This article discusses the purposes and practices of assessment in art education. In so doing, it comes out strongly in favour of practices that promote and cultivate the dispositions that lead to self-regulated learning and creativity. (Contains 4 figures.)

Understanding imagination as both a cognitive and affective endeavor is crucial in order for educators to promote creative and imaginative thinking in informal and formal learning environments. It is the primary aim of this paper to develop the theoretical discussion of Vygotsky's writings on young children's imaginative abilities launched by…

Children enter school brimming with imagination. They're masters of make believe and visualization, honed through five years of play. For the next decade, this essential cognitive faculty is benignly neglected by the institution called school. By comparison, the faculty of reason is explicitly and assiduously cultivated, reflecting the West's…

Currently, American schooling, driven by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and standardized tests, emphasizes development of intelligence. Because of this, teachers must heavily emphasize acquisition of foundational information (facts) in lectures, assessments, and of course, time-consuming test preparation, at the expense of intellect, that…

Going beyond traditional play therapy, this innovative book presents a range of evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches that incorporate play as a key element. It is grounded in the latest knowledge about the importance of play in child development. Leading experts describe effective strategies for addressing a wide variety of…

A central question in creativity concerns how insightful ideas emerge. Anecdotal examples of insightful scientific and technical discoveries include Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization of rubber, and Mendeleev's realization that there may be gaps as he tried to arrange the elements into the Periodic Table. Although most people would regard…

Background/hypothesis: Divergent thinking is an important measurable component of creativity. This study tested the postulate that divergent thinking depends on large distributed inter- and intra-hemispheric networks. Although preliminary evidence supports increased brain connectivity during divergent thinking, the neural correlates of this…

Since the early 1980's, the number of picture books that present Queer characters and themes has grown. Correspondingly, the number of challenges to these books has also increased. "And Tango Makes Three," the true story of two male penguins who hatch and raise a chick in New York City's Central Park Zoo, is one such picture book that has received…

The purpose of this study was to explore Vygotsky's notion of private speech as a cognitive self-regulatory process and how it related to creativity measures among at-risk children. Thirty-two Head Start and state-funded Pre-K children completed the Torrance creativity test Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM). The children's private…

There have been a number of recent findings indicating that unsolved problems, or open goals more generally, influence cognition even when the current task has no relation to the task in which the goal was originally set. It was hypothesized that open goals would influence what information entered the problem-solving process. Three studies were…

The relative effects on creativity of the dialectal inquiry method (DI) and the devil's advocate technique (DA) were examined with 45 upper-division business students who performed a ball in pipe task designed to evoke problem solving. The DA was found to be more effective than the DI method. (MC)

The lack of a universal definition of creativity has led to the assessment of creativity according to the definition favored by the evaluator. These assessments fall into four groups. The first centers around the concept of the creative product; it assesses a tangible event or relationship that results from the creative process, which is implied…

The "Life Skills and Leadership Manual" is designed to be used by Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts who work with youth worldwide to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes integral to three Youth in Development sector competencies: (1) Support healthy lifestyles and prepare youth for family life; (2) Prepare youth for…

This quantitative and qualitative interpretive exploratory case study investigates whether exposure to an Internet based "Extended Cyberhunt" strategy enables teachers to attain a set of outcomes similar to Prensky's "Essential 21st Century Skills" and the "Critical Outcomes of the South African National Curriculum…

For the thirty-ninth time, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes.…