Assessed effectiveness of engaging students in a creative activity on a topic as a means of encouraging an active cognitive set toward learning that topic area. Creative task engagement was found to be an effective means of enhancing creativity (in the absence of evaluation expectation), intrinsic motivation, and long-term retention. (JBJ)

This article reviews five frequently cited attributes of effective schools, presents steps in creating significant schools, considers the importance and role of talent development, and describes relevant applications of the Creative Problem Solving framework to synthesize school improvement and talent development efforts. (DB)

Discusses emerging organizational structures of academic libraries and identifies core competencies for academic reference librarians, including a flexible attitude and approach toward technology, a high tolerance for rapid technological change, creativity, curiosity, communication skills, public relations savvy, and the ability to relate…

Presents techniques that in the author's experience have helped middle-school students produce better, more original work. Alternative formats to the traditional report project, clear assignment criteria, a grading rubric, and instruction in visual communication are all valuable. A model with which teachers can reduce plagiarism and promote…

Conceptual and behavioral methods for developing student abilities to think and behave creatively are presented with suggestions for their application in entrepreneurship courses. Conceptual exercises as well as the use of musical experimentation, card games, and board games as metaphors for business situations are shown to teach a variety of…

Deplores inconsistencies between the realities of today's technologically driven, information-age world and the static, constraining boxes in which state-initiated, accountability- focused reforms hold American education. We must reconceptualize schooling, curriculum content, time, grade levels, and achievement to allow more informal,…

Spiritual development in adolescents is marked by the search for meaning, longing for solitude, urge for transcendence, hunger for joy, creative drive, and hunger for rites of passage. Educators can foster spiritual development by creating an environment where students can explore these yearnings and make connections within themselves, to other…

This article reviews gifted characteristics in students with different types of disabilities, including gifted students with learning disabilities, visual disabilities, physical disabilities, hearing disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Identification considerations are discussed, along with strategies for instruction.…

Addresses the relationship between curriculum integration and classroom relevance in the practices of 29 Canadian junior high teachers. Teachers found curriculum integration rewarding and demanding. Integrated study units exemplified valued forms of learning: higher order thinking skills, problem-solving, applied knowledge, creativity, invention,…

Focuses on the philosophies and practices of art education in the primary and lower-secondary schools that have occurred since the early twentieth century. Identifies the different policy issues facing art education, such as integration into other subject areas using visual representation, creativity and the aesthetic learning processes, and…

Investigates how the process of knowledge formation in teaching and learning can be identified through teachers' definitions, decisions about assessments, and what criteria they use in an assessment situation. Reveals three dominant bipolar constructs among instrumental skills, expressive modes, creativity, and interpretative modes and two further…

This article discusses how the World Wide Web can empower students to think creatively, especially the gifted. It profiles 3 Web sites that discuss techniques, games, and strategies for enhancing creative thinking and 13 Web sites that contain information on inventors and inventions to stimulate gifted students. (Contains one reference.) (CR)

The original work of Alex Osborn making the creative process more explicit, and the following 50 years of research and development on creative problem solving, have made an important and wide-spread contribution to those interested in the deliberate development of creative talent. This article provided a summary of the many versions of creative…

The paper brings the results of a project that passed on to students the opportunity for re-presenting their acquired knowledge via the construction of multi-modal "learning resources". These "learning resources" substituted for lectures and books and became the official learning sources in the classroom. The rational for the…

The reading and writing of creative writing have the potential to bring sociology to life in a dramatic way. Literature has been used in sociology in one of two ways: to provide sociological evidence and as an object of analysis--a social institution to be studied in its own right. Previous scholarship has proven that the use of literature in…