Examining leadership and organizational context for an enabling environment: The case of fostering creativity in schools

Abstract

Cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental challenges in the 21st century have shifted the attention of educational researchers toward the value and urgency of creativity in the classroom. Studies into creativity strongly demonstrate the importance of the climate or surrounding environment for fostering creativity and creative thinking. The relationship between school leadership and creativity in education is limited, with research parallels coming mostly from business literature. This study explored the role that leadership plays in fostering and nurturing the climate for creativity in schools. A two-case qualitative study was conducted in two schools with a common organizational and religious history. The study involved the administration of an adapted version of the KEYS creative climate survey to teachers of both schools. The results of the survey were analyzed by simple descriptive analysis. One-to-one interviews with principals, as well as two focus group sessions with 4 volunteer teachers from each school, were analyzed using the constant comparative method. The study relied on a grounded theory approach to knowledge building. Themes extracted from the transcripts were contrasted with results from the climate survey, the literature, and the lived experience of the researcher. The findings of the study yielded new attributes and perspectives on how school leaders affect the school climate as a whole. Leadership attributes promoting creativity include being open to new ideas, accepting of differences, showing encouragement, communicating a desire to promote creativity, placing emphasis on the students as priority, showing passion for work and practicing distributive/collaborative leadership. Leadership attributes that hinder a climate conducive to creativity include being outcome-oriented, running a one-man show, lacking a vision for creativity, placing increased teacher workload, and delivering negative feedback. The study unearthed unexpected new avenues for research in education, specifically in relation to misconceptions of creativity, lack of a firm grasp of organizational structure and school climate, and a conflation of effective leadership with leadership aligned towards a specific goal, such as promoting creativity. The implications of the findings rests in the potential that school leadership plays as a mediating role in fostering creativity through specific acquired leadership attributes and practices of the individual that are accentuated throughout the school.The findings of the study yielded new attributes and perspectives on how school leaders affect the school climate as a whole. Leadership attributes promoting creativity include being open to new ideas, accepting of differences, showing encouragement, communicating a desire to promote creativity, placing emphasis on the students as priority, showing passion for work and practicing distributive/collaborative leadership. Leadership attributes that hinder a climate conducive to creativity include being outcome-oriented, running a one-man show, lacking a vision for creativity, placing increased teacher workload, and delivering negative feedback. The study unearthed unexpected new avenues for research in education, specifically in relation to misconceptions of creativity, lack of a firm grasp of organizational structure and school climate, and a conflation of effective leadership with leadership aligned towards a specific goal, such as promoting creativity. The implications of the findings rests in the potential that school leadership plays as a mediating role in fostering creativity through specific acquired leadership attributes and practices of the individual that are accentuated throughout the school.