Manifestation and encouragement of creativity in primary school from the teachers' perspective

Abstract

The modern society holds creativity in high esteem while criticising education for not investing sufficient efforts in accomplishing this valuable goal. Teachers' opinions about the manifestation and development of creativity can significantly affect the extent to which they recognise the importance of creativity and are prepared to encourage it in their work. This paper reports the results of research into teachers' opinions on the forms of manifestation of creativity at the primary school level and the ways in which the school can contribute to the development of students' creativity. Primary school teachers from Serbia (N=144) filled out a questionnaire, and the obtained data were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings indicate that teachers described creativity through creative activities, originality, intellectual abilities, motivation and personality traits. The majority of teachers were of the opinion that the school can largely contribute to the development of students' creativity. According to teachers, creativity can primarily be nurtured at the level of class, and then at the level of the education system and the society as a whole. It has been concluded that teachers most often perceive students' creativity through their activities and personality traits, while seeing the school's role in the development of creativity in the domain of their own activities in the classroom. Research results indicate that teachers' concepts of creativity largely overlap with the expert ones. The concluding part discusses the reasons why teachers' positive and activist attitudes towards creativity are not transferred into school practice, as well as the prerequisites that have to be fulfilled for this to be accomplished.