Teaching Creatively in Higher Education: The Roles of Personal Attributes and Environment

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to explore university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching and other factors that may influence academics’ efforts to teach creatively in higher education in Sweden. A qualitative case study was employed, interviewing 14 university teachers in three focus group interviews. The results show that the university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching differed slightly, yet were interconnected. They perceived creative teaching as an ability to engage students in learning, to solve problems in challenging teaching situations and introduce innovation or novelty into their teaching. The results also show that apart from personal attributes (e.g., imagination), environmental factors (e.g., departmental structure and culture) play an important role in enabling creative teaching practices.

KEYWORDS:

• University teacher
• creative teaching
• personal attributes
• environmental factors

Introduction

The importance of creative approaches to learning and teaching has been long recognized by educators (Freire, 2005; Wisdom, 2006). However, despite some rewards from engaging in teaching and service activities, the greatest tangible rewards (such as tenure and promotion) flow to those teachers most active in research and publishing scholarly work (Watty et al., 2008). Teaching, on the other hand, is regularly de-emphasized and even traditional teaching institutions find themselves under pressure to meet challenging research expectations (Wilkesmann & Schmid, 2014). Consequently, creativity in teaching is not always recognized or valued (Dawson et al., 2011; Gibson, 2010). There is also evidence that, due to the pressures on teachers to produce high-achieving students, creative approaches to teaching can be seen as unnecessary, which results in insufficient resources to support that work (Chao, 2009; Gibson, 2010).

Although creativity is welcomed to some degree in teaching as in research, it has been argued to go against the grain of academia, where stability and sameness is often considered a survival mechanism. For instance, mixed messages about what is, and what is not, valued by the university and its cultures, logistics, timetabling, self-efficacy concerns, all create a plethora of reasons for why we tend *not* to take pedagogical risk and creative academic ambitions in teaching are put on the backburner (Philip, 2015).

Many university teachers have limited knowledge about the diversity of strategies that could be used to stimulate creative teaching in their disciplines (Jackson, 2006). Creative teaching, thus, suffers from an “invisibility cloak” (Philip, 2015) and there is only a small amount of research on this topic in higher education (e.g., Kleiman, 2008; Pollard et al., 2018). Without a better understanding of creative teaching and its conditions, successful implementation of creative pedagogy cannot be fully achieved. Hence, to enable universities to work systematically to encourage and value creative teaching, we aim in this paper to explore faculty perceptions of creativity in teaching and of the conditions that enable it.

Definitions of Creativity and Creative Teaching

Creativity as a concept is acknowledged to be elusive and complex (Jackson & Sinclair, 2006), and there is no consensus on an exact definition in the literature. Boden (2001) defines creativity as “the ability to come up with new ideas that are surprising yet intelligible, and also valuable in some way” (p. 95). Beghetto (2007) expands Boden’s definition of creativity to include the issue of raising questions and generate solutions to ill-defined problems in the following way: “the ability to offer new perspectives, generate novel and meaningful ideas, raise new questions, and generate solutions to ill-defined problems” (p. 1). Nevertheless, finding a broad definition that suits the context of teaching in higher education remains a challenge and consequently so does incorporating creative teaching practices.

Most definitions of creative teaching come from school education, where teaching is said to be creative when an instructor combines existing knowledge with a strategy or process that is new to nourish cognition and obtain a useful learning outcome (Ayob et al., 2013). In higher education settings, however, we have only found one definition, from the STEM area, where creative teaching is defined as an activity “evidenced through assessment and teaching practices that are surprising, multidisciplinary, risky, focused on process and product, aligned to learning outcomes and produce knowledge that is new and valuable” (Pollard et al., 2018). Although this definition may be applicable beyond the STEM area, our socio-cultural perspective on learning leads us to agree with Akyıldız and Çelik (2020) who suggest the nature of creativity differs from teacher to teacher, depending on their perceptions (Akyıldız & Çelik, 2020). Additionally, it is noteworthy to reveal the common understanding of teachers on creativity and creative teaching and give them opportunities to talk about it (Hodges, 2005). In order to study academics’ teaching creativity in higher education, we conclude that there is a need for a better sense of how university teachers perceive creative teaching and the conditions that enable it.

