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 I. Introduction:

The development of both teachers and students’ creativity has been a subject on
which a considerable number of educators and researchers have focused on. Within foreign
languages context, students are required to experience real life learning situations and to be
afforded with wide opportunities to perceive the world from a variety of slants and to
scrutinize, classify, and really delve into the problems they encounter in learning as well as in
lives; that is to say that teachers are asked to procure the macroscopic perspective to help
learners improve throughout providing them with a diverse range of activities to help
stimulate their general and critical thinking abilities. Therefore , the following paper consider
that it is of utmost importance to investigate and understand how creative teaching can be
more widely adopted and effectively used by ordinary teachers in order to help promote the
development of higher-order thinking skills in students, thereby giving them an edge for
tomorrow’s global competition.

II. Definition of Creative Teaching :

According to Soh (2000), the creative thinking and teaching are rarely studied due to
most teachers’ obliviousness about both creativity and creative behaviors’ in teaching. So,
apprehending the creative teaching concept is the first initial step toward students learning
improvement.

In fact, it is necessary to understand what “Creativity” means before twigging the

creative teaching concept. Simply said, creativity is the process of producing and coming up
with a new whole out of existing elements by arranging them into a new configuration. So,
“creative teaching” refers teacher’s utilization of their own ingenuity to design systematic
teaching solutions, adopt appropriate teaching techniques, and change teaching methods or
arrange reasonable and effective teaching activities while teaching as ERIC (1966)
Thesaurus explained: “Creative teaching refers to teaching that results from the
teacher’s creativity, not to teaching that is intended to develop the learner’s creativity.”

III. What Makes a Person Creative?

Creativity is not an isolated characteristic, found in some people and absent in others,
but a group of traits that all come to bear at once. Though creativity cannot be reduced to a
single equation, a variety of writers and researchers frequently identify the same handful of
factors that contribute to creative acts. So, creativity involves:

- A gift for associating thoughts and feelings in unusual combinations.

- An attitude of playfulness, openness, and flexibility.
- Knowledge of how the creative process works.
- Skill in using the tools of the trade.

- Persistent effort to keep trying until the result is satisfactory; and a favorable setting in
which creativity can find free expression.

IV. Difference Between “instructional innovation”- “creative teaching” and

“teaching of/for creativity”:

In a broad sense, there is considerable overlapping between “instructional

innovation” and “creative teaching” and “teaching of/for creativity”. To put it simple,
“instructional innovation” stresses more on the use of new instructional concepts, methods
or devices that others have developed while “creative teaching” emphasizes on teachers
personal development and creation of new instructional methods, whereas “teaching of/for
creativity” are seen as the implemented new teaching instruments for the purpose of
cultivating students’ creativity. However it would be fair to say that teaching for creativity
must involve creative teaching. Teaching with creativity and teaching for creativity include all
the characteristics of good teaching as: high motivation, high expectations, the ability to
communicate and listen and the ability to interest, engage and inspire.

V. Who are Creative Teachers?

The above question had been widely discussed by scholars. Although the answer is not
so that easy to define, a general agreement was reached on the several criteria of creative
teachers. According to Fautley & Savage 2007- Sanchez, Martinez, & Garcia in 2003 creative
teachers are those who:

1. Encourages reasonable risks and unpredictable situations, while reinforcing creative

activities.
2. Make a close relationship with their students and motivating class environment using
harmony to challenge the students’ cognitive level.
 3. Encourage the self-confidence and self-regulation of students, as well as their
autonomy and multiplicity of ideas and their active role in defining and redefining
problematic points.
4. Teachers should also be tolerant of ambiguities, critical of their practices and
demonstrative of creative abilities
5. Teachers should provide the opportunity for students to choose tasks or to do their
own self-correction.

6. Teachers should stimulate students to ask questions and to use open answers in
response to badly structured problems and in divergent and unusual situations.

VI. What do teachers need to be creative?

Teaching for creativity is not an easy option, but it can be enjoyable and deeply
fulfilling. It can involve more time and planning to generate and develop ideas and to evaluate
whether they have worked. It involves the following aspects:

1. Confidence in their disciplines and in themselves, and to improvise and take

detours
2. To pick up unexpected opportunities for learning
3. To live with uncertainty and to risk admitting that an idea led nowhere.
4. Teachers’ willingness to experiment new possibilities and to learn from their and
others experiences.

VII. Strategies To Be a Creative Teacher:

There are detailed explanations of creative teaching strategies. The ATDE teaching model
consists of the following four elements (Chen, 1990):

1. Asking: Teachers design question scenarios by providing divergent and convergent

questions to guide students through the thinking process.
2. Thinking: Teachers encourage students to freely associate on the given questions.
students take their time to seek creative solutions.
3. Doing: Teachers use various methods to allow students to seek solutions in activities
and take appropriate actions.
 4. Evaluating: Teachers and students work together on the criteria definitions and
assessment process. They learn to respect each other. Creative thinking is brought into
their practices.
5. The Checklist Technique:

It is a method used to find clues and establish concepts by collecting everything

related to a given problem or subject into a list (Kuo, 1994). Specifically, checklist is a
summary of problems for reforms; it intends to cover all the issues and identify opportunities
of multiple facets. Eberle (1971; 1982) referred to the checklist developed by Osborn to
develop another checklist technique known as seven directions for improvements or changes
as “Scamper” which refers to a technique to help generate new ideas.

In addition, Carolyn Edwards and Kay Springate suggested the following ideas for
encouraging student creativity:

1. Give students extended, unhurried time to explore and do their best work. Don’t interfere
when students are productively engaged and motivated to complete tasks in which they
are fully engaged.
2. Create an inviting and exciting classroom environment. Provide students with space to
leave unfinished work for later completion and quiet space for contemplation.
3. Provide an abundant supply of interesting and useful materials and resources.
4. Create a classroom climate where students feel mistakes are acceptable and risk taking is
encouraged. Appropriate noise, mess and autonomy are accepted.

“12” Secrets to Creativity:

1. Add something: addition, augmentation and increase.

2. deduct something : elimination and reduction
3. expand something : expansion and extension
4. change something : improvement
5. alter something: alternation and rearrangements
6. move something : movement and push-around
7. learning something : imitation
8. Replacement.
9. Connection
10. Reversals
 11. Define something: regulations and boundaries.

VIII. Conclusion:

The challenges facing education systems and teachers continue to intensify. They are
perhaps most acute for newly qualified teachers who are just beginning to gather their
repertoire of classroom practices and learning to attend to many professional issues
simultaneously. Therefore, teachers need to follow a systematic observation of their teaching
style, and mainly to try to renew their teaching strategies. As it has always been believed,
creativity in teaching is primary and first step toward students’ empowerment. Tutors, then,
should aim at improving their creative thinking and teaching and to create a sense of pleasure
and excitement among students to further study.

VIII. References: