The central Florida region, faced with record tourism, a large service population, and significant population growth over the next few decades, must rely on a community-based institution of higher education with lifelong learning offerings, a local community college, to create world class public safety education and training for the region.…

In this article, the authors explore the corpus of literature on creative thinking and applied creativity in higher education to help composition teacher-scholars and writing center practitioners improve the application of creativity in written, visual, and multimodal composing practices. From studies of creative thinking investigated across…

Undergraduate history students can gain insight into the historical process from a short exercise using copies of documents that give conflicting interpretations of the same event. Explains how to lead class discussions based on two letters about lawlessness in Arizona in the 1880s. (Author/AV)

Computerized think tanks can reach decisions more efficiently than the standard committee meeting method. (Editor)

Individual differences in performance on figural analogy tests are usually attributed to quantitative differences in processing parameters rather than to qualitative differences in the formation and use of representations. Yet aptitude-related differences in categorizing standardized figural analogy problems between high and low scorers have been…

Although it is commonly assumed that increases in mathematical knowledge and problem-solving skill alter one's understanding of mathematical problems, little research exists to support this assumption. The present study investigated the relationship between mathematical background and problem perception in two experiments. Experiment 1 employed…

Creativity, intelligence, and problem-solving tasks that varied in the explicitness of problem definition and in the format for an acceptable solution were administered to 100 college students. Two hypotheses that distinguished between concepts of creative and intelligent problem-solving were presented, and syntactical and strategic distinctions…

In a study of tests on diagnosis it was found that confidence measures of knowledge adjusted for reasoning were more reliable than conventional measures of knowledge, supporting the idea that knowledge enhances the ability to recognize the diagnostic entities, and realism is associated with fewer premature closures. (MSE)

Performance on standardized figural analogy tests is considered highly predictive of academic success. While information-processing models of analogy solution attribute performance differences to quantitative differences in processing parameters, the problem-solving literature suggests that qualitative differences in problem representation and…

A 2-year sequence in creative problem solving for college students had no significant effect on memory or evaluation operations, but significantly improved divergent production, convergent production, and cognition. The data support a multidimensional analysis of creativity, involving idea finding, knowing, judging, and implementing ideas.…

Tautologies in student essays, arguments that most commonly assume the truth or self-evidence of themselves without relationship to something other than themselves, can be identified whenever an essay contains a series of nonsuccessive, noncumulative discourse units. Three kinds of tautologies in student papers are tautologies of redundancy,…

Examines some of the assumptions associated with attempts to define the "engineering method." Critiques a previously stated definition of this method, and offers an alternative definition that attempts to include the ideas put forth in the previous definition. Discusses the use of engineering heuristics in both definitions. (TW)

A number of studies have reported that there is a strong tendency to ignore base-rate information in favor of individuating information, except when the former can readily be incorporated into a causal schema. In this study, students in eight undergraduate classes were given problems in which the base-rate information was either causal or…

Of all the uncertain problems which curriculum theorists encounter, teaching curriculum to graduate students is among the most problematic. On the one hand is the mass of knowledge and concepts about curriculum. On the other hand is the student who, more often than not, has limited experience in putting abstract ideas to practical use. If the…

Demonstrates how to promote the transference of concepts and principles developed in other curricula to enhance a student's subject matter mastery in soil classification. Describes course format, critical thinking techniques, and a course evaluation. A conclusion and references are included. (Author/RT)