Next, we provide an overview of research on important factors that identified in the literature for nurturing or inhibiting creative teaching.

Personal Attributes: Who is a “Creative Teacher”?

Personal attributes refer to self-efficacy (the confidence people hold about their capability to successfully carry out a particular course of action i.e., teaching), personality types (i.e., being imaginative or reflective) and work experience. For clarity, the personal attributes we focus on here do not include academic aptitude such as subject area knowledge. These personal attributes are explored further in the following sections.

Self-efficacy. Bandura (1997) defines self-efficacy as the belief a person has about their ability to succeed in specific situations. Self-efficacy can strongly influence the power a person has to face goals, tasks, or challenges. People with high self-efficacy believe they can perform well, and are more likely to view difficult tasks, problems, or challenges as things to be dealt with rather than avoided. Self-efficacy comes from four sources: enactive experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and interpretation of physiological state. The frequent and successful completion of a specific task increases self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), because when people believe their efforts have been successful, their confidence to accomplish similar or related tasks is raised. Repeated failure, on the other hand, can lower self-efficacy beliefs. Observing the successes and failures of others also contributes to individuals’ beliefs about their own capabilities, while positive verbal persuasion encourages individuals to attempt, persist and succeed, thus promoting skill development and growth of self-efficacy beliefs. The final source of self-efficacy information is emotional and physiological arousal; physiological states such as strength, stamina, pain, and mood affect self-efficacy judgments.

Various studies show that teachers with a greater sense of self-efficacy persist longer when confronted with challenges, exhibit a greater enthusiasm for teaching, and are generally more effective in the classroom (e.g., Holzberger et al., 2013). High levels of self-efficacy are in general related to positive teaching behaviour, which characterized by the choice of teaching activities, effort, persistence, achievement, professional commitment, passion for the job, and so on (Vogel & Human-Vogel, 2016). The process of creative teaching is “typified by experimentation, trial and error, [sometimes] a reluctance to “let go’ control of the teaching situation, exhaustion as seemingly ever-more effort is put into planning new activities and assessment tasks, and most of all by creativity” (Cornish, 2007, p. 7). A person’s sense of self-efficacy can influence their ability to cope with unexpected or challenging situations in creative ways. If confidence in one’s creative capacity is necessary for creative performance, as has been suggested (Bandura, 1997; Bandura & Locke, 2003), understanding how to build self-efficacy is a crucial step on the road to creative teaching.

Experience. In addition to self-efficacy beliefs, studies show that, as teachers become more experienced, they improvise more (Moore, 1993). For instance, Bramwell et al. (2011) find that more experienced instructors exhibit more creative teaching behaviours.

Personality types. It has long been widely argued that personal qualities and personality types affect the development of creativity in individuals (Esquivel, 1995; Petrowski, 2000). For instance, imagination, independence, and divergent thinking are thought to figure prominently in the personality of creative people (Diakidoy & Kanari, 1999). Jackson (2006) offers a set of characteristics for creativity, including being imaginative, original, inventive, curious, resourceful, adaptable, and able to see things differently. Moreover, the creative teacher is the one who reflects on his or her actions (Claxton et al., 2008; Tanggaard, 2011).

Bramwell et al. (2011) suggest that teachers’ intelligence (intrapersonal and interpersonal), motivation, and values are crucial factors in their commitment to creativity. In their study, they find being hardworking, nonconforming, knowledgeable, intuitive, confident, flexible, and energetic are the personal attributes contributing to creativity. Creative teaching also requires an openness to experience, a willingness to take risks, and a healthy measure of flexibility, spontaneity, and open-mindedness (Ewing & Gibson, 2007). Similarly, in the higher education context, a study by Pollard et al. (2018) asserts that creative teaching requires determination, an openness to the unexpected and curious, confident risk-taking. But creativity cannot be predicted solely by examining the personal attributes of an individual. Increasingly, researchers are focusing on the social and environmental factors that promote or retard creative activity (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Simonton, 2000).

