STUDENTS’ BELIEFS ABOUT CREATIVITY

Creativity; a nature or nurture matter? Do some individuals have it and some do not? Traditionally, individuals involved with arts have been considered to be more creative as art-related professions may require more creative thinking than some other professions. At the same time, those involved with the sciences, e.g. mathematicians, chemists, computer scientists, and others are to-date not seen as being very creative [Official Statistics, 2015]. To contradict this viewpoint, research showed that we can all develop our creative thinking skills and ideas and we all have the capability of being creative. In fact, creative thinking might be the key to success in any profession since a creative solution might lead to a new innovation. In particular, at times of need, such as the recent global COVID-19 pandemic, almost all individuals, irrespective of profession, had to exhibit creativity in dealing with extraordinary situations. It should therefore be interesting to see to what extent are these societal beliefs about “creative and non-creative individuals” affecting our potential for creative thinking. As research showed that creativity can be developed, researchers got interested in investigating the role of the educator. At the same time, it should be interesting to investigate the beliefs of students about creativity as these might potentially affect their efforts to expand their creative thinking. This had been the aim of the present study which showed that the students believe that creative thinking is very important for the well-being and success of humanity to solve its problems. Students also believe in their own ability for creative thinking and their potential to improve their creative skills. They perceive such improvement as being possible to achieve via the education stream and they appreciate the supportive role of the educational environment towards teaching for creativity. The authors would like to conduct further research in order to: (i) compare and contrast the beliefs of students to those of teachers regarding creative thinking and teaching for creativity and (ii) approach creative thinking from the context of different specialties and programs of study both for the students and the educators.