Profile of Promoters and Hindering Teachers Creativity: Own or Shared?

Abstract

Creativity is now at days a valued quality in all its areas and most particulary in Education. However, there is still widespread ignorance of Creativity in the Formal Education’s field and a lack of scientific research about Creativity and Education, particularly in teacher training. In this article, we will present a categorization of teachers in either promoters or hindering of Creativity, based on interview’s data. The study was narrowed to the training of teachers in Biologic Sciences of the two Institutions with more students of the country. From an interpretive paradigm and with a qualitative design, semi-structured interviews to students and teachers were made and analyzed by “content”. Results show that teachers that highly promote creativity tend to have a close relationship with the student, as well as affectionate, and they are also characterized by recognizing and accepting their own mistakes and limitations. On the other hand, creativity’s highly hindering techers tend to be structured, distant, and believe to be all-wise. Additionally, creativity’s promoting activities are only remarked by students with a close relationship with the professor. At the same time, an affectionate treatment from the student could lead to creativity’s promoting activities by teachers who would normally fit in the hindering type. Considering the previous observation, we propose that affection between students and teachers consists of an essential component of a creative classroom’s atmosphere, continuing and amplifying the systematic model of Csikszentmihalyi. Analogously to the conception that a creative product doesn’t emerge from an isolated person, it seems appropriate to affirm that a creativity’s promoting or hindering profile of a theacher also depends on the interaction with his environment.