The Creative Classroom presents an original, compelling vision of schools where teaching and learning are centered on creativity. Drawing on the latest research as well as his studies of jazz and improvised theater, Sawyer describes curricula and classroom practices that will help educators get started with a new style of teaching, guided improvisation, where students are given freedom to explore within structures provided by the teacher. Readers will learn how to improve learning outcomes in all subjects—from science and math to history and language arts—by helping students master content-area standards at the same time as they increase their creative potential. This book shows how teachers and school leaders can work together to overcome all-too-common barriers to creative teaching—leadership, structure, and culture—and collaborate to transform schools into creative organizations. Book Features: Presents a research-based approach to teaching and learning for creativity. Identifies which learning outcomes support creativity and offers practical advice for how to teach for these outcomes. Shows how students learn content-area knowledge while also learning to be creative with that knowledge. Describes principles and techniques that teachers can use in all subjects. Demonstrates that a combination of school structures, cultures, incentives, and leadership are needed to support creative teaching and learning.

Creative teaching as well as teaching creativity are cutting edge issues in psychology today as recent academic and popular media coverage has shown. This volume expands on that interest with chapter authors drawn from interdisciplinary areas. It includes examples of creatively teaching across the education system, including preschool, K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level education. The variety of subjects covered by the chapters include psychology,math, science, and reading. In addition to creative teaching which may lead to enhanced learning and achievement in students, as well enhanced creativity,another focus is teaching with the objective to enhance creativity.

Trevor Muir uses the power of storytelling and brain science to give educators practical and proven practices to achieve real student engagement, and in return, learning that is permanent and memorable. Any teacher, in any subject area, and in any grade level can use the story-centered framework to transform their classrooms into settings where students are engaged, challenged, and transformed.

Creativity and the Common Core State Standards are both important to today’s teachers. Yet, for many educators, nurturing students’ creativity seems to conflict with ensuring that they learn specific skills and content. In this book, the authors outline ways to adapt existing lessons and mandated curricula to encourage the development of student creativity alongside more traditional academic skills. Based on cutting-edge psychological research on creativity, the text debunks common misconceptions about creativity and describes how learning environments can support both creativity and the Common Core, offers creative lessons and insights for teaching English language arts and mathematics, and includes assessments for creativity and Common Core learning. Featuring numerous classroom examples, this practical resource will empower teachers to think of the Common Core and creativity as encompassing complementary, rather than mutually exclusive, goals. Book Features: Shows how teaching skills mandated by the CCSS and teaching for creativity can reinforce one another. Helps teachers better understand what creativity is, how to develop it, and how to assess it in meaningful ways. Examines the many misconceptions about creativity that prevent teachers from doing their best work. Provides classroom examples, ideas, and lesson plans from successful teachers across disciplines. “This wonderful book makes the important point that teaching to well-designed standards is completely consistent with teaching for creativity. [It] is filled with practical advice for teachers about how to teach to Common Core standards, in both ELA and math, in ways that lead to creative learning outcomes.” —Keith Sawyer, Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Beghetto, and Baer make a strong, nuanced case that knowledge for the sake of knowledge may be acceptable for immediate retention, but knowledge in the service of creating new possibilities has long-term consequences that can’t be ignored by educators and society.” —Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director, The Imagination Institute and researcher, Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania

Creativity is a hot topic in education. As such, there is no shortage of insights or suggestions for how teachers might incorporate creativity into their curriculum. Wading through these suggestions can, however, be quite daunting. This is because many of these suggestions imply that teachers need to somehow radically change their approach to teaching, adopt a new curriculum, or add-on to their existing curriculum. Consequently, many teachers feel that such changes are not feasible and may even come at the cost of supporting students’ academic learning. This book provides an alternative. Teachers need not adopt a new curriculum, radically change what they are already doing, or attempt to add more to their already overflowing plate of curricular responsibilities. Rather, teaching for and with creativity is often more about doing what one is already doing, only slightly better. The aim of this book is to help teachers understand how they can make slight changes to their own teaching, which can substantially support the development of students’ creative potential and result in a more creative approach to teaching. The insights and practical suggestions presented in this book represent some of the newest and most promising work being done in the field of creativity studies. This book is unique in that it presents teachers with concrete ideas for how to simultaneously support creativity and learning. A particularly novel feature of this book is that it offers a blend of theoretical insights and vivid classroom examples to illustrate the kinds of opportunities and challenges that teachers face when they attempt to teach for and with creativity. As such, this book will provide teachers, scholars, researchers, and anyone interested in classroom creativity with new directions for future research and educational practice.

HE students rightly have high expectations of their lecturers and tutors. As staff in HE adapt their teaching to fit the changing share of HE, more support is needed. This A-Z guide is an essential resource to support those teaching in HE today to enhance their practice. This text is a rich source of innovative approaches for learning and teaching in HE. It addresses some common issues faced by lecturers in HE and includes case studies and practical suggestions for teaching. The text takes a critical approach to exploring themes from different perspectives and highlights important and recent theory in the field. This second edition includes more content on teaching and learning online, a new chapter on decolonising the curriculum and many more updates throughout.