Increasing pre-service teacher ideation self- efficacy

Abstract

Ideation, the capacity to conjure and develop ideas is a crucial part of creativity, creative teaching and learning. However, one of the key impediments to teachers’ creativity in the classroom is low ideation self-efficacy. Teachers with low ideation self-efficacy tend to avoid modelling the creative process of generating, developing and communicating ideas with their students. Therefore, an imaginative deficit pervades many classrooms. Like creativity, ideation does not happen in a vacuum and its development requires inspiration and scaffolding. Consequently, this practitioner research evaluates the effectiveness of a visual arts based ITE learning component with per-service elementary school teachers with regard to developing skills and dispositions associated with idearists and increasing their ideation self-efficacy. It also investigates whether looking at artwork by another idearist scaffolds original creation. The study adopts mixed methods including arts-based methods, qualitative content analysis and confidential online survey. Findings evidence that instead of producing pastiche, participants favoured varying, combining and transforming elements of what they saw to create highly original work. They also reveal perceived increases in all nine traits associated with idearists and creative people and increased ideative self-efficacy. This study concludes that ideative development can increase with concerted scaffolding and dispels the notion that exposure to other ideas by impedes original creativity.