William M. Bart

This selective integrative narrative review article examines creativity awareness as a critical cognitive state and highlights its intentional development in teaching and learning as part of essential 21st-century skill building. The article is organized around three interconnected themes: (1) Creativity as a 21st-century skill; (2) Exploring the journey to promoting creativity awareness in education: A multi-dimensional focus; and (3) Enhancing creativity awareness through research and science communication. Grounded in established and emerging research in the field, this review provides research-informed insights and practical recommendations for educators, researchers, and school counselors to recognize, appreciate, and promote creativity awareness in ways that contribute to more adaptive, innovative, and equitable educational environments.

Although student evaluations of teaching (SET) in higher education have recently gained considerable interest, little is known about whether course level influences these evaluations. Accordingly, two datasets, obtained from a large public university in the U.S. Midwest, were analyzed to investigate whether course level makes a difference in SET. The first dataset included 25,306 evaluations across eight course levels collected using the SET questionnaire. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), followed by univariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs), was conducted to test whether course level makes a difference in SET scores. To cross-validate the results and ensure generalizability, the same analyses were conducted using a second, smaller dataset (N = 444). MANOVA results revealed a statistically significant effect for course level on the combined SET dimensions across both campuses. All univariate ANOVAs were also significant across both campuses. Follow-up post hoc comparisons, with level 1 as the reference group, were statistically significant, especially for level 8. Overall, these results underscore the importance of accounting for course level when interpreting SET and encourage researchers to include key covariates (e.g., class size, discipline, instructor experience, and student composition) to identify the factors driving course-level differences.

One helpful set of resources for chess instructors is the many chess-related websites on the internet. Chess instructors may now make extensive use of this chess-related digital technology. Three case studies support the exciting phenomenon of human participants enjoying forming teams to play chess against chess bots available on chess-related websites. These teams may be viewed as cooperative groups that preferred to engage in this activity. This phenomenon occurred among school-aged children, undergraduate students, and elderly participants. One recommendation is that chess instruction involving digital technology should allow human participants to form small groups to play chess games against chess bots.

This article reviews research on chess training as a treatment to promote cognitive fitness and to delay the onset of dementia among the elderly. Alternative treatments are needed to address the widespread problem of dementia among the elderly, primarily because all drug treatments developed thus far to cure or delay dementia have been deemed either unsuccessful or unsafe. Chess training augmented by artificial intelligence is presented as an alternative treatment to address the dementia crisis. Computer-based technology and open-source chess software such as Stockfish 14 with the artificial intelligence component NNUE have the capacity to enhance chess training programs for the elderly. Although research on chess training for the elderly is sparse when compared to research on drug treatments for dementia, one pilot study, as an example, provided evidence that chess training is a viable intervention to improve cognitive fitness among the elderly. The elderly participants in the study enjoyed the chess lessons and looked forward to the challenge and the camaraderie in the group games against artificial opponents available on websites such as chess.com. Chess instruction is a safe, practical, and efficient intervention that should be implemented in community senior centers and retirement villages. Also, chess instruction in community senior centers and retirement villages provides a potentially highly generative and interesting setting for the scientific study of chess and its utility in addressing the enormous public health problem of Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. Chess training should be seriously considered as an intervention to be used in research in the quest to promote brain health among the elderly and to protect the elderly from the ravages of Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia.

The purpose of this study was to explore why and how chess researchers should investigate chess engines for educational and psychological purposes. The motivation for the study of chess engines for educational and psychological purposes is that such study will facilitate chess training and learning.A chess engine is software that can play chess. Examples of chess engines are Stockfish 14 and AlphaZero. Chess engines tend to be used for entertainment, recreation, and sport. But chess engines have the potential to be used for educational and psychological purposes in settings such as schools, colleges, universities, senior settings, and correctional facilities. However, certain issues regarding chess engines need to be investigated to allow chess engines to be more fully used for educational and psychological purposes. For example, there are chess engines that are assumed to be at certain levels of chess skill (i.e., Elo ratings), but the assumed Elo ratings for the chess engines have not been validated. Empirical research is needed to validate the assumed Elo ratings for various chess engines. Also, some chess engines are able to identify chess blunders. The blunders committed by chess engines and by human chess players should be analyzed and interpreted. Such blunder analysis can then inform efforts to improve chess teaching and practice for human chess players at various levels of chess skill.

