Creativity in Our Curriculum Teachers Perceptions

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Creativity in our curriculum? Teachers' perceptions.
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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22058.93124
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CREATIVITY IN THE CURRICULUM 1
Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions
Kai-Stefanie Lorimer
Student Number 407255
Christian Heritage College
Independent Study Curriculum ED649

Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions. 4
Literature Review 8
Conation 12
Cognition 17
Environment 22
Affection 26
Teacher concerns 27
Research Methodology 30
Data Collection 32
Discussion 34
Environmental factors 36
Conation 40
Cognition 45
Affection 50
Teacher Concerns 52
Summary 56
Recommendations 59
References 61
Appendices 68
Appendix i - Concourse of preliminary statements 68
Appendix ii - 24 focus statements grouped by domain 75
Appendix iii - supplementary statements made 77
Appendix iv Table responses 79
Appendix v – Table of Z scores 80

Abstract
This paper reviews teachers’ attitudes towards creativity in the curriculum. Innovation skills
are increasingly sought after and the understandings teachers hold regarding creativity
development is crucial. What teachers do in classrooms is the most important component in
creativity education but is often the neglected aspect in this consideration. This study examines
the predispositions and attitudes which shape teachers’ work by analyzing responses to a set of
24 statements distilled from a larger concourse of conversations on creativity in the curriculum.
The study found that teachers’ understanding of cognitive strategies for innovation and an
understanding of the most conducive social and academic environment were less strong than
their knowledge about conative and affective factors. The study also found that standardised
testing was perceived to be a major inhibitor of creative practice in the classroom.

Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the views which teachers hold on the place
of creativity education their curriculum and to help inform a considered response to the
dilemma summarised by veteran creativity researcher, psychologist Robert Sternberg:
There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles on how to teach children
to think creatively. If one walks into a classroom, however, one is not likely to see a lot
of teaching for creative thinking.
(Sternberg, Teaching for creativity – the sound of silence, 2015. p.115)
Creativity has been extensively investigated by psychology, sociology and more
recently, neurology. Findings have been enthusiastically taken up by a variety of science and
technology sectors, such as information technology, which looks towards developing online
learning environments as business opportunities of the future. Education authorities have, at
times, succumbed to the heavy marketing which Microsoft and Apple are directing towards
schools, and have begun to require teachers to adapt their pedagogy in accordance 1 . The
innovations taken on board by Microsoft showcase schools such as Saint Stephen’s College
(The Educator, 2017) are often couched in terms of creativity education but are heavily
influenced by the marketing strategies of the ICT giants. Teachers’ own views on the creativity
research and how it should be applied in the classroom have not had as much attention.
Despite the potential which creativity research holds for application in the classroom,
vested interests naturally impact on its realisation. Teachers themselves will view educational
research subjectively and will finally apply their own convictions to the implementation of any
curriculum in their classroom. How teachers view creativity and what they understand about
it from an educational psychology perspective is the focus of this study. Along with concerns
1
More specific information is available via https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/2016/05/11/redefining-
learning-as-we-know-it-with-microsoft-showcase-schools/ and https://www.apple.com/au/education/apple-
distinguished-schools/ . Microsoft has partnered with 13 schools in Australia by designating them ‘Microsoft
Showcase Schools’ and Apple with 16 designating them ‘Apple Distinguished Schools’.
they may hold; about their own ability to be creative and teach for creativity, as well as the
access they will have to classroom resources and environments which are supportive of
teaching for creativity. These factors, as well as expectations channelled ‘down’ from
administrators and authorities, will impact significantly on the extent to which students will
have the opportunity to develop creatively. Researchers should pay attention to this important
end-point of the ‘supply chain’: the delivery of the curriculum in the classroom.
This study investigates the dispositions which teachers have regarding creativity
education, based on preliminary semi-formal conversations with primary and secondary school
teachers in Queensland, Australia. Teachers were asked to respond to the question “What role
does ‘creativity’ play in your curriculum?’ during informal conversations which occurred both
in person and via the online platform ‘facebook’ and their responses were noted (Appendix i).
Australia has a National Curriculum (NC) which is being implemented in an ongoing
process since 2010. Underpinning the structure of the NC are seven identified general
capabilities, of which Critical and Creative Thinking is the forth. 2 The general capabilities
are addressed through the learning areas of the curriculum and are included in the content
descriptors and content elaborations which teachers refer to when planning their programs.
The NC states that
…responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex

environmental, social and economic pressures – requires young people to be creative,
innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to
use critical and creative thinking purposefully.
The importance which the NC places on creativity is reflected in the fact that it requires
that Critical and Creative Thinking (along with the other general capabilities) will be taught
explicitly within each learning area and Australian teachers are expected to assess each general
capability as it impacts on the learning area in which they teach. The NC contains the further
22
The others are Literacy, Numeracy, Information and Communication Technology Capability, Personal and Social Capability,
Ethical Understanding and Intercultural Understanding. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities
provision that state and territory education authorities may determine if any of these capabilities
should be specifically assessed or reported upon. In other words, the Australian National
Curriculum expects teachers to explicitly plan for, teach and assess critical and creative
thinking, formalising the need for teachers to make their own thinking about the place creativity
holds in the curriculum explicit.
Preliminary conversations with teachers exposed quite polarised opinions on the place
of creativity in the curriculum. Seventy-five statements were collected and analysed for broad
similarities and recurring themes which allowed summarisation into twenty-four statements
(Appendix ii) which fell into five broad categories: cognitive factors, environmental factors,
conative factors, affective factors and practical factors (‘teacher concerns’).
The statements formed part of an online questionnaire and ‘sorting game’ which was
sent to staff in four QLD schools (one secondary and three primary) who had agreed to
participate on a voluntary basis. The online survey was launched on September 18, 2017 and
closed on October 23. Sixty-four people participated, forty-one surveys were completed, and
twenty-three abandoned, giving a 64% successful participation rate. A small incentive was
offered (a lunch-duty swap or afternoon tea treat) as a thank-you for participation. Participants
took between 3.43 and 58.02 minutes to complete the questionnaire and scale sort, indicating
that various levels of thought and reflection were invested.
The sorting activity was preceded by a questionnaire asking participants to confirm they
were teachers (Q1), had taught for a minimum of two years (Q2), to specify the level of
education they were active in (Q3) and their current role (Q4). 100% or participants who
completed the sort were teachers who had been teaching for a minimum of two years. The
reason for this restriction was that it was deemed important for teachers to have experienced at
least one curriculum planning and reflection cycle to be able to confidently express their
considered opinion on the points raised in the sorting activity.

Most participants were Primary generalists (70.7%), followed by Secondary subject
specialists (26.8%), followed by 9.8% Early Childhood teachers and 7.3% (3 respondents) who
specified ‘other’. Five respondents indicated that they were either curriculum leaders or school
principals.
The ‘sort game’ asked participants to rank the 24 statements on a Likert scale (-4 to +4)
in terms of strength of agreement. The statements were not presented in ‘categories’ and were
randomized for each participant. Participants had the opportunity to add a statement of
clarification at the end of the survey. Ten participants provided additional statements (see
Appendix iii).
In order to move towards an understanding of the ‘silence’ Sternberg observes around
creativity education, this paper will evaluate teachers’ views on creativity in the curriculum
and seek answers to questions such as:
1. To what extent do teachers believe that creativity is an important component of teaching
and learning?
2. Do teachers’ perceptions generally evidence a research-based understanding of human
creativity?
3. How does their understandings of which factors influence creative development impact
on their practice in the classroom?
4. Do teachers feel able (and enabled) to teach for creativity in their classroom?
Literature Review
In order to investigate the literature on the topics which emerged from the initial
concourse, the survey statements were subsequently re-grouped into four topic areas which
mirrored the response categories. The literature review is undertaken to reflect this break-down.
“Creativity results from the interaction of cognitive, affective, motivational, and
social/personal factors” wrote Cropley (1995) in his summary of the work of many other
creativity researchers. Ahmadi and Besancon (2017) also adopted a multivariate perspective
to summarize and define four main components for creativity: a cognitive factor, a conative
factor (e.g., personality traits including motivation), an affective factor (e.g. emotional traits),
and an environmental factor (including the social environment but going beyond). The
confluent effect of these factors is hypothesized to involve more than a simple sum of a person’s
experience on each component. Sternberg (2006) acknowledges that there may be thresholds
on any of these, below which creativity is not possible and that strength in one component may
counteract weakness in another or high levels in several could disproportionately enhance
creative outcome.
As early as 1975, Feldhusen and Treffinger (1997) reported that 96% of teachers they
surveyed expressed the view that creativity in the classroom is important. Given the current
infatuation with technological innovation, it is likely that this percentage has only increased up
to the present.
A plethora of information exists regarding the features and functions of creativity,
including contributions from psychology, educational psychology, philosophy, sociology and
recent neuro-psychological research. Much has been written advising teachers and curriculum
designers on how to apply these insights and research results. Still, there is much lamentation
about how little has changed over the past several decades.
Arne Dietrich (2007) considers that “following a flurry of activity in the 1960s” which
led to many working hypotheses, “creativity has been stuck in a rut”:
One can readily see this in today’s original research articles. They routinely
begin, in 2007 no less, by describing the work of Guilford or Mednik from the 1960s,
not as a historical background for the benefit of the reader, but as part of the rationale
that sets up the upcoming experiments.
He bemoans that fifty years of research into divergent thinking as the major distinctive
cognitive factor in creativity (Guilford 1967), has not yielded a “clear conception of the
fundamental properties of creative mentation or a toolkit of methods to get at them.” It does
seem that psychology up until this point has provided many explanations that are couched in
terms such as “it may well be that” such and such is the case, depending on the various
influences of this factor or that one.
Prolific creativity researcher Robert J Sternberg feels that in quarter of a century (up to
2015) little has been achieved in terms of implementation. He states that
There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles on how to teach children
to think creatively. If one walks into a classroom, however, one is not likely to see a lot
of teaching for creative thinking.
(Teaching for creativity – the sound of silence, 2015. p.115)
He identifies standardised testing, a lack of emphasis on creativity in teacher training
and entrenchment as the interrelated reasons for the ‘silence’ he observes: “Our society is
locked into a vicious circle that perpetuates what we teach through what we test and what we
test through what we teach.” (p. 116)

Alfie Kohn, in his book The Case Against Standardised Testing: Raising the Scores,
Ruining the Schools (2000) alleges that many standardised tests are not designed to test the
quality of teaching and/or learning but instead, are designed to rank performance. He explains
that standardised tests encourage teaching to the test and superficial engagement by learners
(also Linden, 2007). Many scholars have written on the importance which deep engagement
holds in the process of creative cognition (Csikzentmihalyi,1993; Black and Williams,1998;
Lamb-Sinclair, 2016).
Jerald (2006) has found evidence that schools adjust their curriculum to reflect what is
being tested. Further, schools even drill the format of questions and types of items expected on
standardised tests. Jerald also found that surveys of American elementary school teachers
showed that more time was spent on literacy and mathematics and less on science and social
studies in 2004 as compared to 1990. In Australia, some schools set aside up to an hour per
week to practice ‘test taking’ for NAPLAN or QCS standardised testing 3 often at the expense
of subject areas considered less ‘academic’ but arguably able to provide an excellent platform
for creativity education.
US principals in high minority schools across four states surveyed had reduced time
spent on the Arts during these years. Pryzinda et al. (2017) have confirmed earlier results by
Benedek et al. (2014) and Kleinmintz et al. (2014) that there is strong evidence for higher
domain-general creative abilities in musically trained people. Given that current research is
strengthening the connection between cognitive training in the arts (in particular music) and
superior educational outcomes, in particular as pertaining to creativity, the effect standardised
testing seems to have on curriculum is as counterproductive as it can possibly be.
3
In 2013, this author experienced students in Year 9 at St Stephen’s College in Queensland completing nine separate
standardised tests, including NAPLAN and students in Year 12 preparing for fifty minutes per week for the mechanics of completing the
Queensland Core Skills standardised test scheduled late in the academic year.
Kohn (2000) points out that the administration of standardised testing is expensive and
may encourage schools to cut or reduce subjects or electives which are not perceived to be
contributing directly to testing success. He confirms that this often comes at the expense of
important educational and social programs. In Australia, educational consultants such as
‘Mighty Minds’ have taken advantage of schools’ preoccupation with standardised testing,
designing a business model around this perceived need which charges between $A2.50 and
$A9.00 per preparation test/student. While costs may vary and impact different schools to
greater or lesser extents, rationalizations still provide administrators with a plausible reason to
cut non-test subjects or programs. Ironically, the subjects and projects most often cut first, may
be among those which encourage and train creative thinking processes most effectively.
In the light of Sternberg’s identification of teacher training as one of the culprits for the
‘silence’ around creativity in classrooms, it may be relevant to consider that personal beliefs
have been found to be “a stronger predictor of behaviour than knowledge” (Pajares, 1992, p.
311) in the context of teacher praxis. Given that this is the case, an investigation such as the
present one, of teacher’s beliefs about the nature of creativity and its place in their classroom
may provide insight into why so much theoretical information and so little practical outcome
can be observed.
In the face of an overwhelming amount of literature dealing with the nature of human
creativity, it is surprising to find little broad-based agreements among scholars.4 According to
Grainger and Barnes (2006) “We seem to know about what [creativity] is not” more than what
it is. Creativity “is not confined to special people or to particular arts based activities, nor is it
undisciplined play. It is however, notoriously difficult to define.” (p.2)
4
Thorsteinsson & Page (2015, p. 2) citer over one hundred definitions of creativity in scholarly literature.
Conation
Conative aspects (such as those personal dispositions above) in creative behaviour have been
considered by a variety of scholars. Cropley (2001) produced a list of personal qualities
desirable in a creative person which include independence, openness to experience, flexibility,
and tolerance of ambiguity. Sternberg (1995) describes a personality which incorporates the
willingness to overcome obstacles, willingness to take sensible risks, willingness to tolerate
ambiguity, willingness to “stand up to conventions (also 2006, p.7) as well as a sense of self-
efficacy and motivation (where he cites Amabile, 1983). He carefully points out that these
attributes are ‘not fixed’ but subject to a person’s volition. In 2002, Sternberg published a paper
entitled Encouraging students to decide for creativity, emphasizing his regard for the role
volition plays in the creative endeavour. “Creativity is as much a decision about and an attitude
toward life, as it is a matter of ability.” (Sternberg, 2006, p.7)
In creativity research, there is some disagreement around whether creativity constitutes
the product of cognition (and perhaps volition, that is, of a purposeful search for a new solution)
or whether creativity is found in the process of discovery and is perhaps more a matter of
serendipity. The first stance defines the creative act as one that results in a product which is
recognised by others as both novel and useful (Csikzentmihalyi, 1996; Plucker, J.A. &
Beghetto, R.A., 2004). Teachers, however, may immediately think of the many ‘creative’ ways
in which their students explore the world and wonder about the relative importance of a
‘product’. As has been pointed out, “If we restrict creativity to products we are bound to miss
out on much of what creativity is or can be” (Glăveanu, 2011, p.9), and according to creativity
researcher Anna Craft: “Creativity involves being imaginative …. It is not necessarily linked
with a product-outcome.” (Craft 2000, p. 3 cited in Craft 2001, p. 15)

