Abstract
The research problem relates to the lack of existing research in terms of understanding the meaning of being an innovative and creative teacher in association with a passion connected to professional duty. Research questions were the following: “What does it mean for a teacher to be innovative and creative? What makes an innovative and creative teacher?”. The aim was to explore the meaning of being an innovative and creative teacher through teachers’ experiences. The methodology was based on integration of practical phenomenology and epistemological phenomenology. The sample consisted of ten teachers from ten innovative Basque Country schools. Data was collected by using open-ended interviews. Findings showed that the passion-driven professional duty integrates being an ambitious professional, being professional through ethical and moral actions, endeavoring to discover students’ learning needs, designing learning environments, being coherent with school philosophy, and testing for improvement. Findings showed that a teacher’s innovativeness and creativeness are directed to the self, professional actions, students, school, and professional development. Conclusions are focused on empirical facts that innovative and creative teachers experience the meaning of their practices through duties, which they perform with passion. Teachers’ innovativeness and creativity are related to ethical, moral, professional, intellectual, social, institutional, individual, and processual needs.
Highlights
Innovation and creativity are two separate but related key concepts, and each is required for a teacher’s success
The theme passion-driven professional duty emerged from empirical qualitative data with regard to the meaning of being an innovative and creative teacher
This theme was created through integration of subthemes such as being an ambitious professional, being professional through ethical and moral acting, endeavoring to discover students’ learning needs, designing learning environments, being coherent with school philosophy, and testing for improvement
Summary
Innovation and creativity are two separate but related key concepts, and each is required for a teacher’s success. Creativity does not always drive a teacher’s inventions and growth; innovation does. Innovation does not happen without a creative teacher. Generating creativity means allowing teachers to think outside the box and go against the norm sometimes. If the teacher lets bureaucracy stop creativity, innovation will be the victim in his/her teaching (Sinay et al, 2017). Two complex concepts are used in this paper: i) being an innovative and creative teacher and ii) passion-driven professional duty. The first concept is used as a symbol of emergent
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