Art plays an integral role in civilizing society and its members. Through the visual arts we can directly comment on the human condition and begin to comprehend the complexity of our species and our multicultural and mutlilayered society. This article discusses how the arts' civilizing power can inform the education of all children. (15…

To test whether additive bilinguals are more linguistically creative than monolinguals, a creativity index, based upon linguistic features thought to correspond to the distinctive features of creativity, was calculated from essays written by pupils in a Finnish-Swedish comprehensive school. The results did not seem to reveal higher creativity…

Educational revolution in the United States must counteract the tendencies of mass society through the leadership of a "natural elite," based on character and talent and drawn from every region, religion, ethnic group, gender, and income level. Authentic education for a democracy aims at fact-mindedness, critical thinking, and intuitive…

Describes Image-Making, a workshop in creative bookmaking based on a series of simple, carefully structured, parallel verbal and visual activities. Explains how each teacher and student designed and created an individual book (of his or her own poems and visual images) and a large communal book. (MG)

This article reviews recent research on assessment techniques for divergent thinking and examines their predictive validity. Techniques include those using either lenient or stringent solution standards, those assessing total idea output, and those involving qualitative aspects of ideation. Special considerations for the creativity of gifted…

Educators must realize that, in Japan, authentic learning means mastery of memorized information, not experiential learning and independent reasoning in preparation for life. Although many Japanese can recite long strings of facts, few can answer "why,""how,""what if," and "what do you think" questions about…

The contents of 67 college-level creativity course syllabi were analyzed. A theoretical framework emerged with five dimensions, including social climate, personality characteristics, models or theories, process involved, and product variables related to end results. (DB)

Administered Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale and Edwards Personal Preference Schedule to 426 adults, aged 18 through 90. Findings suggest that men create humor more, although women used more coping humor. As age increased, so did humor creativity, coping humor, and humor appreciation. Those who sought to create humor appeared to have need…

Although divergent-thinking tests were once the most common creativity measure in psychological and educational research, their popularity among researchers is waning because of serious questions concerning validity. Recent research suggests that divergent-thinking test scores fail to predict real-world creativity. A task-specific approach may…

Examines Villanova University's decision to stop selling Cliffs Notes in its bookstore and attitudes toward Cliffs Notes, highlighting honest work, shortcuts, serious research, critical thinking, and original thinking. Provides the following advice for librarians: avoid being parental; avoid unexamined judgments; and avoid undervaluing Cliffs…

Creativity exercises, or creater-cizes, can help camp staff generate ideas and solve problems. Common techniques are brainstorming, story-boarding, analogies and metaphors, association and free association, spinning, and lists. Defines and gives examples of each technique. (SAS)

Presents a model of the relationship between the presented problem parameters of art assignments and the creative processes of students. Parameter types of instructions include incomplete, overly and inadequately restrictive, and expanding/contracting parameters. Parameters of student responses are categorized as disregarded, self-imposed, and…

Discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and the ideas of strong versus weak AI in relation to chess-playing computers. The concept of creativity is considered, and an attempt to develop a computer program capable of writing short stories is described. (LRW)

Four studies were conducted to assess gender differences in the effects of extrinsic motivation on creativity. Results indicate expectations of evaluation and work for reward lowered the creativity of middle school girls, but not that of boys. Expecting ungraded feedback reduced the negative impact of expecting evaluation and the gender…

Introduces this special issue on how educators in various countries facilitate creative thinking in their students. Notes that some of the articles contain information or examples demonstrating originality, flexibility, or important personality traits that contribute to creativity, such as risk-taking, and that others address the need for…