School-based makerspaces are increasingly recognized as powerful contexts for fostering creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving. However, educational research on creativity has often prioritized individual traits or final products, underemphasizing the environmental conditions -- physical, social, emotional, and cognitive -- that shape…

Classrooms are increasingly multicultural in their social composition, and students are increasingly connected, through digital media, to local and global networks. However, pedagogy has failed to take full advantage of the opportunities these resources represent. "Multilingual Digital Storytelling" draws attention to the interfaces…

The validity of 6 indices of divergent production was examined in relation to creative output by 144 undergraduates in 8 domains: visual arts, music, literature, theater, science and engineering, business, apparel design, and video and photographic work. Semantic fluency, ideational fluency, originality, and remote consequences correlated with…

This paper reports a study on children's classroom-based collaborative creative writing. Based on socio-cultural theory, the central aim of the research was to contribute to current understanding of young children's creativity, and describe ways in which peer collaboration can resource, stimulate and enhance classroom-based creative writing. The…

This study investigated the relationship between creativity and conformity (social conformity and impersonal conformity) with 45 preschool children. Findings support the hypothesis that highly conforming and highly nonconforming children do not score as highly on creativity measurements as children in the freedom of expression group (i.e., not…

The history of divergent-thinking tests suggests that new approaches to creativity testing are needed. Research has focused on the relation of creativity to insight, divergent problem solving, problem finding, and intelligence. A proposed situational model of creativity defines creativity as a meaningful response to open-problem, open-solution…

Early differences in cognitive motivation (quest for knowledge) may differentiate gifted from nongifted children. Situation-specific and activity-oriented measures of cognitive motivation are described, and evidence is presented showing the effectiveness of a measurement of reaction to congruent and incongruent figures in the identification of…

To evaluate Mednick's theory of the creative thinking process, an associative priming paradigm was used to measure latencies to lexical decisions primed by associations of low, medium, or high strength with 20 high-creative and 20 low-creative high school students. Mednick's theory that creative individuals show a flatter associative hierarchy…

College students (N=135) were presented with novel, ill-defined problems and asked to select concepts they thought would help solve the problems. The use of concepts organized around long-term goals was positively related to indices of solution quality and originality. (DB)

An interactionist model of creative behavior is proposed, combining elements of the personality, cognitive, and social psychology perspectives on creativity. The model considers the interplay of factors including antecedent conditions, creative behavior, consequences, the individual, cognitive style/ability, personality traits, contextual…

Uses a case-study approach to examine the role of belief as a catalytic quality in the artistic making and the thinking processes used by children. Describes the processes encountered by children when presented with artistic tasks. Discusses the relationship between belief and the three other main dimensions of artistic thinking and making: social…

This pilot study investigated characteristics of three groups of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade children (total N=15) in West Virginia: (1) gifted children with learning disabilities (LDG), (2) gifted children without learning disabilities, (3) non-gifted children with learning disabilities (LD). Subjects were assessed on measures of higher…

Mathematical creativity is considered important by many mathematics educators. This literature review gives particular attention to attempts to assess creative ability. Two key aspects emerge related to fixations in problem solving and divergent production, and these might form the basic framework for fostering and rewarding mathematical…

Although contemporary psychologists generally acknowledge the significance of affect in human experience, few have attempted to understand its role in cognitive processes. The same can be said of writing specialists. In fact, New Criticism, so long dominant in American literary thinking, still continues to influence the emotions writers disclose…

Two hypotheses derived from the theory of action identification, which predicts that people are more likely to adopt a novel course of action if they concentrate on the "how" rather than the "why" aspects of their behavior, were tested with 95 undergraduate students. Hypotheses examined how the level of action identification…