Creative Teaching: Qualities, Attitudes, Values, Hopes, and Beliefs

Teachers’ perceptions and attitudes have a strong impact on the learning space’s educational and social climate (Vollmer, 2000), and their knowledge, skills, and attitudes are closely interrelated (Bloom, 1956) and both are likely to affect learning space practice (Banks, 2004; den Brok, Bergen, & Brekelmans, 2006). Teachers are expert professionals, knowledgeable, and are granted creative autonomy in the learning space of creative class (Florida, 2002) require creative teaching that emphasizes learning for deeper understanding, rather than mastery of lower-order facts and skills (Bereiter, 2002; Kafai & Resnick, 1996). Teaching in multi-cultural learning space especially requires specific competencies in creating positive teacher-student relations and achieving student engagement (Dubbeld, et al., 2019).

Sawyer (2004) suggested that creative teaching is better perceived as improvisational performance. Conceiving of teaching as improvisation highlights the inter-actionable and responsive creativity of a teacher working together with a unique group of students. Learning space discussion is said effective and improvisational because the flow of the class is unpredictable and spontaneous from the actions of all participants, both teachers, and students. Several scholarly studies have found that as teachers become more experienced, they ad-lib more (Berliner & Tikunoff, 1976; Borko & Livingston, 1989; Moore, 1993; Yinger, 1987). Creative teaching is disciplined improvisation because it always transpires within broad structures and frameworks in a well-organized manner. Expert teachers use routines and activity structures more than novice teachers; but they can invoke and apply these routines in a creative, improvisational approach (Berliner, 1987; Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986).

Teachers are a facilitator for the entire group’s creativity and are not the sole creative force in a collaboratively creative learning space. They must have a high degree of pedagogical content knowledge to respond creatively to unexpected students’ queries; a more profound understanding of the material than simply reciting a pre-planned lecture or script (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986; Horng, Hong, ChanLin, Chang, & Chu, 2005; Shulman, 1987). An unforeseen student query often requires the teacher to think quickly and creatively, retrieving and accessing the material that may not have been considered and studied the night before in preparation for this class; and it requires the teacher to quickly and improvisational (Sawyer, 2004) to be able to translate his or her knowledge of the subject into a form that will communicate with that student's level of knowledge.

The key to creative teaching is the self-evaluation of ability, which can be assessed through self-efficacy for creative teaching (Lin & Chiou, 2008; Sternberg, 1997). There is likewise some understanding that a key to educator self-assurance is secure subject information (Gardner, 1999; QCA, 2003).

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