SHAPING A CONTEXTUALIZED THEORY FOR THE DEFINITIONS OF CREATIVITY: A CASE OF PAKISTANI SECONDARY SCIENCE TEACHERS

Abstract

This paper was designed to investigate the Pakistani secondary science teachers’ understanding about the definition of creativity. The design of study was qualitative based on grounded theory method. This study recruited 20 (08 males & 12 females) teachers, which wereselected purely based on the purposive sampling technique. All the recruited teachers were from District Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan. The teachers were interviewed through a semi-structured interview guide, and their responses were recorded in the researcher's cell phone through their consent. Data were analyzed according to the coding method of Miles and Huberman (1994). All the interviews were transcribed word by word from which themes were generated. Totally four themes, i.e., newness, new tutoring methods, practicality, and natural/God-gifted phenomenon, were drawn from the interviews. This made the theory of creativity that exclusively grounded in Pakistani context on which an explicit definition of creativity was made.The other astonishing finding that came from this study was that creativity is a multifaceted concept rather than singly defined. So, this paper definedcreativity as newness, new tutoring methods, practicality, and natural/Godgifted phenomenon. Since Pakistani teachers’ definitions of creativity were supported by past literature, therefore, their conception of creativity were referred to as informed views towards creativity. Several limitations of this study have been discussed in last of this article forwhich suggestions have been made for the future researchers when they have to encounter with the concept of creativity.This study contributed to the knowledge in varous areas like context, area of study and in shaping the theory about the definition of creativity.