Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Creativity in education'

A principal goal of higher education is to prepare students for the real-world challenges they will encounter upon graduation in their everyday life, in their work and in society. While discipline specific content knowledge is an important component of a college education, a 2010 survey of employers conducted for the Association of American Colleges and Universities reflected the changing expectations of employers for recent college graduates. Approximately ninety percent of employers surveyed said college graduates entering the workplace need a broader set of skills than in the past in order to meet increasingly complex workplace challenges. Among the top four workplace skills in demand are creativity and innovation.

This study employs a qualitative phenomenological approach to examine a particular curricular program designed to impart creativity and to promote the generation of new ideas that lead to innovation. Through the use of student surveys and in-depth interviews with students and faculty who have participated in the program, the study offers a synthesized description of the student experience of the curriculum and the pedagogies used in the program. The study identifies the key benefits of the program for students; offers guidance on what kind of pedagogical approaches are necessary for faculty to successfully implement this kind of program; and addresses the challenges involved in advancing a curriculum for creativity and innovation that utilizes unconventional pedagogies.

What seems clear from the student experience is that the curricular program is effective in imparting the knowledge and skills to practice creativity and innovation. Also evident is that the constructivist learning environment and the pedagogies employed in teaching the program, including hands-on and collective learning, critical thinking and problem-based learning, and formative assessment, contribute to a feeling of confidence in the mastery of the skills and results in deep learning by the students. Through the experience, students are empowered with a creative capacity and an ability to innovate, as well as with skills in communication, collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving. These are abilities that will prepare students for the complexities of rapidly changing world.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the experiences of teachers who effectively promoted student creativity and maintained high levels of work engagement. Creativity is considered a skill crucial for future success but is often misunderstood. High-stakes accountability in modern education has increased focus on test scores, reduced emphasis on creativity development at the school level, and negatively affected teacher work engagement.

In-depth interviews and written responses were used to generate an understanding of how teachers who foster student creativity and maintain high levels of work engagement experience modern education. Fifteen participants from 14 schools in three school districts across northern Georgia shared their experiences.

Findings indicated that teachers can foster student creativity in the current high-stakes accountability environment when they focus on establishing meaningful relationships with students and colleagues, exhibit adaptability in the classroom, and maintain confidence in their educational identity. The participants in the study also were driven toward self-improvement, found intrinsic value in their approach to curriculum and instruction, were supported by administration, focused on social and emotional aspects of education, provided students with ownership in the learning process, made learning relevant, and established structure and safety for students within a flexible approach to learning. Future implications for practice include placing an increased focus on creativity development in schools because this focus has the potential to increase student learning in addition to boosting creativity.

Creativity is considered to be an essential life skill that should be fostered throughout the educational system. However, public elementary school classrooms in the USA generally do not appear to be creativity-fostering places. A better understanding of teachers' beliefs about creativity would provide valuable insights into their practices in the classroom and facilitate the planning and evaluation efforts to foster creativity in all classrooms.

Using a validated survey instrument, adapted from the Teachers' Conceptions of Creativity Questionnaire (TCCQ), the researcher collected beliefs from 120 public elementary school teachers from six schools within one mid-sized public unified school district in the Los Angeles area. The survey included 25 forced choice and seven open ended items. Participating teachers taught in kindergarten through fifth grade and possessed teaching experience from 3 to 40 years.

Major conclusions include that the teachers believe creativity is primarily expressed in the form of originality of product, behavior or thought. However, these teachers were not aware that creativity should also be appropriate for the situation, an aspect critical to scholars. The teachers believe creativity to be connected mainly with the arts and school subjects in the arts. These teachers support that creativity can be developed in all students but that only a small percentage of students are highly creative. When describing creative students, teachers reported only the positive traits of creative students. The teachers believe that creativity is essential in academic learning, however, teachers expressed an ambivalence regarding their training and capability to effectively promote student creativity within the classroom. The teachers feel impeded to promote student creativity in the classroom by the emphasis on testing, standards, and expectations of the school system. Some implications for practice are that pre-service teacher education and in-service staff development should provide courses, workshops, and activities that assist teachers with knowledge and skills to foster creativity in all students within the classroom. Policy makers and educational authorities must establish creative thinking as an essential learning goal in the educational system so that all children can develop their full personal and work creative potential.

With companies seeking to increase organizational efficiency while promoting prosperous growth, creativity has become one of the most important leadership qualities sought after by employers. This has put a demand on Masters of Business Administration (MBA) graduates to possess creative skills, as well as a dependency for MBA students to acquire a quality MBA education. Although business education has entered into new domains of online learning, the criticism remains that business education does little to foster or strengthen students' creativity skills. Thus, with the evolution of online education arises a need to research the effectiveness of creativity within these new domains. This phenomenological study analyzed MBA alumni's perceptions about the fostering of creativity skills within an online MBA program. A qualitative study was conducted with 25 participants from 3 separate U.S. and internationally based online MBA programs in order to gain insight into the needed improvements and or positive instructional design elements, facilitation practices, and technological media tools that foster creativity in online MBA programs. This study addressed the following research questions through the lens of MBA alumni: 1. What are alumni perceptions regarding facilitation (of instructors) that either enhance and or stifle creativity skills in an online MBA program? 2. What are alumni perceptions regarding instructional design elements (exercises, assignments, and or activities that are built into curriculum) that either enhance and or stifle creativity skills in an online MBA program? 3. What are alumni perceptions regarding technological media that either enhance and or stifle creativity skills in an online MBA program?

Among the findings of this study was the discovery of several themes that concur with experiences that foster creativity skills in online MBA programs: 1. Informal and flexible instructors and course content equates creative learning opportunities. 2. Various active facilitating methods foster a learning process. 3. Latitude of creative learning is enhanced by the freedom and flexibility of students' choices. 4. Program content and delivery are driving factors in incorporating new knowledge and or creativity skills. 5. Technological media tools and opportunities that are driven by the student lead to the learning and practicing of creativity.

Patterns from nature and bioculture lead us to become more ethical teachers and learners and can guide wise school design. The research asked if intrapersonal empathy, collaborative nature creativity, and wisdom education are the same phenomenon at different scales that might accurately be called regeneration. This dissertation reviewed the interconnected landscapes of sustainability education, regenerative design, permaculture, emergence, innovation, ecological intelligence, complexity, chaos, natural pattern, biomimicry, and creativity, to weave a complexity web research nexus using a transdisciplinary, feminist, decolonizing lens and Gaian methods. This regenerative fractal emergent inquiry studied four scales of regeneration with eighty participants using multi-level mixed methods with triangulation. The research found that engaging with the planetary system and dynamic living patterns catalyzed breakthrough learning for wisdom. Inspired by symbiotic nature and biocultural connection, learners and learning collectives accessed expanded states of emergent, creative metacognition and ecological intelligence, including level-jumping and scale-slithering as larger emergents. This Gaian emergence, including e/mergence and inmergence, birthed planetary-scale intelligence and creativity and generated sustained increases in regenerativity in designs and enhanced ethical action. Another outcome of this study was the development of a Transdisciplinary Regenerativity Index. Ecofractal patterns, including branching, radiance, flow, packing, vortex, and tapestry, mobilized learners for ecosocial, emergent, earth regenerative creativity. Such emergent creativity is at the heart of wisdom learning and wisdom school design. In earth regenerative education, learners, communities, and learning organizations can embody the living earth in regenerative self-organization for meta-species wisdom and earth innovations to continue to become a part of the living processes of the planetary unfolding.