The development of music skills, particularly performance skills, is often considered separate from creativity until music skills can be used in a creative way. Though an accumulation of music skills is necessary for high levels of creativity, a student's creativity can in turn develop music skills, and the primary grades (K--2) are the ideal…

Many theorists espouse the need for creativity to be taught within the school environment, but few exemplars exist as to how this can be achieved. Indeed, this is not a development that can happen overnight; it requires a great deal of focused thought and revision, and classroom-based leaders who are willing to take risks and create a new vision…

Teaching children habits is a routine part of many early childhood program curricula, with teachers never really stopping to think about what or how teaching is affecting their students. Habits are formed with consistent practice. Habits can be taught to children easily when teachers have some creativity to the actions. In this article, the author…

This paper looks at the collaborative construction of web pages in History by a Year-4 group of children in a primary school in the UK. The aim of this paper is to find out: (a) How did children interpret their involvement in this literacy practice? (b) How the construction of web pages was interactionally accomplished? and (c) How can creativity…

Parents are their child's first and most important teacher. This booklet introduces parents to techniques for helping their preschoolers learn to read. Included is a story about how one mother and father encourage their children to read, a sample reading activity, and a checklist for parents of preschoolers. This brochure is based on "A Child…

This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children…

This article argues that an overhaul of undergraduate education in Ireland is needed. It asserts that at present most students leave university short-changed, never having been exposed to the riches of discovery and research. A framework founded on research and inquiry is designed to stimulate learning and innovation through action. It is argued…

In Kathleen Loomis's preschool classroom at the Bennington College Early Childhood Center, the goal for children is not to produce beautiful and expressive artworks or to learn specific methods of working with art media--although those things do happen. Here, the curriculum is built around the philosophy that learning to think and create with art…

In 1994, the National Arts Education Association created a research agenda to address major research issues in the field of visual arts education for the purpose of examining, negotiating, and modifying commonly held beliefs in the field of art education. Research by arts educators has done much to inform visual arts education theory and practice,…

Hierarchical educational structures employ a standards-driven decision-making atmosphere that challenges teachers' autonomy. This situation represents a critical issue for teacher educators who must consider how they will teach candidates to respond to these settings. We argue that teacher empowerment represents a moral issue that teacher…

Teaching suggestions and questions on which to build a class discussion are presented regarding concrete poetry. An example of a poem about a bird's feather in which the words are arranged in the shape of a feather is included and is intended as a student handout. In addition to suggestions for student assignments, five sources of concrete poetry…

Discussed a 1974 research study in which student achievement in two different school environments was measured to see how it affected the development of creativity. (RK)

Discusses and defends the innateness hypothesis - that a component of the human mind is a species-specific language learning mechanism--and discusses some implications of that hypothesis. (RM)

This book, a revision of a previous publication, "Dance: Creative/Rhythmic Movement Education", continues and expands on the substantive work contained in the initial publication. Building on the essential elements of the body of knowledge articulated in the first book, this guide presents a conceptual framework for dance and gives procedures for…

Teacher prescription of form and content stifle students' poetic creativity. (JH)