Fostering Creativity in the Classroom: Effects of Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs, Motivation, and Goal Orientation

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and collaboration were measured as indicators of their effort to foster creative thinking in students. Participants were 178 elementary‐school teachers of third‐, fourth‐, and fifth‐graders. Teachers' learning goal orientation was the most significant teacher attribute that demonstrated significant impacts on all five creativity‐fostering instructional practices. Teachers with sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and with high intrinsic motivation for creative work also reported supporting student creativity through some of their instructional practices. However, teachers' motivation for challenging work, beliefs about learning, or performance goals did not significantly predict most of the creativity‐fostering instructional practices. Educational implications of the current findings are offered.