In this response to Sternberg's (2017) feature article in this special issue, we identify and define a kind of closed-minded, dogmatic, self-serving thinking that is nowadays quite prevalent around the world but counterproductive in solving many social problems. We argue that overcoming such a mindset takes wisdom and creativity. We present some…

A major question for research on the development of creativity is whether it is interested in "creative potential" (a prospective approach that uses measures early in life to predict adult creativity) or in children's creativity for its own sake. We suggest that a focus on potential for future creativity diminishes the fascinating…

The articles in this issue of "New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development" nicely summarize recent findings about creativity and development. This commentary underscores some of the key ideas and puts them into a larger context (i.e., the corpus of creativity research). It pinpoints areas of agreement (e.g., the need to take…

This author contends that the United States neglects creativity in its education system. To see this, he states, one may look at the Common Core State Standards. If one searches the English Language Arts and Literacy standards for the words "creative," "innovative," and "original"--and any associated terms, one will…

This reflection paper argues that the design and development of digital games teach essential 21st century skills. Intrinsic to application and game development is design thinking. Design thinking requires iterative development, which demands creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. Students are engaged through learning by doing in both…

This essay is an attempt to add to the argument that beauty matters in education through offering a reciprocal but interconnected point: if the dynamic harmony and deep connectedness of beauty need to be taken seriously, so must their aesthetic converse--the disharmony and estrangement of failure. While the discourse of philosophical aesthetics…

If one wants to teach youth to think, one has to restrain himself from doing all their thinking for them. One has to refrain from specifying in advance what they are going to think. Yet, this is just what educational technologists are consistently guilty of doing. Educational technology is committed to excluding the possibility of anything new or…

Faculty don't give themselves enough credit for innovation and creative thinking within higher education. The soap operas of entrenched faculty, factions divided over trivia, professors protecting their sub-disciplines, lengthy and convoluted approval processes, and ongoing acrimony and melodrama all overshadow progress made without fanfare. The…

I respond to Baron and Chen's article on creative cultural divergence, which they describe as the novel pedagogy of diverging from culturally generated educational expectations. Their article provides an analysis on how an experienced Taiwanese teacher drew on different forms of creative cultural divergence to facilitate students' critical…

Ghassib (2010) presents a provocative view of science as industry. He ties science specifically to a "productivist" industrial model and to knowledge production. If judged based on what is explicit in this article, his theory is useful and logical. There are, however, several concerns as well. Some of these are implied by the title of his article,…

While "thinking outside the box" can be an over-used phase at times, in the world of grants it can provide the genesis of ideas. The "box" is the world of academia accepted by most educators, while "thinking outside" is the process that leads to grant ideas. In the grant world, "thinking outside the box" is a process of doing something that has…

This article presents the author's response to Hisham B. Ghassib's article entitled "Where Does Creativity Fit into a Productivist Industrial Model of Knowledge Production?" Ghassib (2010) presents three intriguing and novel ideas which are worth anyone's attention. Firstly, that the constantly increasing amount of scientific knowledge can be…

This essay employs the images and voices of children to describe how their learning about the world is supported as they engage in experiences that invoke creativity and imagination. The author states his belief that this "imagining," this giving body and substance to the nature of "imagination" is one of the foundations of knowing, a means of…

In his 1982 response to the myth that "creativity is too difficult to measure," Dr. Joe Khatena (a long-time contributor to the literature on creativity), characterized creativity as the "most exciting dimension of mental functioning." Building on a three-dimensional view of creativity (emphasizing the "individual," the "environment," and the…

This paper is a philosophical study of the nature of thinking based on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner. For Heidegger, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers exemplified genuine thinking, appreciating the meaning of Being. But this kind of philosophy was soon replaced by the onto-theological approach, in which Being was…