Teacher education initiatives for developing creativity among early childhood and primary educators: a scoping review

Abstract

Teachers' confidence and competence in their own creativity are recognized as being positively associated with students' creative development. Promoting creativity therefore remains a central concern in teacher education and professional practice. This paper presents a scoping review of studies published between 2015 and 2025 that examine teacher education initiatives designed to develop the creativity of early childhood and elementary school teachers. The methodology followed the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Manual for Scoping Reviews. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 19 studies focusing on pre-service and in-service early childhood and elementary educators were selected for in-depth analysis and synthesis. This review addressed two research questions: (1) What types of teacher education initiatives aimed at fostering the creativity of preschool and elementary school teachers have been reported in the existing literature? and (2) What key themes and challenges have been identified in promoting teacher creativity through teacher education initiatives? The study identified four categories of initiatives designed to foster teachers' creativity: music-based interdisciplinary, science-integrated, strategy-oriented, and technology-enhanced initiatives. The findings indicate that music-based interdisciplinary initiatives most effectively enhance teachers' creativity and that embedding these initiatives within degree courses remains the most common implementation model. The study also found that a key challenge highlighted was pre-service teachers limited conceptual understanding of musical creativity and low confidence in implementing creative pedagogies. Overall, the review contributes insights that respond to the growing attention to creativity and teacher training across research, policy, and practice and synthesizes evidence concerning the effectiveness of these initiatives.