Creativity and critical thinking are key skills for complex, globalised and increasingly digitalised economies and societies. While teachers and education policy makers consider creativity and critical thinking as important learning goals, it is still unclear to many what it means to develop these skills in a school setting. To make it more visible and tangible to practitioners, the OECD worked with networks of schools and teachers in 11 countries to develop and trial a set of pedagogical resources that exemplify what it means to teach, learn and make progress in creativity and critical thinking in primary and secondary education.
Text, illustrations, and suggested activities offer a common-sense approach to mathematic fundamentals for those who are slightly terrified of numbers.
In Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing Learners Who Generate Ideas and Can Think Critically,Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer define and demystify the essence of creative thinking, and offer action-oriented and research-informed suggestions as to how it can best be developed in learners. Where once it was enough to know and do things, young people now need more than subject knowledge in order to thrive: they need capabilities. Teaching Creative Thinking is the first title in the three-part Pedagogy for a Changing World series, founded upon Lucas and Spencer's philosophy of dispositional teaching a pedagogical approach which aims to cultivate in learners certain dispositions that evidence suggests are going to be valuable to them both at school and in later life. A key capability is creative thinking, and, in 2021, one of the guardians of global comparative standards, PISA, is recognising its importance by making creative thinking the 'innovative assessment domain' to supplement their testing of 15-year-olds' core capabilities in English, maths and science. Creative thinkers are inquisitive, collaborative, imaginative, persistent and disciplined and schools which foster these habits of mind in learners need to be creative in engaging children and young people by embedding creativity into their everyday educational experiences. In this extensive enquiry into the nature and nurture of creative thinking,the authors explore the effectiveness of various pedagogical approaches including problem-based learning, growth mindset, playful experimentation and the classroom as a learning community and provide a wealth of tried-and-tested classroom strategies that will boost learners' critical and creative thinking skills. The book is structured in an easy-to-access format, combining a comprehensive listing of practical ideas to stimulate lesson planning with expert guidance on integrating them into your practice, followed by plenty of inventive suggestions as to how learners' progress can be assessed and tracked along the way by both the pupil and the teacher. The authors then go further to offer exemplars of success by presenting case studies of schools' innovations in adopting these approaches, and dedicate a chapter to dispelling any pressing doubts that teachers may have by exposing the potential pitfalls and offering advice on how to avoid them. Venturing beyond the classroom setting, Teaching Creative Thinkingalso delves into the ways in which a school can work towards the provision of co-curricular experiences such as partnering with a range of external community groups and better engage its leadership team and pupils' parents with the idea of creative thinking in order to support learners with opportunities to grow. The authors offer many examples which will inspire schools to do just this, and collate these ideas into building a framework for learning that equips young people in schools today with the twenty-first century skills and capabilities that will enable them to thrive in the workforce of tomorrow. Replete with research-led insight and ready-to-use strategies, Teaching Creative Thinkingis a powerful call to action and a practical handbook for all teachers and leaders, in both primary and secondary settings, who want to embed a capabilities approach in their schools.
The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.
How do we encourage children to think deeply about the world in which they live? Research-based and highly practical, this book provides guidance on how to develop creative and critical thinking through your classroom teaching. Key coverage includes: · Classroom-ready ideas to stimulate high-order thinking · How to think critically and creatively across all areas of the curriculum · Case studies from primary, secondary and special schools · Philosophical approaches that give pupils the space to think and enquire This is essential reading for anyone on university-led and schools-based primary and secondary initial teacher education courses including undergraduate (BEd, BA QTS), postgraduate (PGCE, SCITT), School Direct, Teach First and employment-based routes and also anyone training to work in early years settings.
What is creativity? How can you foster it in your classroom? And how can you incorporate it into your lessons without falling behind on your curriculum plans? Don't worry - the answer is within these pages! Creativity is a key skill for your students, both within the classroom and outside of it, so we interviewed more than 100 teachers and creativity experts from around the world to gather their favorite techniques for bringing creative thinking skills into any curriculum. With Weaving's selection of useful language and 750 tips and ideas, you will be bringing creativity into your classroom in no time! This book will help you deliberately weave various creative thinking skills into every one of your lessons. And best of all, it won't take time away from the subjects themselves. From kindergarten through college, Weaving Creativity into Every Strand of Your Curriculum is the go-to book for a more creative classroom environment!
Developing Creativity in the Classroom applies the most current theory and research on creativity to support the design of teaching and learning. Creative thinking and problem solving are at the heart of learning and application as students prepare for innovation-driven careers. This text debunks myths about creativity and teaching and, instead, illustrates productive conceptions of creative thinking and innovation, including a constructivist learning approach in which creative thinking enhances and strengthens conceptual understanding of the curriculum. Through models of teaching that support creativity and problem solving, this book extends the idea of a creative pedagogy to the four core curriculum domains. Developing Creativity in the Classroom focuses on explanations and examples of how creative thinking and deep learning merge to support engaging learning environments, rising to the challenge of developing 21st-century competencies.
Adapted from inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by international bestselling author and Stanford University Professor Tina Seelig, Ph.D., Innovation Engine distills a dozen years of teaching creativity and entrepreneurship into an interactive guide that turns our natural curiosity and imagination into concrete and action-oriented concepts that can be put into practice immediately. Seelig illustrates how motivation, mind-set, physical environment and social situations can work together to enhance creativity. She explains that creativity lies at the intersection of our internal world (knowledge, imagination, and attitude) and external environment (resources, habitats, and culture). By understanding how these factors fit together and influence one another, Innovation Engine provides the tools to jump-start our own innovation engines and allows us to look at every word, object, idea and moment as an opportunity for ingenuity.
