The chapter examines the concept of fun, specifically the contradiction that "serious" learning and positive affect, the fancy way of saying fun, are incompatible in and around the classroom. Despite the fact that pedagogies considered fun are often unique, highly interactive, and impactful; the fun descriptor is perceived as a badge of…

Two empirical investigations showed that achieved eminence as a creator can sometimes be a curvilinear, inverted-U function of the level of formal education attained by the individual. Typically, the peak falls approximately in the last year of undergraduate education. Because these findings suggest that formal education might not always be…

Creativity is a skill that many consider essential for success in school, career, and life (Florida, The rise of the creative class. Basic Books, New York, 2002; Florida, The flight of the creative class: the new global competition for talent. HarperBusiness, New York, 2005; Guilford, Am Psychol 5:444-454, 1950). For this reason, creativity has…

The goal of educating for creativity must be active understanding rather than passive knowing. To understand is to have the capability to re-create, which trains the ability also to create. The ability to create requires problem-finding as well as problem-solving. It requires practice. Best practice involves the emulation of creative people and…

Creative imagination and memorization are complementary abilities in learning mathematics (Vygotsky, J Russian East Eur Psychol 42(1):7-97, 2004). These complementary abilities engage "movement" in learning mathematics among "realities" (e.g., personal and social experience, emotion, and cultural practices) (see also Dewey,…

This chapter explores the various relationships that exist between contradictions and creativity. The focus is education, with implications for both teachers and students. Contradictions are defined and contrasted with problems, disequilibria, and dilemmae. Product, place, personality, and process perspectives on creativity as also compared. The…

The perspective of creativity as rooted in difference opens up new questions for researchers and educators concerning the sharing of perspectives and, most importantly, the role of contradiction between perspectives within the educational act. While differences of perspective between students, teachers, or students and teachers, can be considered…

This chapter explores how misguided school reformers, the policymakers and citizens who believe those reformers, and the school systems and teachers obeying reform mandates often become trapped within a single worldview and think they are being creative. They might be creative to an extent but they are limiting their creativity by confining their…

Schools have poor reputation among creativity researchers. Teachers' biases and implicit theories, disruptive behaviors among creative students, and the equivocal pattern of the relationship between creativity and school achievement all contribute to this fact. This chapter presents a new typological model of creativity and demonstrate how this…

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…