Creativity for Learning: Tools, Strategies, and Environments for Nurturing Creative Thinking in the Classroom
By Kristy Doss and Lisa Bloom
(Routledge/Prufrock, 2026 – Learn more)
Reviewed by Chris Wagner
We live in a society where knowledge is at our fingertips whenever it is needed. What will separate our students from others will be what they can do with that knowledge.
In Creativity for Learning Kristy Doss and Lisa Bloom provide us with a guide to pushing students past the act of acquiring knowledge to using that knowledge to create, innovate, and iterate.
This is not a book that has to be read straight through. That being said, the first two chapters are not ones to skip. They not only introduce the concepts that are described in great detail in chapters later in the book, they also introduce us to the educational thinkers behind the philosophies and activities one reads later on.
Well-known thinkers like Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dweck are joined by others that may not be as well known, like J.P. Guilford and E. Paul Torrance. Starting with these chapters gives purpose to the rest of the book’s content.
6 Skills for Creative Thinking
The remaining chapters in the book break up creative thinking into 6 skills: fluidity, flexibility, originality, elaboration, incubation, and evaluation. Reading the first two chapters gives one the background to choose which skills you want to focus on or the skills that match what is being worked on in class.
Each chapter is organized in the same manner. After a discussion about each concept, the chapters end with a wide variety of activities that can be used to work on the skill. These are arranged by grade and content. This is where the magic of the book lies. It is worth looking through all the ideas; many of them can be tweaked to fit a wide variety of content areas.
Meeting the Challenges of Assessing Creative Thinking
The book ends by describing the processes needed to increase creative learning. This chapter is a must-read. One of the reasons that teachers may shy away from some activities described in the book is the difficulty in assessing what the students produce. This is especially true as students get used to the culture of creative thinking – the concept that there is not one correct answer, but a multitude of possibilities.
You’ll also find sample language for rubrics that can be used as is or can be helpful in designing one’s own rubric. Perhaps the best resources in the book regarding assessment of creative focus on student agency. Giving students ownership of their learning by setting goals and reflecting is a powerful practice in furthering their creative skills. This chapter has a lot of these types of resources.
If you are a person who prefers going to the source, each chapter in this book ends with a reference section. While this may lead the reader down some rabbit holes of educational thinking, I found this aspect of the book helpful in building my own capacity as a creative learner and teacher.
Getting students engaged in their learning can be tough. Creativity for Learning is a book that teachers at any level of experience, in any subject, can use as a resource to build engaging, thought-provoking activities to use with the content they may already teach.
If your goal is to prepare students to engage in society in the future, building the skills described in this book is a must, and Creativity for Learning is a great resource to inspire and support you.
Chris Wagner is a 6-8 ELA teacher at Nippersink Middle School in Richmond, Illinois. Heading into his 27th year of teaching, Chris has also been the ELA content leader for his school and has served as its Future Problem Solving Coordinator for the last decade. He lives in Crystal Lake with his wife Kim and their two children.
