically called musical skills and include singing, chanting, playing, moving, creating, improvising, and writing. Suggestions for organizing the school…