In attempting to balance the requirements of social structure and the empowering initiative of creativity in children, numerous obstacles must be confronted, including insecurity; fear of uncertainty; ritualistic problem solving; dogmatic, dichotomous thinking; inner resourcelessness; lack of playfulness; restricted affect; forcing premature…

Discussed is Brazil's struggle to achieve consensus between the arguments for egalitarianism and elitism in gifted education. Also described are Brazil's efforts to define giftedness, identify gifted children, and develop curriculum extension programs. The importance of creativity in both identifying and nurturing special talent is emphasized.…

The article describes an inservice teacher training program which is teaching Brazilian teachers to (1) be more aware of their own creativity, (2) creativity enhancing techniques and exercises to use in the classroom, (3) basic concepts about creative thinking and problem solving, and (4) increased awareness of obstacles to creative development.…

Discusses creativity and the teacher's importance in providing a context that encourages creative thought. Contrasts the author's success in teaching technical writing to college juniors and seniors with her experiences in using the Macintosh personal computer to teach first year composition. Notes that computers alone cannot stimulate creativity.…

Describes a lesson designed to teach a computer programming construct, the "if-then" statement, and to help students gain insight into computing concepts, stimulate students' creativity, and develop their higher order thinking skills. (JKP)

This article presents a queuing model simulation of scientific productivity utilizing critical path analysis. Creativity is found to have a large positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect on productivity, depending on the stage of the problem-solving process to which it is applied and the nature of the bottlenecks inherent to the specific…

A discussion of creativity and curiosity, particularly in the context of college instruction, examines two psychological models of creativity, the cognitive approach of Howard Gardner and one aligned with depth psychology (James Hillman). Commonalities are noted: preference for mess over management and for boundaries transgressed rather than…

This study investigated the relationship between creative interests and dream recall frequency (DRF) by having 44 adults complete dream recall journals as well as a verbal creativity test. Results indicate that persons with both visual and verbal creative skills remember their dreams more. Visual memory may be a mediating variable between…

Presents findings concerning the role of symbolic play. Assumes that symbolic play has seven functions in the child's development: cognitive, creative, ordering, stimulative, social, expressive, and substitutive. Considers play as a phenomenon that prepares children's abilities through symbolic play. (BAC)

To evaluate Mednick's theory of the creative thinking process, an associative priming paradigm was used to measure latencies to lexical decisions primed by associations of low, medium, or high strength with 20 high-creative and 20 low-creative high school students. Mednick's theory that creative individuals show a flatter associative hierarchy…

This article reviews the evidence on the relationship between the two brain hemispheres and creative cognitive processes. It concludes that claims about creativity being "in" one or the other hemispheres represent an uncritical acceptance of naive pseudoscientific beliefs about the brain and brain function. (DB)

This article describes 2 experiments conducted with a computer-aided problem-solving tool called BRAIN, involving 30 adults of varying backgrounds and 15 organizational executives. The BRAIN program encourages users to discover partially and fully formulated insights, through iterative generation of word lists and meaningful statements. Eighty…

This paper examines research on influences of emotions on creativity, describes how feelings impact an individual's ability and willingness to function creatively, and discusses the implications for management of creativity in the employment setting. A four-step model of the creative process is discussed, and two sources (proximal and distal) of…

This paper argues that emphasis on conventional critical thinking ("logicism") skills neglects nonlogical, imaginative ways of knowing and suggests that imagination is a necessary condition for good thinking. Education in thinking skills should encourage both imaginative thinking and logical analysis. (DB)

Nine correctional teachers of the year describe their teaching experiences with adult and adolescent offenders. (SK)