Do your students occasionally seem bored? That's ok, says John Spencer. Doing tedious tasks or spending some time without stimulation can actually be great for creativity, freeing up your brain to make connections it might not otherwise have made. Spencer walks us through why our modern culture is so resistant to boredom and how we can cultivate…

This dissertation reviews the literature on creative behavior and reports a study exploring the operational approach to creativity. One hundred and nineteen 6th-grade students were assigned randomly to 6 treatment levels. The Ss in 4 levels read booklets which described principles of creative thinking techniques, and which presented examples and…