Encourage a culture of innovation and creativity. Innovation and creativity are imperative to educational success and require the contributions of teachers, students, administrators, and policymakers. Explore the four essentials for developing a creative, mistake-tolerant culture; investigate teaching and leadership beliefs and practices that undermine creativity; and discover strategies for successfully navigating challenges that your team may face along the way.

When we imagine young children becoming the innovators of the future, we envision them conducting science experiments to cure diseases, writing the next great novel, or creating a revolutionary digital tool that brings the world together. But how do we help our youngest learners bridge the gap from play-based learning to innovation? This book shares six easy-to-understand, yet powerful, steps that teachers can take to transform the learning experience into one in which critical and creative thinking are encouraged. This text features specific strategies, organisers, thinking starters (or curiosity catchphrases), and STEAM mini-lessons that can be used by teachers and other educational stakeholders to promote innovative thinking in children in Pre-K through grade 3. Topics of innovation addressed in this book include growth mindset, building empathy, making inferences, curiosity, developing meaningful connections with previous learning, self-reflection, and revision.

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.

A revolutionary reappraisal of how to educate our children and young people by Ken Robinson, the New York Times bestselling author of The Element and Finding Your Element. Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization’s history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation’s troubled educational system. At a time when standardized testing businesses are raking in huge profits, when many schools are struggling, and students and educators everywhere are suffering under the strain, Robinson points the way forward. He argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges of the twenty-first century. Filled with anecdotes, observations and recommendations from professionals on the front line of transformative education, case histories, and groundbreaking research—and written with Robinson’s trademark wit and engaging style—Creative Schools will inspire teachers, parents, and policy makers alike to rethink the real nature and purpose of education.

The groundbreaking international bestseller that will help you fulfil your true potential. The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. In this hugely influential book, world-renowned creativity expert Ken Robinson considers the child bored in class, the disillusioned employee and those of us who feel frustrated but can't quite explain why - and shows how we all need to reach our Element. Through the stories of people like Vidal Sassoon, Arianna Huffington and Matt Groening, who have recognized their unique talents and made a successful living doing what they love, Robinson explains how every one of us can find ourselves in our Element, and achieve everything we're capable of. With a wry sense of humour, Ken Robinson shows the urgent need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about ourselves. Above all, he inspires us to reconnect with our true self - it could just change everything. 'The Element offers life-altering insights about the discovery of your true best self' Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 'A book that lightens and lifts the minds and hearts of all who read it' Susan Jeffers, author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

An urgent call for the radical re-imagining of American education so that we better equip students for the realities of the twenty-first century.

This book explores, through eight chapters, how design thinking vocabulary can be interpreted and employed in educational contexts. The theoretical foundations of design thinking and design in education are first examined by means of a literature review. This is then followed by chapters that characterize design thinking among children, pre-service teachers and in-service teachers using research data collected from the authors’ design-driven coursework and projects. The book also examines issues associated with methods for fostering and assessing design thinking. In the final chapter, it discusses future directions for the incorporation of design thinking into educational settings. Intended for teachers, teacher educators and university instructors, this book aims to provide them with the theoretical foundations needed to grasp design thinking, and to provide examples of how design thinking can be interpreted and evaluated. The materials covered will help these groups of professionals to consider how design thinking can be integrated into their own teaching and learning contexts. The book will also promote a discourse between educational researchers on the theoretical development of design thinking in educational settings.