The trend towards an emphasis on outcome based (thus product based) curricula, easily
results in a devaluation of the process of learning, and with this, the important personal attribute
of developing intrinsic motivation. Our society often appears to values outcomes (such as
‘having’ a degree) above the actual skills which a certificate may represent. Ashley Lamb-
Sinclair (2016) described an experiment she took to only provide formative feedback to her
senior English class for the first six months of the course. She found that her students
approached each assignment more positively and without fear, and as a result their motivation
and engagement increased and reflections and thought processes deepened. When teachers
value the process of learning above data points, students engage more deeply and the likelihood
of creative thinking being applied in the process, increases; the opposite effect of standardised
testing which flattens engagement and decreases intrinsic motivation.
Teachers demonstrate what they consider important by the way they teach: the
pedagogy they employ in the curriculum they prioritize. Foregrounding test preparation and
skill acquisition aimed at providing data for standardised tests, declares different priorities to
those exemplified by Lamb-Sinclair above. Black and Williams (1998) found in their review
of literature on formative assessment, that descriptive feedback, focussing on the process of
learning rather than the outcome, leads to a more substantial improvement in academic
outcome than numeric or alphabetic grades.
The challenge researchers and educationalists alike face is that data is easily captured
and provides statistics which can be used to provide ‘research-based’ information on which to
base decisions with a degree of confidence. Creativity research itself has focussed more on
product-producing creativity than on process. Keith Sawyer (2000) observed that
“performance...is ephemeral and does not generate any lasting ostensible product, it has
[therefore] been easy to neglect [in creativity research].” He goes on to argue that improvisation
– such as may occur in the selection and performance of movements, every day decision
making and language processing (2011) - “may actually represent a more common, more
accessible form of creativity than privileged domains [of production] such as the arts and
sciences.” He suggests that the everyday explorative behaviour of pre-school children is
creative in essence, and thus naturally “become[s] relevant to creativity theory” (Sawyer, 1997,
p. 2). Unfortunately, this kind of creative behaviour is difficult to observe and more difficult
to assess, potentially leaving teachers with ‘gut feelings’ about the creative behaviour of their
young students, which although probably correct, are difficult to justify.
In dealing with just this problem, Howard Gardner (1982, p. 90) finds that children and
artists have much in common, such as the “enjoyment of the task” and “a willingness to
disregard common conventions”, yet he finally concludes that “children’s apparently
imaginative activities are best written off as happy accidents” (Gardner, 1982, p. 169) because
they display a lack of intentionality. David Feldman, too, finds that children’s creative products
have been ‘romantically’ overvalued (in Sawyer et al., 2003, p.219). David Elliott even goes
as far as to claim that “there is no such thing as ‘the creative process’” (1995, p.224) and that
creative thinking is merely particularly efficient ordinary thinking which produces a valuable
and novel outcome.
Some disagreement therefore exists about the extent to which volition plays a part in
creative endeavour and whether innovations are the result of a deliberate search for creative
solutions or whether creative products are the outcome of ‘happy little accidents’ at “either at
the generative or selection stage of the creative process.” (Tardif & Sternberg, 1988, p.430).
Tardif & Sternberg identify a group of researchers who favor this point of view, citing “sudden
inspiration” (Feldman, Taylor, Wallas), a group who take a middle position (Gardner,
Sternberg, Torrance), and a group who totally reject inspiration as a source of creativity
(Gruber & Davis, Weisberg, Simonton).
Elliott (1995) contrasts ‘spontaneous originality’ with creativity, stating that the former
is an uninhibited response to the environment which “has no relationship to recognized
domains of practice except, perhaps, in a naïve, exploratory way.” (p221) Whereas creative
efforts, according to Elliott, are concerned with achieving specific results. In contrast, Bennett
Reimer advances the view that a creator must follow their feeling without ‘regulating’ the
creative process with conscious intent for fear of “violating his [sic] art and thereby corrupting
it.” (Reimer, 1989, p.274) It is unclear what kind of corruption conscious direction would bring
on the creative outcome.
Research has shown that motivation is closely associated with the concepts of volition,
agency, self-direction, and self-regulation (Kane, 1985), and is thus part of conation. Education
has traditionally been very interested in motivational theory. Teachers know that motivation is
an essential component of learning. Teresa Amabile (1998) makes motivation the third, distinct,
component of creativity (alongside cognitive skills and domain expertise) in her list of
necessary qualities. While many experts, including Amabile, have traditionally advocated for
the importance of intrinsic motivation, more recent research has caused Amabile to revise her
original premise and to conclude that while intrinsic motivation does appear to be essential for
creativity, certain forms of extrinsic motivation may have no impact or even a positive impact,
on creativity. (1996, p.202) The difference is made in the type of external reward on offer:
extrinsic rewards which enable people to become more deeply involved in something they are
excited and/or place value on their creative work enhance intrinsic motivation (an effect termed
“motivational synergy” by Amabile). Clearly extrinsic motivation should not be in the form of
performance competition if this synergetic effect is desired, and clearly, intrinsic motivation,
if it can be achieved, is more desirable.
Psychologist and productivity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pioneered research
into intrinsic motivation as part of the human experience since the 1960s. In particular, he was
interested how it occurs in autotelic5 activity, apart from any extrinsic product or goal. The
resulting conceptualization has become known as ‘flow’ and refers to the state of activity where
one is completely absorbed by and focused on the challenges at hand, where action and
awareness merge, where self-consciousness is weak, where a sense of control is strong, where
the consciousness of time is distorted and the activity undertaken is perceived as intrinsically
rewarding. (Nakamura, 2009) People ‘in flow’ operate at an optimal level of skill challenge (cf.
Vygotsky, 1978) and employ every conative and cognitive resource to full capacity.
The ability to focus, or the lack thereof, has been variously associated with the creative
process and as it has been shown above, several researchers take the concept of ‘inspiration’
seriously indeed. Arne Dietrich (2007) finds this more than a little suspect however: “From
Kekulé’s daydream of whirling snakes forming a (benzene) ring to Coleridge’s poem Kublai
Khan, among rather many other examples, such flashes of insights are the very cliché of
creative genius”. Nevertheless, it appears that he recognizes both the ‘big C’ type of creativity
above as well as the ‘little c’ type of process described by Sawyer (2000) and Craft (2000)
above: According to Dietrich, we have a “mountain of data [from neuroscientific investigation]
on bottom-up and top-down processes of attention” to date; describing an inductive and an
abductive approach to creative thinking respectively. The ‘top–down’ approach surely refers
to the more intuitive, inspired, defocussed and divergent, and the bottom-up approach to the
serendipity of the chain of ‘happy accidents’. In any case, Dietrich states, “there is substantial
5
Auto = self, teleos= goal
empirical evidence to support the proposal that these two broad mechanisms of attention
produce creative insights that are qualitatively different in type” (2004) and thus, as educators,
perhaps we can conclude that both types of attention are to be encouraged in our students.
In his presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1950,
creativity pioneer J. P. Guilford recognized a variety of outcomes of creative endeavour:
The consensus of the philosophers seems to have been that creativity is the same
wherever you find it. To this idea, I do not subscribe. [ … ] What it takes to make the
inventor, the writer, the artist and the composer creative may have some factors in
common, but there is much room for variation of pattern of abilities.
Guilford recognized that “originality, fluency of ideation and sensitivity to missing elements”
contribute to individual creativity, yet we still see him framing ‘creativity’ in terms of ‘creative
personality’ or a ‘pattern of traits’ (a trait being “a relatively enduring way in which a person
differs from another”). (1950, p.33-34) While personal characteristics (innate or developed)
may predispose people towards developing expertise in particular areas, ‘traits’ alone are
unlikely to be responsible for creativity. Subsequent research emphasizes that a proficient level
of knowledge in a field or domain is a critical component enabling creativity. (Elliott, 1995;
Weisberg, 1988)
Cognition
The Australian NC relates creativity closely to ‘critical thinking’. Like the concept of creativity
itself however, ‘critical thinking’ does not seem easy to define: “although academics […]
consider critical thinking skills to be a crucial outcome of … education, many would have
difficulty defining exactly what critical thinking is.” (Quitadamo et al, 2007, p. 141). The same
authors define critical thinking as a process “of purposeful self-regulatory judgment that drives
problem-solving and decision-making,” (p. 328).

Guildford (1950) recognized two phases in the process of thinking creatively. He
described these as divergent and convergent. The latter requires conventional logic to be
applied to a problem in an analytical fashion to arrive at the ‘best’ or the ‘most correct’ answer.
By contrast and definition, divergent thinking diverges from the available information by
recognizing loosely related yet relevant aspects of a problem. This may lead to novel ways of
looking at and solving the problem. Divergent thinking may include seemingly ‘irrational’
modes of thinking6 and may not necessarily be bound by the rules of physical reality. Nearly
sixty years later, Robert Burton (2008) has described the same processes as analytical and
associative modes of cognition. Thinking in the associative mode is “defocused, suggestive
and intuitive, revealing remote or subtle connections between items that may be correlated, or
may not be, and are usually not causally related.”
Memory researcher Liane Gabora (in press), citing Onarheim & Friis-Olivarius (2013),
asserts that it is “standard [today]… to essentially equate creativity with the capacity for
convergent and divergent thinking, with divergent thinking the more important of the two for
creativity.” (p.3) Her current neurological research aims to show that convergent thought could
be more fruitfully characterized by “conceiving of concepts in their conventional contexts”
rather than via concepts of ‘logic’ and ‘correctness’ and that divergent though may be more
properly characterized as “playing with a halo of potentiality surrounding concepts” (p.4)
If convergent, critical, analytical thinking, turns out to be mired in the ‘conventional’
and divergent thinking can be pinned down more effectively by neuro-scientific advances in
the future, the nurturing of the divergent thinking process – which is scarcely understood at
this point – may become much more important in schools than it is at present. Keith Sawyer
6
(such as Janusian thinking – Rothenberg 1988- This term derives from the Roman God Janus, after whom the
month of January is named. Janus could look ahead and backward simultaneously, and was thus aware of information
coming from two directions at the same time This approach emphasizes the bringing together of apparently contradictory
ideas)
(2011) agrees that current definitions may soon need to be revisited in light of advances in
cognitive neuroscience: “Existing CN studies of cognition, memory, attention, etc. can
potentially provide creativity researchers with new ways to think about how to subdivide the
concept of creativity into a set of brain-based constructs. “(p.13)
Both modes of thinking are, in any case, under the control of the executive functions of
the brain. Executive function is thought to underlie all planning, problem solving, and
reasoning and involve both convergent/analytical thought and divergent/associative thought.
The core executive functions are given as
• cognitive flexibility (divergent thinking)
• inhibitory control (convergent, critical, thinking), and
• working memory control (mentally holding and retrieving information).
(Blair and Razza, 2007)
This leads to the consideration of the importance of memory as the third component of
the cognition associated with executive function. Memory provides access to learnt skill and
even if there is not yet mastery in a skill domain, memory provides a cognitive context for the
imagination: “one needs to know enough about a field to move it forward” (Sternberg, 2006,
p.6) or be creative in it. Logically “one can’t move beyond where a field is if one doesn’t
know where it is”, (Ibid.). Even Simonton (1988, cited in Cropley 1995), who proposes a
chance configuration model of creativity, recognizes that “creativity requires a basic stock of
mental elements (information, ideas, memories, concepts, beliefs, feelings, emotions, etc.).”
Research by Weisberg (1988) and Elliott (1995) emphasizes the necessity of subject specific
knowledge in one or several domains of endeavour for creativity.
Gabora (2010) concurs that creative thought occurs “not by searching a space of
predefined alternatives and blindly tweaking those that hold promise, but by evoking remotely
associated items through the recruitment of neurds in a distributed, content-addressable
memory.” (p.2) She explains:
Activated cell assemblies are composed of multiple neural cliques, groups of neurons
that respond differentially to general or context-specific aspects of a situation. I refer
to neural cliques that would not be included in the assembly if one were in an analytic
mode, [emphasis mine] but would be if one were in an associative mode, as neurds. It
is posited that the shift to a more associative mode of thought is accomplished by
recruiting neurds that respond to abstract or atypical microfeatures of the problem or
task.
(Ibid.)
It appears then that something must exist in the brain before it can be ‘recruited’ into
the service of creativity. It also appears that intentionality (critically) “searching a space of
predefined alternatives” may not be as important as is thought by some at present, and that
“evoking remotely associated items” which perhaps are not even articulated consciously,
provide the initial spark for an idea that may well end up creatively eminent.
In the educational context, this means decisions made at curriculum level must ensure
opportunities become available that allow associative modes of thinking to be exercised as
routinely as analytical thinking. In practical terms this may mean creativity education is about
more than creative pedagogy on behalf of teachers and may require a rethink of what is taught
and how time is allocated within the curriculum on an institutional level.
Guilford already realized in 1950 that on some level, “creativity is bound up with
intelligence”. He stated that “there is much evidence of substantial positive correlations
between IQ as measured by an intelligence test and certain creative talents.” (p.36) Sternberg
(2006) agrees, positing a theory of “successful” intelligence “which emphasized the importance
not only of one’s pattern of analytical, creative, and practical intelligence, but also of
capitalizing on strengths and compensating for or correcting weaknesses”. (p.2) Over 30 years
ago, Torrance (1962) pointed out that defining potential creativity based on an IQ score alone
overlooked about 30% of students with superior creative potential, however. Today we
understand that neither IQ, nor a good proportion of the other characteristics cited as necessary
for creative action, are fixed. According to Sternberg, many researchers agree that creativity
and intelligence are correlated up to a certain threshold, which sits around an IQ of 120, after
which they tend to vary independently (Sternberg, 2005), proving that memory and processing
power (analytical thought) are but two parts of a whole which includes at least one more
variable: divergence.
On examining the connection between IQ and creativity, Howard Gardner (1993) notes
that his “Theory of multiple intelligences is clearly relevant to the topic of creativity” and goes
on to explain that in his view, just as there are many forms of human intelligence, there are
many forms of creativity also, each focused on a particular area of content. Thus, in Gardner’s
view, people are creative in particular domains:
Mozart had extraordinary creativity in the musical realm, just as Newton had amazing
gifts [emphasis mine] in the logical-mathematical arena. Yet there is little reason to
believe that Mozart could have been a great physicist, Newton a world-class musician,
or either a leading statesman.
(Gardner, 1991, p.112)
In the same vein, Anna Craft refers to ‘multiple creativities’ in her description of “a
state of mind in which all our intelligences are working together”, involving ‘seeing, thinking
and innovating’ (Craft, 2000, p.38).
There is some disagreement among scholars whether domain-specific intelligences
work together to produce creative thought or if domain-specific creativities draw on various
intelligences. If one accepts the concept of multiple intelligences, it seems congruent with
evidence from neurological memory research (Gabora, 2010) that creativity will associate
knowledge and experience from various domains held in the memory.

Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein (2004) bring together evidence to show that
substantially creative people in any field are polymaths, with unusually broad patters of
interests and expertise in more than one or two specific areas. Their research demonstrates that
“arts activities and interests as well as visual and spatial imagery and memory prove to be good
predictors of scientific achievement.” (Singer, 2004). It appears that creative artists and
innovative scientists both use careful observation, draw on mental imagery and fantasy, check
their efforts through abstraction, recognise many and varied interests, employ analogy,
patterning and modelling. (Root-Bernstein, 2004). In other words, eminently creative people
function competently in both analytical and associative thought patters and draw on a wide
range of memories. This should be highest priority information for educators whose aim it is
to advance creative innovation in future generations and concern those who have had a focus
on ‘data mining’ via standardised testing.
Environment
The concept of ‘environment’ here will refer to the academic as well as the physical and social
environment of the school and classroom.
An illustration of the effect of the traditional academic environment on creativity is
provided by Barbot, Lubart & Besançon (2016) as they cite Torrence’s longitudinal study
published in 1968. Here he examined an observed ‘slump’ of creativity in gifted children
around the ages of 9 or 10. Torrence concluded that the ‘normative effect of school’ was to
blame for this significant decline in creativity: as “children are taught to …. fit within the
classroom norms.” (Ibid p.9)
As already discussed above, an emphasis on formal exams has been shown to produce
a measurable decline in the frequency of divergent thinking (as a precursor to creativity) and
particularly so in Middle school children. (Yi, et. al,2013) Beghetto (2005) cites the review by
Collins and Amabile (1999) on motivation and creativity as he makes the point that a “mastery
environment” which emphasizes personal achievement is more conducive to the development
of creativity in students than an environment of inter-personal (or inter-group/school)
competition. In light of what has been considered above, it could be said that the mastery
environment, coupled with the permission to experiment with solutions (Gabora’s “playing
with a halo of potentiality surrounding concepts”) in the absence of high-stakes assessment,
comes close to a fertile academic environment for creativity.
Barbot, Lubart & Besançon (2016) have shown that the physical and cultural
environment a person lives (learns and works) in shapes “individual inclinations, interests, and
personal investments” deeply and continuously. (p.5) Thus a competitive school culture driven
by standardised assessment geared towards data collection, or even by an entrenched system
of external rewards, can be seen to be inhibiting creative achievement in students.
Recent innovations aimed at the physical environment in schools have included
innovative seating arrangements, ‘learning spaces’, ‘active furniture’. Built environment
researchers from the University of Salford have documented the effect which the physical
design of classrooms (including variations in desk orientation, natural light, noise, temperature,
air quality, flexibility of space, storage facilities, and use of colour) has on academic outcome.
Barrett et. al (2012) found that their research model “explained 51% of the variability in the
learning improvements of the pupils, over the course of a year. However, within this a high
level of explanation (73%) was identified at the “class” level, linked entirely to six built
environment design parameters.” As creativity research around cognition has shown, the
development of analytical thinking and memory (traditional ‘academic skills) are major
components of creativity education. Davie, et.al. (2013) have produced a systematic literature
review of research around the educational environments which optimize creativity. The
authors cite environmental factors such as the flexible use of spaces, working outside of the
classroom and/or the school, a ‘game-based’ approach to learning, connections to the ‘real
world’ (partnership with outside agencies), a degree of learner autonomy, and non-prescriptive
planning, among the most influential factors.
The research by Barrett et. al. and Davies et.al. seems to make a good point for investment in
functional, flexible, safe and comfortable classrooms to maximise creative potential in our
students. While the physical environment is difficult for teachers and even for school leaders
to influence, the social classroom environment provides ample opportunity.
Considering the social environment, Davis et. al. (2013) cite high teacher expectations,
mutual respect, flexibility, dialogue and the modelling of creative behaviour and attitudes by
teachers, as the most important features of a fruitful student-teacher relationship towards
maximizing creative potential. Barbot, Lubart & Besançon (2016) also point out that the
classroom climate is tightly correlated with the attitudes, and personal characteristics, of the
teacher, which in turn affect pedagogical praxis in the room. It seems that teachers who
understand creative cognition and are allowed to apply their own creative thinking in their
professional praxis, will be most effective in fostering creative thought in their students.
Tightly restricting teacher autonomy in terms of curriculum and pedagogy can be
assumed to have a detrimental effect on their ability to recognize the creative process at work
or to distinguish genuine immature creativity from disruptive behavior. As early as 1979,
Milgram & Feldman showed that there were correlations between teacher creativity and that
of students (also Davidovich & Milgram, 2006). R.M. Cropley (1995) reasons that this is the
case because creative teachers model creative behavior and it is not unreasonable to suspect
that teachers who are prevented from displaying creative behaviours will invert this correlation.
Teachers are, and will always stay, the central cog in the wheel of teaching and learning.
Children do not learn from ‘information sources’ as much as they learn from people, and the
younger the student, the more important the relationship they have with their teacher is likely
to be in that regard.
Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi (1996) first changed the question of “what is creativity” to
“where is creativity” as he conceived creative activity as an interaction between the person,
their domain of expertise and the social field they function in, thus an interaction of person,
knowledge and environment. Csikzentmihalyi’s definition of creativity (in contrast to that of
Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein cited above) specifically excludes ‘brilliant’ people, who
may be unusually bright but may not produce or “contribute something of permanent
significance” (1996, p.25). He also makes a distinction between people who simply experience
the world in novel and original ways and those who have “changed our culture in some
important respect” (p.26), citing as examples Leonardo da Vinci, Edison, Einstein and Picasso.
Csikzentmihalyi refers to creativity which changes cultures as ‘creativity with a ‘big C’ or
eminent creativity. Personal or ‘little c’ creativity, by contrast, is found in the realm of
‘everyday’ creativity. That these are not necessarily contrasting has already been alluded to
above.
In Csikzentmihalyi’s view then it would appear, that a truly creative person is one who
may or may not be ‘brilliant’, but whose creative activity causes a significant cultural change.
Notwithstanding that all four examples he cites are usually acknowledged to have been
particularly intelligent, the concept of ‘causing a significant cultural change’ is open to a moral
question: what kind of significant cultural change is going to be considered worthwhile (and
thus ‘creative’). Gregor Mendel worked in obscurity for many years even though he had sent
his paper on genetics to all the major European scientific societies “who collectively ignored
his work” (Plucker and Beghetto, 2004, p158). It would take another generation before the
scientific advances in biology would overcome racism, pride and apathy and Mendel’s work
was finally appreciated “and his creativity became the stuff of legend. “(Ibid.) The fact that his
creative solution was initially not considered to be ‘worthwhile’ in no way detracted from its
innovative genius. It may not be easy for educators to determine the success of the creative
endeavour of their students based on the parameters supplied by Csikzentmihalyi.
Affection
As early as 1958, Maslow pointed out the role which affection plays in creative
production. His paper Emotional blocks to creativity describes how emotional experiences can
block or promote creative endeavour. Melvin Shaw (2009) researched the feelings involved in
the creative process as experienced by engineering students and found positive emotions such
as the “joy of creation”, as well as fascination, excitement and satisfaction, to play a part in the
creative process, but students also needed to contend with frustration. It has been pointed out
by others above that the willingness to tolerate frustration is necessary to the creative process.
Zenasni and Lubart (2011) have shown that emotions impact on individual creativity, in that
emotional intensity can enhance creative potential.
Associative/divergent thought does not flourish in an atmosphere of anxiety or stress.
A recent study by Ritter and Fergusson (2017) experimentally tested whether specific states of
emotion (induced by specific normed excerpts of music) facilitates divergent and/or convergent
creativity. It was found that creative output was higher for participants who listened to ‘happy
music’ (i.e. positive music high on arousal) while performing divergent creativity tasks than
for those in a silent control group. Interestingly, no effect was measured for convergent
creativity.
Shallcross (1981) found that the emotional climate of the classroom must first of all be
safe: “The ground rules are personal guarantees that allow [students] to grow at their own rate,
retain the privacy of their work until they are ready to share it, and prize their possible
differences.” (p.19) It seems then that the opposite of these positive emotions will be
detrimental to creativity. Pressure to grow according to an imposed time table, public scrutiny
of one’s work – in particular via standardised test results - and pressure to conform will likely
produce feelings of being in danger (including but not limited to those arising from high-stakes
competition). Teachers will likely bring to mind Maslow’s hierarchy and recognize that safety
is a much more basic need than self-actualization. If we are to maximize creative thinking in
our students we must ensure their emotional safety.
Teacher concerns
In their research of pre-service teachers, Bolden et. al (2010) found that “there was a
consensus that creativity ought to be encouraged…there was also a degree of uncertainty about
how one might do that in the classroom”.
In order to prioritize teaching for creativity, teachers must believe that it is mouldable,
teachable, and developable (Cropley,1995) and they must obviously feel that they have the
temporal and academic space to creatively explore strategies for creative thinking with their
students. Beghetto (2005) found that teacher’s “efforts aimed at promoting student creativity
are often marginalized and overshadowed by a myriad of other demands” placed on their
instructional time. The message teachers often get from their superiors can imply that
compliance and adherence to rules, regulations, syllabi and curricula are of utmost importance
for success. As has been pointed out above, a persuasive argument can be made for the value
of teachers’ modelling behaviour. If teachers model test-oriented, competition driven, linear
thinking, their students are likely to regard this as ‘proper’ for school and follow suit – and thus
inhibit their own creative potential.
It takes a strong and informed professional to think ‘divergently’ in such a context. The
drive for data requires the ranking of students which requires the standardization of testing
which denies flexibility both of teaching and learning at every juncture and confirms to all
stakeholders the perception that the academic potential of a student is measurable by a fixed
number when it has been comprehensively shown that this is not the case.
In 2002, Runco and Johnson researched the beliefs teachers and parents held about the
traits of creative children in the USA and in India. They found in both cases creative children
were seen as “artistic, imaginative, and inventive” and that some were perceived to be “more
creative” than others. In researching the attitude of preservice teachers to creativity in the
classroom, Bolden, Harries, & Newton (2010) found that English, Art, Music and Science were
generally seen as creative subjects, with more scope for exploration, and fewer ‘correct’
answers.
Munakata, M. & Vaidya, A. (2015) also found that among science and mathematics
students and teachers, arts-related disciplines are deemed to be more creative than the sciences.
Teachers of young children claimed to believe that Mathematics is a creative subject in research
by Carruthers and Worthington (2005), “but closer inspection shows that they refer to the
opportunities mathematics sessions provide for creative activities in construction, art, and
songs and rhymes, rather than in mathematics itself.” Crowe, et al. (2008) found that “Teachers,
in particularly of subjects such as mathematics and the sciences sometimes associate the
analytical mode [convergent thinking] with the upper levels (analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation) of Bloom's taxonomy”.
As has been seen in this review, effective transfer of learning in order to form significant
new connections and insights is the consequence of associative thinking paired with analytical
ability and the recall of significant knowledge (via memory). Students who benefit from an
environment which provides the freedom and security for thought experiments will be
equipped to exceed factual analysis and move into true creative problem solving.
Therefore, in order to prioritise creativity, teachers must believe that convergent
thinking alone is not the road to superior academic achievement. According to Kennedy (2005),
teachers of older students often routinely dismiss the importance of creative thought altogether,
particularly in subjects like Mathematics “where they may see the acquisition of algorithms as
paramount and creativity as a distraction.” (cited in Beghetto, 2007) Unfortunately teachers are
often encouraged to take this view based on the demands placed upon their teaching by the
pursuit of league table results.
It appears therefore, that teachers’ beliefs about the nature and importance of creativity
in the classroom may be a significant point of leverage for ensuring creative thinking and
innovation become more mainstream in education in the future. The relationship between
teacher beliefs and praxis does not always look straightforward. It may be mediated by
misconceptions about their own and their students’ creative potential, pressures to cover a
prescribed curriculum, “teach to the test”, value judgements about the ‘worth’ of particular
subjects and particular types of knowledge, entrenched teaching styles, a lack of understanding
of the psychology of creativity, a lack of understanding of the cognition involved, as well as
other factors.
Research Methodology
The purpose of this study was to investigate the subjective views which teachers hold
about the place and importance of creativity in the curriculum because it is recognised that the
values people hold will impact on the choices they make, in this case, about how they plan for
and deliver creativity education.
The views of forty-one teachers from a variety of backgrounds were investigated using
aspects of Q Methodology in the beginning stages of the study. Q Methodology is a mixed-
mode method which was developed specifically in order to measure subjectivity (Brown 1980,
McKeown & Thomas, 1988, tenKloster, et al. 2008) and is an increasingly popular research
methodology across social, health and environmental research domains (Zabala & Pascual,
2016, p.2). Q Methodology is designed to interpret perspectives based on the ranking of sets
of statements which is developed based on an initial larger ‘concourse’ of expressions. The
concourse should be large enough to capture as many views as are prevalent and capture as
many diverse views as are likely on an issue. Respondents are asked to sort the set of
statements summarized from the concourse in order from ‘most agree’ to ‘most disagree’. The
present study scaled these possible responses from -4 to +4. Usually these rankings are
analysed using data reduction techniques in order to find similarities between respondents.
According to Zabala and Pascual (2016), “discussing the analytical process and looking for
progress in Q methodology is becoming increasingly relevant” because of the growing
popularity of the methodology which is not matched by research exploring the internal validity,
reliability or external replicability of Q studies (Ibid. p.2). The present study made use of the
data collection aspect of Q but not of the statistical data analysis methodology, given that the
data set was relatively compact and easily described.

