About the Book
"In today′s ′teach-to-the-test′ climate, do we ever need a book about wisdom and creativity! Our focus as educators is enriched by this book."
—Robert Di Giulio, Professor
Johnson State College
"Creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship may each sound good enough in itself, but the contributors to this volume make a compelling case for how much they need one another."
—David Perkins, Professor
Harvard University
How do creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship translate into "excellent and ethical" educational practices?
This important new volume from Anna Craft, Howard Gardner, and Guy Claxton focuses on the need to educate for "wise creativity" so that students will learn to expand their perspectives and exercise their talents responsibly within their school community and in the real world.
The editors′ theories, plus contributions from noted scholars Dean Keith Simonton, David Henry Feldman, Jonathan Rowson, Helen Haste, Patrick Dillon, Hans Henrik Knoop, Christopher Bannerman, Robert J. Sternberg, and Dave Trotman, develop a concept of teachers as "trustees," or respected, nonpartisan role models who can exercise wise creativity in their classrooms and cultivate this quality in their students.
The book explores a wide range of questions, such as:
What is the nature of creativity and wisdom and what does it mean to exercise a balance between the two?
What do creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship look like in society and in the school community?
How can schools educate for creativity tempered by wisdom?
What does it take to nurture trustee leadership in the classroom and schoolwide?
Thought-provoking and incisive, Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship is essential reading for all members of the educational community.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
About the Editors
About the Contributors
1. Nurturing Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship in Education: A Collective Debate - Anna Craft, Howard Gardner, Guy Claxton
Part One: Stimulus Chapters on Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship
2. Tensions in Creativity and Education: Enter Wisdom and Trusteeship? - Anna Craft
3. Wisdom: Advanced Creativity? - Guy Claxton
4. Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship - Howard Gardner
Part Two: Response Chapters on Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship
5. Creative Wisdom: Similarities, Contrasts, Integration, and Application - Dean Keith Simonton
6. Creativity and Wisdom: Are They Incompatible? - David Henry Feldman
7. How Are We Disposed to Be Creative? - Jonathan Rowson
8. Good Thinking: The Creative and Competent Mind - Helen Haste
9. Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship: Niches of Cultural Production - Patrick Dillon
10. Wise Creativity and Creative Wisdom - Hans Henrik Knoop
11. Creativity and Wisdom - Christopher Bannerman
12. Leadership as a Basis for the Education of Our Children - Robert J. Sternberg
13. Liberating the Wise Educator: Cultivating Professional Judgment in Educational Practice - Dave Trotman
Part Three: Synthesizing Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship
14. Concluding Thoughts: Good Thinking — Education for Wise Creativity - Guy Claxton, Anna Craft, Howard Gardner
Index
About the Author :
Anna Craft is Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, England, where she leads the CREATE research cluster. She is also Reader at The Open University, England, and Director of The Open Creativity Centre. She is founding Co-Editor Thinking Skills and Creativity (Elsevier) and founding Co-Convenor of the British Educational Research Association Special Interest Group, Creativity in Education. She holds a Visiting appointment at Harvard University and has held visiting appointments at Hong Kong Institute of Education. Her most recent books include Creative Learning 3-11 and how we document it (Trentham Books, 2007), Creativity in Schools: Tensions and Dilemmas (Routledge, 2005), Creativity and Early Years Education (Continuum, 2002), Creativity Across the Primary Curriculum (RoutledgeFalmer, 2000). Her empirical work, informed by constructivist and socio-cultural views of learning, seeks to impact practice, policy and theory.
Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a leading thinker about education and human development; he has studied and written extensively about intelligence, creativity, leadership, and professional ethics. Gardner’s most recent books include Good Work, Changing Minds, The Development and Education of the Mind and Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons. His latest book Five Minds for the Future was published in April 2007.
Guy Claxton is Professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Bristol Graduate School of Education, where he directs the research initiative on Culture, Learning, Identity and Organisations (CLIO). His books include The Wayward Mind: An Intimate History of the Unconscious (2005), Learning for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education (2002, co-edited with Gordon Wells), Wise Up: Learning to Live the Learning Life (1999) and the best-selling Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less (1997). His current work focuses on the development of infused approaches to the cultivation of positive lifelong learning dispositions in schools. The resulting ′Building Learning Power′ approach has influenced practice in schools throughout the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Review :
"The contributors′ thoughts about the importance of a disciplinary framework as a necessary foundation for building greater creative and intuitive insight are so true. Their examples of the artist’s performance as being an ′interplay between the intuitive and the conscious′ are wonderful. I also appreciated the discussions on the importance of collegial work and empathy."
"The book is rich in ideas and scholarship. Its diversity of perspectives is also a strength."
"Especially in today′s ′teach-to-the-test′ climate, do we ever need a book on the subject of wisdom and creativity! This is a relatively rare and essential title. Our focus as educators (and citizens) would be enriched by such a book."
"The book focuses on very significant issues of our time. It teaches us lessons about ourselves as a society and a culture that we need to heed. The ideas presented are well corroborated by work in widely different fields of scholarship, giving them solid credibility."
"The book reveals some superb thinking about complex ideas. It offers the valuable tension of differing perspectives, and its contributions successfully and elegantly bridge the chasm between theory and practice."
"An important topic. A book like this provides fodder for dialogue and articulation that is much needed in higher education."
"Rich, varied, and highly stimulating. This book breaks new ground by identifying the opportunities and conflicts in our desire to encourage multiple virtues through education. It will nourish educational practice and encourage fresh public debate."
"Creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship may each sound good enough in itself, but the multiple contributors to this volume make a compelling case for how much they need one another. Wise creativity is one of the aspirations, a quality distinctly at odds with the culture-free and economically aggressive conceptions of creativity that figure in educational and corporate agendas these days."
“Creativity, that marvelous catch-all phrase with which we are now all imbued, is a concept that is both complex and simple...a vital life force. This book is important because its fundamental proposition is that creativity and being are one and the same. Read it.”
