Classroom Emotions and Student Creativity
What can teachers do to foster creativity in students? This question is discussed widely – by scholars in this book and elsewhere. But what do teachers need in order to be able to teach and interact with students in a way that fosters their creativity? Wh
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2. CLASSROOM EMOTIONS AND STUDENT CREATIVITY Why Teacher Well-being and Relationships Matter in Teaching for Creativity
INTRODUCTION
What can teachers do to foster creativity in students? This question is discussed widely – by scholars in this book and elsewhere. But what do teachers need in order to be able to teach and interact with students in a way that fosters their creativity? Which preconditions need to be in place? My aim is to investigate how research in teaching for creativity might be inspired by research results on occupational wellbeing in school teachers – two research fields that have not been brought together up to this point. Only recently, research into teacher well-being has been able to establish a connection between teachers’ work-related well-being and their interaction with students in class. This chapter will explore how these findings can add a new perspective to the challenge of teaching for creativity. Drawing on scholarly publications in both fields, I aim to investigate the assumption that occupational teacher well-being is a precondition for the attitude and behavioural responses that teachers need to create a learning environment that fosters creativity in students. Results from applied research in teacher-focused school development will be included, in order to suggest practical steps to be taken by school leadership and teachers in working with social, interactive preconditions for developing students’ creativity. This issue is also politically relevant, in light of recent demands in European school curricula that students should receive training in creative skills, with a view to increasing innovative potential and education in entrepreneurship (see also B. Lund, Chapter 6 below). I start by summarising the latest findings in the field of occupational teacher wellbeing and strain research, pointing out the powerful role that relationships in schools play, both for teacher well-being and student learning. I then review further findings, describing how teachers’ well-being can affect their interactions in class with consequences for student learning. Next, I look at relevant research on creativity, defining the concept and explaining the perspective I apply in this chapter. In the final part, I make links to teacher well-being research and describe how it can inspire practical steps of school development to improve teaching for creativity. T. Chemi et al. (Eds.), Innovative Pedagogy, 27–43. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. Grams Davy
OCCUPATIONAL WELL-BEING IN TEACHERS
As mentioned in the introduction, my aim is to link results from research on teacher well-being to the challenge of teaching for creativity. I will start by reviewing relevant findings from this research, thereby providing the background needed to discuss possible links and implications in the second part of this chapter, where I will consider the assumption that the occupational well-being of teachers is a meaningful precondition for teaching for creativity – through the classroom relationships t
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