This research aimed at investigating pre-service and in-service preschool teachers&rsquo / views regarding creativity in early childhood education by determining similarities and/or differences among their views. The data of the study was gathered from 10 pre-service and 11 in-service teachers by asking their views about creativity in early childhood education. This study has been realized by the qualitative research method and the data was gathered through a type of interview, namely focus group technique. The seven basic interview questions developed by Aslan &amp / Cansever (2009) for primary school teachers were rephrased considering early childhood education context. In the data analysis procedure, four basic themes were constituted: &ldquo / teachers&#039 / views on creativity&rdquo / , &ldquo / teachers&#039 / views on creative people&rdquo / , &ldquo / teachers&rsquo / views on the importance of creativity in early childhood education&rdquo / , and &ldquo / teachers&rsquo / views on the obstacles to creativity in early childhood education&rdquo / . The results demonstrated that although every participant had their own creativity definitions, they agreed on some common ideas about creativity. The participants were aware of the value of creativity in preschool education and they stated that they prepare and implement creative activities to nurture children&rsquo / s creativity as well as stating that there are many obstacles to achieve this goal. They indicated that these obstacles are mostly based on school administrators, teachers, and parents. Moreover, it was concluded that the most striking difference between pre-service and in-service early childhood teachers&rsquo / views was the fact that unlike in-service teachers, only the pre-service teachers gave some recommendations to tackle with the obstacles to children&rsquo / s creativity.

The Relationships between Grade, Residence Area, Birth Order, Constructive Thinking, Emotional Competence and Pupils¡¦ Technological Creativity Ya-I Li Abstract The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between grade, residence area, birth order, constructive thinking, emotional competence and fifth to sixth graders¡¦ performance on technological creativity. The participants included 903 fifth and sixth graders from elementary schools in Taipei City, Kaohsiung City, and Penghu County. The employed instruments were The Constructive Thinking Inventory, The Questionnaire of Emotional Competence, and The Test of Technological Creativity. The applied analysis methods were Descriptive, One-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance, One-way Analysis of Variance, and Multiple Enter Regression. The main findings in this study were as follows: 1. The sixth graders outperformed the fifth graders on the test of technological creativity. 2. Pupils living in urban areas had higher technological creativity than their counterparts in rural areas. 3. The first-born children outperformed the later-born children on the test of technological creativity. 4. Constructive thinking had no significant effects on the pupils¡¦ technological creativity. 5. Emotional competence had positive influences on the pupils¡¦ technological creativity. 6. Grade, residence area, birth order, and emotional competence could effectively predict the pupils¡¦ technological creativity. Finally, some suggestions were proposed for educational authorities, teachers, parents and the future research. Keywords: grade, residence area, birth order, constructive thinking, emotional competence, technological creativity

<p>Background: The importance of creativity and innovation is frequently stressed in modern literature on management. The significance of innovation gives entrepreneurs the reason to prior to the commencement of a relationship with a venture capitalist, obtain necessary insights regarding the influences such a relationship may have, in terms of innovation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to scrutinise the influence of venture capital firms on their portfolio companies regarding their ability to be innovative. Delimitations: The intent is to study the impact of a venture capitalist from the viewpoint of its portfolio companies. In other words, what the portfolio companies have perceived as changes is our main area of concern, rather than what the venture capitalist has perceived as change. Realisation: LinkTech, a venture capitalist located and active in the town of Linköping, has together with three of its portfolio companies constituted as an example for the empirical research. An interview with the CEO at LinkTech was carried out as well as interviews with managers at the three portfolio companies. Additionally, a survey aimed towards the employees atthe portfolio companies was conducted. Results: It has been found that a venture capitalist does influence its portfolio companies in terms of innovation. This is mainly done through changes in the existing strategy, but also through the building of networks, changes in the organisational structure of the firms, and through the establishment of reward systems. Empowerment, corporate culture, decision- making, and teamwork have also been examined but been shown to be less influenced.</p>

<p>Since the late 1960’s, the hydromechanical term turbulence has been a part of the business administration vocabulary, but until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, a relatively small amount of research was dedicated to this field. These studies and more contemporary ones conclude that where the business environment is paradoxical and of fast- changing and chaotic nature, successful corporate strategies are shaped by strategic flexibility founded in high innovation rates, networks and alliances, and organisational elasticity and adaptiveness. From this perspective, the purpose of this study was to track and examine the strategy formation processes of a company operating in a turbulent context, and to contribute to an understanding of how these turbulent conditions can be managed. The study was conducted with a hermeneutic, systems- oriented, longitudinal case-study method and with a contextcontent- process perspective in which the process was the key factor. To a large extent, our conclusions coincide with those of other researchers. Forming multidimensional networks and alliances coloured by voluntary initiatives and full attention seem to be an extremely important contribution to survival in turbulent contexts. Nevertheless, it is equally important to break up and build new alliances as the initial objectives of the arrangement have expired or been reached. Furthermore, in contrast to other researchers’ observations, we conclude that high innovation rates do not necessarily lead to a greater potential to be successful in a turbulent context. The issue is instead to present a product offering flexible in itself developed and marketed by a flexible organisation. Innovation rates are decided by self-initiated and unofficial activity on part of the r&d teams and other coworkers, and management’s task is to facilitate for this corporate creativity to develop.</p>

