Do you have a creative class? A yardstick to assess creativity level of EFL classrooms Cover Image

Do you have a creative class? A yardstick to assess creativity level of EFL classrooms
Do you have a creative class? A yardstick to assess creativity level of EFL classrooms

Author(s): Ali Rahimi, Navvab Hematiyan
Subject(s): Education, Foreign languages learning
Published by: Birlesik Dunya Yenilik Arastirma ve Yayincilik Merkezi
Keywords: Creativity; creative thinking; thinking process; observation;

Summary/Abstract: Creativity is creating clear and singular visions for the future in the mind of people. These visions act as incentive in order for the people to enhance their thinking process and hence stimulate their creativity. Good teachers can encourage their students' creativity. Among recent works on creativity and creative thinking, one profound study is the influential book, The Research for Satori and Creativity written by E. Paul Torrence. This research is underpinned mostly by this book. This study explores the extent to which whether different EFL classrooms at Kashan university are creative or not. Five teachers were selected randomly. An observational checklist was used based on intrinsic attitudes of E. Paul Torrence he had gathered in his book after twenty years of study on creativity. Two observers were selected beforehand. Each class was observed twice by each of these observers.Two observers were selected to increase the research credibility. We have adopted Cronbach's alpha consistency analysis to verify whether or not the observation checklist possesses good reliability. The data from two raters gathered to be analyzed. The results of two raters were correlated. This checklist was implemented as a yardstick to see the level of creativity in each class. In the result we can see that rigid approaches which stifled creativity in EFL classrooms were easily spotted. Then in conclusion as a result of these findings, we offered some recommendations to the teachers of each class in order to enhance creativity.

  • Issue Year: 2/2012
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 8-12
  • Page Count: 5
  • Language: English