To improve your own creativity and to nurture creativity in the students with whom you work, it is important for you to know and understand a number of topics, as well as to be able to apply a variety of specific skills and tools.

Creativity and CPS skills and tools are important for a variety of reasons for you and for your students.

• We all need to be able to deal with a variety of complex, open-ended tasks and challenges.

• We all need to deal with rapid change and growing complexity in all aspects of life.

• We need to be able to deal with opportunities and challenges that we have never encountered before, and
for which we cannot rely only on knowledge and memory, or solutions we have been given by others.

Creativity enables people to be independent, resourceful, and productive; it also adds joy and excitement to life.

Your work in this module will help you to be “deliberatively creative” yourself, and to enable others with whom you work to learn and apply creative skills and tools as well. Each unit will include specific learning objectives. The module includes the following major topics:

This module uses the Creative Problem Solving framework, CPS Version 6.1™, which is the intellectual property of the Center for Creative Learning, Inc. The module has been created in cooperation with, and with support from, the Future Problem Solving Program (FPSP) and Destination ImagiNation, Inc. (DI). In this unit, you will be learning about the nature and definition of creative thinking and critical thinking.