Recognizing the increasing popularity of skateboarding, the author has found a project that teaches design and manufacturing concepts--and, of equal importance, really gets his students motivated. He challenges them to design and build a skateboard rack that mounts easily on a bicycle. The project benefits students by teaching creativity, the…

Results from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have shown that the degree to which education systems succeed in equipping students with important foundation skills varies significantly. Since the quality of teaching is at the heart of student learning…

This case study consisted of an examination of the perspectives of students, teachers, and administrators at the Shuangling Primary School, a rural Chinese school in Shaanxi Province, as they relate to themes of China's most recent curricular reform efforts. The intent was to understand these perspectives and determine how to best assist teachers…

As teachers plan instruction--even instruction about punctuation--they have the opportunity to engage students' minds and create new labels: question-asking, problem-solving. How teachers teach embeds a vision of who they think kids are and what they think kids are capable of. Are they destined for a future of critical thinking, questioning,…

Problem solving is a critical skill for engineering students and essential to development of creativity and innovativeness. Essential to such learning is an ease of communication and allowing students to address the issues at hand via the terminology, attitudes, humor and empathy, which is inherent to their frame of mind as novices, without the…

In this study, we examined optimal experience and the antecedents of flow as reported by college-level developmental reading students using "Second Life", a multi-user virtual environment. In an educational context, "Second Life" provided a space for demonstrating 21st century skills including communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and…

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and…

A central question in creativity concerns how insightful ideas emerge. Anecdotal examples of insightful scientific and technical discoveries include Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization of rubber, and Mendeleev's realization that there may be gaps as he tried to arrange the elements into the Periodic Table. Although most people would regard…

The purpose of this research is to find the relationships among attributes of creative problem solving ability and their relationships with the Math Creative Problem Solving Ability. In addition, the attribute patterns of high, medium, and low mathematical creative groups were identified and compared. There were 409 fifth and sixth graders…

This exploratory study conducted in the People's Republic of China sought to determine the managerial knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that are perceived as important for the Chinese market economy. Questionnaire responses were collected from 145 business students in 2001 (before China's WTO entry) and 141 business students in 2006 (after…

This article presents a problem-solving model of variability and creativity built on the classic Reitman and Simon analyses of musical composition and architectural design. The model focuses on paired constraints: one precluding (or limiting search among) reliable, existing solutions, the other promoting (or directing search to) novel, often…

This study compared the creative outcomes in student work resulting from two pedagogical approaches to creative problem solving activities. A secondary goal was to validate the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) as a means of assessing creativity. Linear models for problem solving and design processes serve as the current paradigm in classroom…

Despite much public discussion about the importance of creativity and innovation-friendly teaching in Finnish higher education, the impact of the general opinion on actual teaching practices has been limited. In the Finnish computer science education the teaching mostly follows a pattern of lectures, fixed exercise sets, and exams. With this…

Six hundred and seventeen teacher-nominated Chinese gifted students rated the importance of 25 characteristics and 14 competencies for teachers of gifted learners, and all 39 characteristics and competencies were endorsed as important. The 25 teacher characteristics could be conceptualized in four dimensions, as an individuality orientation, a…

Creativity can be an elusive concept. It may be misunderstood and difficult to define, but it is clearly necessary, particularly in a world so rapidly changing. Creative people are those who can imagine. This means they can imagine solutions to problems and challenges faced. They can also imagine what it is like to be someone or something…