Abstract:

The concept of creativity has always been complex and tough to outline. There is a diversity of definitions, due not only to the cultural and historical specificities that this concept implies, but also because it aggregates individual dimensions such as personality, cognition or motivation. More and more, however, creativity plays an extremely important role in all areas of society, as it can change perspectives and providing innovative problem solutions. Thus, creativity is recognized as an urgent, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural requirement for 21st century skills management. So, creativity assumes a critical issue in the contemporary society, being an inescapable concept when the scope of research is education. This construct is now understood as one of the keys to development and progress in schools, reinforcing the quality of teaching, the personal development of students and the well-being of the educational community and even the society. So, it is increasingly emphasized the significant role of school in the development of creativity from the early childhood, to the adulthood, passing through all school trajectory. The first years in the school appears as a sensitive period because of creative opportunities that can be provided.

Thus, the present study aimed to explore the creative environment of classrooms of the 3rd year of the primary school, from the perception of Portuguese students and to analyse the relationships between the perception of the creative environment of the students and their sociodemographic variables. A total of 1298 of 3rd year students from the districts of Lisbon and Porto participated in the study. The data was collected through a sociodemographic questionnaire built within the scope of the present research and the Climate for Creativity in the Classroom Questionnaire (CCCQ) that evaluates the creative environment through four factors: support for the expression of ideas, student interest in learning, self-perception of the student's creativity and autonomy.

The results obtained seem to validate that the participating students perceive the classroom environment as creative. The results also show the multifaceted nature of the creativity construct, since the various factors analysed correlate with each other. There was also a lack of relationships between the creative environment and the sociodemographic variables of the students, except for the place of data collection (Porto or Lisbon) that was related to the students' self-perception of their interest in learning. Results were compared with findings from previous research and reviewed in the context of the current literature on the school psychologist's role. Implications for the field are also provided.

Keywords:

Creative environment Primary school, Education, Students, School success.