For teachers, students, parents, and anyone interested in creativity, Learning and Teaching Creativity, by Dan Hunter, inspires and promotes individual imagination. He details steps to improve student creativity through imagination. Hunter explores metacognition, teacher attitudes, exercises, ideation, and problem-solving techniques. Throughout the book there are stories of creative successes fueled by imagination: Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Franz Schubert, Sherlock Holmes, Leonardo Da Vinci, and more. Hunter clearly explains the latest neuroscience on creativity. Hunter draws on humor, extensive research, and his lifetime of practicing and teaching creative work.

This book is for anyone looking for pathways to creativity in life or in the classroom. Education in America is in an upheaval. Rote learning—as promoted on standardized tests—is useless in the age of search engines. We need to prepare students to adapt to
and manipulate change—which requires an agile imagination. However, we don’t know how to teach students to be creative, resourceful, and imaginative. Learning and Teaching Creativity lays out pathways to student (and teacher) creativity.

Learning and Teaching Creativity also punctures many of the myths of creativity by drawing distinctions between creativity and imagination. All humans have imagination.  It is simply the ability to predict outcomes, engage in counterfactual thinking, and
visualize scenarios. Imagination is how you guide your life—making day-to-day decisions as well as thinking about the most profound issues humans face. For example, you use your imagination to make plans for the weekend, decide on your lunch, or
choose a color to paint the back hall. But you also use your imagination to predict life in the next century or how to reverse global warming.

Life will always deliver the unpredictable. Imagination is required.

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Advance praise for Learning and Teaching Creativity:
“This book represents a rare combination of good science, practical and relevant advice, and a good read. Well done.”
–Rex E. Jung, Ph.D. Research Professor of Psychology, University of New Mexico

“Delivered with wit and originality, whether explaining neuroscience or observing the instinctive behavior of children.” –Alexandra Marshall, The Silence of Your Name: The Afterlife of a Suicide

”A masterful study of the way the human brain works…. It’s a gift, from an original thinker, to educators and students alike.–Roland Merullo, Breakfast with Buddha

“A very important book that will help all teachers think more deeply and deliberately about their own and their students’ imaginations.”  –Jean Hendrickson, Director Emeritus, Oklahoma A+ Schools

Dan Hunter is the inventor of H-IQ, the first assessment of individual imagination and ideation, available online at www.h-iq.com. H-IQ provides students with practice generating ideas and teaches student metacognition. H-IQ was a finalist in Reimagine Education, the world’s largest awards program for innovative pedagogies. Out of a field of 1100 applicants from all over the world, H-IQ was on the shortlist to win an award for “Breakthrough Educational Technology” in 2022.To develop H-IQ, Hunter has devoted ten years of study for the questions of improving creativity. He is the co-author with Dr. Rex Jung of, A Call to More Imaginative Research into Creative Achievement, published in the peer-reviewed Creativity Research Journal, 11/15/2022 and A New Measure of Imagination Ability: Anatomical Brain Imaging Correlates, published in The Frontiers of Psychology, an international peer-reviewed journal.

Hunter’s understanding of creativity has been learned by practicing creative work, generating a steady flow of ideas as a songwriter, playwright, columnist, and political consultant. Hunter taught creative writing and playwriting at Boston University for 17 years.

About the Author

Dan Hunter is an award-winning playwright, songwriter, teacher, and founding partner of Hunter Higgs, LLC, an education consulting firm.  He has served as managing director of the Boston Playwrights Theatre at Boston University, published numerous plays with Baker’s Plays, and has performed topicalhumor in song on ABC, NPR, BBC, and CNN. Formerly executive director of the

Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (MAASH) a statewideadvocacy and education group, Hunter has  25 years’ experience in politics and arts advocacy. He served as Director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs (a cabinet
appointment requiring Senate confirmation). He is the author of several books ofhumor, including Let’s Keep Des Moines a Joke, Iowa?…It’s a State, and his most recent Pandemic Panacea: Laughing through Quarantine.