Q methodology considers the group of respondents to be a “representation of the
population diversity” rather than a representative sample (Zabala and Pascual, 2016, p.3).
Identifying all perspectives regardless of any proportional representation they may have, could
be particularly important in areas such as education where highly influential leaders have a
strong impact on the behaviour of others. For the same reason, the sorting responses collected
for the present study were designed to be received anonymously and are only identifiable by
number (or any self-revelation respondents may have included in voluntary comments). To
identify the ‘archetypical’ responses, Q methodology correlates the entire response set and
reduces the data to a few typical responses using data reduction methods. This results in a small
number of sets of sorted statements different from each other (which Q terms ‘factors’) that
synthesize the perspectives among respondents.
The present study forgoes a statistical analysis in favour of qualitative description of
participants views around five areas of emphasis which emerged from the responses.
Respondents represent a random cross section of experienced teachers (minimum 2 years)
drawn from schools with diverse ICSEA7 ratings, whose views will be relevant in terms of an
exploration of the above focus questions. Participation in the survey was voluntary however,
which would have attracted teachers with strong opinions about the research topic to participate.
The fact that the questionnaire statements were summarized from a wide concourse of teacher
expressions (beyond those at the three nominated schools) should affect the validity of the
questionnaire responses positively and counteract the small sample size somewhat. Q Method’s
ability to look for archetypical responses rather than average responses may make a statistical
exploration of the collected data with Q worthwhile in a future study.
7
ICSEA stands for Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage and is a scale which provides
an indication of socio-educational background of students in a school.
Data Collection
Following the Q model for data collection, a ‘concourse’ of opinions held by educators
about the place of creativity in the curriculum was developed. A concourse is a hypothetical
concept that conveys the infinite set of possible expressions which refer to a particular topic.
In other words, it is a collection of many possible opinions, from multiple discourses and many
different points of view pertaining to the topic under investigation, as one is likely to come
across. (Watts & Stenner, 2005). The concourse statements are analysed for areas of meaning
and a set of statements is distilled -typically between 40 and 80 – which are provided to
respondents for ranking over a grid which represents a set frequency distribution (Zabala
&Pascual, 2016).
The present study collected 75 concourse statements by asking QLD teachers “How
important is creativity in your curriculum?” Responses were collected via personal
conversation as well as via the social media platform Facebook. The posed question was
purposefully less specific than it might have been, making no reference to the NC or particular
pedagogies, in order to facilitate the broad range of responses required. The 75 statements
collected were distilled into 24 succinct representative statements. In Q methodology, the
distribution grid is often shaped as a bell curve (quasi-normal distribution), based on the
assumption that fewer statements will be at the extreme end of agreement or disagreement.
(Brown, 1980) The current study did not make this restriction.
It is likely that Respondent 7 is not a valid response as all of the allocations that were made by
this respondent were made in the negative. The anonymous nature of the data collection made
it impossible to determine the respondent, however, they did supply a supplementary statement
(Appendix iii) which did not align with an overall completely negative sort. For this reason,
Respondent 7 has been excluded from any calculations of standard deviation or percentage
summary.
Discussion
The expressions around the place of creativity in the curriculum collected from teachers in the
initial phase of this study seemed to fall into five broad categories which were easily found
delineated in the research literature also:
environmental factors (yellow), conative
factors (pink), cognitive factors (green),
Figure 2- illustratio of the strength of agreement expressed
affective factors (blue) and teacher concerns
3.83965 (grey). Within the 24 statements provided for
Figure 1- illustration of standard deviaiton by domain.

‘sorting’, six related to cognition, six to
environmental factors, three to connation, three to affection and six to teacher concerns (see
Appendix ii). In the evaluation of the data collected, these areas will provide the framework
for discussion and will be appear in order of significance to teachers as revealed by the results.
Figure 1 shows the strength of agreement respondends collectively expressed in these
four domains adjusted proportionally. All five domains produced responses with large standard
deviations (see Figure 2). Very wide ranging views were recorded and may point to a basis in
opinion rather than researched-based knowledge guiding decisions about creativity in the class
room. Teachers generally recorded the view that environmental factors were the most
influential on creativity, but expressed a range of opinions within this domain. Conation and
cognition were considered close second and third in importance, each also with significant
standard deviation.
Teachers agreed most on the size of the effect which conation and affection may have
on creativity. Adjusted for Respondent 7, the standard deviation for conation was 3.84 and for
affection 4.10. Environmental factors experienced a standard deviation of 6.51 and cognition
of 6.66.
Respondent 7
Respondent 7
Respondent 7 Respondent 7
Figure 3- representations of the standard deviation of responses in the domains of conation, affection, cognition and environment.
More teachers agreed about the effect which conation and affection have on the
potential creativity in students, while fewer teachers agreed that the roles which the
environment cognition paly in general. It appreas that there is more agreement about the
influence (strong or weak) which the more innate variables may have on creative behaviour
than there is about the more manipulable ones. Interestingly, the most contentious area was
cognition which may indicate a spread of teacher
knowledge about how cognition contriubtes to
creative behaviour.
The category which received the most
Figure 4- representation of the standard deviation of diverse views however, was that of ‘teacher
responses to statements about issues of concern.
concerns’, with a standard deviation of 9.526 (adjusted for R7). This illustrates clearly that
some teachers strongly perceive creativity education to be associated with issues of concern
for themselves whereas others are very comfortable about the same issues and how they impact
on classroom management.
Environmental factors
Figure 4 represents a summary of the strength of
opinion expressed across the six statements
pertaining to ‘Environment’, illustrating the overall
strongest positive position for a domain. Respondent 7
Figure 5 – representation of responses to statements

2,3,14,15,16,21
Statement 15 - Creativity flourishes in an environment that encourages and does not punish
confident risk-taking- received the strongest positive agreement within this category,
disregarding the the anomalous response at (-4) by R7. At least one respondent still disagreed
mildly (at -1) and one had no strong opinion, indicating that professional experienced teachers
by no means all agree with the above statement and/or that around 4% of teachers are not aware
of the research that confirms the importance of an intellectually and emotionally safe
environment for the development of creative cognition.
Statement 2: Creativity in the Classroom is fostered by creative teachers who value
divergence, curiosity and playful exploration –received strong support from respondents, with
only three disagreeing (two authentically, one R7), and three returning a neutral response while
36 agreed and 17 of these very strongly.

Up to 10 % of teachers therefore do not perceive themselves to have the power to influence the
learning environment in their classroom effectively to produce “an environment that
encourages and does not punish confident risk-taking” (Statement 1), agreeing to this premise
in Statement 15 but seemingly not believing that teachers foster this by valuing ‘divergence,
curiosity and playful exploration’ (Statement2).
Statement 21 – Creativity is as important as literacy – which emerged from the concourse via
a number of strongly expressed initial statements akin to slogans, and which was included
among the sort statements both because it represented a recurring idea and because the idea
expressed seemed somewhat dogmatic and controversial. The statement found a surprising
amount of strong agreement.
The literature review confirmed that teachers have been recorded as consistently rating
creativity as an important aspect of education, and the strength of agreement expressed above
is not surprising, particularly if the one strongly negative allocation is recognized as the
anomalous Respondent 7. This then means that 86% of teachers held creativity to be as
important as literacy (2% neutral and 12% disagreeing slightly).
Respondents 8, 27 and 31 described themselves as curriculum co-ordinators and all three
agreed (+2,+1,+4 respectively). In light of this, it is surprising that their priorities have not
‘filtered down’ to their staff, five of whom disagree with this premise and more concerningly,
one (R38) had no opinion on this important point.
Interestingly, the proposal that Creativity is central to all teaching and learning- Statement 14
received 9 ‘neutral’ ratings. Four disagreed while the majority was fairly stronly in favour. One
could easily argue that ‘literacy is central to all teaching and learning’ and given that creativity
was deemed to be as important as literacy by 17 respondents above, it is a surprise to discover
it is not, however, considered central to schools’ core business of teaching and learning.
Among those who were ‘neutral’ on this point was R8, a curriculum-coordinator who agreed
that creativity was as important as literacy above, providing quite an inconsistent response.
Statement 17 - Personal creativity is influenced by the social, cultural and environmental
context the learner functions in- has a similar, slightly more positive, spread. This seems to be
attesting that most respondents believe that the choices they make as teachers (about the
academic, cultural and social environment in their classrooms) have a potentially significant
impact on their students’ creativity but may be mitigated by the responses to Statement 2 which
saw 10% of teachers believe their agency is not important in this respect.
The positive response to S17 is also weakened by the fact that teachers generally agreed more
about the importance of conation and affection for creative behaviour in students; factors which
they as teachers, can influence less than the social, cultural and environmental context their
students function in. The response to this question may also indicate that teachers do not
associate social and cultural environments with their classrooms particularly closely.
In Statement 3: The assessment and evaluation of students’ creative efforts can be
detrimental to creativity responses were more evenly spread with 15 responses disagreeing, 4
neutral and 23 in agreeance. Assessment speaks directly to the academic environment in a
classroom and perhaps for this reason, teachers’ response was more cautious. It is possible that
S3 suffered from a lack of precision in the discrimination between informal and formal,
formative and summative assessment in the statement which may have contributed to the wide
spread of responses here.
Opinions about the role of assessment quite go to the heart of the current discussion and
will be referred to again below. It is clear from the literature that assessment, when it is aimed
at improvement, is not harmful to the development of creativity (Beghetto, 2005) but that high-
stakes assessment aimed at ranking students negatively affects student perseverance,
preparedness to take risks and pursue challenges, thus stifling the development of creative
habits. It seems plausible that the responses collected above reflect an awareness among
teachers that some types of assessment are more useful/harmful than others.
In summary, teachers mostly recognize that developing the creativity of their students
is important and evidence an understanding that their actions and choices about the
environment they provide for students are significant in the pursuit of teaching for creativity.
It appears that teachers do understand that the flourishing of Csikzentmihalyi’s ‘little c’
creativity – or what others have referred to as ‘possibility thinking’ (Craft 200) - depends on
the small, every-day choices they make in their own classrooms towards an environment that
“value(s) divergence, curiosity and playful exploration”. The literature reviewed seems to
point to the fact that a controlled, performance- and data- driven environment such as exists in
many schools today, does not allow creative practice on behalf of the teacher, however.
Teachers recognize the paradoxical situation which requires someone to both improve ‘pupil
performance’ (as measured by standardised tests year on year) and at the same time, lead
students to excel at creative problem-solving and innovation.