Narrative Intelligence is the ability to craft, tell, understand, and respond appropriately to narratives. It has been proposed as a vital component of machines aiming to understand human activities or to communicate effectively with humans. However, most existing systems purported to demonstrate Narrative Intelligence rely on manually authored knowledge structures that require extensive expert labor. These systems are constrained to operate in a few domains where knowledge has been provided. This dissertation investigates the learning of knowledge structures to support Narrative Intelligence in any domain. I propose and build a system that, from an corpus of simple exemplar stories, learns complex knowledge structures that subsequently enable the creation, telling, and understanding of narratives. The knowledge representation balances the complexity of learning and the richness of narrative applications, so that we can (1) learn the knowledge robustly in the presence of noise, (2) generate a large variety of highly coherent stories, (3) tell them in recognizably different narration styles and (4) understand stories efficiently. The accuracy and effectiveness of the system have been verified by a series of user studies and computational experiments. As a result, the system is able to demonstrate Narrative Intelligence in any domain where we can collect a small number of exemplar stories. This dissertation is the first step toward scaling computational narrative intelligence to meet the challenges of the real world.

This dissertation identifies the diluting effects that network society has had on the avant-garde subcultures, by first building a framework through which to understand the social structure and spatial production of the historical avant-garde, and then comparing this with contemporary avant-garde movements. The avant-garde is a cultural tradition that originated in modern 18th century Europe and North America, that critically responds to hegemonic power structures and mainstream cultural assumptions. I use the term “avant-garde subcultures” because my research focuses on the entire social group of the avant-garde. Most scholarship on the avant-garde has overlooked the importance that social relations, in particular supportive actors, and collaborative spaces have served in the creativity of the avant-garde. During the past twenty years, as society has shifted into a dependence on networked interactive technologies, the boundaries which protect these avant-garde spaces and social relations were diluted. As a result, avant-garde subcultures have entered a phase of recursively repeating themselves and culturally stagnating. I begin by reviewing the historical avant-garde and subcultures, building an overarching theory that explains that avant-garde is a type of subculture. Using past scholarship that maps the conceptual lineage from early bohemians to 1970s punk rock, I synthesize a set of traits which all avant-garde subcultures exhibit, and which can be used to build their genealogy. I then extend this genealogy to contemporary art practitioners, to prove that the avant-garde tradition continues to this day. Next, I develop a philosophical understanding of the importance of space for hegemonic power structures, based largely on the work of Henri Lefebvre. I explain how avant-garde subcultures produce spaces of representation in the cafes, bars and night clubs they inhabit, which challenge hegemony by being different from normal values and aesthetics. I reference first-hand accounts of these spaces of representation, to show how they enable the collaboration and creative thinking that is most often associated with the avant-garde. The avant-garde protect these spaces through a set of cultural boundaries: fashion, slang, esoteric knowledge, accumulation, and physical space. Manuel Castell's concept of network society depicts how hegemonic power structures have become pervasive, and thus can overcome the boundaries of avant-garde subcultures. As a result, avant-garde subcultures have increasingly become retrogressive and fluid. Some avant-garde practitioners, such as tactical media, have evolved methods for addressing these problems. While these are effective in continuing the avant-garde tradition of introducing difference, there are no adequate methods for producing new spaces of representation. I examine Eyebeam, an arts and technology center, which has since 1997 provided a space for many contemporary practitioners. While unique in its circumstances, Eyebeam has adopted several processes which have enabled it to overcome the diluting effects of network society, thereby providing a potential model for building future spaces of representation.

