Motivating students to learn in general education courses, particularly in an online environment, is a challenge for many colleges and universities. A general education curriculum, by definition, is wide-ranging in its scope of topics, disciplines, and applications, but many students enter college with specific personal interests or affinities for…

As a result of exclusionary tactics, social, cultural or economic disadvantage or disability, vast numbers of pupils have poor educational experiences and are either marginalised or demonised due to "difficult differences". In the context of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, where she suggests that we ought to be who we want to…

This paper offers a critical analysis of the education policy move towards teacher professional standards. Drawing on Lacan's three registers of the psyche (real, imaginary and symbolic), the paper argues that moves towards codification (and domestication) of teachers' work and identities in standardized (and sanitized) forms, such as the…

This article explores the concept of "syncretism," its history, related concepts, and potential as a research tool. It proposes a critical syncretism for analyzing the syncretic literacy projects of three young Puerto Rican bilinguals with attention to their agency and creativity drawing on diverse languages and literacies and…

The study examined the effects of gender and item content of domain-general and domain-specific creative-thinking tests on four subscale scores of creative-thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration). Chinese tenth-grade students (234 males and 244 females) participated in the study. Domain-general creative thinking was measured…

Many people correctly believe that a majority of innovators come from the population of gifted and talented children. If we want to develop innovative abilities of the gifted, then a special, new direction in gifted education is needed: innovation education. This article introduces innovation education, which refers to a wide range of educational…

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists among its top priorities for students the development of "learning and innovation skills," of which the first are "creativity and innovation." The third National Standard from the National Association for Music Education is "Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments." These guiding…

This article discusses the role of eye gaze in creative sign language. Because eye gaze conveys various types of linguistic and poetic information, it is an intrinsic part of sign language linguistics in general and of creative signing in particular. We discuss various functions of eye gaze in poetic signing and propose a classification of gaze…

President Obama's "Educate to Innovate" initiative emphasizes training in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). More recently, arts have been added to STEM, resulting in the acronym STEAM: Science and Technology interpreted through Engineering and the Arts, based in the Mathematical elements. However, should the…

Transformational leadership and immediacy behaviors within educational contexts have received a great deal of attention from researchers in the past few decades. Generally, the literature has focused on the impact of instructor transformational behaviors and instructor immediacy behaviors on educational outcomes. However, the relationship between…

Imagination and creativity in today's world are becoming increasingly relevant in the light of the fact that main human work products are innovations, knowledge, ideas, and creative solutions. Nurturing child imagination is the most promising way of building up a creative personality and contributing to individual creative production in the…

This article is based on a systematic review of educational research, policy and professional literature relating to creative environments for learning in schools. Despite the search yielding 210 documents, comparatively few empirical studies were published between 2005 and 2011 that addressed the review objectives. Only 18 studies included in the…

Education and assimilation seem intimately connected; education either supports assimilation or thwarts it. But these paradigms assume a model of cultural vitality that depends on what one scholar aptly terms "tenacious adherence," over time, to an unchanging cultural or religious tradition. Taking the example of the Jewish community and Jewish…

Background: Native Americans are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether having to violate cultural taboos might be a factor in the decisions of some Native Americans not to pursue STEM degrees. Many STEM faculty likely know very little about Native Americans' historical experiences…

Many students in American schools are facing educational limitations due to the effects of poverty and homelessness. Educator preparation programs must address the needs of this special population of poverty by providing training in trauma-informed pedagogy. The goal is to make teachers more aware of the effects of poverty and provide additional…