The purpose of this study was to present insights on teaching chess to the community. Schools (grades K-12), colleges and universities (grades 13 and above), elderly settings, clinical groups, and correctional facilities are the five segments of the community to be featured in this report. Insights on teaching chess in each of those segments of the community are presented as well as recommendations for chess practice and teaching that emanate from the insights. Among the insights and subsequent recommendations to be presented are the following. Regarding teaching in the schools, one insight is that students respond favorably to playing against artificial opponents on a computer. A recommendation is to use chess technology including chess-related websites in schools where appropriate. Regarding teaching chess in colleges and universities, one insight is that undergraduates respond favorably to computer-based instruction. A recommendation is to employ chess technology in chess instruction in colleges and universities. Regarding teaching chess in elderly settings, one insight is that the elderly tend to be very social. A recommendation is to teach the elderly in a group-based manner. How and in what ways one teaches chess in the community depends upon the segment of the community in which the chess instruction is to occur.

This study investigates the factorial structure of a five-item questionnaire for student ratings of teaching (SRT) at a university setting. It features factor analyses of three large samples of data from a large Midwestern public university in the USA. Students completed the questionnaire at the end of courses. There were three campuses at the university, and thus three data sets in the study including an evaluation of a total of 27,693 courses with responses from a total of 1,087,652 students. An exploratory factor analysis with maximum likelihood extraction and varimax rotation was conducted to explore the factorial structure of the three data sets separately. The results indicated that there was only one factor explaining 80.99%, 77.18% and 84.94% of the variance in the Campus 1, 2 and 3 data sets, respectively. Thus, our results suggested that the data set in each campus was primarily unifactor. That the five-item SRT measure is unifactor across the courses in each of the campuses is a robust finding. Calculation of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the questionnaire indicated that the questionnaire had high internal consistency reliability (i.e. α = .94, α = .92 and α = .95) for Campus 1, 2 and 3, respectively.

The purpose of this study was to explore how elderly citizens react to chess instruction. Underlying this inquiry was the belief that chess training could be useful in the care of older people by helping to maintain the cognitive vitality of seniors and reducing the likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Certain findings emerged from a pilot study of a chess training intervention with elderly citizens as participants. There were 12 participants in the study. All participants were at least 65 years of age. There were seven male participants and five female participants. The chess training intervention lasted approximately three months. The intervention occurred either in a community senior center or in a community library. The intervention sessions were weekly with each session being 90 minutes in length with some lasting 2 hours. The training made extensive use of chess-related websites available on the Internet such as chess.com and lichess.org. The instruction involved the projection of a chess-related website projected onto a large classroom screen with the use of an instructor’s computer connected to a projector that projected the computer-based image onto the screen. The chess training involved instruction in chess on topics such as tactics and basic checkmates. The chess activity that the students enjoyed the most was a group activity pitting the seniors as a group against an artificial opponent available on chess.com. The seniors tended to learn at a slower pace than undergraduates whom I have taught. Also, some of the seniors were quite timid, seemingly fearful of making a mistake. Overall, the seniors enjoyed the chess training and looked forward to the training activity.

The purpose of this study was to explore how undergraduate university students react to chess instruction. Certain patterns emerged from 10 offerings of a Freshman Seminar entitled “Beginners’ Chess and 21st Century Thinking Skills”. The course enrolled only first-year and second-year undergraduate students at a large public state university in the USA. The students tended to have little or no knowledge of chess prior to the course. The course made extensive use of chess-related websites available on the Internet such as chess.com, lichess.org, and chessgames.com. The instruction involved the projection of a chess-related website projected onto a large classroom screen with the use of an instructor’s computer connected to a projector that projected the computer-based image onto the screen. The course had 10-20 students in each annual offering of the course that lasted 15 weeks. The student evaluations of the course were very positive, indicating that the students enjoyed the course very much. The course involved instruction in chess on topics such as tactics and basic checkmates along with instruction on the cognitive psychological foundations of chess on topics such as problem solving and critical thinking. The primary task in the course was that each student had to prepare a critical evaluation of two of their own chess games that included correct usage of proper algebraic notation for the chess moves. The chess activity that the students enjoyed the most was group competition.