Creative teachers and outdoor educational settings: new directions of research

Creativity is a desirable characteristic for every individual in both the professional and private spheres and has been considered for some time now, at global level, one of the essential competences of the 21st century (e.g. Davies, Newton, & Newton, 2018; Egan, Maguire, Christophers, & Rooney, 2017; Guo & Woulfin, 2016; Newton & Newton, 2014). The recent socio-cultural Manifesto on creativity expresses the urgency to direct current and future interests of research and education towards it as “[creativity] will become a necessity for the dignity and survival of the human species” (Glăveanu et al., 2019, p. 2), also in relation to the growing coexistence of various forms of artificial intelligence. In the world of the school, there is a continuing tendency to limit creativity to artistic disciplines or to specific programmes, while it is more rarely considered in terms of a priority, interdisciplinary competence common to all individuals (Guerra & Villa, 2017).In the Italian context, the National Indications for the curriculum for the first cycle of education (2012; 2018), based on the Council of Europe’s Recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning (2006; 2018),do not list creativity as one of the main competences, as other countries in the world do (e.g. Lai & Viering, 2012; Shaheen, 2010), therefore the responsibility of assuming it as an objective in the educational processes ends up by being in the hands of the teachers. Assuming that a creative attitude of the adult encourages and supports that of children (Jeffrey & Craft, 2004; Jeffrey, Troman, & Zezlina-Phillips, 2008) and therefore plays a particularly important role, our research interest aims to explore less traditional educational settings to verify their impact on the style and actions of the teacher, observing the repercussions on this role when the conditions and possibilities made available vary. In this sense, one particularly interesting context to investigate appears to be that of outdoor education, understood as a way of schooling which sees in the natural environment “an overall approach to learning” (Farné, 2014, p. 60) and as a privileged setting for education and experience (Antonietti, Bertolino, Guerra, & Schenetti, 2018). Education in nature also requires investigation to advance the understanding and the implementation in terms of learning outcomes, mechanisms of influence and implications for policy and practice (Jordan & Chawla, 2019), with a particular interest in teaching and creativity. The literature looking at the relationship between creativity and teachers in the open has not, to date, been studied in depth (Guerra & Villa, in press) and allows outlining a perspective of enquiry aimed at observing the attitude of teachers in relation to their creativity in sociocultural terms (Glăveanu, 2013, 2015), in outdoor educational settings, of which to explore the characteristics and the affordances.