Digital Commons Network^™

Catching Up To Yesterday: An Argument For A Practical Application Of Creativity For Inspiring Change From A Content-Based Course Delivery To A 21st-Century Skills-Based Delivery, Darren Chapman

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project is a creative vision for how college-level courses could be changed to deliver the most important skills students need in the 21st century—moving toward an essential employability skills-based delivery process while training vocational (content) skills. Technology is outpacing humans' ability to adapt and adopt to it, making it increasingly difficult to keep pace with technological change. This has wide-ranging effects on each of us – productively, emotionally, and perhaps physically. Colleges are at the forefront of educating citizens about the working world to improve their productivity, incomes and their sense of intrinsic motivation. However, these same colleges are …

An Analysis Of Traditional Pedagogical Practices With Innovative Strategies For Beginning Band Students With A Focus On Assessment, Higher-Order Thinking Skills And Differentiation, Cole Woods

Music Theses

Instrumental education is a field rich in tradition, with a strong foundation of methodology being codified in method books used by band directors around the country. Equally rich is the vibrant research community found within music education, and innovative techniques for teaching band are being presented yearly in both journals and conventions. These new strategies and additions to curriculum supported by recent research could potentially deepen the learning taking place in the instrumental music classroom. Nowhere is this more visible than in the wealth of new research, curricula, and literature that has been published regarding beginner instrumental music instruction in …

Beyond The Bell: Rebuilding Care, Civic Learning And Creativity Within Youth Spaces, Michelle R. Haapala

Culminating Experience Projects

The purpose of this research is to investigate high school age students’ opportunities within formal classroom settings to engage in care, civic learning, and creativity within a suburban, publicly-funded charter school. This study used thematic analysis and coding methods to organize and find patterns in the qualitative data from surveys distributed to education professionals at Canton Preparatory High School in Canton, Michigan. The goal is to establish a foundation of the perception of care, civic learning, and creativity within school environments and classroom settings. Overall, education professionals rated these categories positively, but with a closer investigation, a disconnect is found. …

The Impact Of Collaboration, Problem Solving, And Creativity On Computer Programming Education For Middle School Girls, Amanda Meek

Dissertations

Despite high scores and abilities, girls lose interest in science and math throughout middle school. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in the computer science research field will grow 19% by 2026; however, only 18% of the bachelor’s degrees in computer science are earned by women in the United States (ComputerScience.org, 2021). New technology and inventions are being created without the benefit of more diverse perspectives and input from females. There is a need to engage girls and maintain their interest throughout middle school and beyond. Additional research needs to be conducted about the impact and best practices …

Integrating Artificial Intelligence Into Creativity Education: Developing A Creative Problem-Solving Course For Higher Education, Selma Dawani

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project aims to develop an introductory college course that integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process. Drawing on best practices for teaching CPS and the latest research of AI, the project outcomes are prototypes of a Master Course Development Document, Student Syllabus, and Lesson Plan with accompanying PowerPoint slides. The course will equip students with the knowledge and skills to apply AI techniques to the CPS process. This project aims to begin to bridge the gap between AI and CPS education, preparing students for the demands of the modern workforce while fostering interdisciplinary thinking.

Crossing The Boundaries: Integrating Poetry Writing With Translation Practice, Xia Fang

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

How is poetry translation essentially different from poetry writing? Poetry writing pertains primarily to the acquisition of a main skills set, for instance the mastery of poetic forms and of literary devices. At the writing level, how does translation correlate with poetry writing? On the one hand, poetry translation predominantly grapples with losses and gains due to incongruities and constraints rooted in poetic forms. Either choosing to comply with or digressing from a certain poetic form remains a constant issue that poetry translation incontrovertibly addresses; the outcome of such often involving rewriting. On the other hand, the practice of poetry …

Creating The Pause: A Theoretical Approach To Helping Students Achieve Creative Independence, Amanda J. Anderson

MSU Graduate Theses

This paper will detail how the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic revealed the need for a modification of our current educational best practices. This modification asks that teachers create an intentional Pause where students can spend time dwelling on content and making their own meaning before teachers intervene through scaffolding and front loading. It uses a combination of personal experience, review of best practices, and Covid-19 data to show that best practices did not transfer well during the pandemic. It will then provide evidence for the addition of the Pause as well as addressing anticipated counterarguments.

