How do creative teachers facilitate children's creativity in visual arts? A case study about the visual arts teacher training and teaching

Abstract

In the years of education reform in Hong Kong, educators aimed to nurture creative children for their lifelong learning. The creativity of the teacher's became a critical factor in facilitating children's creativity to create their visual arts capabilities. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate how creative teachers in Hong Kong facilitate children’s creativity in their visual arts classroom. A case study in a visual arts teacher training programme was conducted through the semi-structured interviews. Data were coded using the thematic network analysis (Attride-Stirling, 2001). We found that creative teachers facilitated children in the creative process of fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration as suggested by Guilford (1950) and Torrance (1963, 1966). More than these capacities, creative teachers performed visualization and modification in teaching visual arts to the young children. The findings of this study suggest that creative teachers show both existing and new conceptions of creativity as their pedagogies to facilitate children’s creativity in visual arts.