Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Attributes of the School Environment That Teachers Relate to Creative Instruction

Creative instruction is widely regarded as effective teaching that enhances learning and promotes learner creativity. The benefits to students are clear. However, contemporary research does not identify how instructional creativity is enabled and limited by the environment. This investigation addresses this gap by looking beyond the school environment as an academy where only learner creativity is valued. The insights of measurably creative teachers are synthesized as an approach to discovery that is unique to this area of research. The findings suggest that teachers with a high or substantial creative ability relate distinct attributes of the physical and socio-organizational environment to the creativity of their professional experiences and that the attributes are interrelated. This mixed-method study contributes important knowledge which can be used to improve the design of schools and optimize both learner and instructor creativity.