God gave humankind creativity and imagination when God created Adam. God is our example, He created so many kinds of animals and plants, with all the different colour and shapes. Through sin that enters the world, we lost our pure imagination and creativity, wrong thoughts came also into our minds. Today our learners argues that they are not creative.
Teachers beliefs are different about creativity. Imagination and creativity meanings are close to each other, it is possible to use them substitutable (La Rocque, 1973, p. 6). Creativity is not something that can be an easy examination by the learners. That is why there are different definitions by teachers. Stone (2015) researched the different beliefs. Some answers were: “creativity means perceiving differently”, “thinking out of the box” or “originality of thinking” (Stone, 2015, p. 90). All the answers had something with to be original, no copying of others, and with the mind.
The writer writes about a spirit that is moving on the school ground (Stone, 2015, p. 83). There is no rest for creativity today, each teacher is looking for it by the learners. In schools but also in companies it is today very important to have creativity, later in the time we can look back and say this was the century of creativity.
La Rocque writes in an article that creative people have other characteristics than people that are not creative. “Good sense of humour, are dominant, self-accepting, are flexible, high energy level, sensitive to problems” (La Rocque, 1973, p. 6) are examples. Most are skills that are also able to be taught. The excitement of the teacher can determine when a learner enjoys a subject or not. Creative thinking is not something that we are born with. The teacher has a huge influence on the learner’s imagination and thinking. We should encourage them to use their creativity and help them with the task that they have to do.
I agree, some learners a more creative than other learners. But that does not mean that the other learners not creative. No, they are creative on another aspects. We should build on that and help the learners to become what is in their ability.
Reference list
La Rocque, G. E. (1973). Educating for Creativity. English Education, 5(1), 5–20.
Stone, D. L. (2015). Art Teachers’ Beliefs about Creativity. Visual Arts Research, 41(2), 82. https://doi.org/10.5406/visuartsrese.41.2.0082
Teacher in progress 