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Courses

Teaching Creativity Creatively

This course provides teachers with the knowledge and skills to nurture creativity in their students. Among students in our classrooms, creativity varies over a wide range - visual, mechanical, verbal, artistic, linguistic, athletic, mathematical, and analytical. Part I of this course defines creativity and describes behaviors most often associated with it. In addition, a model is systematically developed that teachers may use to develop creative lessons. Part II elaborates upon the model by adding and covering topics that range from finding problems to critical thinking. Each topic is functionally related to model components. Part III emphasizes the application of the model to lesson development and teaching creatively.

 

Carlow University ED 628 • Madonna University EDU 5960.13 • Mercy University EDUT 553

The required text for this course is Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire.

ISBN: 978-0399175664

 


Graduate participants earn 3 semester hours of graduate credit and will receive a transcript from one of our partner institutions below. Professional development participants will receive a certificate of completion for 45 hours of professional developments credit for face-to-face classes and 60 hours of professional development credit for online classes.

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Course Schedule

  • 1/9/24 - 4/9/24
  • 3/12/24 -6/11/24
  • 5/14/24 - 8/13/24
  • 7/9/24 - 10/8/24
  • 9/10/24 - 12/10/24
  • 11/12/24 - 2/11/25

Course Schedule

Zoom

5/2-4 & 5/9-11

Joan Goldsmith

 

 

Session 1: Creativity Orientation

Contents:

  • Course orientation
  • Ten definitions of creativity
  • The Creators' Patterns
  • Essential terms and definitions
  • Three examples of teaching creativity creatively
  • A case for teaching students creative attributes

Session 2: A Model for Classroom Application

Contents:

  • Catalyst to action: problems, needs, challenge, curiosity
  • Irrational element(s): dreams, fantasy, etc.
  • Generative processes (rational elements)
  • Discovery, judgments, and justification
  • A model to facilitate creativity in the classroom

Session 3: The Role of Thinking in Creativity

Contents:

  • The role of cognitive structures
  • Proven paths of creative exploration
  • Problem solving through creative behavior
  • The relationship of intelligence and creativity
  • How to think creatively

Session 4: Nine Creative Intelligences

Contents:

  • Create yourself
  • You and you - Personal intelligence
  • You and them - Social intelligence
  • Heaven knows! - Spiritual intelligence
  • Body talk - Physical intelligence
  • Making sense of your senses
  • Count on yourself - Numerical intelligence
  • Mind the gap!
  • The power of words

Session 5: Screw-Worm Caper: A Case Study in Creativity

Contents:

  • The setting
  • The problem
  • The creative process

Session 6: Creativity and Critical Thinking

Contents:

  • What is critical thinking?
  • The role of logic in critical thinking
  • Phases of decision making
  • Critical thinking and objectivity
  • The role of transfer
  • Inductive/deductive reasoning
  • Applying structured knowledge to unstructured problems

Session 7: Domains and Creativity

Contents:

  • Distinct bodies of knowledge and modes of inquiry
  • Thinking process across disciplines
  • Fields of human beings that make judgments
  • Creativity and domain structure
  • A case study

Session 8: Assessing Creativity

Contents:

  • Domain criteria, traditional and out-of-the-box thinking
  • Conditions for novelty in context
  • Effectiveness as a function of usefulness and practicality
  • Teacher judgments and assessments
  • Tests of creativity - commercial and teacher made
  • Criteria for product assessment

Session 9: Writing and Developing Creative Lessons for the Classroom

Contents:

  • The structure of an elegant problem
  • Solving real problems through the use of creative attributes
  • The impractical to practical continuum
  • Creative cooperation and collaboration
  • Challenging but achievable problems
  • Transforming, restructuring, combining, reorganizing to achieve problem resolution
  • Time to reflect and integrate lessons
  • Making diverse connections through problem content

Session 10: Providing the "Congenial" Environment

Contents:

  • Learning environment that promotes risk taking and living with temporary frustrations and failure
  • Appropriate meshing of prescribed curriculum and creativity
  • Domain impact on a congenial environment
  • Accepting creative behavior by parents, administrators, and students
  • Provide specific instruction in creative and critical thinking
  • Course review and synthesis
Objectives
  • Identify basic concepts associated with creativity
  • Review key questions about creativity
  • Develop a definition of creativity
  • Consider creativity as a process
  • Identify the X factor in the creative process
  • Develop a model that can be used to construct creative lessons
  • Explore the function of cognitive structures in creative behavior
  • Define the role of cognitive structures
  • Examine the relationship between creativity and intelligence
  • Identify personality traits that enhance creativity
  • Present selected creative teaching methods
  • Present guidelines for encouraging creativity among your students
  • Develop an approach for assessing creativity
  • Develop a classroom context for creative behavior
  • Extend strategies for developing catalysts to action
  • To expand the concept of "generative processes" and how they relate to creativity in the classroom
  • To establish guidelines for maintaining a congenial environment for creative behavior
Partner Universities

Our Partners are well-established regionally and nationally accredited colleges and universities, recognized for academic excellence and their commitment to teachers.

Important Information

Online 3-graduate credit courses are 13 weeks in length.

On-site weekend courses are held Friday evening from 6:00pm-9:00pm and Saturday/Sunday, 8:30am-5:30pm.

Weekday courses are Monday-Friday from 8:00am- 6:00pm.

It is the responsibility of the student to check with their state, county, district, or school to ensure that all requirements are being met by the course you're taking.  

Check the Partner Universities page for specific university information as well as course numbers which are specific to the university partner. 

Students are required to purchase their own textbook, the information for which can be found here. If no book is required it will be specified on the list. We have copies of many of the textbooks should you wish to purchase directly from TEI. 

Professional development (PD) participants receive a certificate of completion from TEI for 45 hours of PD credit for face to face classes and 60 hours of PD credit for online classes. These certificates are mailed within one week of the end of the class and reflect the course title, dates of attendance, and credit hour information. 

Student Academic Integrity
Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.