While improved academic outcome is indeed linked to excellence in creative problem-
solving (via all the cognitive steps that go into that process), competitively measuring this
process has been shown to undermine its effectiveness. Decision-makers at a school and
authority level ought to consider the plethora of research that is available in this area and
implement research-driven rather than fear-driven strategies towards excellence, which might
well include action plans which empower teachers to make more autonomous decisions to
maximize potential creative outcomes in their classes.
Decentralizing decision-making can be challenging for those responsible for outcomes.
An understanding that ‘eminent’ creativity (i.e. the type that provides novel and useful new
solutions and products) does not just appear out of nowhere and that ‘little’ and ‘everyday’
creativity (i.e. the messy process which initially appears to have no standardize-able,
measurable outcome) is a necessary precursor to the eminent kind: like an engine that drives
potential genius. Educators must understand the psychological mechanics of ‘little c’
possibility thinking so that the potential for ‘big C’ impact is not thwarted in the classroom.
This imperative is summarized by R15, a teacher experienced both in primary and secondary
education, who added the comment: “Creativity is a skill that can be taught to anyone.” –
“Creativity is taught by the intentional actions of teachers in classrooms.” – Yes, I agree, but
I have no idea about the HOW!”
Conation
The second largest area of agreement regarding factors influencing creativity development was
conation. Conation refers to aspects of personality which may, of course, still be developing in
school aged students and therefore be particularly

sensitive to the types of environmental influences thus
far described. Early literature on creativity often
framed it as a collection of innate ‘traits’ (Guildford,
1950) and it appears that the respondents in this study Figure 6- representation of responses to statements
6,8 and 17
still hold to this view in the main.
Statement 8 Creativity is innate and is available to every person in different measure -
received the broadest support with thirteen people agreeing very strongly, and thirty-two
agreeing to some extent. As is the case with many of the results, very divergent opinions were
also represented (and one of the -4 positions represents R7).
Statement 6 proposed that Creativity is facilitated by certain states/habits of mind in balance:
including problem posing, focusing, imagining and persisting. This could possibly be
understood as an elaboration on Statement 8, which may explain why thirty-four respondents
agreed and a similar number remained neutral. The slightly stronger agreement may be
influenced by the fact that teachers may recognize that habits of mind may be developed
beyond what is innate and ‘available in different measure’ to individuals.
It is less clear why teachers seem to believe that the environment they provide in their
classroom has an important impact on creativity development but some students may never
benefit from this because creativity is a collection of ‘innate’ traits. Responses to the statements
in this domain expose possible inconsistencies like those observed under the ‘environment’
domain above.
Statement 17 attempts to consolidate the position that creativity is not easily influenced by
external forces: Personal creativity is mitigated by some factors we cannot influence, such as
age, personality or predisposition, and teachers agreed more cautiously to this suggestion.
The results in this domain seem to describe opinions which run counter to the belief that
environmental factors influence the development of creativity decisively, which was expressed
in the results discussed above. While at least 10 (minus R7) respondents disagreed and thus
affirmed that the environmental factors they considered above were indeed powerful
influencers, a more significant number of respondents (64%) believe that creativity cannot be
developed to the same degree by most people due to innate conative factors. 65% also believe
(as will be shown below) that Creativity is a skill that can be taught to anyone, exhibiting again
the complexity of this issue in teachers’ minds.
As demonstrated by the emphasis in the NC document, schools are generally geared
towards convergent thought: out of seven identified general capabilities, only one refers to
creativity: Critical and Creative Thinking. The NC recognises that critical and creative thinking
are two separate yet related complementary modes of cognition8 which are generally referred
to as convergent and divergent/ associative and analytical modes of thinking in the literature.
Still, the document is looking for a ‘product’, stating “The products of creative endeavour can
involve complex representations and images, investigations and performances, digital and
computer-generated output, or occur as virtual reality.” It could be argued that these products
8
“Critical thinking is at the core of most intellectual activity that involves students learning to recognise or develop an argument,
use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems. Examples of critical
thinking skills are interpreting, analysing, evaluating, explaining, sequencing, reasoning, comparing, questioning, inferring,
hypothesising, appraising, testing and generalising. Creative thinking involves students learning to generate and apply new ideas
in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links
that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover
possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition. “(https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-
curriculum/general-capabilities/critical-and-creative-thinking/)
may indeed be creative, but it is more likely that they are not; certainly not, if the definition of
creativity given by many theorists (variations on ‘novel AND useful’) is applied. Time
restrictions and the need to ‘finish this assessment’ which exist in schools are very likely to
produce pseudo-creative products which let teachers and administrators tick a box and rob
students of the opportunity to develop creatively independent of an ‘outcome’.
Efficiency in convergent thinking is easy to test. Divergent thought is more difficult to
observe. Both types of thinking appear to be important for creativity and neurological research
seems to indicate that associative thought may be more fruitful than convergent thought.
Describing the generation of creative ideas, Howard-Jones and Murray (2003)
suggested that divergent thought ensures originality, while convergent thought ensures
appropriateness: “a creative idea is generally considered to possess two main qualities—
appropriateness and originality”. If both convergent and divergent thought are required for
students to excel in creativity – and indeed, if current research is correct and divergence will
prove to be far more important than is currently thought - schools and teachers must take into
account the conditions that seem to be required for divergent thinking to occur and step away
from time-table and outcome driven expectations; not least in order to maximize the chances
for creative achievement by those students whose academic IQ may lie outside of the
correlation curve cited by Sternberg.
Several considerations emerge from the results discussed so far: Firstly, if the creative
product is supremely important, then carefully structured problem-solving activities and the
acquisition of mastery skills in particular domains will lead students towards inventing valuable
solutions. In this model, students deliberately practise cognitive skills such as posing insightful
questions, clarifying ideas, making discerning choices between alternatives and making
meaningful connections across several domains to come up with a ‘novel and useful’ solution.
They also need to become fluent in their preferred area of expertise. For this reason, perhaps,
Gardner (1991) advocates that “the most important event in a child’s education is the discovery
of a domain of strength and interest” (p.290/1) illustrating his belief in “widely divergent talent
profiles” which should be “identified and nourished from an early age”. (291) In this case, it is
the teacher’s role to provide the stimulus and mentoring necessary for children to acquire
proficiency in the cognitive skills and domain specific skills they will need to produce
something creative.
If, however, the creative process is more important, if genius solutions stem from
strings of ‘happy little accidents’, if inspiration is possible, then teachers’ role widens to include
the provision of a suitable environment and sufficient space and freedom from
assessment/ranking pressure, in which individual creativity may grow.
Howard Gardner, who has long felt that “creativity is most likely to be fostered by a
transformative atmosphere […and] most likely to be thwarted by an excessively mimetic
regimen” (1991, p.14) recognized in his research on Chinese children’s creativity that
Chinese culture is directly opposed to this, yet was not prevented from making the most
remarkable technological and aesthetic discoveries over the millennia. […] The
Chinese education system embraces “mimetic” modes in the most rigorous (…) way
imaginable and yet […] these practices do not prevent Chinese individuals from
achieving innovations in many spheres. […] …clearly, the story of creativity is much
more complex than I had imagined.
(Ibid., p.15)
Conflicting advice for teachers, based on one or the other philosophical stance, abounds
and is regularly adopted in a fairly uncritical way in ‘directives’ issued by education authorities
and curriculum advisors. ACARA’s Learning Continuum for Critical and Creative Thinking
is clearly based on a ‘product’ view of creativity evidenced by the fact that only one of the sub-
elements refers to ‘imagining’ and the breakdown of behaviours associated with each mode of
thinking, illustrates the degree of arbitrariness alluded to above, as ‘hypothesizing’ is described
as belonging to critical thought and ‘constructing theories’ as belonging to creative thought.
Secondly, some personal characteristics (such as the ability to tolerate ambiguity and
the ability to focus) may be enhanced or perhaps even developed through training, such as
through instrumental music practice for example. (Collins,2013) Thus, teachers must consider
what changes may be made to the educational environment to provide students with research
based opportunities to enhance and/or develop personal characteristics that have been shown
to be necessary for creative endeavour.
Thirdly, since patterns of personality traits must be coupled with a store of knowledge
in order to be of creative use (according to the literature reviewed), consideration must be given
to how children are to acquire this knowledge. Pedagogical decisions must be made which will
include choices about how to sequence ‘discovery’ and ‘mastery’ approaches in the classroom.
Teachers’ perceptions around this will be explored further below.
Like the concept of creativity itself, ‘critical thinking’ also does not seem to be easy to
define: “although academics […] consider critical thinking skill to be a crucial outcome of …
education, many would have difficulty defining exactly what critical thinking is.” (Quitadamo
et al, 2007, p. 141).
Cognition
received the third highest agreement score (see Fig.1).
Most respondents believed that creativity was linked to
cognition in significant ways. Creativity is a skill that
Figure 7- representation of responses to statement 1,

7, 10, 11, 18, 22
can be taught to anyone (Statement1) received cautious general agreement with at least
respondents disagreeing however (accounting for R7).
Given that these same respondents must have recorded agreement that the environment is a
significant factor in the development of creativity (i.e. that conscious decisions made by
educators make a difference in this regard), the response to Statement 1 indicates that not all
respondents are convinced that environmental choices are enough to foster creativity, that some
people may not be able to develop it, that its development is not related to cognition or that
some people may simply ‘have it’ as an innate trait rather than a developed skill. This
consolidates the indication of the same provided by responses discussed above.
Statement 7 – Creativity is taught by the deliberate actions of teachers in classrooms. -
was met with even more caution, indicating that teachers somewhat agree that their intentional
actions (their pedagogy) directly contributes to the development of creativity in students. In
the light of the strong agreement that a certain environment is necessary, it is surprising to find
teachers may feel that their deliberate actions only carry limited power to affect that
environment.
The question then arises what may cause this hesitancy: lack of information, lack of
autonomy, lack of opportunity. Given that 28 respondents believe that creativity is the result of
skill development according to the responses gathered on S10 (Creativity is the result of skill
development, high teacher expectation and student resilience ), but only 26 believe that the
deliberate actions of teachers in classrooms facilitate this skill development (S7) and 11 are
definitely sure that they cannot deliberately teach creativity (S7), it is not surprising that both
statements 7 and 11 received a number of ‘neutral’ or weak (-1 or +1) responses, perhaps
indicating a lack of concrete information about the nature of human creativity.
Statement 11 refers again to assessment (as did S3) but with an emphasis on the
cognitive process of reflection being a necessary part of the creative process, rather than
assessment being imposed by the school environment for extrinsic reasons. The assessment
and evaluation of students’ creative efforts are a necessary part of the creative process was
responded to with one of the most evenly spread response matrices:
Below the response to S3 for comparison:
The similarity in responses to these two statements (which posit opposing views on assessment)
are the strongest indicator yet that the thinking teachers are undertaking on creativity
development may not be comprehensive or well informed. It is possible that a Likert scale
response may not provide the necessary context for some respondents to discriminate their
answers sufficiently, however, responses could also point to teacher insecurity. Respondent 18
for example, provided the following additional comment:
How to teach and foster creativity was not a part of my teacher training at university
and real change will probably not occur until enough is known and taught in this area.
Statement 18 - required a response to Creativity is the application of higher order
thinking to problems in order to produce novel and useful outcomes. It was possible to
determine that the one strongly negative response belonged to Respondent 7 (discussed above).
This statement garnered a very positive response and it reflects the definition of creativity
promoted by theorists such as Csikzentmihalyi which layers the condition of ‘useful outcome’
over simple divergent thinking. At least five teachers however, feel that a practical and useful
outcome is not overly relevant to creativity and only 6 feel that it is of high importance.
S18 and S22 (Creativity is related to critical thinking.) explore teachers’ perceptions of the
similarities (or differences) between critical thinking and creative thinking.
S18 makes it clear that the majority believe that when higher order thinking produces a useful
outcome, creativity was involved. A surprising eight (16%) respondents however have no
strong opinion on whether creativity and critical thinking are related and at least four (8%) find
there to be no such connection, meaning 24% of teachers hold a different definition of creativity
than the curriculum document they are working from offers.
Clearly some respondents are thinking very precisely about the relationship between
critical and creative thinking as illustrated in the comment made by Respondent 26 which
clearly relates the two:
In my classroom creativity is THE environment, curriculum is encased within. To foster

a classroom of creative thinkers leads to endless possibilities’ including being able to
think outside the box and to question and reflect upon what is the “norm”.
Teachers generally believe that creativity is related to cognition and can be taught but
are not as confident about how critical thinking and creativity are related. This is not surprising
given that theorists and academics alike have some difficulty coming to a consensus as well.
(Quitadamo et al, 2007, p. 141)
The results of the study so far have shown that teachers generally realize that creativity
is important, can be developed, requires certain environmental factors to flourish and is

influenced by teacher decision making, but that they are less sure about the ‘mechanics’ of how
to go about the process of developing “purposeful self-regulatory judgement that drives
problem-solving and decision–making” (op.cit., p.328), i.e. creativity, in their students in a day
to day context or whether this is always possible.
Domain specificity of knowledge emerged as a significant consideration in reviewing
the literature on creativity education and it is one which plays directly into considerations
around education and curriculum. As Baer (cited in Plucker & Beghetto, 2004) has pointed out:
if creativity is domain specific, it follows that teaching ought to be based on domain specific
strategies. If creativity is domain-transcendent however, the potential to incorporate creativity-
focussed strategies exists in many domains, and opportunities for practice and immersion will
be lost if this is not recognised.
It stands to reason that a domain-specific skills and knowledge in creative people
increase as their expertise and experience and thus their mastery and fluency in a particular
domain increases, resulting in high quality creative output which will increase motivation, task-
commitment and passion. This may explain why Mozart was not an outstanding engineer, but
it does by no means prove that he could not have been (see Gardner, 1991, p.112, cited above).
In fact, it stands to reason to believe that Mozart’s childhood benefitted from the kind of
divergent atmosphere that allowed his developing expertise the freedom to practice and
experiment in a fertile musical environment. Had his father been an engineer who had taken
his boy on trips across Europe to study machinery, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that
the world might have gained a genius engineer rather than a genius composer in Wolfgang
Amadeus.
Creativity therefore may look domain-specific when it really is not. Indeed, Plucker &
Beghetto (2004 posit that creativity has both domain-general and domain-specific
characteristics and there should not be any artificial dichotomy. They cite literature on transfer
learning (specifically Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996) which shows that a narrow focus on
particular domains inhibits transfer of learning, while flexibility of thinking practised via the
application of creative strategies across contexts, becomes a tool to promote knowledge transfer
to problems in different domains and thus enables the creative process. The ability to apply
information from one context in another has been described as a key component of creative
insight. (Sternberg & Davidson, 1995) It is also the ninth sub-element of the ACARA learning
continuum for ‘Critical and Creative Thinking’.
Affection
Statement 9 - Creativity is sparked by inspiration
and divergent, unorthodox thought, centering in
artistic endeavor – attempts to consolidate any

