The Create Excellence Framework’s Impact on Enhancing Creativity: Examining Elementary Teacher Candidate Mathematics Lesson Planning

Abstract

The focus of this research is to examine the impact of an instructional instrument to improve the quality of pre-service teachers' lesson plans to enhance creative learning opportunities for children. The Create Excellence Framework focuses on four components essential to high-quality lesson plans: Cognitive Complexity, Real-World Learning, Engagement, and Technology Integration. The research study examined data from two elementary education teacher candidate classes for five semesters to measure the impact of the instrument on instructional planning for mathematics or mathematics and science integration. Over the course of the five semesters, for each component, the mean scores increased, and there was a positive statistically significant difference between the scores from the baseline semester to the fifth semester. In the fifth semester, the component of Technology Integration had the largest increase and Real-World Learning has the highest mean score. As students learned to design instruction around authentic tasks, cognitive levels and engagement also increased. Students were exposed to and utilizing new digital tools to enhance their learning. Using these digital tools along with real-world applications of the content encouraged students to think creatively to solve authentic problems.