Divergent Thinking

Child psychotherapy is in a state of transition. On the one hand, pretend play is a major tool of therapists who work with children. On the other, a mounting chorus of critics claims that play therapy lacks demonstrated treatment efficacy. These complaints are not invalid. Clinical research has only begun. Extensive studies by developmental researchers have, however, strongly supported the importance of play for children. Much knowledge is being accumulated about the ways in which play is involved in the development of cognitive, affective, and personality processes that are crucial for adaptive functioning. However, there has been a yawning gap between research findings and useful suggestions for practitioners. Play in Child Development and Psychotherapy represents the first effort to bridge the gap and place play therapy on a firmer empirical foundation. Sandra Russ applies sophisticated contemporary understanding of the role of play in child development to the work of mental health professionals who are trying to design intervention and prevention programs that can be empirically evaluated. Never losing sight of the complex problems that face child therapists, she integrates clinical and developmental research and theory into a comprehensive, up-to-date review of current approaches to conceptualizing play and to doing both therapeutic play work with children and the assessment that necessarily precedes and accompanies it. The book includes a presentation of Russ's recently revised Affect in Play Scale and, in an appendix, a complete manual for it. Clinicians, trainees, and students will welcome Russ's clear guidelines for empirically supported practice; researchers will appreciate her suggestions for new directions to explore.

The third edition of this well-known text continues the mission of its predecessors--to help teachers link research and theory regarding creativity to the everyday activities of classroom teaching. Part I (chapters 1-4) includes information on theories of creativity, characteristics of creative individuals, talent development, and motivation and creativity. Part II (chapters 5-8) includes strategies designed to explicitly teach creative thinking, to weave creative thinking into content area instruction, and to organize basic classroom activities (grouping, lesson planning, assessment, grading) in ways that support students' creativity. *Pedagogy --Within each chapter reflection questions and sample lesson plans help the reader adapt ideas to their own teaching situations. *Changes --In addition to general updating, there is new material on cross-cultural concepts of creativity, on teaching for creativity in an age of standards (including lessons tied directly to state standards), and on collaborative creativity. * Audiences --This book is suitable for any course that deals wholly or partly with creativity in teaching, teaching the gifted and talented, or teaching thinking and problem solving. Such courses are variously found in departments of special education, curriculum and instruction, or educational psychology.