ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the results of a research study carried out by The Creativity Centre on behalf of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA). It explored the views of 94 National Teaching Fellows (NTFs) about creativity, teaching and learning in HE, via an email survey of 90 NTFs and interviews with a subsample of 21. The research questions (devised by NESTA and the HEA) are similar to those used by the author in Project 1000, a study of the views of 1,028 teachers and further education lecturers about creativity, teaching and learning (Fryer, 1989). Some of the Project 1000 measures have also been used in this research. The results of the survey show that most Fellows are keen to develop students’ creativity and are highly motivated to provide interesting and highly relevant teaching and learning experiences for their students. On the whole, their views about how creativity may be developed are quite congruent with the creativity literature. In contrast to the teachers and lecturers who took part in Project 1000, the NTFs are far less inclined to see creativity as a rare gift. The findings indicate a need to address the assessment of creativity in HE, especially the relationship between creative ability and academic achievement. Indeed, there is an urgent need to ascertain how many highly creative students fail to achieve academic success, as currently measured, and what steps need to be taken in the light of the findings. The results also suggest that it would be timely to examine HE provision with a view to creating provision that is geared more towards the future than the past.