Figure 8 -representation of responses to
statements 9, 23 and 24.
indications that teachers believe creativity to be
more stable, more innate and less associated perhaps with critical thinking. It also reflects an
opinion which emerged from initial conversations which positions all creative behaviour in
‘the arts’.
Statement 23 - Critical thinking is analytical and therefore not necessarily related to creativity.
– attempts expose the latent perception that creativity may only be associative and never
analytical. R6, an Early Childhood teacher and R14, a Primary specialist, agreed with S23 (at
+1). Both however disagreed (at -2) with the proposition of S24 below. R18 and R41 agreed
very strongly with S23 (both at +4). R18 disagreed with S24 (at -3) and R41 held a neutral
view. In other words, these teachers do not necessarily associate creativity with critical thinking
but they also do not associate it with intuition or non-rational thought (or they have no strong
opinion about it). These again, are responses, like several described above, which illustrate a
lack of cohesion in teachers’ perceptions. R11(a primary specialist teacher) also agreed with
S23 at +1 and then agreed (at +2) with S24 below. While this position is more consistent, it is
contrary to both the NC and the research literature.
Statement 24 - I associate creativity with intuition, day dreaming and non-rational thought.
Responses to S24 should logically relate to those given to S23. If critical thinking is not
necessarily related to creative thought because the former is analytical, then it follows that
creative thought can be associated with non-rational, associative thought.
All of the above domains clearly interrelate as they apply to students’ creativity
development. Emotions are affected by the environment as much as the environment is affected
by the emotions of the people inhabiting it. The personal traits and habits of these people matter
when they must work together, as do both IQ and EQ. The condition which teachers and
students must work under are however, partly at least, subject to decisions taken at a classroom
and school level. What teachers and administrators (as well as students and parents) believe
about the nature of nature and importance of creativity will make the decisive difference in the
pursuit of high quality creative output by current and future generations of students. As has
been pointed out above, belief precedes action – and knowledge must feed belief. It follows
from this premise that if knowledge is lacking, belief may be based on anecdotal evidence or
urban myth which may lead to curriculum decision and pedagogical actions which do not
achieve the outcome desired.

Teacher Concerns
As mentioned above, opinions diverged most in
responses about teacher concerns. Figure 7 illustrates a
summary of the spread of responses provided.
Statement 4 - There is not enough time and mental space
in the curriculum to teach overtly for creativity - 49% Figure 9- standard deviation of views expressed
in response to statements 4,5,12,13,19,20.
disagreed, 46 % agreed and 5% remained neutral. Adjusted for R7.
Responses may illustrate a possible belief that ‘overt’ teaching for creativity must mean
‘separate’ rather than across domains. Inconsistently, however, teachers generally did not
agree that (Statement 12) Teaching for creativity adds content or procedures to the classroom
which adds to teacher workload.
Here 54% agreed that their workload would not increase if they taught for creativity. Perhaps
this represents the feeling that teaching for creativity should not be ‘overt’, despite the NC
requiring this explicitly and teachers’ agreement in other responses that students’ creative
development is influenced by overt teacher actions (on social, cultural AND academic
variables).
Responses to Statement 19 - The development of creativity is yet another thing to add
to my growing list of priorities indicated that most teachers understand that the teaching of
skills for creativity and innovation is not a ‘new’ responsibility being ‘added’ to their portfolio.
63% disagreed with the premise while some (at 0 and +1) were somewhat concerned and a few
greatly concerned.
Like so many responses this survey looked at, this one illustrates both the breadth of perception
among teachers (perhaps indicating a lack of professional conversation) and some significant
misunderstandings of both the literature and the requirements of the NC.
Statement 5 - The drive for data via the preparation for standardised tests stifles
teaching for creativity in the classroom – received the most polarized response of all statements
in the sort. Teachers who participated in this survey work in many different situations and may
experience data collection very differently. Of the five (adjusted for R7) who disagreed strongly
(-4 or -3), three were specialist teachers (such as Art, Music or PE), not involved in standardised
test preparation and two were primary curriculum coordinators.
78% of teachers who responded felt to varying degrees, that the burden of data collection via
standardised tests negatively impacts on their ability to provide students with the opportunity
to develop skills to innovate and create. The academic literature comprehensively and clearly
supports them in this view.
The purpose of this survey was to gage teacher perceptions and understandings as these will
give rise to teacher actions. The responses collected for Statement 20- My curriculum is largely
framed and developed by others rather than by me in response to children’s needs and
interests- are concerning because they indicate that 36% of teachers feel that they do not have
the freedom necessary to follow their students’ interests or inclinations in the curriculum.
The literature has shown how important intrinsic motivation is for creativity, or indeed
extrinsic motivation if it relates to topics of personal interest. (Lamb-Sinclair,2016; Amabile,
1996, Craft 2002). Research has also provided evidence that mental space and time are required
for associative thought to blossom into productive creative thought. (Sawyer 2011, Blair and
Razza, 2007). Productivity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously described the
conditions necessary for creative success in his work on ‘flow’, first developed in 1990.
Schmidt (2010) summarizes as follows:
1) engagement in activity chosen for its own sake

(2) perceived challenges of the task at hand that are relatively high and in balance with one’s perceived
skills;
(3) clear proximal goals that are regarded as important;
(4) immediate feedback indicating one’s success at meeting these goals; and
(5) highly focused, rather than divided or scattered, attention.
Citing the story of SONY as a prime example of the operation of ‘flow’,
Csikszentmihalyi relates how founder, Masaru Ibuka, started his innovative company without
a product: all that SONY had initially was an idea: to establish a workplace where engineers
can “feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to
their heart’s content” (2002). Csikszentmihalyi’s research, and that of those following in his
footsteps, provides ample justification for an urgent reduction of time and performance
pressure in schools if we, as a society, wish to foster innovation in the next generation. Not
only will students develop their creative potential, “[t]eenagers who report more flow tend to
be happier, and they develop academic talents further than teens who are in flow less often.”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1998) An analysis of the NC is outside of the scope of this study, but the
perception alone, that no space or freedom exists to pursue avenues of interest a class or student
may have, is concerning.
Statement 13 - referred to the concern that Encouraging creativity in students
heightens the risk of unruly behaviour in the class room. The great majority of teachers (62%)
felt that this was not the case. 22% felt that this was cause for concern.
While it is reassuring that most teachers do not associate creativity with a negative behaviour,
the fact a significant minority do illustrates a possible misunderstanding of the nature of
creative activity. It is possible these teachers expect states of chaos and confusion rather than
absorbed focus in their students. This statement received the most ‘negative agreement’ of all
statements provided.
Summary
In answer to the questions posed at the beginning of this study: teachers believe
overwhelmingly in the importance of creativity in the curriculum, but their perceptions do not
generally evidence a research-based understanding of human creativity. This impacts their
classroom practice as it manifests in a lack of confidence about the principles of cognition as
well as about the way the academic and social environment need to be arranged to maximise
creativity development. Furthermore, teachers do not always feel able to teach for creativity
and neither to they feel enabled to do so as the prevalent quest for data via standardised testing
is perceived as a severe impediment.
The matrix below displays the statements provided for sort in terms of least popular to
most popular (it is displayed without Respondent 7). It also clearly displays the range of
responses each statement received. None were universally accepted or rejected and even those
measuring strong support or disapproval always attract several opposite opinions as well.
The literature review found that despite an overwhelming amount of literature on the
nature of human creativity being available, there is very little broad-based consensus among
scholars, so perhaps it is not surprising that this situation is mirrored among teachers. This
opens the question whether Respondent 18 would have been more confident, had they
benefitted from this increasingly important area of pedagogy being dealt with in their university
education:
How to teach and foster creativity was not a part of my teacher training at university and real change will
probably not occur until enough is known and taught in this area. (R18)
In addition, psycho-neurological research is progressing at a rate where current
definitions of creative behaviour may soon need to be updated (Sawyer, 2011) and an education
degree undertaken a decade or more ago may not be in any position to inform teachers for
effective praxis today. Disagreement about the nature of creativity and how it can be nurtured
as well as about the challenges this may provide in schools is one of the most obvious results
of this study. This is in line with the findings of Bolden et. al (2010) that “there was a consensus
that creativity ought to be encouraged…there was also a degree of uncertainty about how one
might do that in the classroom”. Respondent 13 provided the following insight into this
frustration:
Creativity is a skill that can be taught to anyone." "Creativity is taught by the intentional actions of
teachers in classrooms." Yes, I agree - but I have no idea about the how!
Respondent 21 noted:
I'd be interested in attending a PD to teach creativity across the curriculum.
R.W. Connell (1985) studied teachers views of their work and found that “half-articulated
operating principles … characterize teachers’ work and opinions (p.182) which led to the
consideration that “[t]he inarticulateness of teachers’ knowledge of their own trade is perhaps
one reason for their willingness to accept bits of over-articulate knowledge that seem to offer
a scientific base for their profession.” (p.174).

The lack of confidence that was generally observed in the results, and the strength of
feeling around the category of ‘teacher concerns’, may play into the reason that conation and
affection emerged as those domains which teachers agreed about most: they may be domains
which teachers feel more confident about, than cognition and the academic/social environment.
The results could highlight that teachers generally feel that cognition as it applies to creative
thought is not well understood and that teacher control over the teaching environment is
perceived to be inhibited.
It is worth highlighting in this summary that more than three quarters of teachers (76%)
of teachers identified standardised testing as a detrimental influence on creativity in their
classrooms. The academic literature agrees. (Sternberg, 2015; Kohn,2000; Gerald, 2006;
Linden, 2007) Respondent 15 recorded that “[s]tandardised test prep has killed creativity. The
need to focus on such, if even for a few weeks, increases more instructional time spent in ELA,
and Mathematics. Science and Social Studies are nearly second fiddle.” Respondent 2 shared
that “[w]here students are taught exclusively from C2C assessments, NAPLAN or to cover a
content in a fixed time frame, they appear to experience high anxiety and insecurity when asked
to create.” Respondent 11 links this concern to the school environment at large: “Unfortunately
in primary schools children are ground down to fit the standardised “norm.”
It is concerning that teachers feel less than powerful to manipulate the academic
environment for their classes, because the research literature makes clear that teacher
expectations, attitudes and behaviour are the most important variable in the maximization of
creative potential in students. (Davis et. al.2013) Without question, these behaviours and
attitudes should not just be positive and encouraging but should be securely grounded in
psychological and neuro-psychological research, including that which exists on standardised
testing.
The prevalence of testing designed to rank (students, teachers, programs, schools,
principals, etc.) is probably not based as much on educational goals as it is on political and
economic ones. Rowe (2000) suggests that ‘market ideologies’ … have fostered a climate in
which competition has begun to dominate co-operation.” The competitive spirit is counter-
productive to the development of a new innovative generation while it is counter-intuitive to
many power brokers of the current generation. Schools, teachers and learners must find ways
to prioritize genuine cooperation across levels and sectors while eschewing the lure of simply
following the lead set by technology companies who naturally espouse a competitive business
model.
Recommendations
The current examination of teachers’ perceptions on the issue of creativity education is
informative to researchers, educational decision-makers and teachers themselves in that it helps
to elucidate why there may be an observed ‘silence’ (Sternberg) in classrooms. There is great
potential for education to lead the way into the future based on a student experience which
foregrounds the development of innovation skills but this potential seems currently thwarted
by at least two factors.
Firstly, a lack of expertise and confidence hampering practising teachers who are keenly
aware of the importance of creativity education but are not as securely connected to
knowledges and skills which would help them implement this in their classrooms and secondly
by the current infatuation with standardised testing and ‘data mining’ based on competitive
models of progress as emphasized above. Sternberg (2005) further makes mention of
“entrenchment” of ideas among teachers, but the current study did not find evidence of this.
Participant 10 suggested
Let’s keep the discussion going so that we can break down the clichés and catch phrases about
creativity. We know that schools kill creativity. Teachers, however love creativity. Look at our cultures
history and let's look at the great teachers and philosophers who have helped creativity to flourish.
Surly the most important thing to have going into the uncertain future we have.
Keeping the professional conversation going – while we invite the researchers and experts in
to our midst - with the aim to reflect on and improve our practice, is likely among the most
productive ways forward.