Environmental Factors and Creative Teaching

Many researchers describe the effect of one’s environment on creativity (e.g., Simonton, 2012). A supportive environment is required to encourage, nurture and value creativity (Newton & Newton, 2014; Sternberg, 2003). A teacher’s creative performance may influence, and be influenced by, perceptions of the teaching environment. For instance, pressures such as a heavy syllabus, standardized tests, limited time to practice creative teaching, and lack of teacher training and knowledge may also constrain the integration of creativity in education (Anderson-Patton, 2009; Newton, 2012).

For instance, Sawyer (2004) critiques contemporary reform efforts that have associated creative teaching with “scripted instruction” – a highly structured teaching format that emphasizes instructional delivery skills for teachers, yet often denies teacher creativity. Similarly, Woods (1995) emphasizes that teaching is frequently constrained in various ways that may limit creativity. For example, there are syllabuses to be followed, assignments to be set, tests and examinations to be given and assessed, and other institution-specific curricular requirements to be met. Therefore, a supportive educational environment is necessary to support teacher creativity. If departments can offer more practical support to teachers in terms of resources, training, time for planning and implementation of programmes, the practice of creativity in the classroom can be more viable. Therefore, creative teaching is an issue that deserves the attention, not only of all university teachers when designing curriculum and teaching activities, but of university administrators responsible for the promotion of creative teaching.

Furthermore, research on teachers approaches to teaching shows approaches are influenced by emotions experienced in academic teaching so that positive emotions are connected to student-centred approaches to teaching (Trigwell, 2012). Teachers’ efficacy in engaging students also largely depends on classroom experiences and interactions with students (Quin, 2017). This implies that students may also play an important role in creative teaching. A similar idea is emphasized in the literature on student partnerships, advocating for a shared responsibility for the development and design of teaching and learning (Cook-Sather, 2014; Cook-Sather & Felten, 2017). Hence, students can stimulate creative teaching experiences, thus contributing to teachers’ efficacy in student engagement (Huang et al., 2019).

Current Study

To enable favourable conditions for creative teaching in higher education this study, thus, examines university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching and what factors university teachers think influence their creative teaching practices. The research questions addressed are as follows:

1. How do university teachers perceive creative teaching and its role?

2. What are the factors that university teachers think influence their creative teaching practices?

Method

We used a case study to get in-depth analysis of university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching at one education department at a research-intensive university in Sweden. A case study design is an empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon and when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident, and, thus, provides an opportunity for one aspect of a problem to be studied in some depth (Yin, 2009).

The department offers education in the areas of courses in the K-12 teacher programme career guidance, human resources education, health education, philosophy of education, higher education, etc. It was hoped that the width of educational programmes teachers at this department are engaged in would enable insightful information given their background in the educational field.

Participants

Three face-to-face focus group interviews consisting of four to five participants were conducted (n = 14). The strategy for selecting participants was based on the maximum variation principle, so that participants differed with regard to gender, age, work experience and teaching areas (e.g., teacher education, career guidance, language education, higher education certificate programme, etc.). Seven women and seven men between the ages of 35 and 69 years participated and all contact about the interview was made through e-mail.

Data Collection

For data collection, we utilized focus group interviews to explore university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching and other factors influencing it. Focus group interviews are useful when searching for empirical data on how social groups understand and interpret a particular topic and enable qualitative, meaningful exploration of specific issues on this topic (Barbour, 2007). In this context, this approach allowed the participants to express or contrast their perceptions, views, and digress from the general topic at hand, in order to convey their perspectives and elucidate the issues concerning creative teaching in higher education in particular.

The interviews were semi-structured and the interview guide was developed using relevant literature and revolved around the overall research theme: (a) perceptions of creative teaching, and (b) other factors influencing creative teaching practices in higher education. Each focus group had a moderator and an observer who asked follow-up questions. The flow of conversation determined if and when to introduce new questions to the interview. A pilot interview was conducted to test the interview guide. In the findings, assumed names have been used.

Prior to beginning of the focus interviews, permission was sought from each participant to record the interview, with assurances of confidentiality. Participants were fully informed of the purpose of the interview and of their rights to confidentiality and to withdraw at any time. They were required to sign a consent form before the interviews began.

