Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship: Exploring the Role of Education

"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.

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.