Highlights a mathematics program for gifted students (ages 6-8) in Beijing. Different components of the program are described, including using audiovisual geometry, emphasizing the combination of shape and number, stimulating imagination, applying the discovery method, and using the search-out model. Provides sample math problems. (CR)

Raises concerns about whether literacy-enriched play in early childhood settings is really play. Presents a vignette to illustrate how a teacher can model literacy unobtrusively, thereby enhancing literacy, but unwittingly draw children away from meaningful play activities. Differentiates the cognitive processes involved in play and literacy…

Examined 6-, 9-, and 14-year-olds' imagination of the unknown within a storytelling context. Performed phenomenological analysis of the two youngest groups' drawings and the oldest group's story on the "heffalump" theme. Derived eight categories providing an image-analysis of the concept of the "unknown" structured as "something-otherwise," that…

A study examined the cognitive underpinnings of spontaneous and prompted pretend play in 28 children with autism (ages 2-3), 24 children with developmental disorders, and 26 controls (ages 1-3). Children with autism were significantly delayed on pretend play scores. They also had significant deficits in a theory of mind measure. (Contains…

Presents a study questioning how comparative educators use their imaginations to construct new knowledge/understanding on representing educational phenomenon; the genres and forms of representations and how these code choices influenced ways of seeing and thinking; and how the self-reflexive history of imagination is patterned as an intertextual…

Training teachers as artists will develop an understanding of their own cognitive style and a trust in personal intuition. The art student imitates the masters, learns from peers, and develops by experimentation and subjective assessments. Teachers and art students both learn by becoming committed to their work. (JD)

This study evaluated the use of guided imagery practice to enhance creative writing with 43 academically gifted students (stratified as either high or low creativity) in grades 3 and 4. Groups receiving the guided imagery practice (regardless of original creativity level) generated more original writing, which contained more sensory descriptions…

This special section on the spirit of play discusses (1) characteristics of adult play; (2) styles of playfulness; (3) the creation of environments that foster children's sense of wonder; and (4) strategies for training teachers to be playful and to be attentive to children's play. (HOD)

The rapid, disjointed, and vivid style of Sesame Street may impede rather than promote progress toward literacy and the development of voluntary attention. It robs children of the ability to create mental pictures. Contends that it is a failure as an instructional medium. (DM)

Learning to imagine is a crucial step in symbol-making in early childhood. Uses examples of children's symbol-making to illustrate the process by which children understand the world around them. Considers how effectively aspects of children's learning environments facilitate children's exploration and their development of imagination. (MDM)

Explores the complicated question of whether imagination can bridge or transcend gaps between authors and the cultural groups they write about. Argues that cultural authenticity is the basic criterion for evaluating multicultural literature and the foundation on which to build literary excellence and that imagination cannot substitute for it. (SR)

This exploration of the two leading varieties of nonsense literature defines strict nonsense as that in which the laws of nature are suspended and replaced by new laws which the author decrees, and loose nonsense as usually comic writing about a singular unlikely event. Examples of these two types of verse in children's literature are cited. (22…

Creative projects, whether in the arts, literature, or social aspects of education, demand a mixture of the "subconscious" (imaginative) and "intellectual" (rational), not the rejection of one in favor of the other. Rationality and imagination are complementary in speculative research. An advocacy approach may be appropriate in certain cases. (20…

This study examined the impact of three conditions on how subjects (105 college students) generated ideas about imaginary extraterrestrials. Results are discussed in terms of constraints on innovation, ways of overcoming those constraints, and the general tendency for new ideas to preserve many of the central properties of existing concepts.…

Since vision, imagination, and a passion for justice are in short supply, educators must transcend traditional technical/rational approaches and create space for artists' prophetic voices to emerge. Empowering the voices of imagination through the arts will help renew the metaphysical dimension of educators' work. (27 references) (MLH)