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Appendices
Appendix i - Concourse of preliminary statements
if u throw out creativity... ur just a textbook... why bother coming to school at all... u can learn the rest
at home – E.
to be truly creative, you use elements you understand, that are part of your vocabulary, not just
accidental - D.O.
There is often not enough time for creative activities: creative part of the lesson tends to be sacrificed if
time is short – M.
Creativity encourages students to think, to problem solve and to produce authentic and highly original
work... it take greater skill, greater commitment and more time – E.
I CAN'T EVEN CONSIDER CREATIVITY BECAUSE MY CURRICULUM IS TOO CROWDED –

K.
Creativity is an ESSENTIAL component of learning ... even in maths students can come up with
creative stories around number facts - quick, simple and accommodates different learning styles. – C.K.
Everyone does it [being creative] without thinking about it – it’s natural – C.P.
Teaching is more art than science.... everything we do is creative anyway. – D.
It's an important part of my curriculum, though I find I don't have enough time with students to include
it as regularly as I'd like.- R.
One of the most important objectives we have as music teachers is to develop musical skills (musical
imagination/innner hearing acquired through performance and listening) in harmony with the
possibilities mainly defined by our students' age and prior musical experiences. The musical skills
acquired this way will eventually enable them to pursue independent musical work. As soon as some
basic musical skills have been acquired students are encouraged to do creative work including
improvisation and composition. These activities are usually centred around the concept of variation. It
is the first important step in the process of developing generative skills. L.N.
I want to be excited and be creative to try something new every lesson, I wish A.S.
In my teaching days, creativity was always incorporated into most academic lessons A.P.
We need all the things that are indicated in our curriculum docs – and creativity is in there, isn’t it. We
have to improve the way we teach the curriculum – K.
Curriculum should be holistic – is that the same as ‘creative’? I’m not sure. I think a holistic curriculum
would make room for creative endeavour - J.J.
Creativity is in place from day 1 of prep music when they respond to the music by moving and create
actions on as we sing (initial ideas provided and used as a fall back for kids who can't think of what to
do yet themselves) D.
More time and more (mental and emotional) space would help everyone develop their creativity more
effectively – D.B.
One of the things I do is lead innovation workshops where we need people to think creatively. We've found we
need to specifically teach creativity. Starting off with helping people to believe they can be creative, because
many of them think they can't (this is probably more true of adults than kids). Then we give them tools to bring
out creative ideas. There will always be some people who are naturally creative but there are many who need
scaffolding and have to be purposely stretched otherwise they just do what they've always done and revert to
what they know.- R.G.
Do we need to teach kids to be creative? Absolutely. In the workplace, whatever they end up doing there is
continual change. People need to be able to think creatively and do things in new and better ways. You need
be able to try things that might fail but also might succeed. You need to be confident and comfortable to do
that. Kids that have learned to do that will have a huge advantage.- F.
Any of the info from Victor Wooten on Music is a language is amazing. My favourite thing he says is we
improvise every time we speak and the way be become better speakers is through building our vocabulary
and expanding our grammar. We then experiment with language over and over and making mistakes and
speaking with proficient speakers helps us to master language. – M.
From me: you can only improvise or create as well as the skills you possess. So my first point of call is skill
acquisition. From there I would go to improvisation with focus... so choosing a skill/element and
experimenting with it so the improvisation has direction. Once students have spent time experimenting and
have developed improvising skills then I would put more focus on creating. Again, teaching creativity by
giving setting boundaries so the compositions have purpose and momentum. – J.S.
Creativity is at the essence of what we do as teachers. B.
Creativity can and should be taught and you should be a central component of education. Look also at the
work of Csikszentmihaly. You will remember from uni where we talked about the notion of creativity and
flow. This is the important and critical component which none of the so-called creativity researchers seem to
include in their thinking. Creativity should also be understood in terms of application not just random ideas
which some people have. J.C.
some kids need to be taught... creativity is innate but some student's life experiences reduces the depth of
their creativity as noted by some of your teachers here... technology or limited life experience due to
working parents or parents with personal difficulties means some kids haven't accessed their creativity or
know how to allow themselves to be creative... teachers need to cater for this... R.C.
How do we teach kids to be creative... encouragement... wait time... sharing thoughts... encouraging
emotions... using different devices like images or music to stimulate a reaction/connection... allowing
assessment to be open for student Individuality and allowing them to work with peers... allowing them time
to think and improve their original design and to see the work of others... D.B.
do we need to: YES... students future worlds are going to need creativity and problem solving skills - they
go hand in hand... plus it's good for the soul... it encourages hope which helps build resilience... yes we can...
but again, time, tiredness, routine, etc can get in the way for a more experienced teacher and confidence is an
issue for some teachers... kids can achieve profound things and change the playing field of their assumed
capabilities when they are engaged creatively... for me... I feel we owe it to them... and I don't feel that the
current curriculum doesn't value it... I think sometimes pressure for data makes teachers feel less free to
experiment and more focused on explicit teaching to ensure that they can guarantee kids will meet data
benchmarks and not free to allow the results to eventually speak for themselves (there is a lot more risk in
all)... also, some teachers rely on their limited exposure to teaching strategies and assessment options...
schools could be more encouraging of staff seeking exposure and funding of new learning models...L.K.
Can we/should we... of course we can... you have to persist past the negative feedback cause ur asking kids
to do more than most teachers (eg. Think independently and answer their own questions)... but eventually
the mindset sticks and the positive feedback and growth that results is profound and worth the investment...
as long as it has clear purpose (outcomes appropriate) and develops literacy or numeracy as it's end
product... what is there to lose? – J.D.
some teachers in Primary refer to Art, Music and Drama as the creative subjects and their classroom as
academic. Some I believe don't see what they do in their classroom as creative but rather label it as academic
even though in my eyes it is a type of creativity. When I talk to teachers who are not in the arts i hear this
often "im not creative like you". I always make a point of saying "yes you are! You probably don’t realise
what you are doing is creative!" L.J.
I can't imagine any curriculum or subject that does not have creativity in it. That aside, in my music subjects
and classes, the act of 'bringing into being', that is, creating a new 'entity', a new understanding, permeates
every aspect of the subject. But it is especially apparent in performance where the students 'bring into being'
a new interpretation of an existing work ... it need not be specifically novel, just the performing of a work is
a phenomenologically happening. Because of who is performing it and because of where it is being
performed it is new, and certainly, it is often new to the student. In composition obviously. Teaching
students how to compose is the craft of teaching creative skills and thinking. But I used to do this in Yr 8
English too. In the context of writing a fantasy story I would have the children create a new animal/monster.
It would be a combination of two or more existing animals. I would give example from the repertoire (Half
man, half bull, or half elf half goat). In music composition we begin with what the students already know
and can imagine/hear, and then add to it, or combine it with another element. Creativity, my own creativity,
permeates my subject and my interpretation of the curriculum. If I need to teach an element, and there is no
existing repertoire that best fits my cohort, then I create my own. Hence the rounds and canons I created.
But, I also wrote specific works for specific classes to perform, in specific styles, or with specific elements
that the students needed to grasp. I considered this creating pieces to suit my students, the norm and thought
that most music teachers should be able to do the same. Silly me. What an idealist! I created repertoire
examples for exams. I wrote pieces that perfectly captured what had been taught and what was being
assessed. If I had written a work for class performance, then in the exam I could create a sister-piece, one
where I knew that the majority of the students could 'hear' the elements and understand and more aptly
respond to the question. I created scores with deliberate errors (choral work with cross-voicing or incorrect
harmonies, bad text setting and so on) and asks students to correctly locate and identify the error and then
extend them by asking them to show how they would correct the error. – R.B.
it is vital we 'teach' not only skills and elements, but create a classroom environment where students feel safe
to take risks. We need to teach lessons where student input is valued, encouraged and nurtured. Lessons
where students create in many ways - text, movement, rhythm, pitch....D.O.
creativity needs to be tied into skill, technique, knowledge and confidence K.I.
Play-based activity is really important and I think not just at primary school level. If you want to find out
about creativity in the curriculum go look at ‘Age Appropriate Pedgagogies’– A.H.
I think kids are more creative than adults and we should be focussing on harnessing that creativity as early as
possible. Maybe we can extend it into adulthood then and produce more creative grown-ups. T.H.
Well, there is a lot of talk about creativity all the time but don’t we really need to focus on teaching them the
basics of literacy and numeracy first?? Kids are naturally creative… I don’t think we need schools to make
them creative. – R.H.
That’s why we need the ‘A’ in STEAM – to be creative. All of that boring maths and science stuff – kids
should be allowed to literally let off their creative steam as well and just go all out and make stuff – for fun
and for self-expression. A.A.
Schools are such pressured places – well, I find that anyhow. There is really no space for much ‘creativity’ ..
pretty much everything is regulated. Starts with the bells… and continues… line up, shut up, do this, do that,
teach this, don’t teach that, no time for a side-track…. Hmmm. Yeah creativity would be great in schools,
but I don’t think our system values it because we have absolutely no time for it. R.G.
I’ve read a lot of things about ‘flow’ and how to get into creativity just for my own life. I don’t think at
school we ever experience the kind of atmosphere where either teachers or students can be truly creative.
You just jump through hoops, don't you. K.W.
I think over time, kids have gotten worse at being creative. Two or three decades ago, kids were more
playful and free with invention. Lot’s of my students today are really focussed: on achieving an A. Any way
they can. – T.H.
Lot’s of info about – like on the web- about “how teachers can be more creative” but I’m not really sure that
is what you are talking about. Being a creative teacher is all well and good, but how do you shake the
students out of their routine?? In a place where we set on routine because it helps us crowd control?? – D.R.
Haven’t got time for that. –F.Z.
Yes yes yes ---- sooooo important. I want to give my students that, but I really am a bit stuck knowing how
L S.F.
With focussed students there is more ability for individual expression and involvement and creativity. Also
not having a prescribed curriculum leaves room for an individual approach. The intrinsic “creativity” in
Music-making also, say, in a choral or orchestral performance where there is no one “Right” way such as a
Maths Equation, but your own performance or interpretation (providing it has the “Correct elements” –
accurate pitch, timing, dynamics) may be different to the next person or even how you yourself did it another
day. R.M.
The cheeky and naughty kids - They are often doing these things because they are Bored – they are “quick”
and have already completed the “task” and are doing other “Creative” things – whether this is experimenting
with new tonal qualities on their cello, inventing their own Recorder tune, or making a paper aeroplane out
of their worksheet. Mostly for “discipline” and “class control” we actually reprimand these children for
doing these things which are CREATIVE and stifle the very students who have the most aptitude – in order
to bring order to the “Many”……and we have no time to ”indulge” these actual Creative and inquiring kids
because we need to keep on task the other 29 students…K.G.
We are lucky as music teachers because our part of the NC is not so prescribed. I feel sorry for my English
and Maths (etc) colleagues. I know people who work in schools where they have been told they MUST teach
C2Cs and nothing else. No need for any creativity in that context, in fact, it is apparently actively
discouraged. – D.A.
Teachers are amazing at being creative – we rock! My classroom is full of the fruits of my kids creativity –
love it all. – F.F.
I don’t think you can teach creativity. You can encourage it perhaps, but not teach it. What are you going to
do? Sit them down and say “so now we are going to be creative??” I think assessment kills off any desire in
teachers and students to try and be creative. We just have stuff to learn and to mark … and that’s it. P.L.
I love helping my students see things in new ways. To me, that is being creative, and encouraging their
creativity. I feel a bit subversive at times, but I think it is so important that they question what they see and
experience – and what is told to them by authorities and the media and stuff. Really thinking about what they
see and hear and re-framing it is an important aspect of creativity to me. Not just deconstructing everything
negatively, but re-framing it into a new reality.- S.W.
Hahahahah – yeah right. Unless you are talking about ‘required’ artsy components of the curriculum, I can
not see how creativity fits into my curriculum. And – I don’t like the art stuff anyhow. It’s really a bit of a
waste of time given the amount of differentiation I need to do. N.N.
I can see the potential for creativity education in project-based work and I try to make this happen for my
kids. The problems I run into include the that kids KNOW that the outcome of their project is not
‘authentic’, that is, they know that the poster they make or the letter they write or the machine they invent –
is not really going to make much of a difference in reality. So I don’t get a real genuine effort or
engagement, I often get a lot of mucking around and personal squabbles about who is in whose group and so
on. N.L.
Well, we need creative people in our future, so we have to let kids ask questions. Sadly there is often very
little time to have a socratic circle in class and fostering the kind of listening behaviour that is required for
kids to share and listen to each others ideas and evaluate them is – in my mind- really difficult these days.
Kids are very ‘me-centred’ … they are not used to listening to anything for any length of time. E.H.
I teach creativity by being open and honest and optimistic. I love what my kids do and I show them I value
their opinions. H.S.
Oh wow – are we actually supposed to be creative? I thought we were supposed to produce data? Can you
measure creativity enough to turn it into data? F.H.
The longer I am a teacher, the more annoyed I am at the learned helplessness I encounter – not just in
students either, mind you. Generally I find kids (and adults) have mind-set that says “you want me to do
this, so you enable me”. Of course I want you to ‘do this’ (to read this book, to write this piece, to do this
experiment, etc) and my curriculum does not allow me to say “sure, you go ahead and read a different book
or write a different story” because the blasted ‘criteria’ will not apply to the blasted assessment the will they.
This is a really sore point for me and I don’t like to think about how much we should be encouraging
creativity and how much we actually do not.F.S.
All human activity carries seeds of creativity with it. We really don’t need to have the education system tell
us or the children how to be creative. They could stop interfering though. B.M.
As an art teacher, I think being a successful visual artist assumes a high level of creativity. Teachers should
be thinking about what they are doing in their classrooms to encourage or hinder creative critical thinking. I
do think creativity can be taught overtly and I do think it matters what choices we make in terms of
pedagogy AND curriculum. That is, if we do not put creativity education on the curriculum and embed it in
all learning domains, it will not be given the time and space it needs. –L.A.
The human ability to imagine is among the most advanced cognitive traits we have. Why would any teacher
ignore this? I am acutely aware of the importance of creativity in my curriculum – but I am also very aware
of how little I know about it and how much this desire to impart/teach creativity is smothered in my day to
day life by all the ‘urgent’ stuff we all do. –L.B.
I am a visual art specialist and I believe that many teachers totally misunderstand creativity. Letting students
‘experiment’ and ‘be creative’ without reference point often leads to the least imaginative work being
produced. When told “you can work in any style you like” or “just experiment with anything you want”,
even usually creative students tend to rehash something that was previously successful. When allowed to do
whatever we like, we simply revert to what has brought us positive attention in the past or what has made us
feel good in the past. No creativity is being exercised at all. Limitations are required that force new
solutions, they focus effort on a problem or issue. Really creative work is NEW – i.e. no repetition of
previous success is allowed. We must help students to be really creative. Part of this is also to expose
students to what has previously been created by other artists (or inventors or poets or writers)- A.K.
We protect kids from their own processes too much – oh, and their parents do as well. Success and failure
are so high stakes these days that no-one wants kids to experience them. Without taking ownership of the
viability of their thinking or idea generation, kids won’t ever become creative. Kids need to be allowed to
make lot’s of mistakes without any penalty. Judgement, yes – they do need to be judged, both by their peers
and by themselves. Judging creative ideas gives the originator the opportunity to improve them. W.I.
In today’s world, our students must become creative and critical thinkers!! – and they must have strong
values as well. The way I tend to apply this in the classroom is to encourage a problem-based approach and a
critical review process. I have had to teach this really carefully though. Students have to learn to give and
receive genuine feedback on their products. Teaching creativity to me is part of teaching metacognition:
understand how you function as a human being and you will have access to that function. – H.W.
It is urgent in today's world that our students become critical thinkers with strong values. Imitation as a
learning style is very limited to accomplish this goal, and when I employ imitation in teaching, I must point
out its limitations and I need to supplement it immediately with approaches that require innovation, problem
solving, and a critical review process. H.L.
In any subject area, I think, not just in the Arts, most of the examples of really outstanding creativity come
from creators who have achieved a certain level of skill and knowledge. Obviously skill and knowledge
themselves are not the same as creativity – so the question I ask myself is: how do I get my students to
acquire the set of skills required for (let’s say) writing a really creative story…. While not killing their joy of
learning so that they can still tap into their playful, experimental, free-association side to be creative?? And
all in a few hours a week. –G.K.
Yes, quite an interesting question – well, I think we often accept ‘fake’ creativity in our students and we say
things are ‘creative’ when they are actually not. We do that in other areas as well. Kids are always told that
their efforts are ‘great’ or ‘amazing’ or ‘wonderful’ rather than that it is cool that they ARE making an effort
but the outcome may be less than superlative. If we tell our kids that any picture they produce is ‘great’, will
they ever strive to create something truly exceptional?? If we tell them ‘oh you are so creative’ when they
are doing something very moderately interesting, will they ever leave the safe harbour of easy affirmation in
order to explore something really new? K.L.
As a teacher, I am not often forced to think about and articulate my ideas about creativity and even when I
am asked about them, my stated opinion does not have any real impact on curriculum development either at
school or higher levels. – I.A.
Many times I have been told that my role is that of ‘facilitator’ and not ‘teacher’ any more. I am to
‘facilitate’ learning, rather than teach anything. Well, in my experience, creativity is an example where this
just does not sit well. Our students are so used to being spoon fed by society (media etc) they have all but
forgotten how to be creative. A desire for a quick result makes many of them want to copy ideas, re-combine
old ideas or other people’s ideas (or even my ideas) rather than try to come up with their own. As a teacher, I
need to understand how creativity works on a cognitive level and I need to try and incorporate this
knowledge into my curriculum design. As a teacher, I need to explain the goals of an exercise in terms
students can understand and my assessment of creative work needs to have clear parameters which are
different to those applied in the assessment of technical work. P.E.
Creative people are quirky. Quirky people are often difficult to live with :D I welcome quirky people in my
classroom and I think that in order to appreciate beauty, we have to look at ugliness as well. I teach creativity
by providing as many wide ranging experiences to my students as I can within the limits of the
classroom.A.W.
Creative teachers make for creative students. Creativity is caught, not taught. J.D.
Lot’s of people confuse ‘craft’ or ‘art’ with creativity, so I get kids who are not very good at drawing
thinking of themselves as ‘not very artistic’ or worse, ‘not very talented’. I’ve even had parents who have
told me that their child just ‘is not very creative’ because they are ‘more sporty’ or ‘more into maths and
science’. The mind boggles. Obviously people misunderstand creativity a whole lot. Creativity is part of all
learning if we are going to remember what was learnt. – R.B.
I think that the intuitive, creative side of our selves is developed my observation, not by judgement. I try to
model how one keeps multiple solutions or possibilities open in one’s mind in order to give them an
opportunity to combine. Sometimes I talk to certain kids about this as well, but I don’t make this a formal
part of what I do in the classroom. Maybe I should.- A.L.
Look, I really have no clue about this. I suspect it has more to do with pedagogy than curriculum, but if I am
honest I have to say I don’t usually give it a second thought. –B.B.
There is ‘creativity’ on a basic level where we think kids are being ‘creative’ because they are being a bit
mayhemic. But there is also creativity on the other side of the hard work and usually this is much more
authentic. Getting kids to understand what being creative actually is and how important it is that we all have
new ideas – is the first step.
Am I a creative teacher? I am not sure. I hope I am. I certainly try to search for ways to do things better and
overcome mistakes I have made. I review and adjust and try to imagine ways to make improvements. I think
that this ability to be confident enough to allow for the possibility that I am not perfect (and to be ok with
that) is an important part of finding truly creative solutions to problems. Lot’s of my kids struggle with that
kind of self-confidence.- Y.W.
In my experience, administrators do not rate creative teachers as their best teachers. Predictable and non-
experimental teaching styles are usually preferred.- M.G.
I agree creativity is important, but I am not sure that it is as important as learning to read and write and think.
I am a bit sceptical of ‘creativity’ as an element in the curriculum. I think you can teach creatively but I don't
think creativity needs to be overtly taught. And I think if it is emphasised carelessly, it may give license to
some students to become more difficult to deal with than they would otherwise be. – C.M.
There is so much going on in my room all the time, I think we are being creative just holding it all together!!
I am not sure what more I could do. – P.H.
There is a place for creativity in the curriculum and more place should be made for it. Unfortunately, the
academic curriculum leaves little opportunity.- H.H.
I teach creativity by valuing all students – even the unconventional ones – perhaps those specially. It sends a
message about inclusion and diversity and I believe about creativity to the whole class.
Appendix ii - 24 focus statements grouped by domain
Cognition
Creativity is a skill that can be taught to anyone.
Creativity is taught by the intentional actions of teachers in classrooms.
Creativity is the result of skill development, high teacher expectations, and student resilience.
The assessment and evaluation of students’ creative efforts are a necessary part of the
creative process.
Creativity is the application of higher order thinking to problems in order to produce novel
and useful outcomes.
Creativity is related to critical thinking.
Environment
Creativity in the classroom is fostered by creative teachers who value divergence, curiosity
and playful exploration.
The assessment and evaluation of students’ creative efforts can be detrimental to creativity.
Creativity is central to all teaching and learning.
Creativity flourishes in an environment that encourages and does not punish confident risk-
taking.
Personal creativity is influenced by the social, cultural and environmental context the learner
functions in.
Creativity is as important as literacy.
Conation
Personal creativity is mitigated by some factors we cannot influence, such as age,
Creativity is facilitated by certain states/habits of mind in balance: including problem posing,
focussing, imagining and persisting.
Creativity is innate and is available to every person in different measure.
Personal creativity is mitigated by some factors we cannot influence, such as age, personality
or predisposition.
Affection
Creativity is sparked by inspiration and divergent, unorthodox thought, centering in artistic
endeavours.
Critical thinking is analytical and therefore not necessarily related to creativity.
I associate creativity with intuition, day dreaming and non-rational thought.
Teacher Concerns
There is not enough time and mental space in the curriculum to teach overtly for creativity.
The drive for data via the preparation for standardised tests stifles teaching for creativity in
the classroom.
Teaching for creativity adds content or procedures to the classroom which adds to teacher
workload.
Encouraging creativity in students heightens the risk of unruly behaviour in the class room.
The development of creativity is yet another thing to add my growing lists of priorities.
My curriculum is largely framed and developed by others rather than by me in response to
children’s needs and interests.
Appendix iii - supplementary statements made
Respondent 2
Creativity in Music in the current weekly 30 min class time could be assisted greatly by exploration
and creativity in the general classroom learning environment. Where students are taught exclusively for C2C
assessments, NAPLAN or to cover a content in a fixed time frame they appear to experience high anxiety and
insecurity when asked to create in Music. I find I am scaffolding more and more the ‘creative’ elements of
the Music curriculum to limit behaviour issues and ensure positive outcomes in what could be a wonderful
destructured opportunity for students to develop and explore their own skills.
Respondent 3
Creativity in the curriculum is very important and children need tasks that allow them to be creative.
Respondent 7
It comes back to that old question of, nature verses nurture. Personally, I see creativity as an individual's
disposition to how they plan, solve and resolve different issues/situations/tasks. In saying this though, how does
one judge creativity and to what degree? What may be creative to me, may be mayhem to others. Within the
education system many of the ways to express creative are boxed or standardised. For some this presents barriers
for true expression and the attainment of full potential of creativity. I see value in Steiner and Montessori models
of education for creativity but then the question lies, are these students more adequately prepared out of the school
model to resolve different issues/ situations and tasks in the "real world". As an educator I see many traits of
individuals that can be a strength and a weakness if not managed. An individual's temperament also is a key to
one's expression of of creativity. Therefore, my rambled thoughts are concluded with the view the nature and
nurture are both a requirement to inspire and flourish creativity. :)
Respondent 10
Lets keep the discussion going so that we can break down the cliches and catch phrases about creativity.
We know that schools kill creativity. Teachers, however love creativity. Look at our cultures history and let's look
at the great teachers and philosophers who have helped creativity to flourish. Surly the most important thing to
have going into the uncertain future we have.
Respondent 11
In my classroom creativity is THE environment, curriculum is encased within. To foster a classroom of