Curriculum Adaptations To Teach For Creativity Using A Published Language Arts Curriculum, Barbara T. Prendergast

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to examine a published language arts curriculum, determine how Anna Craft’s possibility thinking framework could be integrated into the curriculum, and then observe how students responded to the implementation of lessons integrating the elements of possibility thinking. The findings revealed that a teacher can use the possibility thinking elements to encourage creativity while still teaching the objectives of a published curriculum. Creativity development can be encouraged by using a variety of supports that build possibility thinking. The data demonstrated a connection between life experiences and the curriculum through possibility thinking. The …

Writing Workshop And Creativity Despite Standardization: An Exploration Of Elementary Teachers' Practices, Darcie Kress, Matt Townsley

Journal of Research Initiatives

The focus on formulaic approaches to writing in today’s classrooms can be problematic, for it may inadvertently cause the quality of students’ writing to decline. The National Writing Project (NWP) provides teachers with professional development to learn how to effectively incorporate evidence-based practices into their writing instruction. The aim of this study was to explore the practices of three elementary teachers who received professional development training from the NWP. The researchers investigated how these teachers navigated the tension between creativity in a workshop approach and accountability for teaching the Common Core writing standards. Findings suggest participants navigated the standardization of …

Developing The Beginning Prototype For A Children’S Book Series For Creative Curriculum, Valerie Palmer

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Developing the Beginning Prototype for a Children’s Book Series for Creative Curriculum

Creativity is increasing in popularity and demand in our 21st Century world. It is among the top five most desirable traits that employers are seeking in employees. Some educational institutions abroad have adapted a creative curriculum and have seen much success in student achievement and performance. Yet in America’s educational institutions are not with this new era of creativity. When in actual fact the majority of American schools reject and counter this concept of creativity in the classroom. There are exceptions to this statement for example Charter Schools …

Developing A Bachelor’S Level Creativity Course Outline Through An Understanding Of Neuroscience, Juliette M. Ripley-Dunkelberger

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project documents the creative process of developing a bachelor’s level basics of creativity course. Through conversations with instructors who teach creativity courses, learning models and approaches in adult education, and analysis of lower division student’s needs, the course focus was established as a basics of creativity course based in an understanding of the neuroscience of creativity. Learning goals, objectives, activities, and assessments were developed for lower division students.

Development Of A Transcript To Record Learner Creativity And Curiosity, Prue Anderson, Toby Carslake, Anit Cherian, Bethany Davies, Laura Good, Jonathan Heard, Sladana Krstic, Brendan Mcginley, Dara Ramalingam, Sarah Richardson, Claire Scoular, Shani Sniedze, Jennifer Star

Assessment and Reporting

Funded with generous support by the Jacobs Foundation, the ultimate goal of this project was to develop transcripts to track learner progress in the domains of creativity and curiosity. To support this overarching goal, the research team sought to define creativity and curiosity in language that would resonate with learners and teachers and that would be appropriate across numerous cultural settings. The result of the project is a series of prototype materials and resources, specifically: literature reviews, frameworks, enabling environment summaries, reflective quizzes and transcripts. Based on insights from the literature reviews, the researchers developed frameworks to define the constructs …

Examining Relationships Among Creativity Skills Training, Domain-Specific Creativity, And Creative Self-Efficacy: A Mixed Methods Study, Kayla R. Steffens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among and impact of creativity skills training, domain-specific creativity, and creative self-efficacy in adult alumni of a youth creativity skills training experience. This research further aims to remediate the deficiency of existing creativity research regarding the relationship between domain-specific creativity, creativity skills training, and creative self-efficacy. This study employs a mixed-method approach to address four research questions regarding the impact of a creativity skills training experience from adult alumni of Destination Imagination, an educational experience designed to enhance creativity. The Amusement Park Theoretical Model of Creativity acts as a theoretical …

Research Conference 2021: Excellent Progress For Every Student: Proceedings And Program, Australian Council For Educational Research

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

The focus of the 2021 Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Research Conference is on evidence-based strategies for ensuring that every student makes excellent ongoing progress in their learning. This is an important topic because many students in our schools do not make good, steady progress. Some slip behind and fall increasingly behind the longer they are in school. By the middle years of school, this contributes to significant levels of student disengagement. ACER has invited a number of leading educational researchers to join us to share the findings of their research relevant to this topic. An important conclusion of …

Disability Injustice: A Latino’S Creative Autoethnographic Testimonio On The Organizational Culture Of Higher Education, Leonel A. Diaz Jr.

