Children mature into adults through their own activities and the influence of their social environment. One such social influence, education, is purposeful, planned, and institutionalized. Educational psychology investigates the psychological foundations of this process, particularly in the development of humankind. The publication focuses on such…

This document describes the aesthetic education curriculum developed by the Aesthetic Education Program (AEP) of the Central Midwestern Regional Educational Lab. Developed for elementary grades, the curriculum is intended to enhance aesthetic perception, teach the arts, create a better living environment, promote general education, and use the…

The two complementary questions--"What does literature do to young readers?" and "Can literature be taught?"--are not easily answered. Youth should not employ literature as an exclusive guide to life since they will encounter numerous unrealistic situations. Instead, literature should entice them to deal vicariously with vivid, new experiences and…

This paper is a review of opinion and research concerning the objectivity and relevance of grades and grade averages as measures and as predictors of success. As measures they are ambiguous, reflecting differences in sex, basic temperament, instructors, departments, institutions, as much as levels of competence. And as a predictor of…

Social contact through informal speech, a basic adolescent need, can be most effectively developed in secondary schools through the learning, working, and creating situations of drama activities. Since drama is conflict and living language is action, the process of making a play is as important as the play. Thus, drama creation within a small…

This book presents performance-based projects to provide elementary school students both the structure and the freedom to become actively engaged in their own learning. The approach is based on the concept of authentic learning, which advocates a relevant, real world experience to personally engage students in learning. The book is divided into…

Main section argues that developing aptitudes for creativity in infants and toddlers is an important goal. Suggests the foundations of creativity begin with feeling valued, learning to combine things, exploring space and direction (gross motor development), fine motor development, making things happen, making a mess, and exposure to variety.…

This document is a handbook for helping children develop self-esteem through encouraging creative behavior in after school day care. The handbook is meant to be a resource for after school day care providers. Each chapter is structured to describe a creative behavior concept or strategy, explain how and why it works, and when it can best be…

Stressing language development as the prime component of all learning, this resource book presents suggestions to teachers to aid them in developing children's descriptive language. Basic to the described activities is the concept that vocabulary development is essentially concept development, requires a variety of experiences, and results from…

The young child learns patriotism through music, art, games, and dramatic activities. Concepts in history (names, dates, events) geography, and civics are introduced through specific activities. The media are used as a source of information. Art activities, listening to original stories, musical activities, pantomime, and role playing provide…

Youth programs that meet during the out-of-school hours, particularly those offered by organizations that have historically collaborated with their community members to support their interests and meet their needs, are in a unique position. These programs have the potential for and a history of engaging young people in experiences that can…

This evaluation of the Twin City Institute for Talented Youth, a summer program for gifted students in grades 9 through 12, consists of two parts: a description of the program; and the evaluators' assessments, including advocate and adversary reports. Achievement tests were not used for evaluation. Evaluative comments follow each segment of the…

A child's own purpose in life is to educate himself and to explore experience; consequently, secondary-school children will benefit from English teaching that encourages their imaginative creativity rather than forces strict adherence to arbitrary rules. When considering their childhood memories and the adult experiences before them, children…

In investigating patterns of family relationships conducive to creativity, several inventory-type personality tests and a questionnaire about family relationships and childhood interests were sent to 99 Mills College alumnae 5 years after their graduation and to the siblings of 51 of them. All had been tested, while seniors, for personality and…

Based on the more general principle that all thinking (including reasoning) is basically perceptual in nature, the author proposes that visual perception is not a passive recording of stimulus material but an active concern of the mind. He delineates the task of visually distinguishing changes in size, shape, and position and points out the…