As part of recent complex transformations, it seems that higher educational organisations are being forced to reorganise, standardise and streamline in order to survive in the new political and economic context. How are ethnographers in general going to approach these contemporary phenomena? By drawing on the conceptual history of anthropology,…

This study examines the sudden enlightenment sect of Chan (or Zen in Japanese terms) in order to understand various aspects of teaching and learning in the Buddhist tradition in China. To unravel Chan's educational import, we analyze its aesthetic features through a Western lens in order to highlight significant aspects of the teaching/learning…

This article reports on recent case-study research that examined teacher- and student-level processes in nine Australian arts classrooms. The selected classrooms, based on the results of a connected longitudinal study, demonstrated strong positive links between arts participation and academic motivation, engagement and achievement. The focus here…

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…

The creativity program, "imagination 'first': unleash the power of possibility," implemented in public primary and secondary schools in Northern Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, deals with the power of imagination in unleashing creativity among gifted students and teachers. Following an in-depth literature review on creativity for…

What the ultimate goal for education is to help students develop their capabilities and in turn to maximize their potentials into practical uses in everyday life. In fact, teachers are critical resources at their disposal to facilitate maximum students learning experience and to release students' potentials in classrooms. It is believed that…

Art educators are concerned with exposing their students to contemporary art making practices. They aim to create fresh lessons that expand their understandings of art in today's world while highlighting the importance of imagination. With a personal interest in performance and street art (art forms that have gained popularity in recent years),…

The Vygotsky Blocks Test assesses problem-solving styles within a theoretical framework for the development of higher mental processes devised by Vygotsky. Because both the theory and the associated test situate cognitive development within the child's social and linguistic context, they address conceptual issues around the developmental relation…

Imagination is a powerful engine that can drive people to bring their ideas, dreams, and desires to reality. The imagination constructs stories that lead people to create. Combining imagination with engineering knowledge creates inventions which initially might seem fantastic. The authors provide in this article a brief overview of a successful…

PBL is learning through becoming conscious of practical and abstract problems and finding ways how to solve them. It can be a pattern which doesn't follow traditional divisions of disciplines. In this article the material was collected from two, in the first sight, very different groups. One was music students (N = 62) who had to learn to solve…

According to Vande Zande (2007), understanding the Design Process can help students become stronger critical thinkers. With this in mind, Andrew Watson decided to undertake an observational case study in which he focused directly on Design Thinking and addressed it more intentionally in his teaching. The hope was to understand how students saw…

Building upon previously developed and more general dual-process models, this paper provides empirical support for a multidimensional thinking style construct comprised of linear thinking and multiple dimensions of nonlinear thinking. A self-report assessment instrument (Linear/Nonlinear Thinking Style Profile; LNTSP) is presented and…

This dissertation explored the value and functions of imagination in leading learning in the twenty-first century, a knowledge-based age marked by diversity, change and unpredictability. In such a context, how can imagination enable teachers to be leaders of learning who optimally engage and prepare students for success? Research in cognitive…

Leadership educators are faced with the challenge of preparing students to serve organizations and people in dynamic and ever changing contexts. The purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate leadership students' self-perceived level of moral imagination to make recommendations for moral imagination curricula. Moral imagination is the…

"We know that progress depends on discovery, inventions, creativity and design, but we have simply supposed that it happens anyway," de Bono (1999 p. 43). Technology education is ostensibly a foundation for future designers and creative thinking. However evidence of good design or creative thinking in outcomes displayed in school…