SUPPORTING CREATIVE COGNITIVE SPACES: THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATIVITY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECONDARY ELA CLASSROOM
Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, University of Oklahoma
How they used Delve
A doctoral researcher at the University of Oklahoma used Delve to code semi-structured interviews with nine secondary English language arts teachers about creativity professional development, importing the Zoom-captioned transcripts, highlighting snippets to build an online codebook, and coding inductively for a thematic analysis.
“I uploaded each of the nine transcripts to my personal subscription-based Delve account on my password-protected laptop. Delve is an online qualitative data analysis platform that allowed me to create an online codebook for the nine transcripts. For example, after transcripts were uploaded into Delve, I went through each transcript and began highlighting phrases, or snippets, in order to create codes. Each snippet was labeled using a description to capture the overall theme of the phrase, which became the initial set of codes.”
- Field
- English language arts / creativity and teacher professional development
- Data
- Semi-structured Zoom interviews (with follow-ups) with nine secondary English language arts teachers in an Oklahoma school district
- Approach
- Qualitative study with semi-structured Zoom interviews and follow-ups, transcribed with Zoom's captioning and analysed with Braun and Clarke's phases of thematic analysis: transcripts highlighted into snippets, labelled to form initial codes, then an online codebook and inductive coding
- Data types
- Interviews
Abstract
While teachers and districts clamored to discern how to combat pandemic learning losses through a focus on teaching standards and skills, few considered the role that creativity played in supporting cognitive and personal growth. Creativity fosters a plethora of skills and gives individual students the space and opportunity to explore their own interests and follow their own paths, or, as Nel Noddings would argue, to give each individual the tools necessary to live a fulfilling and satisfying life. With pressures on secondary ELA teachers to focus on standards, skills, and test scores, this study sought to explore how professional development can provide secondary ELA teachers with the pedagogical practices necessary to support students in creative thinking processes in the ELA classroom. Using post-intervention surveys and a post-intervention interview of secondary ELA teacher participants who attended a creativity workshop, this study aimed to better understand how creativity professional development impacted teachers’ perceptions and practices regarding implementing creative activities within their classrooms in order to foster cognitive growth, individual satisfaction, and student engagement. Keywords: Secondary ELA teachers, creativity, critical thinking, professional development, student engagement, individualized learning.
Citation
Jacqueline Royale Rasnic (2025). SUPPORTING CREATIVE COGNITIVE SPACES: THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATIVITY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECONDARY ELA CLASSROOM. SHAREOK (University of Oklahoma).