Generation of creative metaphors and perception of creativity of future teachers

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The relevance granted by OECD to creativity is reflected in the assessment of creativity in the PISA tests in 2022, but also in its importance in the new Spanish educational law (LOMLOE, 2020). In the context of evaluating the creativity of the different agents of the educational system as a determining factor in the stimulation of creativity in the classroom, this study analyzes the ability to produce creative metaphors and its relationship with creative self-perception. METHOD. This is an empirical ex post facto study with 438 teachers in training (in Primary Education and three linguistic specialties from the master’s degree in Secondary Education Teacher Training). The correlational study is based on data collected from the Kasirer and Mashal (2018) instrument and the K-DOCS test (Kaufman, 2012). RESULTS. The results show a medium level of creativity. Statistically significant differences have been found for the variables of gender (men have a higher perception of their creativity) and degree (philologists have a greater capacity of generating creative metaphors, their age is also a statistically significant variable: the capacity of generating creative metaphors increases with age). In addition, the correlation between metaphorical capacity and perception of creativity is demonstrated. DISCUSSION. The results show that the training of these future teachers has not been able to stimulate their creativity good enough. This will condition their ability to channel the creativity of their students, which is something required by the Spanish syllabus for all educational levels and subjects. As a possible solution, instructional changes in teacher training are proposed as the first step to improve the attention that creativity must have in the educational system.