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

Using creative autoethnographic testimonio (CAT), a story is told about the injustices within the learning environment and work environment of higher education toward a person with disabilities: sleep apnea, learning disabilities, negative mental health. The author explores the health difficulties of addressing sleep deprivation while attending graduate school and working full-time as a professional. With sleep apnea impacting his health, his mental health declines. As his health declines, there is an increase in discrimination, hostility, oppression, bullying, and toxic masculinity. Initially, the medical system dismisses his declining health and refuses to look further into it. Once he receives medical care …

What Would Gloria Ladson-Billings Do?: A Pedagogical Framework That Moves, Dominique Modory

SPACE: Student Perspectives About Civic Engagement

During my time as an elementary education major at Loyola University Chicago, I was offered a position as a K-2nd grade dance instructor at McCutcheon Elementary. After some students expressed disinterest in dance, I turned to culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), a term that is coined by pedagogical scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings, to engage, educate, and inspire my students. I explain the criticality of practicing introspection on one's biases that may unconsciously hinder a student's academic growth. Further, one must brainstorm on how to insert education into the context of students' cultures. In the article, I ruminate how, through CRP, cultural competency, …

Creativity Through Arts: Expanding Creativity For A New Fluency In Imaginative Thinking, Tanya M. Knudsen

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The Torrance Incubation Model beckons creativity into education. That was in 1961. Like the subconscious automatic and multidimensional act of breathing, and formulating language, creativity is within us, materializing on a Mobius Loop structure continually moving in and out of incubation, creation, and the shaping of outcome. Creativity is unique in that is both a verb and noun adding weight and value to its illusive form and potential. Creativity Through Arts expands the Torrance Incubation Model of Creative Teaching and Learning in an expressed combination of creativity and arts to immerse creativity into curricula, cracking a new code for finding …

Fostering Music Performers In The 21st Century: A Contemporary Professional Perspective Toward A New Curricular Agenda For Graduate Study In Music, Andre Januario

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

What if the core curriculum for graduate students in music performance were designed to prepare students to succeed in the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

This dissertation offers a hypothetical answer: a structured and systematic academic curricular framework for music graduate students of performance of concert music (especially those in terminal degrees, such as doctoral students), along with music instructors, professional music performers, school administrators, and college professors, seeking to prepare such students for achieving and maintaining a music career more in keeping with the current work environment, especially those skills demanded by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the …

Review Of Mathematical Imagining: A Routine For Secondary Classrooms By Christof Weber, Geoff Krall

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

This book review of Christof Weber's Mathematical Imagining yields insight into the routine of mathematical imagining and offers practitioners advice on how to incorporate the routine in the classroom. A brief summary of the book is provided, followed by commentary on potential benefits of mathematical imagining, connection to other research, and suggestions for accommodating for emergent bilingual students. Readers are encouraged to follow up with a reading of the original book.

A Study Of Problem Posing As A Means To Help Mathematics Teachers Foster Creativity, Deborah Moore-Russo, Amanda A. Simmons, Michael J.D. Tulino

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Research suggests that mathematical creativity often results from extended periods of mathematical activity and reflection based on the use of deep and flexible content knowledge [14, 15]. This implies that instruction can influence creativity. However, for teaching to foster creativity in mathematics, there should be purposefully designed instructional tasks. It is doubtful that routine, mechanical exercises would foster creativity. Moreover, mathematical creativity may neither be explicitly promoted, nor fully appreciated, by students when a learning space involves only problem solving, even if the problems are challenging and engaging. For students to get an authentic sense of mathematics and to develop …

Creative Thinking: Skill Development Framework, Dara Ramalingam, Prue Anderson, Daniel Duckworth, Claire Scoular, Jonathan Heard

Assessment and Reporting

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has reviewed the extensive literature on creative thinking and developed both a definition and a framework that synthesise and harmonise existing theory and research on creative thinking. This framework has been developed to address the challenges associated with teaching and assessing creative thinking. It outlines creative thinking processes along prescribed strands and aspects informed by a sound evidentiary basis. The aspects contained within the framework are designed to provide foci for teaching and the basis of assessment. ACER’s creative thinking framework identifies key factors that underpin the development of creative thinking with a …

"Untrain Their Brains For Creativity To Feel Normal": A Case Study Of Four Early Career Secondary English Teachers' Perceptions And Practices For Cultivating Creativity, Jennifer A. Jennings

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Creativity in the context of teaching and learning has renewed its popularity in today’s social discourse. Journalists, business leaders, economists, government officials, entrepreneurs, and lay people are calling for those in P-20 education to produce workers and citizens with skills that allow them to be flexible and critical thinkers, as well as innovative problem-solvers. This qualitative, multiple case study examined early-career English teachers’ conceptual understanding of and classroom practices related to cultivating creativity skills among students. Data were gathered through opening interviews, classroom teaching observations, closing interviews.

