H. A. HALIM ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
ing to Amabile (1996), creativity includes the willingness to
take risks, maintain a high level of self-initiation and to be task-
oriented in striving for excellence. Gardner (1997) has describ-
ed it as “the ability to solve problems and fashion products and
to raise new questions”. The UK National Advisory Commit-
tee’s Report (1999), states that firstly, creativity alway s involv-
es thinking and behaving imaginatively. Second, overall this
imagination activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achie-
ve an objective. Third, these processes must generate something
original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the
objective.
Other definitions of creativity that placed importance on out-
comes are by Prentice (2000) who claimed that the productive
outcomes of creative activity should be originality, value, risk
taking and the capability to cope with uncertainty in situations.
On the other hand, Fawcett (2000) asserted that creativity is a
complicated and broad concept because there is no standard
principle by which we can precisely define it. He also stated
that some people may think creativity is only for arts and it is
the gift or innate ability that cannot be taught.
However, creating means putting elements together to form a
coherent or functional whole; organizing elements into a new
pattern or structure generating, planning, or producing (Ander-
son & Krathwohl, 2001). Lucas (2001) says that it is “a state of
mind in which all intelligences are working together.”
There are many definitions of creativity. As researchers from
various fields focus on different angles, creativity may be de-
scribed from different views and perspectives although it may
refer to the same thing. Wehner, Csikszentmihalyi and Magya-
ri-Beck (1991) examined 100 doctoral dissertations on creativ-
ity and found a “parochial isolation” of various studies con-
cerning creativity. There were relevant dissertations from psy-
chology, education, business, history, sociology and other fields.
However, different fields tended to use different terms and to
focus on different aspects of what seemed to be a basic pheno-
menon. Fisher and Williams (2004) claim that part of the rea-
son for this diversity of definitions is that creativity can be seen
as a property of people (who we are), processes (what we do) or
products (what we make).
In the words of many other researchers, the meaning of crea-
tivity can also be examined by looking at the conceptions given
in different fields of research.
The Study
The aims of this study include examining the various stake-
holders’ (teachers, students, parents, administrators and policy
makers) definition of creativity; examining the similarities and
differences in the stakeholders’ definitions; and examining the
contextual factors which impact the definition and understand-
ing of creativity in the ESL curriculum. The aims suggest that
qualitative research is needed to understand the phenomenon
under investigation.
Another source of information invaluable to this study is
analysis of documents. Such documents may include official
curriculum documents, as well as the published data used in the
literature review. Since qualitative research focuses on process,
meaning and understanding, the product of this research is
richly descriptive. Data in the form of the participants’ own
words, direct citations from documents, excerpts from video-
tapes, and so on are likely to be included in order to amplify the
findings of the study (Mirriam, 1998). Other sources of data
were from: survey form, lesson plans, students’ worksheets and
exercises, textbook, workbooks, school yearly plan, and the
school yearly magazine.
Findings and Discussions
In many ways the teachers are the key stakeholder group as
they have the ultimate responsibility for interpreting and deli-
vering the policy on creativity. They are the policy enactors.
Additionally, most teachers strive to teach creatively and to in-
spire creativity in their pupils as a part of their normal teaching
role.
Data from Teachers
The Survey Form
In general there was no clear consistent shared definition of
creativity, rather, for all three questions, the teachers seemed to
take a multiple definition of creativity. There was slightly more
consistent agreement when the potential definition(s) of crea-
tivity were linked to the context of the student or of teachers
rather than in a more general, open and abstract way.
The teachers’ choices to question one, which asked them for
a general personal definition of creativity were consistent with
them all viewing creativity as concerning the “person” and or
the “process” rather than being about “product” when consi-
dered through the lens of Fisher and William’s (2004) defini-
tion of creativity. The wording of questions two and three
precluded this type of consideration as the possible choices
were all presented as attributes or behaviours and therefore
could only be seen as being about “person” or “process”. None
of these basic questions provided data that could be considered
in terms of big “C” (BCC) or little “c” (LCC) (Craft, 2005)
creati vi ty.
The Interviews
In summary, the interviews with the teachers were much
more revealing than the survey questionnaires in terms of the
teachers’ personal definitions of creativity. The teachers as a
group were fairly clear and confident in their answers and each
teacher tended to express answers that suggested a fairly con-
sistent view. In general, as a group, the definition of creativity
they presented was of a practical and pragmatic LCC-type of
process focused creativity. The teachers tended to link creativi-
ty with novel ideas and an ability to use this to solve “real-
world” problems. This seemed very well aligned with the crea-
tivity presented in the CCTS part of the syllabus. Only two of
the nine teachers differed in any significant way from this view.
All of the teachers saw obstacles to creativity, particularly a
lack of time in the face of large numbers of students, lack of re-
source and often conflicting administrative and other “non-tea-
ching” duties. The very full and rigid syllabus and the pressure
to be exam focused and strategic was also identified as an im-
portant limiting factor.
Teachers’ Lesson Plans
Given the superficial approach taken by the teachers and the
very short-hand, formulaic nature of the content the language
used to describe the activities and expected learning, the plans
revealed nothing about creativity or the opportunities for crea-
tivity in the classes. Nowhere in any of the plans was creativity