Creativity theories and related teachers’ beliefs

Abstract

Creativity theories have been investigated in relation to explicit or implicit theories, which have dominated the field. The flourishing attention about creativity motivated many researchers to examine implicit and explicit theories to understand creativity in their studies. Explicit theories are those formulated by psychologists or other social scientists. They develop explicit theories from research studies on the individuals’ creative performance. On the other hand, implicit theories are those formulated by lay individuals who develop their implicit theories based on their belief systems about creativity. A major problem is the huge range of definitions in implicit theory, that is, what individuals believe creativity is implicitly. Studies on creativity usually focus on comparisons between the teachers’ spontaneous perspectives and scientists’ definitions of creativity. Researchers have categorised these differences between implicit and explicit theories. The purpose of this article is to distinguish between explicit theories and the teachers’ beliefs (implicit theories) about creativity.