creative thinkers leads to endless possibilities; including being able to think outside of the box and to question and
reflect upon what is the "norm." Unfortunately in primary schools children are ground down to fit the standardised
"norm." Creative teachers are required to allow freedom of thought and allow children to soar to their full potential.
We need the next generation to be the "thinkers of tomorrow" and have the confidence to question authority and
the status quo.
Respondent 13
Creativity is a skill that can be taught to anyone." "Creativity is taught by the intentional actions of
teachers in classrooms." Yes, I agree - but I have no idea about the how!
Respondent 15
Standardised test prep has killed creativity. The need to focus on such, if even for a few weeks, increases
more instructional time spent in ELA, and Mathematics. Science and Social Studies are nearly second fiddle. Life
skills classes are practically non-existent and let's not dive into how the arts are treated.
Respondent 18
How to teach and foster creativity was not a part of my teacher training at university and real change
will probably not occur until enough is known and taught in this area.
Respondent 21
I'd be interested in attending a PD to teach creativity across the curriculum.
Respondent 26
In your questions I would have liked to see what your definition of curriculum meant. I think perhaps
you need to clarify what you mean by curriculum- is this referring to Aust. Curriculum standards (The WHAT
we teach) or do you mean pedagogy (The HOW we teach). In my mind the how we teach is where creativity
fits. The curriculum WHAT we teach are the techniques but the creativity is HOW students use those
techniques. Can't wait to hear the results of your survey. Very intriguing questions.
Just wanted to clarify that whilst curriculum outcomes are created by others with the Australian
Curriculum. Teachers have the power to decide what is essential within it and adapt it to the students in front
of them. The analogy I use is that using the curriculum is like playing a piano. If you have a deep
understanding of the curriculum you can move up and down from Prep to Year 10 adjusting to suit the needs
of the student in front of you. Furthermore I believe it is not curriculum that helps teach students creativity it
is pedagogy: giving the students the freedom to take risks, think critically and question.
Appendix iv Table responses

Appendix v – Table of Z scores

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Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions

Student Number 407255

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Independent Study Curriculum ED649

Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions. 4

Appendix i - Concourse of preliminary statements 68

Appendix ii - 24 focus statements grouped by domain 75

Appendix iii - supplementary statements made 77

Appendix iv Table responses 79

Appendix v – Table of Z scores 80

development is crucial. What teachers do in classrooms is the most important component in

24 statements distilled from a larger concourse of conversations on creativity in the curriculum.

testing was perceived to be a major inhibitor of creative practice in the classroom.

Creativity in the Curriculum: Teachers’ perceptions.

dilemma summarised by veteran creativity researcher, psychologist Robert Sternberg:

Creativity has been extensively investigated by psychology, sociology and more

learning environments as business opportunities of the future. Education authorities have, at

Australia has a National Curriculum (NC) which is being implemented in an ongoing

The NC states that

…responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex

holds in the curriculum explicit.

conative factors, affective factors and practical factors (‘teacher concerns’).

that various levels of thought and reflection were invested.

considered opinion on the points raised in the sorting activity.

Most participants were Primary generalists (70.7%), followed by Secondary subject

In order to move towards an understanding of the ‘silence’ Sternberg observes around

and seek answers to questions such as:

1. To what extent do teachers believe that creativity is an important component of teaching

2. Do teachers’ perceptions generally evidence a research-based understanding of human

on their practice in the classroom?

“Creativity results from the interaction of cognitive, affective, motivational, and

counteract weakness in another or high levels in several could disproportionately enhance

A plethora of information exists regarding the features and functions of creativity,

including contributions from psychology, educational psychology, philosophy, sociology and

led to many working hypotheses, “creativity has been stuck in a rut”:

fundamental properties of creative mentation or a toolkit of methods to get at them.” It does

influences of this factor or that one.

2015) little has been achieved in terms of implementation. He states that

He identifies standardised testing, a lack of emphasis on creativity in teacher training

test through what we teach.” (p. 116)

holds in the process of creative cognition (Csikzentmihalyi,1993; Black and Williams,1998;

for creativity education.

superior educational outcomes, in particular as pertaining to creativity, the effect standardised

testing seems to have on curriculum is as counterproductive as it can possibly be.

important educational and social programs. In Australia, educational consultants such as

creativity, it is surprising to find little broad-based agreements among scholars.4 According to

undisciplined play. It is however, notoriously difficult to define.” (p.2)

considered by a variety of scholars. Cropley (2001) produced a list of personal qualities

desirable in a creative person which include independence, openness to experience, flexibility,

willingness to overcome obstacles, willingness to take sensible risks, willingness to tolerate

toward life, as it is a matter of ability.” (Sternberg, 2006, p.7)

In creativity research, there is some disagreement around whether creativity constitutes

with a product-outcome.” (Craft 2000, p. 3 cited in Craft 2001, p. 15)

testing which flattens engagement and decreases intrinsic motivation.

of literature on formative assessment, that descriptive feedback, focussing on the process of