A study examined the transcript of a group enquiry conducted according to the practice of philosophical enquiry with eight gifted children (ages 8-12). Use of a central metaphor was seen to play the role of a "conceptual playground," permitting the children to exercise both their imagination and their reasoning abilities. (Contains references.)…

Discusses conception of moral formation. Traces progress to moral maturity through well defined stages of cognitive, conative, and/or affective growth. Explains that logical status of developmental theories are not clear. Argues that the accounts are more evaluative than descriptive. Explores the problematic moral educational implications of this…

Notes the ability to imagine is considered the gift of authors and illustrators whose books inspire readers. Highlights 38 works of children's literature that show how imagination can inform and excite both readers and characters. Concludes that through creative envisioning, poets, authors, and llustrators propel readers to relate the familiar to…

Explores the different demands of scripted and unscripted story writing tasks and the extent to which the task prompted a group of Scottish pupils to adopt different writing behaviors and attitudes. Raises questions about how children are taught to write stories and suggests that a better understanding of the demands of story-writing task could…

Changing one's mind and keeping the mind open will be essential decision-making skills in the future. Positive uncertainty helps clients deal with ambiguity, accept inconsistency, and use the intuitive side of choosing. (TE)

Describes a program that has been conducted for two years by a group of educators at the University of Hamburg, West Germany, in which participants investigated the pedagogical use of the story. Illustrates the way in which story telling can be used to teach concepts at a high level of synthesis. (KO)

Elaborative interrogation was compared to the construction of imaginary representations to determine its efficacy in fact learning. Four experiments, involving a total of 260 undergraduate students, indicated that elaborative interrogation is equally as powerful a learning procedure as is imaginary representation and that both are useful during…

Offers an interpretive frame for viewing children's growth as creators of imaginative worlds. Suggests that writing development depends not only on children's discovery of cognitive and linguistic strategies but on children's discovery that writing can help authors create coherence in their worlds beyond texts. (MS)

Discusses ways in which the integrated design of all the components of picture books can facilitate both visual and verbal literacy, allowing children to refine literary and aesthetic appreciation and improve their own expressive activity. A bibliography of well-designed picture books is provided. (16 references) (CLB)

Explores the profound connection between human memory and imagination. Educational ideas that find only incompatibility between memorizing and developing imagination and procedural skills are inadequate. Viewing teaching as story telling transforms the curriculum from a huge mass of predigested material to a collection of great stories reflecting…

Discusses the passionate philosophy of Robert Alexander, founder and director of living stage theater company and his views of art, creativity, the entire process of learning, politics, philosophy, and hope. Presents several excerpts from Alexander's presentations for artists and teachers during Living Stage residencies in cities around the…

This article considers the synergistic force, specifically imagination, which can serve as the catalyst for motivation and learning. The importance of classroom climate in fostering imagination and developing growth, discovery, and vision is emphasized. Ways to make imagination an important element of classroom climate are listed. (JDD)

Studied children's grasp of make-believe transformations they had seen enacted. Children indicated the pretend outcome by choosing a picture depicting no change or a picture depicting the pretend change. Older children chose correctly, even with the addition of a picture of an irrelevant transformation, but younger children did not. Autistic…

A self-taught artist describes the creative process and a technique for developing one's intuitive drawing ability. The article identifies seven basic motifs derived from natural forms and illustrates how these motifs are used in the artist's work. (DB)

Examines the differences between imagination, creativity, and fantasy, and presents the relationship of imagination to creativity. Suggests that the basic distinction between imagination and fantasy is that while imagination is related to reality, fantasy is related to unreality. The link between imagination and creativity lies in the opportunity…