The NASSP Taking the Initiative program was created to help principals and school leadership teams develop essential skills, such as the ability to give meaningful feedback, think creatively, function as a team member, gather resources, deal with resistance to change, and launch an initiative. This article describes the program's success in a…

This introductory article discusses a blind-variation and selective-retention model of the creative process developed by Donald Campbell. According to Campbell, creativity contains three conditions: a mechanism for introducing variation, a consistent selection process, and a mechanism for preserving and reproducing selected variations. (Author/CR)

Discusses the importance of imagination and the power of stories. Draws on insights gained from visits with children growing up in difficult environments, and shares examples from the author's own works written for young adults. (AEF)

Contends that only students with performance or composing abilities are given a chance to explore music in their education. Stresses the importance of teaching all students how to listen to music in an active, "minds-on" way instead of only teaching hands-on activities. Challenges the traditional music curriculum by refuting five myths…

Thirty-four gifted children in Louisiana and 34 from Connecticut were administered the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) and the Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory (KTCPI). The KTCPI included the What Kind of Person Are You (WKOPAY) subtest, a measure of creative striving. Perfectionistic traits were negatively correlated with…

Suggests that scientific thought experiments (TEs) draw upon three epistemological resources: conceptual-logical inferences, visual imagery, and bodily-motor experience. Argues that TEs are powerful because of students' thought capabilities related to imagination and visual imagery. Claims that TEs are not currently exploited by school learning…

Suggests that management education should explore accommodation of individual expression and interpretation within a flexible and open teaching framework. Analysis of fiction may support a management education that questions its own content and context. Argues that management educators must employ a bold approach to literary criticism if use of…

Preservice teachers must learn to seek ways to transform the pedagogic world rather than conform to it as it is written, with traditions, conventions, rules, and patterns. They are encouraged to try to write the pedagogic world of students and teachers and live un/grammatically, challenging the ways that the world has been written for them. (SM)

This study investigated the effects of prop realism on the play of 24 preschoolers. Observations of play sessions revealed that highly realistic props and low-realism props elicited equal amounts of group dramatic play. However, low- realism props generated greater diversity of play themes, more fantasy role enactments, and more nonintended use of…

A modified version of Kirton's Adaptor-Innovator Inventory was used to operationalize the person-environment fit model and a self-report measure was used to assess creative productivity in 40 British adults. Results indicate that style match between the individual and the environment was associated with higher levels of product novelty and…

This article examines creativity and talent of individuals that can be identified from perceptions of themselves. It describes two instruments that may be used to measure such predispositions. Several problems studied with these instruments are presented and a number of uses for the instruments are suggested. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study examined the relationship between structured imagination and creativity in story writing among 108 undergraduates. Subjects produced paragraphs that were meaningful/original, meaningful/non-original, or non-meaningful/non-original. Results showed that groups 1 and 2 wrote psychologically meaningful stories significantly more than group 3…

Discusses preliminary studies on thoughtful schools in Brunei Darussalam. Thoughtful schools emphasize the concepts of creativity, reflectivity, responsibility, and reciprocity in the areas of teaching, learning, and school management. Examines precursors to thoughtful schools and looks at why there have not been many studies on the subject. (SM)

An experiment was conducted to investigate the innovative performance of problem solving groups (n=196) with three different blends of cognitive styles. As predicted, groups with a heterogeneous blend of styles outperformed groups with completely or partially homogeneous blends. Participant satisfaction, however, was lower for heterogeneous teams.…

A study of 94 intact autonomous work groups performing multi-part tasks revealed that group creative performance increased exponentially with the number of highly creative group members composing the group. However, this occurred only when Team Creativity-Relevant Processes within the group were relatively high. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)