The Importance of Creativity and Creative Teaching

Creativity is important for individuals and for societies, it is essential for progress and culture of every civilisation (Scuka, 2008). Creativity in education has become the subject of many researches in 1990s (Craft, 2003), or as outlined by Gibson (2005, p. 149), it has become the current icon in education. However, researchers (Boden, 1996; Craft, 2001, 2003; Gibson 2005; Kampylis & Valtanen, 2010; Pecjak, 2006; Srica, 1999) agree creativity is an ambivalent and ambiguous concept and there is no generally accepted definition about what creativity is. The problems of definitions lie in its particular associations with the arts, in the complex nature of creative activity itself and in the variety of theories that have been developed to explain it (NACCE, 1999, p. 28). In the last decades, creativity has also been the subject of interest in educational systems. It is believed that teachers should be creative in their own teaching and they should promote creative abilities of their pupils. Teachers' role is to recognise young peoples' creative capacities and to provide the particular conditions (e.g. environment) in which they can be realised (ibid.) These two clusters are also the focus of the book. In the first chapter, we first discuss the question of what creativity is. We present different understandings and definitions and try to draw a conclusion. Then we present some psychological theories of creativity such as associative theory, gestalt theory, psychoanalytic theory etc. We continue with different types of creativity explaining the differences and interaction between e.g. object and social creativity, individual and organizational creativity, primary and secondary creativity, etc. Then the focus is on different characteristics of creative persons and we finish the chapter with barriers for creativity. The second chapter is more school oriented. It starts with an important role of teachers and explains the importance of teachers in the process of identifying and fostering children's creativity. Nevertheless, we also point out that teachers need to be properly qualified in order to be competent to teach for creativity and to teach creatively. The last can be thoroughly realized through various creative teaching methods that are presented accordingly. At the end, we also highlight the role of the school environment and leadership in fostering creativity of teachers and children.