ABSTRACT
Creative teachers need choice, and the power to make it. This applies to their own capabilities and dispositions which empower them through self-knowledge and qualify them as 'reflective practitioners'. As such they are able to see alternatives and to achieve analytical distance from their professional role, continuously evaluating their own performance. The opposite of creative teaching is teaching in which teachers have little or no choice but to carry out the dictates of others. In this mode, they are technicians rather than professionals. The argument is that they have become deprofessionalized and deskilled as their work has become increasingly intensified. This is a world-wide development affecting all professionals. Ball and Bowe in noting different responses to the changes from secondary schools and departments, suggest that they reflect different capacities (the experience and skills of the staff in responding to change), contingencies (staffing, students, and resources), commitment (firmly held and well-established views), and history of curriculum change.