The interviews, lasting approximately one hour, were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim, and all personal data were anonymized. In each interview, the teachers knew each other quite well, which seemed to create an atmosphere of trust where open-minded discussions took place on creative teaching. The results provided some illuminating descriptions of the participants’ experiences.

Data Analysis

We used thematic analysis (Clarke et al., 2015), which involved data familiarization, coding, and the labelling of themes. Coding strategies and a more theoretical approach were used when analysing the transcripts. The coding was an inductive process examining the repetition of key phrases, words, and constructs. It involved moving from the specifics of the data provided, to the general themes that emerged from coding the transcripts. Codes were generated after multiple readings of the transcribed interviews, and from a close reading of the literature on creative teaching (see Table 1). The more theoretical approach viewed the transcripts from the perspective of existing concepts of creativity and studies of creative teaching. An inter-rater reliability test using two raters was conducted as a means to “mitigate interpretative bias” and ensure a “continuous dialogue between researchers to maintain consistency of the coding” (Walther et al., 2013, p. 650). The agreement on the assignment of codes to text segments from the inter-rater reliability check was > 85%. Any disagreements between the raters were resolved through a consensus approach. Finally, the coded data enabled emerging themes to be identified.

Table 1. Description of codes, themes and subthemes.

Question Area	Code	Theme & Subtheme
Perceptions of creative teaching	to solve problems	Solving problems in challenging teaching situations
	to engage students	Engaging students in learning
	innovation & novelty	Introducing innovation & novelty in teaching
Factors influencing creative teaching	teaching experience	Personal attributes required to teach creatively
	teaching self-efficacy
	problem-solving
	reflective
	imaginative
	teaching context	Conditions enabling creative teaching
	teaching formats
	time
	colleagues
	students

Findings

The aim of this study is to better understand university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching and the other factors that they think influence their creative teaching practices. The findings from the interviews were categorized in relation to the two research questions. Themes were also identified for each of the questions. Quotations are provided to reflect the views of the participants and verify the analysis procedures (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). In the following section, we present the results of the qualitative analysis of the themes for each question, accompanied by illustrative quotes.

Perceptions of Creative Teaching

This section addresses the perceptions of creative teaching as described by the participants. The analysis showed that creative teaching was perceived slightly differently by each university teacher in our sample. The themes that suggested the variations in perception of creative teaching included understandings of the term as (a) solving problems in challenging situations, (b) engaging students in learning, and (c) introducing innovation and novelty in teaching.

Solving Problems in Challenging Situations

The university teachers perceived creative teaching as the ability to come up with new solutions and ideas to solve problems in challenging situations. Creative teaching occurs when teachers are and responding to unexpected challenges, and the university teachers said that creative teachers need the ability to deal with new situations and problems:

When you stand in the classroom and have a group of students and you find yourself in a situation where your usual way of working does not work anymore. Then you have to immediately come up with something new to explain something in a new way or illustrate in some new way – then it can be very creative in that way. (Lisa)

Engaging Students in Learning

The university teachers perceived creative teaching as the ability to think and deliver their teaching in a way that engages their students in learning. They added that creative teaching happens when a teacher interacts with students and gives them the opportunity to learn and act upon what they have learned:

It is about how I am able to organize a teaching situation – not just in a new form but finding other ways to engage students in learning. (Alex)

Introducing Innovation and Novelty in Teaching

Some university teachers, however, disagreed and did not relate creative teaching directly to student engagement. They perceived creative teaching as the ability to think in a way that leads to innovative and novel outcomes in their teaching. They also perceived creative teaching as making novelty in a teaching situation and as an ability to “think outside the box”:

Creative teachers are willing to take a risk on trying new things, whether it is being criticized from a student perspective or from their colleagues’ perspective or from the administrators’ perspective because, a lot of the time, you come in and there has been a certain way something has been taught for years – there is certain rule that dictates how these things go and I think that a creative teacher does not just stick to that one possibility. Creative teaching is a more innovative use of the knowledge you have. To use that knowledge in different ways that is not common. (David)

The university teachers further agreed that, in order to be creative in their teaching and think outside the box, they needed expert or subject knowledge:

… . And I also think creative teaching is based on your competence and knowledge. You need to know the box, [and] once you have got expertise then you can think outside the box. The more professional and knowledgeable you are, the more new and different ways you can come up with to be creative. (Ella)

Factors Influencing Creative Teaching

In this section, we address other factors that may influence to teach creatively as discussed by the participants. Two subthemes emerged from the main theme and provided the subheadings for this analysis section: (1) Personal attributes required to teach creatively and (2) conditions enabling creative teaching.

