Creativity for Learning (Routledge/Prufrock, 2026) lays out a classroom-ready approach to nurturing creative thinking—mapping it into six skills and offering grade- and content-based activities, plus concrete support for assessing student work where there may
By the time students can search for answers in seconds, “knowing” is no longer what separates them. The real gap—teachers say they feel it every day—is what students can do after they find information.
Creativity for Learning, a 2026 book by Kristy Doss and Lisa Bloom (Routledge/Prufrock), is built around that shift. The authors focus on moving students beyond acquiring knowledge toward using it to create, innovate, and iterate. The book is designed so it does not have to be read in a straight line; chapters can be pulled in as needed.
That said, the review emphasizes that the first two chapters are not the place to rush past. They introduce the concepts explored in later chapters in detail. and they also bring in the educational thinkers behind the book’s classroom activities. The thinkers named include Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dweck, alongside J.P. Guilford and E. Paul Torrance. The reviewer points to starting with these early chapters as a way to give purpose to everything that comes afterward.
From there, the book breaks creative thinking into six skills: fluidity, flexibility, originality, elaboration, incubation, and evaluation. The chapters are organized in a consistent way: after discussion of each concept. each chapter ends with a wide variety of activities to build the specific skill. Those activities are arranged by grade and content. and the reviewer describes this as one of the book’s strongest practical features—ideas that can be tweaked to fit many subject areas.
But the book doesn’t stop at engagement. It also tackles one of the hardest parts of teaching creativity in real classrooms: assessing it.
The final chapter describes processes meant to increase creative learning. and it directly addresses why some teachers shy away from creative activities—because evaluating what students produce can be difficult. That challenge becomes sharper once students adopt a creative-thinking culture. described in the review as one where there is not one correct answer. but multiple possibilities.
To meet that reality, the book includes sample language for rubrics that can be used as written or adapted. The reviewer highlights assessment resources that focus on student agency. pointing to the idea that giving students ownership through setting goals and reflecting is a powerful practice for building creative skills. The goal is not just to grade outputs, but to build habits that help students steer their own learning.
One more detail shapes how the book can fit into a teacher’s workflow: each chapter ends with a reference section for readers who want to follow the ideas back to their sources. The reviewer says this aspect helped them build their own capacity as a creative learner and teacher.
At the center of the book’s promise is simple: getting students engaged in learning can be tough. and Creativity for Learning is positioned as a resource for teachers at any level of experience. in any subject. to create engaging. thought-provoking activities grounded in the content they already teach.
The review ties that classroom work to a broader need—preparing students to engage in society in the future—while keeping the focus on what happens day to day: the skills students practice. the activities teachers run. and the way educators learn to assess learning that may not follow a single answer key.
The review is written by Chris Wagner, a 6-8 ELA teacher at Nippersink Middle School in Richmond, Illinois. Heading into his 27th year of teaching. Wagner 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.
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