Parents who want their kids to be more creative may be tempted to enroll them in arts classes or splurge on STEM-themed toys. Those things certainly can help, but as a professor of educational psychology who has written extensively about creativity, I can draw on more than 70 years of creativity research to make additional suggestions that are more likely to be effective—and won’t break your budget.
James C. Kaufman
James C. Kaufman is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. He is the author/editor of more than 50 books, which include Creativity 101 and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. He has also written more than 400 papers, which include theoretical contributions such as the Four-C Model of Creativity (with Ronald Beghetto) and empirical work, such as the study that spawned the “Sylvia Plath Effect.” His current research interests are creativity as it relates to meaning, equity, and other positive constructs, as well as creativity assessment.