Creativity and teacher education curricula in Argentina

Abstract

Creativity is a valued competence in educational institutions and teacher education. However, previous research indicates that general definitions and few methodological guidelines on how to promote creative processes in educational contexts predominate in curricular documents. The objective of this study is to analyse the curricular documents of teacher education programs in Argentina, considering the place given to creativity in the objectives, content and pedagogical guidelines. The study integrates quantitative (JAMOVI2.5.6) and qualitative (MAXQDA24) analyses of secondary sources of information. Specifically, the corpus consists of eleven curricular documents available on the official website of the National Institute of Teacher Training of Argentina and twenty-three teacher training programs published by the Department of Higher Education of Córdoba (Argentina). The results show that creativity is mainly associated with artistic disciplines. Terms related to creativity appear most frequently in the curricula of visual arts, music, dance and theatre. The analysis reveals four general purposes related to creativity: subjective expression, interdisciplinary integration, problem solving and knowledge production. In general, curricular documents do not present clear and theoretically grounded definitions of creativity; the potential of this construct as a transversal competence is unknown. It is essential that curricular policies recover current developments in the field of creativity research, recognizing the importance of creative processes in the different fields of knowledge. It is also necessary to establish creativity as a space for thinking about new teaching practices in higher education and other levels of education.