Preparing Teachers for Creative Education

Can the school and college play a dramatically larger part in starting a new creative phase of human living, and add a significant number of creative men and women to the present small, highly adaptable minority?1 If Dale's question is to be answered affirma tively, teacher education will need to prepare pre service and in-service teachers for creative educa tion. The challenge will demand a change in at titude because creativity and the conditions that bring it about need to be understood. Creativity is too important for bandwagons or slogan wheelers. It is a vital part of one's personality and a necessary condition for mental health. Lip service to creativity is not enough. Teacher educa tion must become the major means of promoting the creative process. Rogers defines the creative process as the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people or circumstances of life on the other.2 This defini tion suggests that creativity is not a mystical ele ment ; that it is individual, as well as social; that as a student interacts with ideas, information, people (his classmates and others), he either adds to or substracts from his uniqueness. For example, if the learned continually thinks of himself as incapable, the greater will be his use of defense mechanisms (anger, aggression, regression, etc.). The definition also implies that the creative process involves thinking. This also falls within the teacher's realm. It is his task to initiate and develop the thinking processes of his students. Divergent thinking is the type that most charac terizes creativity. It is the thinking that is specula tive, that 'takes off' from information already pos sessed.8 Again, we are presented with clues for preservice and in-service programs designed to promote creative education. One obvious clue is that learning and creativity are inseparable func tions. One creates when he learns and he learns when he creates. Other clues appear to be: (1) that all individuals, in varying degrees, possess the abilities involved in being creative, (2) that these abilities can be improved through education, (3) that this is the function of the school. For the school to carry out this task, teachers need to be so educated that they understand and appreciate the creative process and develop ways to stimulate creative thinking. They need to know and use learner centered approaches. They need to explore strategies for developing the thinking processes. In short, creativity should become the benchmark for teacher education.