Personal Attributes Required to Teach Creatively

The university teachers said that personal attributes are very strongly linked to creative teaching in the classroom. The codes that suggested the influence of personal factors on creative teaching included: (a) teaching experience, (b) teaching self-efficacy, and (c) personality (reflective, imaginative, problem-solving).

Teaching Experience

The university teachers recounted how their experience facilitates an increasingly creative teaching process in the classroom:

… . But I have a bigger toolbox, I think, I can use. If I am in the middle of the seminar and I realize something does not work, let’s try this instead. Then I can do that. Because I have more experiences with different ways of doing things. (Lisa)

Interestingly, by contrast, some of the university teachers argued the opposite, saying that they taught more creatively when they were less experienced:

I think, sometimes, I was more creative when I was new as a teacher. I was not so experienced, so I planned a lot because I was scared what could happen then. I thought about different kinds of scenarios before teaching. But nowadays, sometimes, I feel like my imagination is not triggered. (Agnes)

Teaching Self-efficacy

The majority of university teachers agreed that self-efficacy is linked to the ability to teach creatively and encourage student learning. However, some of them argued the opposite and pointed out that high self-efficacy in teaching may result in a professional “comfort zone”. These university teachers thought that low teaching self-efficacy and dealing with new and challenging teaching situations may lead to creativity in their teaching:

When a teaching process does not work, of course, I can lose my self-efficacy. But it can also start a reflective process and you can become creative. Creative teaching is a very complex interplay between different things. (Lisa)

Personality

The university teachers identified characteristics and abilities associated with a creative personality. They believed that the manifestation of creative teaching depends on the personality of the teacher. The characteristics and abilities they most frequently mentioned as necessary for creative teaching were: problem-solver, reflective practitioner, and imaginative thinker.

The teachers pointed out that creative teaching requires problem-solving skills and the capacity to deal with unpredictable teaching situations. They also said that creative teaching is closely linked to a capacity to be “a reflective practitioner or person”. They believed that questions like “How did I do?” and “How could I change this for the better?” are critical for creative teaching.

The teachers also mentioned that imagination is necessary in creative teaching:

It is a matter for me as a teacher to use my imagination in order to create a unit of teaching in different ways. (Tim)

While discussing personal characteristics, the university teachers also agreed that, although being reflective and imaginative are considered to be personality traits, in many cases, they can be learned and developed through training, teaching experience and professional development programmes.

Conditions Enabling Creative Teaching

The university teachers considered environment of utmost importance with respect to the manifestation of creative teaching. The environmental factors they identified related to (a) departmental structure, and (b) academic community.

Departmental Structure

Our analysis revealed three main areas that affect university teachers in the context of their department: teaching context, teaching formats, and time.

Teaching context. The majority of the university teachers said that creative teaching is context specific and that teachers should always consider the level of their students, the subject being taught, class responsiveness etc.:

So, if you actually engage in a process of creativity you tend to feel alive. But that same activity can make you completely not interested and dead in another context. I suppose that I cannot really teach creatively in the same way too many times. After a while, I get bored with what I have been doing and I have to do something differently to retain the sense of life within it and I can see it with the students, too. I have one student group that is incredibly engaged and if I try to do the same with the next student group it is still a mystery if it is going to work the same way for them. (Tim)

Teaching formats. University teachers are frequently constrained in their creative teaching by various factors such as syllabi and the formats of teaching to be followed, assignments to be set, tests and examinations to be assessed, and other curriculum requirements. The university teachers stated that these routines and constraints sometimes negatively influence their creative teaching practices.

