To understand creativity is to recognize and develop the creative potential within oneself and others. This article examines what creativity is "not" and then what creativity "is". First, the six leading misconceptions about creativity are discussed: Creativity belongs solely to the arts; creativity is quickly recognizable;…

This study investigates the process of identifying high-quality lessons for gifted learners that integrate the arts with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. These STEAM lessons have the potential to develop deep thinking, as well as develop creativity and visual--spatial skills that are necessary in the STEM…

Serious identification of the gifted started with the work of Lewis Terman early in the 20th century. Terman's model, based largely on IQ, may have made sense in the early 20th century, but it no longer makes sense today. The problems that society needs its gifted individuals to solve in the 21st century require much more than IQ--in addition to…

In this response, we commend Sternberg's Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model yet urge him to consider an ACCEL-S model that more fully incorporates society's integrative role in giftedness. ACCEL-S builds on the highly complex and contextual view of giftedness proposed by Sternberg and transforms it into a…

This commentary is focused on Robert Sternberg's new Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model. The new model is well conceived and goes far beyond existing models. It is especially attractive in that the emphasis is on ethics. Now more than ever before there is a clear need for education to support ethical reasoning and…

This paper reviews research showing problem finding to be distinct from problem solving and research supporting the role of problem finding in intrinsically motivated creative performances. The paper concludes that problem finding represents a family of related skills, each of which seems to be influenced by cognitive and extracognitive factors.…

This article examines the relationship of cognitive processing and creativity and argues that educational interventions contribute to the development of creative thinking skills when they provide requisite knowledge structures and stress controlled application of these processes in solving progressively more complex problems. (DB)

This article describes the development, over 13 years, of the Minnesota Young Inventors Program and Fair, focusing on its program components, including invention instruction and exhibit judging, the inventors fair, exhibit opportunities, plans for the future, and administration. The involvement of community businesses and corporations,…

Presents the views of different members of "The Creativity Group" at Teachers College, Columbia University, on the importance of creative thinking and how teachers can provide conditions for continuous encouragement of the creative process. The importance of creative thinking, planning, and implementation for good teaching is emphasized.…

This article explains how the theory of the motivated mind conceptualizes the productive interaction of intelligence, creativity, and achievement motivation and how this theory can help educators to maximize students' emergent potential for giftedness. It discusses the integration of cold-order thinking and hot-chaotic thinking into fluid-adaptive…

The predictive validity of original thinking, as measured by two subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, to the performance of real-world creative activities (in such domains as art, drama, sport, music, and dance) was examined in 60 second-graders. Original thinking was significantly related to creative performance but not to…

A questionnaire of out-of-school activities was developed to assess mathematical creative ability at four levels using a three-stage circular technique. Israeli high school students (n=139) reported whether they had performed the activities. Resulting data provided evidence of the construct validity of a 12-item scale for assessing creative…

The text from this article, by Jim Gallaghar, is adapted from an address given to Talent Identification Program (TIP) awardees at Duke University May 17, 2004. He discusses being a survivor in public schools. The overall message he is trying to get across, is be a survivor, be a problem finder, it will energize and might find some results that…