Abstract

Creativity and creative thinking have been identified as crucial to learning by educators (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014; OME, 2016). In the Ontario Ministry of Education’s 2016 discussion paper, 21st Century Competencies, creativity was identified in a list of key global competencies. This has important implications for teacher education programs. In this research, we sought to explore teacher candidates’ perceptions of creativity and asked where does creativity come from; is it innate or nourished and can a person learn to be creative? How future teachers define and view origins of creativity, will necessarily influence their teaching pedagogies. This research study explored views of creativity from 121 future teachers in a teacher education program in Ontario, Canada. Using content analysis, themes were identified in the TC’s responses and are presented for discussion and future research considerations. The findings indicate that the participants view creativity as innate (42), learned (17) and a combination of both (45). How these results may impact teacher motivation and student learning is discussed along with recommendations for teacher education programs.

Citation

Laffier, J., Hughes, J. & Petrarca, D. (2020). What Future Teachers Think of ‘Creativity’ and What This Means for Their Future Teaching Practice. In D. Schmidt-Crawford (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1156-1164). Online: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved August 31, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/215876/.

© 2020 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Keywords

• Creativity