Time. The university teachers agreed that time is one of the main constraints on their creative teaching practice as it requires a lot of planning and preparation:

Time matters, of course. Time is important to do good teaching. If creative teaching is good teaching, it takes a lot more time. (Sara)

They also stated that the time devoted to other administrative or research-related activities might adversely affect the time available for creative teaching:

… . when you have deadlines approaching for grant proposals and then definitely the time you have for teaching is a competition. You have to spend time on writing grant proposals. Now, it is a lot of evenings and weekend work. That is not good for creative teaching. Your mind, mental focus is definitely on research. (Christina)

Academic Community

The academic community can also affect the level of creative teaching, and in this context that includes the roles of colleagues and students.

Colleagues. Colleagues play an important role in creative teaching. The university teachers in this study were happy with their relationships with peers, and reported that interaction, collaboration, and exchange of ideas with colleagues are essential in building their creative teaching practices:

I worked together with a colleague of mine for several years. Now, she is retired, and I miss her so much. I had such a [good] kind of support and we worked a lot together. I am a lot more creative in my teaching when I can discuss and talk rather than sitting by myself. Then, I am not a creative person. I need people. Interaction is very important. (Agnes)

Students. The role of students in creative teaching is crucial, since they are clearly key players in the teaching and learning process. Students’ attitudes towards learning – their interaction, engagement, and response to instruction – were viewed as prominent factors that influence creative teaching. The university teachers considered students to be the main resource for creative teaching:

I do not own this process alone. I own it together with the students. So, it definitely has to do as much with them as with me. I can approach a teaching situation and feel very alive with what I wanted to do. And if the students do not recognize that, then it can turn into nothing. (Tim)

Discussion

In this study, we explore university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching, and examine the conditions that enable it. The findings of this study show that the university teachers’ perceptions of creative teaching differed slightly, though were interconnected. They perceived creative teaching as an ability to engage students in learning, to solve problems in challenging teaching situations, and to introduce innovation or novelty in their teaching. In terms of the perceptions of creative teaching, our findings are, hence, in line with the findings by Tanggaard (2011), who in the Danish secondary school context, reported that teachers perceive creative teaching as a problem-solving approach and a willingness to experiment whenever appropriate. Tanggaard further adds that, in such teaching situations, students can ideally engage with the teacher and other students. Further, in the higher education context, Kleiman (2008) introduces five qualitatively different conceptions of creative teaching, and one of them is categorized as product-focused experience in which the focus is on the production of something original. This finding overlaps with our finding on creative teaching as an act of introducing something new or innovative that leads to a novel outcome.

Our findings also reveal that being reflective, imaginative, and demonstrating a problem-solving ability were thought by the teachers to be key attributes of creative teachers. This finding is line with Diakidoy and Kanari (1999) who assert that the manifestation of creativity depends on the personality of the individual. Moreover, teaching experience and self-efficacy are attributes commonly associated with creative teaching, and may help teachers respond in problem-solving situations in the classroom. According to the literature, it requires years for a novice university teacher to become familiar with the practices involved in learning facilitation and build self-efficacy beliefs for teaching. Contrary to previous literature, our results reveal that being less experienced, with the commonly associated lower self-efficacy beliefs, may also result in more creative teaching practices. One possible explanation for this could be that when university teachers put significantly more effort into planning their course, with a desire to consider all contingencies, it may be that challenge that triggers their imagination and helps them to achieve creative results in their teaching. This could of course also be a result of the specific context in which our interviewees acted, a context where learning and education is in focus as content of teaching. However, if we employ the social cognitive theory lens introduced earlier (Bandura, 1997), having the knowledge and skills needed to perform an act does not guarantee that an actor will perform efficaciously. Effective action – in this case, teaching creatively – also depends upon the personal belief that one can mobilize such knowledge and skills to perform an act successfully. In other words, although effective functioning requires both skill and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), the level of skill is less important than what one believes one can achieve under unpredictable circumstances. So, sometimes, having less experience and skill may encourage novice university teachers to experiment more and achieve more creative results in their teaching. We believe this is something that departments should embrace and make use of for their educational development.

