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…

Children of all ages who have the opportunities, time, and materials to explore science content in a self-directed manner will develop higher level understandings, and demonstrate more sophisticated approaches to science. A vast and growing body of research supports the academic benefits of self-directed or authentic scientific inquiry, which is…

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…

Education to Theatricality as pedagogical and artistic research is experienced by almost twenty years in Italy in laboratories and projects organized in collaboration with universities, schools, theaters, educational centers, cultural centers, educational and social services, associations. Education to Theatricality is a science that includes…

Three studies were combined to examine the effects of creativity and imagination on the academic performance of design students. Study 1 conducted an exploratory factor analysis to determine the most appropriate structure of the Creativity Capability Scale (CCS) in a sample of 313 college students. The scale was a new self-report measure, and it…

Research Findings: Pretend play is an important context that supports young children's developing social-cognitive and creative abilities. The play behaviors of 70 sibling dyads in early and middle childhood were examined for the following indices of creativity in play: (a) play themes (set-up/organization, expected, creative), (b) object use…

When world literature as a subject was introduced to schools and colleges in the United States during the 1920s, its early curriculum was premised on the notion of bounded territoriality which assumes that identities of individuals, cultures, and nation-states are fixed, determinable, and independent. The intensification of global mobility in an…

Eisner (1991) defines culture as a place for growing things. School constitutes an essential culture where students' minds can be grown and developed and where learning can be fostered. Teachers are in charge of developing and fostering young minds and because they participate in the culture called school they have many possibilities and…

This article explores the interplay between young children's spontaneous engagement in learning through their imagination, and the mind-set of the teacher when approaching planning for instruction. Perhaps by connecting with our own imaginative thinking, we can gain insights about our young learners, and find additional strategies to promote…

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…

This case-study explores the impact of a 12 week in-class intervention designed to encourage creativity, inquiry and exploration as a normal and expected part of mathematics lessons, with a particular focus on supporting the learning of highly capable and gifted students. Fred is a mathematically highly capable grade five student whose personal…

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…

Drawing on assets-oriented, sociocultural theories of imagination and learning, the authors argue that the improvisational qualities and expanded resources of dramatic approaches to teaching make a positive difference in the quality of and persistence in students' story writing. The authors describe findings from a controlled quasi-experimental…

Works of literature for children are supposed to give prominence to the child's self. In other words, the level of the works is expected to be appropriate to the characteristics of this demographic. In works of children's literature, the prominence of adults and their worlds along with their ideological, religious, and traditional statements,…

In the face of transmission-oriented national curricula, this study explores possibilities for claiming space for imagination, as 'the most powerful and energetic of learning tools' (Egan 1986), in early childhood education in mainstream Kenyan schools. Drawing from Egan's work on imagination and Cummins' Nested Pedagogical Orientations framework,…