Creative thinking is critical to overcome many daily life situations. As such, there has been a growing interest on how creative thinking develops during childhood. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms driving its development. Indeed, almost all research has focused on divergent thinking, leaving aside convergent thinking, and…

Fostering young children's creativity is a desired outcome of STEM learning experiences. Such experiences often incorporate hands-on activities that encourage agency, curiosity, and experimentation. While educators generally have a good understanding of how to nurture creativity within a physical learning environment, less is known about…

From the perspective of survival adaption, adverse childhood experiences may promote creativity, and this effect would be enhanced by external threat. This study adopted three approaches to explore the impact of childhood harshness and unpredictability on creativity. By using a historiometric approach to investigate the adverse childhood…

Preschoolers have different experiences in different environments. These experiences can stimulate children's imaginations. This longitudinal study examines the impact of preschool children's three-year experiences in early childhood institutions, which are their primary educational environments. The question 'Do preschoolers imagine different…

The requirements imposed by society also apply to modern preschool education. First of all, it includes the need to create optimal conditions for the education of a dynamic and creative personality, which contributes to a full-fledged interaction with the environment in accordane with their age characteristics and capabilities. In the concept of…

The main concern of this article is to introduce the concept of the authentic gesture as a vital, largely self-determined expression of the child and to make it fruitful for art education. Because of the assumed educational importance of the concept, some hints to other learning areas will also be given. This should be done from a historical and…

Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity are regarded as core skills of the twenty-first century required to succeed in life and working frameworks. Meanwhile, new technologies have entered educational settings to facilitate children's development of competencies. During the last decade, several studies have been conducted…

This theoretical article examines the crucial role of play-based learning (PBL) in enhancing the mathematical skills of children in the Early Childhood Phase, referred to as Foundation Phase (Grade R-3) learners, within a South African context. The article argues that the traditional approach to teaching early childhood mathematics, where teachers…

The concept of assemblage, drawing on the posthuman theorisations of Deleuze and Guattari, delineates a dynamic and new materialist approach to an event. In this approach, desires, material agency and (de)(re)territorialisation emerge as key concepts, and open ways to understand the school classroom in early childhood as a territory where lines of…

A recent study showed that less than 50 forest kindergartens or nature preschools were in operation in 2012, but as of 2017, over 250 such schools have emerged in 43 states in the United States, with estimations for continuous growth over the next decade (NAAEE, 2017). While nature-based education programs are gaining popularity in light of recent…

Whether schools help or hinder creativity is a topic of vibrant, international debate. Some contend that the focus on structure, rote learning and standardised assessments associated with formal education stifles children's creativity. Others argue that creativity, much like numeracy or literacy, is a skill that can be taught, and educational…

The development of divergent thinking (DT) in school-age children and adolescents has received considerable attention in the educational psychology literature since the 1970s. A body of research has outlined the existence of slumps (i.e., temporary declines) in this development with, however, conflicting findings concerning the magnitude and…

Creative thinking is valuable and necessary in society today and in the development of solutions to environmental issues. Fostering creative thinking skills and environmental values should begin early in life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence that a nature preschool experience has on the development of creative thinking…

This study investigated the relationship among gender, sibling constellation, age, and young children's creativity performance in the Fluency, Imagination, Originality dimensions of creativity, as well as the developmental trajectory of their creativity performance. In total, 493 young children took the Torrance's Thinking Creatively in Action and…

Studies of children's developing social identification often focus on individual forms of identity. Yet, everyone has multiple potential identities. Here we investigated whether making children aware of their multifaceted identities--effectively seeing themselves from multiple angles--would promote their flexible thinking. In Experiment 1, 6- to…