In terms of environmental factors, the findings reveal that the university teachers experienced some tensions in trying to teach creatively while also fulfilling other job demands. Chang et al. (2010) identify three categories of support that university teachers need: teaching resources, peer support, and administrative support. Similarly, our findings reveal that flexibility in terms of teaching formats and syllabi, and more time for course planning, could be helpful for university teachers to focus on creativity in their teaching. These findings echo those of the secondary school context, where Tanggaard (2011) also found that creative teaching requires more time and effort for preparation. Our findings are also slightly consistent with Akyıldız and Çelik (2020) who, in the Turkish secondary school context, find that a content-heavy curriculum and exam-oriented education constrain creative teaching. The balancing demands for alignment and space for creativity is, thus, an important aspect of creating an environment that enables creativity in teaching.

Encouragement, collaboration, and support from colleagues were also considered important for enabling university teachers’ creative teaching practices. According to social cognitive theory, verbal persuasion and positive modelling are strategies to strengthen self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1997). People learn through observing behaviours, coding (interpreting) and then performing similarly. More importantly, in the context of higher education, collaboration or support from colleagues can boost teachers’ creative teaching (e.g., Roxå & Mårtensson, 2009). For instance, sharing experiences with colleagues or observing a class on teaching methods, techniques (vicarious experiences), or encouragement for creative teaching ideas (verbal persuasion) may increase teachers’ creative teaching practices. Thus, it can be inferred that creativity can be learned or improved likewise. Similarly, teachers’ sense of collective-efficacy might influence a department’s ability to overcome challenging situations and create a positive environment in which students can reach their academic potential (Fives & Looney, 2009). An academic department that consists of teachers who work together in a collective environment can thus enhance their teaching creativity as well as the academic capabilities of students.

Finally, our findings show that students and their attitudes towards learning may facilitate creative teaching. This finding is in line with Akyıldız and Çelik (2020) and Yagcioglu (2017), who report that students’ negative attitudes prevent creative teaching, while positive attitudes promote it. When teachers realize that their students are motivated and interested, they become more motivated and enthusiastic to apply more creative techniques and methods in the classroom. This realisation may also lead towards a stronger partnership with students (Cook-Sather & Felten, 2017), where students are viewed as a resource for innovation and creativity in teaching.

Implications

This study contributes to the education field by exposing the meaning of creativity for university teachers and also the key inhibiting and facilitating factors of creative teaching, which could be an exploratory groundwork for further empirical studies. Moreover, our results offer departments guidance in supporting and enhancing creative teaching practices in their institutions by helping them understand the demands faced by university teachers in this area, as well as how personal attributes and environmental factors influence creative teaching practice. First, departments can, at the skills level, provide professional development programmes to teachers to improve their skills and capacity for creative teaching. This training should equip teachers with a range of strategies to stimulate students’ engagement and deal with challenging teaching situations. In addition, professional development activities should support teachers’ personal and collective self-efficacy beliefs. Specific strategies to promote their self-efficacy revolve around supporting sources of self-efficacy, e.g., observing colleagues’ classes, learning how peers deal creatively with challenging teaching situations (vicarious experiences), and experimenting with these skills (mastery experiences). Strategies to promote collective efficacy beliefs include collegial collaboration, and sharing experiences of success and failure (Bolander Laksov & McGrath, 2020). Professional development needs to be underpinned by institutional support (Smith, 2011) such as awards, promotions, funding, and encouragement to develop expertise in creative teaching. We conclude that a supportive educational environment is necessary. Institutional constraints on creativity enhancement are a reality, and if departments can give more practical support to university teachers in terms of resources, training, and time, then the facilitation of creative teaching will be more viable.

Considerations

Two limitations of this study have to be addressed to highlight the directions for future research. Clearly, this was an exploratory study and the small sample size limits the extent to which findings can be generalized to other university teacher populations. However, the findings are in line with previous research in primary and secondary school contexts. Also, the study was based on interviews and depended in large part on the teachers’ self-reported data. In future studies, therefore, the study of creative teaching could include other approaches to data collection such as quantitative survey, third-party classroom observations, and interviews with teachers from other disciplines.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Institute.