Significant efforts have now been made to identify the generic competencies required to succeed across different workplace contexts. The aims of this paper were to: (i) outline factors that contributed to the increased demand for generic competencies seen over the last three decades; and (ii) review the early generic competency frameworks…

Since independent study groups can be important in providing spaces for students in creative disciplines to develop a critically reflexive approach to their creative practice, tutors in an Australian university introduced independent group learning to students studying in creative disciplines. However, student responses to the experience of…

Teaching and the student experience are interlocked. This paper takes a personal look at the pleasures and pressures of teaching in contemporary higher education. In doing so it adds to the definition of teachers' work in higher education, surveys some of the creative and positive sides of University teaching and shines a light upon the impact of…

As long as there have been public schools, there have been reformers of public schools. All too often, they have insisted on sweeping changes; enamored of their bold, new idea, they haven't considered whether anything established ought to endure. The result? A century of faddish ideas, but little real progress. Among today's most vocal reformers…

Creativity is increasingly understood as a social phenomenon, especially in organizational contexts. This article offers a conceptual framework for social creativity that integrates perspectives from published literature. The foundational questions that structured the literature review are twofold. First, because both individuals and entities,…

In principle, education depends upon the understanding of human beings. Ecological studies can give us opportunities to understand humans more clearly (or scientifically). This truth emphasizes the importance of ecological education. In ecology, a human being is a part of nature. This is because all living beings are members of ecological…

This report examines the link between human resource management practices and innovation. It is based on a conceptual framework in which "human resource stimuli measures"--work organisation, working time, areas of training and creativity--feed into innovative capacity or innovation. Of course, having innovative capacity does not…

With an increasing emphasis on creativity and innovation in the twenty-first century, teachers need to be creative professionals just as students must learn to be creative. And yet, schools are institutions with many important structures and guidelines that teachers must follow. Effective creative teaching strikes a delicate balance between…

This 21st Century Skills Map is the result of hundreds of hours of research, development and feedback from educators and business leaders across the nation. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has issued this map for the core subject of World Languages. [Funding for this paper was provided by EF Education.]

Standards drive critical elements of the American educational system--the curricula that schools follow, the textbooks students read, and the tests they take. Similarly, standards establish the levels of performance that students, teachers and schools are expected to meet. To succeed in the 21st century, all students will need to perform to high…

A mixed analysis of the perceived characteristics of effective college faculty members was conducted through surveying 615 students, predominantly Hispanic, enrolled in courses at two southwest Hispanic-serving universities. Beliefs were identified that led to 29 prevailing themes: Knowledgeable; Understanding; Communication; Teaches Well; Caring;…

Research on divergent thinking (mental activity directed to open-end problems for which there is no one correct answer) indicates that the characteristics associated with divergency (fluency of thinking, flexibility of thinking, originality, redefinition, and elaborating) are right brain functions. To assess right brain function and verbal…

The prediction of creativity is an intricate and difficult problem for which there is no currently accepted method of solution. At least two conceptually discernable types of creativity are identifiable in research on the topic. The first type conceives creativity to be a trait which is distributed across the population in a fashion analogous to…

E. Paul Torrance believed that creativity, like other skills, could be taught. His test to assess creativity is described. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes that the right combination of personal characteristics and encouraging environment produces creativity, and that children cannot be taught creativity. The adventure process creates an…

A study was conducted to determine whether a stable set of core characteristics found to be associated with creativity in samples of creative adults would also distinguish a group of professional jazz musicians selected for excellence of improvisational ability. A second purpose of the study was to see whether such differences found between groups…