Creativity in Schools: A Survey of Teachers in Europe

This report examines teachers' perceptions about creativity for learning and their reflection on their own teaching practices. Teachers' opinions where collected through an online survey which gathered data from 32 countries and at distinct school levels. For the scope of this report, only responses from teachers from EU27 and teaching in obligatory schooling were examined (ISCED levels 1 and 2). This amounts to a total of 7659 responses. Almost all surveyed teachers have an encompassing view of creativity: 98% believe that creativity can be applied to every domain of knowledge and 96% that creativity can be applied to every school subject. Almost nine out of ten teachers in this survey endorse a democratic view of creativity sustaining that everyone can be creative (88%). Teachers' opinions on creativity in education are much stronger than their practices. While teachers claim to foster many skills that are connected to creativity, traditional teaching and assessment methods and resources are still predominant. The vast majority of surveyed teachers claim that technology has improved their teaching (85%) and that ICT can be used to enhance creativity (91%). has become an important tool for teachers to update their own knowledge for use in their lessons (90%), to prepare handouts and material (89%) and to search for teaching material (87%). Notwithstanding the high importance attributed to technology, its use seems to be still teacher-lead. Only half of the teachers (53%) claim to let their students use a wide range of technologies to learn (videos, mobiles, cameras, educational software, etc). Moreover, the potential of Web2. 0 technologies is still untapped and more than half of teachers surveyed (54%) disagree that mobile phones could be important for learning. Teachers claim to need more support and are willing to undergo more training. Teacher training on the use of ICT for education was received by less than half of respondents. Only one-fourth of our sample (25%) agreed that the quality of ICT in their school is excellent. Only less than a quarter of respondents (23%) deem to have learnt how to teach during initial teacher training.