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What is creativity: Teachers’ beliefs about creativity in students’ written stories

Alhusaini Abdulnasser A. (University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA + King Abdul-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia Kingdom)
Maker June C. (University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA)
Deil-Amen Regina (University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA)

The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ conceptual beliefs about creativity. Using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), 17 elementary school teachers rated students’ creativity in two separate studies. In the first study, 11 teachers analyzed the stories of 67 male and 70 female students from kindergarten, first, and second grades. In the second study, 6 teachers rated the stories of 67 male and 72 female students from third, fourth, and fifth grades. In both studies, teachers were required to use a list of clearly established guidelines in which the final step was to report the criteria used to evaluate students’ creativity. Teachers’ reports, which comprised 51 documents, were organized and analyzed. After coding and analyzing the data using NVivo software, the authors identified 8 major themes: (a) fluency, (b) voice, (c) originality, (d) imagination, (e) elaboration, (f) complexity, (g) making connections, and (h) writing clarity. Future researchers are encouraged to challenge the identified themes by replicating the current study in many places and in a variety of domains to enrich the theory of Creativity as a Social Construct (CSC).

Keywords: Creativity as a Social Construct (CSC), teachers’ beliefs and creativity, creativity in students’ writing, and rating creativity