Creativity and the Common Core State Standards are both important to today’s teachers. Yet, for many educators, nurturing students’ creativity seems to conflict with ensuring that they learn specific skills and content. In this book, the authors outline ways to adapt existing lessons and mandated curricula to encourage the development of student creativity alongside more traditional academic skills. Based on cutting-edge psychological research on creativity, the text debunks common misconceptions about creativity and describes how learning environments can support both creativity and the Common Core, offers creative lessons and insights for teaching English language arts and mathematics, and includes assessments for creativity and Common Core learning. Featuring numerous classroom examples, this practical resource will empower teachers to think of the Common Core and creativity as encompassing complementary, rather than mutually exclusive, goals. Book Features: Shows how teaching skills mandated by the CCSS and teaching for creativity can reinforce one another. Helps teachers better understand what creativity is, how to develop it, and how to assess it in meaningful ways. Examines the many misconceptions about creativity that prevent teachers from doing their best work. Provides classroom examples, ideas, and lesson plans from successful teachers across disciplines. “This wonderful book makes the important point that teaching to well-designed standards is completely consistent with teaching for creativity. [It] is filled with practical advice for teachers about how to teach to Common Core standards, in both ELA and math, in ways that lead to creative learning outcomes.” —Keith Sawyer, Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Beghetto, and Baer make a strong, nuanced case that knowledge for the sake of knowledge may be acceptable for immediate retention, but knowledge in the service of creating new possibilities has long-term consequences that can’t be ignored by educators and society.” —Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director, The Imagination Institute and researcher, Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania

Examines and responds to the tension educators face while trying to nurture creativity within the curricular constraints of the classroom.

Creativity: A Handbook for Teachers covers topics related to creativity research, development, theories and practices. It serves as a reference for academics, teacher educators, teachers, and scientists to stimulate further “dialogue” on ways to enhance creativity.

Creative teaching as well as teaching creativity are cutting edge issues in psychology today as recent academic and popular media coverage has shown. This volume expands on that interest with chapter authors drawn from interdisciplinary areas. It includes examples of creatively teaching across the education system, including preschool, K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level education. The variety of subjects covered by the chapters include psychology,math, science, and reading. In addition to creative teaching which may lead to enhanced learning and achievement in students, as well enhanced creativity,another focus is teaching with the objective to enhance creativity.

Employees who possess problem-solving skills are highly valued in today?s competitive business environment. The question is how can employees learn to deal in innovative ways with new data, methods, people, and technologies? In this groundbreaking book, Arthur VanGundy -- a pioneer in the field of idea generation and problem solving -- has compiled 101 group activities that combine to make a unique resource for trainers, facilitators, and human resource professionals. The book is filled with idea-generation activities that simultaneously teach the underlying problem-solving and creativity techniques involved. Each of the book?s 101 engaging and thought-provoking activities includes facilitator notes and advice on when and how to use the activity. Using 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving will give you the information and tools you need to: Generate creative ideas to solve problems. Avoid patterned and negative thinking. Engage in activities that are guaranteed to spark ideas. Use proven techniques for brainstorming with groups. Order your copy today.

The concept of creative learning extends far beyond Arts-based learning or the development of individual creativity. It covers a range of processes and initiatives throughout the world that share common values, systems and practices aimed at making learning more creative. This applies at individual, classroom, or whole school level, always with the aim of fully realising young people’s potential. Until now there has been no single text bringing together the significant literature that explores the dimensions of creative learning, despite the work of artists in schools and the development of a cadre of creative teaching and learning specialists. Containing a mixture of newly commissioned chapters, reprints and updated versions of previous publications, this book brings together major theorists and current research. Comprising of key readings in creative education, it will stand as a uniquely authoritative text that will appeal to those involved in initial and continuing teacher education, as well as research academics and policy specialists. Sections include: a general introduction to the field of creative learning arts learning traditions, with sub sections on discrete art forms such as drama and visual art accounts of practice from artist-teacher partnerships whole school change and reforms curriculum change assessment evaluative case studies of impact and effect global studies of policy change around creative learning.

