Gayle T. Dow and Katie Kozlowski, researchers at Creativity Research Lab at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, discuss how the brain makes us creative and what teachers can do to encourage creative learning in the classroom.

Creativity is a multifaceted construct that recruits different cognitive processes. Here, we summarize studies that show that creativity develops considerably during adolescence with different developmental trajectories for insight, verbal divergent thinking, and visuospatial divergent thinking. Next, these developmental time courses are mapped to…

Creativity has been conceptualized as involving 2 distinct components; divergent thinking, the search for multiple solutions to a single problem, and convergent thinking, the quest for a single solution either through an analytical process or the experience of insight. Studies have demonstrated that these abilities can be improved by cognitive…

The study investigated the possible correlations between brain growth stages and creative art work through the evaluation of 549 samples of children's art by children in grades K through 6. The absence of a valid instrument led to the development by the investigator of a criterion referenced rating scale for evaluation of the art work. The data…