The Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) is a 30-item scale based on a core of four criteria: Relevance & Effectiveness, Novelty, Elegance, and Genesis. The CSDS offers potential for the consensual assessment of functional product creativity. This article describes an empirical study in which non-expert judges rated a series of mousetrap…

This article describes a music program in a prison where two preservice music education majors conduct a choir of the inmates. The mission of the choir, framed in the context of social justice, is to move beyond barriers to create communities of hope that restore, enlighten, and transform lives through music. It is an outlet for the inmates to…

Many images of the "artist" or "designer" pervade the media and popular consciousness. Contemporary images of the artist and creativity that focus solely on the individual offer a very narrow depiction of the varying ways creativity occurs for artists and designers. These images do not capture the variety of creative processes and myriad ways…

Trainee teachers undergo a complex series of changes as they move through their training, from subject specialists to teachers of their subjects. This paper considers the results of a small-scale action research project, part of which used blogs as a medium for developing students' understanding of geographical concepts, and as a space for…

Utilizing games within the classroom may assist counselor educators with enhancing learning. Counselor educators may integrate games within the curriculum to assist students in learning and developing self-awareness and to assess knowledge and skills. This article describes the utilization of games within experiential-learning theory and presents…

We discuss preliminary findings from a study that investigated the effectiveness of a Holistic Arts-Based Group Program (HAP) for the development of resilience in children in need. The HAP teaches mindfulness using arts-based methods, and aims to teach children how to understand their feelings and develop their strengths. We assessed the…

Reading, writing, and communicating, also known as literacy, are important cognitive skills to teach within society. Early literacy is knowledge about reading and writing before actually being able to read and write and is the foundation to future reading and writing skills (Ghoting & Martin-Diaz, 2006). The role of families in developing early…

This literature review looks at recent research into job burnout and self-efficacy, with an emphasis into the teaching profession. The Maslach Burnout Inventory has been the standard instrument for almost all burnout research. MBI's three subscales include emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Research shows…

The purpose of this study was to explore the integration of vidcasts as student-generated products in English as a second language (ESL) classrooms. We collected qualitative data through observations, student artifacts, and semistructured interviews from 16 reading students at a public middle school located in the southwestern United States. Study…

In this essay I explore the constraints and opportunities confronting me as a newly qualified teacher and how these affect my pedagogy. I have reflected on my own development from beginning to newly qualified teacher and considered how such forces have shaped my identity as a teacher, my values and my approach to the job. As part of my exploration…

This article explores whether or not there is a more effective way to develop and present portfolios to make them more meaningful and usable in the hiring process. An example of a pilot ePortfolio, with an accompanying three to four-minute introductory reflective video highlighting the pre-service teachers' beliefs about education, was shown to 15…

CoTA (Collaborations: Teachers and Artists) is a professional development program that empowers teachers to access the arts in everyday instruction to support student achievement. CoTA schools commit to intense, 3-year collaborations for ten weeks each year where teachers learn to capitalize on arts content and strategies to promote knowledge and…

Despite it being the second decade of the 21st century, there still exists a range of definitions of what a 21st century learning environment is. This can be troublesome for teacher educators as we strive to prepare teachers for environments we can't clearly describe. In order to describe a 21st century learning environment, we developed an IC Map…

This study examined relationships between five personal traits and adolescents' creative activities and accomplishments in five domains--music, visual arts, creative writing, science, and technology. Participants were 439 tenth graders (220 males and 219 females) in China. The relationships were examined using confirmatory factor analysis.…

This paper reports on a Professional Learning Programme undertaken by primary school teachers in China that aimed to facilitate the development of "adaptive expertise" in using technology to facilitate innovative science teaching and learning such as that envisaged by the Chinese Ministry of Education's (2010--2020) education reforms.…