Creative approach to tourism through creative approach to didactics

Abstract

ABSTRACT The relationships between creativity and tourism are commonly discussed. The article, rooted in the experience of post-soviet countries, presents an experiment carried out within the course “Creativity in tourism” at the University of Łódź, Poland. The objective was to perform two psychometric tests to verify the level of students’ creativity: Test of Creative Imagination and “Creative versus Imitative Attitude Scale Test”. The aim was to answer the research question: may the introduction of the element(s) of creative pedagogy impact creativity of students. The main objective of this paper is to prove the necessity of taking similar actions and including methods and tools from the creative pedagogy framework in teaching processes at the academic level. The students achieved a high increase of fluent thinking. The high rate of the course given by the students may encourage looking for new solutions within the scope of stimulating creativity. The experiment thus constitutes an example of the introduction of a subject satisfying the needs of a dynamic job market and tourism into the academic teaching program.