Creativity Domains in Special Needs Prospective Teachers

Abstract

Creativity and creative thinking are fundamental keys for the intellectual and educational development of people. This importance is observed in the recent inclusion of a creativity test in the 2022 PISA tests. It should be taken into account that teachers play a key role in the development of creativity in the different domains and there is a relationship between teachers’ creative perceptions and creative performance in the classrooms. In addition, some studies suggest that children with neurodevelopmental disorders perform better on creativity tests, so special needs teachers should be prepared for the task. The objective of this work is to assess the self-perceptions of creativity in special needs prospective teachers in different creative domains and compare them with students from other specialties. Participants were 113 Spanish prospective teachers from the specialties of special needs, music, and English. Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) was used to assess the self perception of creativity in five different domains Self/Everyday, Scholarly, Performance, Scientific/Mechanic and Artistic of student teachers of the three specialties. The results show relevant differences in the perception of creativity of the different domains, being Scientific/Mechanic the one with the lowest. Moreover, prospective teachers tend to assess their creativity across traditionally stereotypic lines, with statistically significant differences in the Performance and Artistic domains. For the special needs specialty, prospective teachers have a lower perception of their creativity when compared with students from the other two specialties. Since there are many specific tasks that require creativity from the special needs teacher, the inclusion of specific content and resources on creativity (not currently present in the Spanish curriculum) is proposed. This will enrich the training of special needs future teachers.