Promoting Creativity Across The Life Span

Creativity is a major driving force for human beings, urging us to try things a new way, see things differently, and imagine what might be. This book explores what is known about creativity and what we can do to promote it at all stages of people's lives -- from preschoolers through senior citizens. The authors, all social scientists and many of them artists in their own right, cover a variety of perspectives, from programs aimed at creativity in children, to long-term research projects, to a new theory of women's creativity. This subject has implications not only for child welfare and the possible application of creative activities to help at-risk children and families, but also for society as a whole. Each chapter challenges readers to creatively reshape their lives in more positive ways.

Foundational topics such as history, ethics, and principles of primary prevention, as well as specific issues such as consultation, political issues, and financing. The second section addresses such topics as abuse, depression, eating disorders, HIV/AIDS, injuries, and religion and spirituality often dividing such topics into separate entries addressing childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

This book is about redefining the value to health of creativity. Creativity derives from biological changes during human evolution as a tool that is needed for survival. The successful use of creativity generates feelings of pleasure and self-esteem that are beneficial to health. In particular, it can help depression. Current values do not give adequate importance to creativity, and the author challenges these values in this book. The book contains contributed chapters on a theory of creativity as an innate capacity, the therapeutic benefits of creativity, factors that encourage or inhibit creativity and current research on these, and accounts of creativity both as individual projects and as groupwork.

This volume presents a collection of writings on the relations among creativity, culture and development. The editors invited “like-minded” researchers of creativity from around the world to share their respective notions of creativity. Given that human creativity is a potential that can and should be nurtured in the course of lifespan development and across all cultural backgrounds, the volume emphasizes the importance of promoting creativity in all cultures and through societal-educational opportunities, and offers a venue for the authors to make conceptual, empirical and practical inquiries into the relations among creativity, development and culture. The authors represent a varied “mix” of contemporary and emerging creativity researchers who use different methodologies to investigate the importance of culture in creativity development and the reciprocal role of developing creativity and cultural enrichment. The volume represents an attempt on the part of the editors and the authors to broaden our current understanding of creativity in the contexts of human and cultural development, and in so doing to enhance our understanding of creativity, culture and development in the contexts of flourishing human and societal activities. As the first volume in a book series on “Creativity in the Twenty-First Century”, the book invites readers and researchers to engage in future interdisciplinary and intercultural discourses and dialogues on the importance of creativity for human and cultural development.

Most health professionals would agree that time and funds are in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Patients, too, would admit similar shortfalls, even with optimal motivation. This book offers self-administered and easily administered interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding. Editor Luciano L’Abate continues his long tradition of prolific innovations by identifying major changes in today’s health care systems and explaining how targeted, prescriptive promotion/prevention strategies can enhance traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions in key behavioral and relational areas.

Creativity Under Duress in Education? introduces a new framework—creativity under duress in education. Leading creativity researchers and educational scholars discuss creative theory and practice from an educational lens that is provocative. Across international contexts, this book combines insights from creativity and educational research; rich illustrations from classrooms, schools, and other professional settings, and practical ideas and strategies for how anyone invested in education can support creative teaching and learning. Readers will encounter diverse perspectives from an international cast of authors exploring cutting-edge ideas for creativity and innovation as a foremost priority for economies in the new millennium. At the same time, they consider forces of authority, control, and constraint that impact creative education and innovation within educational systems, extending to the professions. Educators and those interested in the future of education are vitally important to this conversation around research-based and practical analyses of creativity in and beyond the classroom. Addressed are these major issues: (1) creativity frameworks of theory and action in education, (2) research investigations into creativity and education, and (3) applications of creativity theory in real-world practice. Dynamic, this book presents a bridge between draconian contexts of assessment and explosive creativity in diverse places. A key contribution of the volume is its validation and promotion of creativity and innovation for students, teachers, professors, leaders, employers, policymakers, and others seeking ways to profoundly improve learning and transform education. In tackling the seemingly irreconcilable issues of creativity and accountability in K–12 institutions, higher education, and policy circles, worldwide, this work offers a message that is both cautionary and inspiring. Book editor Carol A. Mullen, PhD, is Professor of Educational Leadership at Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA. A twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar to China (2015) and Canada (2017), she was honored with the 2016 Jay D. Scribner Mentoring Award from the University Council for Educational Administration. She is author of Creativity and Education in China (2017) and co-editor of Education policy perils (2016).

This book emphasizes family-centered, social network, and school-based interventions in the preparation of social workers for direct and indirect practice with clients from vulnerable populations, especially the poor, people of color, and recent immigrant groups. With an eye to recent changes in social work practice and service delivery, including the impact of welfare reform and managed care on vulnerable families and children, Social Work Practice with Families and Children helps social work students and practitioners understand the increasingly complex needs of their clients. Three valuable appendixes include information about tools and instruments to support practice, child welfare resource centers, and electronic resources pertaining to the field.