Presents selected responses to the question "The Farmer's Dilemma" that represent the thinking of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. Indicates that by being given the freedom to use a variety of methods, most students found at least one solution or demonstrated an understanding of the restrictions set by the problem. (ASK)

A common way to teach creative thinking is through creative problem solving. Outlines the stages of problem solving: problem exploration, idea development, implementation, and selected activities for developing creative problem solving competences. Discusses the role of attitude, experience, and motivation. Concludes that creativity training is…

Describes how the authors used process drama as a tool by which students assume the persona of characters in a literary text and improvise what the characters might say and how they might react in challenging situations. Discusses how students created modern dramatic interpretations of traditional texts in order to solve problems that parallel…

Analysis of 1,475 transcripts of online discussions among 7 student learning groups (n=38) with diverse learning styles indicated that most groups seem to respond to diversity by accommodation or elaboration rather than transformation. Few groups seem to invest the resources needed to capitalize on cognitive diversity and engage in nonroutine…

In a sample of 45 kindergarten children, significant, but relatively weak correlations were found between the Nebraska Starry Night Observation Protocol (NSNO) and the originality and elaboration scores of the concurrent measure, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Implications of using the NSNO to identify young creative children are…

The paper questions the relationship among reason, imagination, and empathy, and argues that empathy fosters critical and creative thinking and that its enhancement should be adopted as an important educational goal. The paper proposes that critical and creative thinking are much more integrated processes than often supposed. (JDD)

From their experience with open-ended tests requiring higher-order thinking and problem-solving abilities, schoolchildren in the USSR learn to think before answering. U.S. students instead train for rapid response, learning how to take tests rather than how to solve problems. Tests should be part of the curriculum, not separate from it. (MLH)

Considers arguments for and against the use of videotape productions of children's literature as motivators to reading. Criteria for the selection of videos that are successful adaptations of books are identified and discussed in the context of specific video productions. (four references) (CLB)

Examining the metaphor of the child, or lay adult, as an intuitive scientist results in a theory of the development of scientific thinking centering on progressive differentiation and the coordination of theory and evidence. This metacognitive and strategic development requires thinking about theories and evidence. (SLD)

Synectics is a creative problem-solving process carrying participants from problem analysis to the generation and development of new ideas. The system recognizes three types of thinkers: apposite, divergent, and generative. Effective thinking is often limited by maintaining inflexible criteria concerning thinking, insisting on literal meaning,…

Suggests metaphor is a linguistic tool for discovering meaning and a fundamental form of understanding. Recommends instructing students to produce and analyze extended metaphors by composing biographical portraits. (MS)

To evaluate Mednick's theory of the creative thinking process, an associative priming paradigm was used to measure latencies to lexical decisions primed by associations of low, medium, or high strength with 20 high-creative and 20 low-creative high school students. Mednick's theory that creative individuals show a flatter associative hierarchy…

This article describes 2 experiments conducted with a computer-aided problem-solving tool called BRAIN, involving 30 adults of varying backgrounds and 15 organizational executives. The BRAIN program encourages users to discover partially and fully formulated insights, through iterative generation of word lists and meaningful statements. Eighty…

This paper examines research on influences of emotions on creativity, describes how feelings impact an individual's ability and willingness to function creatively, and discusses the implications for management of creativity in the employment setting. A four-step model of the creative process is discussed, and two sources (proximal and distal) of…

This paper argues that emphasis on conventional critical thinking ("logicism") skills neglects nonlogical, imaginative ways of knowing and suggests that imagination is a necessary condition for good thinking. Education in thinking skills should encourage both imaginative thinking and logical analysis. (DB)