This article explores the contours of the Indian pragmatist Bhimrao Ambedkar and his reconstruction of Buddhism in the 1950s. As a student of John Dewey at Columbia University, young Ambedkar was heavily influenced by the pragmatist ideas of democracy and reconstruction. Throughout his life he would continue to evoke Dewey's words and ideas in his…

The Idea Bank column provides tips and techniques for creative teaching, in about 1,000 words. As students use increasingly diverse internet sources, it becomes hard to tell whether their answers are truly original. A general solution to this dilemma is to ask students to present information in a format that they are unlikely to encounter in books…

For over 50 years, science educators have been calling for increased opportunities for students to engage with science in creative manners, but teachers are still reliant on packaged materials that promote single and 'correct' responses with cookbook approaches. This article suggests five strategies that teachers can use to enhance constructed…

The National Core Arts Standards in general music provide some exciting possibilities for music growth and understanding among our students. For those of us who are still unsure of how to read the standards or implement them in our classrooms, the standards also present some challenges for music educators. This article provides a deeper look into…

In this essay, I share reflections on what it meant to teach my book of poetry in an introductory English literature class. The book took inspiration from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, particularly his studies on encountering the other person. Engaging with this text (both the poetry and the philosophy), I consider some of the nuances of a…

Factors that predict political party affiliation are of particular importance in research due to the wider implications in politics and policy making. Extending this line of work, the idea that creativity predicts party affiliation was tested using 2 conceptualizations of creativity: creative personality and creative ideation. Participants (N…

Dr. Katrina Carter shares some of the challenges and successes she encountered when incorporating Audio Description (AD) into an undergraduate circus module in the UK, for the first time. She demonstrates how, by considering diverse audiences, access tools can enhance the creative process for the artists themselves. Forcing them to question what,…

The need for dialogue between diverse groups within society is pressing, but the shrinking of shared public space makes it difficult for storytelling to cross social divides. Through an evolving practice of multi-artform "storyhacking," I and various collaborators have attempted to facilitate creative intercommunity dialogue by indirect…

Individual creativity (IC) is regarded as the core driver of innovation in higher education. Information and communication technology supports the opportunity to study IC in the online environment. In addition, we believe that the role of transformational leadership (TL) has changed compared to the offline environment. In this research, we employ…

The aim of this paper is the validation of measurement tools which assess critical thinking and creativity as general constructs instead of subject-specific skills. Specifically, this research examined whether there is convergent and discriminant (or divergent) validity between measurement tools of creativity and critical thinking. For this…

Research has shown that once a potential solution to a problem has settled into one's mind, it can be difficult to break from the original idea and move in a different direction (Cardoso & BadkeSchaub, 2009; Jansson & Smith, 1991). When designers are given examples (whether as models, photographs, sketches, or drawings), they often fixate…

It is widely known that there is a discrepancy between educational policy on the one side, and teaching and learning practices on the other. Most studies have been focusing on the sociocultural and micropolitical frames that shape teachers' understandings and enactments of teaching, and that cause the vast diversity of classroom practices around…

This paper builds on work undertaken over a number of years by a group of international researchers with an interest in the potential of connecting academic and everyday practices and knowledge. Drawing extensively on literature and our own work, we first discuss the challenges around defining informal learning, concluding that learning is…

English language arts teacher Zachary Wright describes how he uses "Mad-Lib"-like templates to help his unconfident writers (which is most of his students) see precisely how to do things like write a thesis statement, extract examples from the text, and structure a coherent essay.

Artful Living and Learning is an early childhood educational program based on research that shows an association between improved academic achievement and creativity through immersion in the fine arts in preschool classrooms. The Artful Living and Learning program improves the school readiness of all children -- particularly those who are under…