Creativity is typically defined as the generation of novel and useful ideas or artifacts. This generative capacity is crucial to everyday problem solving, technological innovation, scientific discovery, and the arts. A central concern of cognitive scientists is to understand the processes that underlie human creative thinking. We review evidence…

The mathematics classroom is particularly vulnerable to these judgments of perfectionism, with endless evidence of students and teachers believing that mathematics is based on an ultimate truth or a single, objective, unique answer. School mathematics still favors students' participation in rote procedures, memorization, and using only a few…

This paper draws on a recent study of teaching experiments in a Danish gymnasium (upper secondary school) context. The aim of the study was to afford students time to devise creative solutions to specific problems in each subject area. For the purposes of the study, abductive reasoning, applied to ordinary subjects in the classroom in a high…

Creative Contradictions in Education is a provocative collection of essays by international experts who tackle difficult questions about creativity in education from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The contributors to this volume examine and provide fresh insights into the tensions and contradictions that researchers and educators face when…

Contemporary geography education is mostly based on rational linear thinking skills, such as observation, explanation, interpretation, calculation and analysis. Even field trips--according to many the "heart" of geography--are often organized in a logical, rational manner, in which learners step-by-step improve their understanding of the…

This article reports on an ethnographic analysis of students who play chess at a mixed comprehensive school in England. The authors explore how children learn when playing chess and speculate about how the appeal of the game could be used by secondary teachers to improve English lessons.

Teaching thinking skills to students is often associated with a thinking strategy or a specific thinking technique. The strategy or technique may refer to a series of steps that is systematically drawn up to ensure that the teaching of thinking skills takes place effectively. In the case of Malaysia, a conceptual framework of Thinking Skill…

The author argues that, in all people, one hemisphere of the brain has dominance--either the left, logical side, or the right, creative side. He presents methods of improving the design and delivery of learning through developing the recessive hemisphere. (CT)

In relating brain hemisphere differences to education and educational administration, the author reviews literature on the issue and discusses the concepts involved. For background, he briefly goes over the history of brain and cognition studies and the advent of "split-brain" studies and the "triune" brain theory. Definitions…

Linguistic and psychological factors which bear on the concept of "intuitive thinking" are analyzed with respect to second language learning. Analytical thinking is considered as being logical, cognitive, and objective while intuitive thinking is considered to be creative, constructive, and non-analytical. Following a brief discussion of Piaget's…

Author describes utilizing both cerebral hemispheres of the brain (the intuitive-metaphoric and rational-logical mind) in teaching science so that creativity in students can be fostered. (BR)

The renewed interest in teaching thinking skills results from concern about the failings of the current system. Some thinking skills programs emphasize cognitive processes, while others are concerned with heuristics, development of formal operations, language and symbols, or thinking as subject matter. (TE)

In the last few decades there has been a move in philosophy of education toward a concept of pragmatic rationality. This paper examines whether the move away from systematicity, fixed guiding principles or logical systems, makes this notion of pragmatic rationality so broad that it can encompass any procedure of selection which involves rules, no…

The differing functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain are discussed and means of developing interaction between the two are described. (JD)

Describes the contents of a book entitled The Care and Feeding of Ideas: A Guide to Encouraging Creativity which considers the thinking process, why skills need to be developed, and how students use or should use these thinking skills. (RT)