"Som en pusselbit som passar överallt"
En kvalitativ studie om hur gymnasieelever upplever kreativitet på psykologilektionerna
In the nineties, policy makers highlighted the importance of creativity in education in order to nurture entrepreneurs in our society, thus the purpose of this study is to investigate high school students´ experience of creativity in psychology classes. The results are based on qualitative data from four semi-structured interviews with Swedish high school students who study psychology. The conclusions are that the respondents perceive psychology as a very creative school subject in which they can give personal experience as examples, they can give alternative explanations and solutions to problems, and that there are no right or wrong answers which means that they feel encouraged to self-reflect. The teacher is important as the respondents experience her as open, tolerant, and moreover, that she varies the classes, which contributes to a good classroom climate. The respondents also experience a certain degree of freedom when they feel involved and are allowed to influence their education. However, they feel inhibited with their creativity, for example, because of lack of time. They feel that they sacrifice creativity and adapt their behavior and performance to achieve the desired grades, rather than learn for the sake of enjoyment. Lack of perceived creativity can also be explained by the fact that there are few roles for students to fill other than student, except for group projects and presentations where they can assume other roles such as teachers or alpha male. Nevertheless, creativity is a concept that is desirable in the school documents. The three main themes that have been defined is Freedom, Variation in Education and Framework That Inhibits Creativity.