Good teaching, at its core, is an intuitive practice. It is an art and craft in which, through vision, objectives, and planning, a teacher prepares for the teaching moment. Experienced teachers know that lesson plans and pre-planning though, no matter how finely crafted, only point the teacher and the student in a direction. As artist-educators…

In this paper, the author revisits the classic idea formulated by Hanna Segal that creativity takes place from a depressive position impulse to repair previous destruction wrought on internal parental objects. The author proposes that in the light of psychoanalytic work with deprived and borderline children, there may need to be a rider to this…

Certain challenges are inherent in collecting data to evaluate nonformal education programs and settings. One challenge relates to the complexity of the educational system in which nonformal learning takes place. Separating the learning effects of a nonformal education program on participants from the effects of other essential elements of their…

There are administrators who merely administer and there are administrators who not only administer, but also lead. In this article, the author provides an example of the former and discusses what it means to be an administrator who is also a good leader. He shares his proposed theory of educational leadership, which has four basic elements.…

This study examines the relationship between creativity and tolerance of ambiguity. Participants were parents and their adolescent children. Three measures of creativity were used: a divergent thinking task, a story-writing task and self-evaluation of creative attitudes and behavior. Participants completed two self-report measures of tolerance of…

Two studies were conducted to show connections between giftedness and intuition. The first study was exploratory. A sample of 194 gifted adolescent students (N=194) included fifty-five students identified as gifted by their teachers and fifty-six percent who were female. Using the Polish version of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, the students…

Background: Neuroscience is unlikely to produce findings for immediate application in the classroom. The educational significance and practical implications of knowledge about mind and brain inevitably require some level of interpretation, yet the multiplying examples of unscientific "brain-based" educational concepts suggest this process of…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether Science, Technology, and Society (STS) learning increases student concept mastery, general science achievement, use of concepts in new situations, and attitudes toward science in middle school classrooms. The study involved two teachers and fifty-two students in grades 6 through 8. Two sections of…

This study reports findings from an analysis of the 2002 Chinese National Physics Curriculum Guidelines and the alignment between the curriculum guidelines and two most recent provincial-level 12th-grade exit examinations in China. Both curriculum guidelines and test content were represented using two-dimensional matrices (i.e., topic by level of…

Early childhood educators and researchers often write of the need for a "magical playscape"--a sensory-rich environment that will draw out children's active inquiry and engagement in an outside learning environment. Despite this soundly child-based information, the reality of many playgrounds is a sandbox, a climbing frame, and a bicycle path;…

Conventional assessments do not meet the cognitive demands of the world today. WICS, an acronym for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized, can provide a more meaningful model. Findings from the Rainbow Project, conducted by the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise, showed that assessing students for…

This article extends recent work on the relationship between personality and career self-efficacy by examining relationships across two new inventories with scales for identifying human strengths. The Healthy Personality Inventory (HPI) has 17 content scales tapping an array of positive personality measures. The CAPA Confidence Inventory (CCI) has…

Drawing on socio-cultural theory, this paper focuses on children's classroom-based collaborative creative writing. The central aim of the reported research was to contribute to our understanding of young children's creativity, and describe ways in which peer collaboration can resource, stimulate and enhance classroom-based creative writing…

Development of creativity is influenced by multiple factors, including the environment, developmental changes, and measurement tools. In this study, we investigated the relationship between creativity development and implementation of the Discovering Intellectual Strengths and Capabilities while Observing Varied Ethnic Responses (DISCOVER)…

Studies on the development of creativity have highlighted the impact of learning environments. In particular, pedagogical approaches are hypothesized to differ concerning their emphasis on individual initiative, and action-based learning. A semi-longitudinal study was conducted during two consecutive years with 210 children in elementary schools…