The purpose of this handbook is to demystify art for parents and teachers and to help them understand what the art experience is like for the child/adolescent. The book discusses visual art concepts in simple terms and presents art as a vehicle for educationally transformative experiences. The book also provides sample dialogs between adults and children for parents and teachers who wish to help children approach art projects creatively. The "I can't draw syndrome" is explained and stages of artistic development are discussed from scribbling to adolescent art. The text also offers ideas and projects to help adults support the authentic vision of the child/adolescent throughout all the stages. Major sections include: the art experience, creativity and the child, stages of artistic development, keeping creativity alive, art projects for children ages 2 to 12, and art projects for adolescents ages 12 to 17. Also provided are an appendix on art materials and safety information and a glossary. At the core of this book is the belief that children are born artists and that artistic talent emerges from the interplay of proclivity, cultural enrichment, and nurturance. This exceptional handbook will raise consciousness and foster understanding about the nature of the art experience, and it will help adults find ways to keep the creative process alive at home and in the classroom. Visit Author's Web site.

The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. Book Features: Presents a research-based approach to teaching and learning for creativity. Identifies which learning outcomes support creativity and offers practical advice for how to teach for these outcomes. Shows how students learn content-area knowledge while also learning to be creative with that knowledge. Describes principles and techniques that teachers can use in all subjects. Demonstrates that a combination of school structures, cultures, incentives, and leadership are needed to support creative teaching and learning.

The fourth edition of this well-known text continues the mission of its predecessors âe" to help teachers link creativity research and theory to the everyday activities of classroom teaching. Part I (chs 1-5) includes information on models and theories of creativity, characteristics of creative people, and talent development. Part II (chapters 6-10) includes strategies explicitly designed to teach creative thinking, to weave creative thinking into content area instruction, and to organize basic classroom activities (grouping, lesson planning, assessment, motivation and classroom organization) in ways that support studentsâe(tm) creativity. Changes in this Edition: Improved Organization -- This edition has been reorganized from 8 to 10 chapters allowing the presentation of theoretical material in clearer, more manageable chunks. New Material âe" In addition to general updating, there are more examples involving middle and secondary school teaching, more examples linking creativity to technology, new information on the misdiagnosis of creative students as ADHD, and more material on cross-cultural concepts of creativity, collaborative creativity, and linking creativity to state standards. Pedagogy & Design âe" Chapter-opening vignettes, within-chapter reflection questions and activities, sample lesson ideas from real teachers, and end-of-chapter journaling activities help readers adapt content to their own teaching situations. Also, a larger trim makes the layout more open and appealing and a single end-of-book reference section makes referencing easier. Targeted specifically to educators (but useful to others), this book is suitable for any course that deals wholly or partly with creativity in teaching, teaching the gifted and talented, or teaching thinking and problem solving. Such courses are variously found in departments of special education, early childhood education, curriculum and instruction, or educational psychology.

Current, comprehensive, and authoritative, this text gives language teachers and researchers, both a set of conceptual tools with which to think and talk about creativity in language teaching and a wealth of practical advice about principles and practices that can be applied to making their lessons more creative. Providing an overview of the nature of creativity and its role in second language education, it brings together twenty prominent language teachers and researchers with expertise in different aspects of creativity and teaching contexts to present a range of theories on both creative processes and how these processes lead to creative practices in language teaching. Unique in the field, the book takes a broader and more critical look at the notion of creativity in language learning, exploring its linguistic, cognitive, sociocultural and pedagogic dimensions. Structured in four sections— theoretical perspectives, creativity in the classroom, creativity in the curriculum, and creativity in teacher development—each chapter is supplemented by Questions for Discussion and Suggestions for Further Research. Its accessible style makes the book relevant as both a course text and a resource for practicing teachers.