Context. Teachers’ creative self-efficacy (CSE), or personal beliefs about one’s own abilities to recognize and produce creative outcomes, is believed to be one of the factors that support creativity in the classroom and is connected to general self-esteem.
Objectives and design. In the present paper, two studies were conducted to map Estonian teachers’ CSE and the factors, beliefs and attitudes towards creativity that are related to it, as well as how teachers transfer their CSE into their everyday activities in the classroom. In the first study, Estonian adaptation of Rubenstein et al. (2013) Teaching for Creativity Scales and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Pullmann & Allik, 2000) were used. The second study was based on a qualitative analysis, using in-service teachers’ self-reports focusing on their teaching practices.
Main outcomes. As a result of both studies, a framework for understanding teachers’ CSE is proposed, where self-esteem and perceived societal value of creativity are associated with the manifestation of CSE in the classroom, which in turn transfers into enhancing creativity through teaching for creativity and creative teaching.
The article presents the comparative results of research on 16-17 year-old Estonian adolescents’ and 9-12 year-old children’s creative thinking in connection with their social environment. Creative thinking has been defined through three components: fluency of thought, originality and flexibility of thinking. The aim of the empirical research on which this article is based was, firstly, to find out whether there is a connection between the child’s creative thinking and the parents’ profession, the family’s economic status and the child’s place of residence; and, secondly, to carry out a comparative analysis of two age groups, 9-12, and 16-17, regarding manifestations of creativity in connection with the factors described above. The results of the study demonstrate that the creative thinking of the 16-17 year-old adolescents is higher in the group where one or both parents have university education, work as top executives or specialists, where the families cope well economically and live in the capital. The creative thinking of the 9-12 year-old children is higher in the group where the mothers have a higher education and where they live in a rural area. Even though the correlation between social factors and the creative thinking of the adolescents treated in the study occurs only at the older age level, it is likely that the influence of cognitive and personality components of the child’s creativity begins at a much earlier age.
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