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the role and potential of community arts programs and organizations in improving the lives of disadvantaged African American youth, through the creation of a participatory video project and the internal evaluation of the same; using applied anthropological methods, and cultural praxis (an innovative educational design), and following the recommendations of expert community arts programs evaluators. The study responds to the need identified in the community arts literature to offer robust program evaluations that explain the benefits of such programs. The lack of evidence seems to derive not only from the difficulties of measuring creative practices and other desired outcomes related to quality of life, but also from inadequate research design and implementation (Matarasso 1996; Putland 2008). Although the evaluation instruments can use some refinement, the resulting ethnography brings about the complexity of the lives of disadvantaged African American youth and the difficulty in making generalizations about their needs. It also highlights the need for community organizations to understand the context in which their programs are offered, and of using a holistic/integral and long-term approach in the design and implementation of programs, which can potentially enhance the growth and development of participants. This study speaks to the fundamental need for community arts organizations to train personnel adequately and offer the necessary infrastructure and tools to instructors in order to accomplish the objectives of the organization. Community arts programs and their outcomes depend on a clear understanding of the population's needs, adequate design and implementation of programs with capable instructors, and an internal organization that is sustainable and that can ensure the safety and wellbeing of all those involved.

This thesis reports a study of the relationship of CAD use in designing and creativity through a Creative Behaviours Framework. This thesis provides a description of the establishment of a framework for gathering empirical evidence to support the analysis of links between CAD and creativity. The Creative Behaviours Framework consists of seven categories including novelty, appropriateness, motivation, fluency, flexibility, sensitivity, and insightfulness. The framework was developed from published literature largely relating to the area of cognitive psychology. The research reports findings concerning the use of this framework in analysing the use of CAD at Loughborough University and involved four postgraduates, two finalist undergraduates, and the researcher s own design project. Multiple data gathering methods including interviews, observations, protocol analysis, and design diaries have been used in this study to provide data reliability and validity. The results demonstrate the occurrence of creative behaviours in relation to the use of CAD when designing. Most of the categories had a significant number of occurrences observed and identified in the case studies using the data gathering methods (in particular protocol analysis and design diaries). However, novelty was only reported from the design diaries in Case studies 1 and 2. Some findings that linked the emergence of xvi creative characteristics of product outcomes with CAD usage were also established from data analysis of the design diaries. Hence, a key research output is the development of a framework which enabled researchers to observe and identify creative behaviours whilst CAD was used in designing. This framework has shown its reliability by also capturing creative behaviours in other than CAD activities such as 2D sketching and 3D sketch modelling. The findings from Case studies 1 and 2 indicated that creative behaviours were consistently identified during the observations of these design modelling activities. It shows that the Creative Behaviours Framework is not exclusively useful to observe creative behaviours during CAD use, but can also be applied in identifying these behaviours in other designing activities. An online questionnaire explored whether this framework could also be useful in wider application such as in supporting teachers in developing effective classroom and studio practice to encourage the emergence of creative behaviours by their students. The research study (using case studies and paper questionnaires) was undertaken with students of the Design and Technology Department, Loughborough University and the findings could be biased to this particular population. Hence, the online questionnaire was carried out with Malaysian CAD users to provide broader feedback. Although there was a small number of responses received from Malaysia, the data still provided a useful foundation to make the comparison between the UK and Malaysian CAD users perceptions about the relationship between creativity, in particular creative behaviours and the use of CAD in designing.

No description available.

Artistic methods to evoke relaxation, spark creativity, and change self-perceptions are already being used by therapists, educators, and scientists. Interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers are developing to create new paradigms that incorporate the use of arts to empower individuals. By describing various connections between the arts and participants, researchers are looking at the expressive arts (including dance, music, drama, poetry, and visual arts) for transformation and self-actualization.The problem is that no construct is available to describe the transformation, "the conscious move from one deep structure of knowledge to another" (Wilber, 2004), that occurs when using the arts in health care and education/therapy, particularly in curriculum and instruction.This study developed a construct that integrates and describes how the arts assist with transformation. With analysis and description of two arts-based models, each with two programs, this dissertat ion shows how the arts function as a means of transformation.These arts-based Models are: Arts in Health Care and Arts in Education/Therapy. The Arts in Health Care Model sustains programs in settings such as hospitals, medical centers, and clinics. The Arts in Education/Therapy Model presents programs in counseling centers, rehabilitation, therapeutic settings, and expressive arts facilities.This study breaks new ground by using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to define change, transformation, and self-actualization. Within each Model, two Programs are described as curricula using George Posner's Curriculum Analysis. In the Health Care Model, Arts in Medicine programs at Shands Hospital at the University of Florida in Gainesville and Moffitt Cancer Center at the University of South Florida in Tampa are the two Programs reviewed. The Education/Therapy Model's two programs are Natalie Rogers' Creative Connection, based on her psychotherapeutic process, and Paulo Knill's Minstrels of the Soul, an inter-modal approach to expressive arts therapy. The final outcome, expressed as a Construct based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, synthesizes, condenses, and explains how the arts are being used for change and transformation, is termed Arts in New Directions.