Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship
Exploring the Role of Education
- Anna Craft - The Open University
- Howard Gardner - Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA
- Guy Claxton - King's College London, UK
"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.
"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.”
Wonderful, absolutely in line with my dissertation