This study culminated in four major findings. The first was that the teachers …

Barrington Bunny: Case Of The Curious Clouds A Narrative Picture Book For Symbolic Play And Stem Curriculum, Claudia Chung

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Adults constantly use their imagination to help them visualize, problem-solve, enjoy a book, empathize, and think creatively. Therefore, using one's imagination is a critical cognitive skill that can be used throughout life. And it is crucial for educators to encourage imagination, creativity and original ideas in childhood through pretend play, story, picture books, and narrative make-believe if we want our students to be mindful and functioning adults in society. Pretend play is also known as "symbolic play" because it involves the use of symbols. This type of symbolic thought is also needed for language and reading, as our words are …

Ready Coder One: Action Research Exploring The Effects Of Collaborative Game Design-Based Learning On Gifted Fourth Graders' 21st Century Skills And Science Content Knowledge, Mary Kathleen O'Grady-Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research was to describe the impact of digital game building on fourth grade gifted and talented (GT) students’ growth in problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and science content knowledge. Traditionally, gifted education has focused on acceleration of content, disconnected enrichment activities, and thinking skills practiced in isolation of real-world problems. Increasingly, there is a call to involve students in real world experiences through projects that explore real issues using technology in ways that could transform the field. The ability to create rather than consume technology has gained attention linking creativity and collaboration to using coding languages.

Data …

Fostering Creative Thinking Skills In Young Children Using Design Thinking Challenges, Tom R. Gannon

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

For this master’s project I developed a set of resources (guidebook, videos, and presentation deck) which provide child development professionals with a framework and set of skills to facilitate design thinking challenges (open-ended problem-solving activities based on design thinking’s phases of: creating empathy, problem identification, ideation, prototyping, and idea testing) with preschool age children. The centerpiece of the project is the guide book titled Save the Gingerbread Man: Understanding & Supporting Creative Thinking Skills in Preschoolers. The videos are interviews with preschool age children in a series called From the Experts. The presentation deck incorporates can include the …

Somewhere Between Rational And Irrational: Creativity In The Graduate Research Process And Its Implications For Librarians, Kelly Hangauer

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Scholars analyzing the relationship between creativity and graduate research have tended to be PhD supervisors and psychologists. Using qualitative research methods and personal insights, these authors have looked closely at what creativity in the research process entails, and have called on supervisors to more effectively, and explicitly, foster creativity in graduate student research. Within this scholarly conversation, the teaching and support services of librarians have been largely overlooked.

This presentation contends that librarians are ideal collaborators for the development of creativity in graduate research. What’s more, a review of the doctoral education literature reveals ample opportunity for librarians to engage. …

Creative Thinking: Definition And Structure, Dara Ramalingam, Prue Anderson, Daniel Duckworth, Claire Scoular, Jonathan Heard

Assessment and Reporting

In recent years there has been an increasing recognition that creativity and creative thinking should be fostered as valued outcomes of schooling, either in their own right, or as part of a set of so-called ‘21st-century skills’. While the importance of creative thinking is now widely accepted, it remains the case that there is a lack of agreement regarding a definition of creative thinking, nor is there a universally adopted framework to guide its teaching and assessment. It is in this context that the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has reviewed the extensive literature on creative thinking and developed …

Working 'Failure' Into Your Learning Design, Nilanjana Saxena Ms.

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

The world is grappling with education failing to meet industry demands for skills. We’re constantly striving to design for learning that is able to meet with the emerging societal and Industrial needs. Against this background what should the learning design strategy be?

Of particular relevance is Productive Failure (PF) a deeper learning design strategy, which runs counter to a traditional Direct Instruction methodology and demonstrates the affordances of experiencing and learning from failure. This brief elaborates on PF, select use cases and applications as well as key design features in operationalising PF.

Developing Creativity And Imagination Skills, Amy Lightfoot

Teacher India

Cultivating creativity among students is widely acknowledged as an essential prerequisite for 21st century success. In this article, the author discusses how teachers can help foster creativity in the classroom.

Key Skills For The 21st Century: An Evidence-Based Review, Esther Doecke, Quentin Maire

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

It is vital that education systems deliver quality outcomes for all young people and prepare them well for their future in the economy and society. To do so, many systems have traditionally had a strong focus on developing academic skills, particularly in literacy and numeracy. In recent years, education systems have developed greater expectations that schools will also equip young people with a broader set of skills for the 21st century (e.g. creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving). This paper addresses these developments and the challenges they present. Building on an evidence-based review, this paper asks what are the key skills required …