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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using mobile devices as an instructional tool on teachers' creativity and to promote their usage as instructional tools in educational settings. The research also studies the perceptions of teachers on the effect of using mobile devices as an instructional tool on their creativity and what features of mobile devices are believed to help in terms of enhancing their creativity.

This qualitative inquiry used an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) method for inspecting the professional capabilities of Pakistan's primary and secondary school teachers. Data were gathered from nine individuals through interviews. Three themes regarding creativity emerged from the study data.

It is found that the use of mobile devices as a teaching tool significantly increases teachers' creativity by enabling them to manifest their creativity and explore different pedagogical vistas in which they can use a wide variety of instructional resources and tools. Using mobile devices as a teaching tool improved three skills: motivation, self-confidence and communication skills. Mobile applications, cameras and portability of these devices are among the features that teachers considered to have encouraged their creativity.

Finding the obstacles and difficulties teachers have while utilizing these tools to demonstrate their creativity may be valuable for future studies. First, because respondents were teachers from elementary and secondary classes, the population was not entirely homogenous, even though they had adequate help. Second, only semi-structured interviews were utilized for data gathering in this study. Further data collection methods, including observational research or participant-written reflective diaries, are thought to have been preferred.

For future research, it may be interesting to determine whether the results of this study can be applied to other demographic groups. Based on this study, it is also recommended to conduct a quantitative study to know teachers' perceptions of the impact of these devices on creativity, since these studies can have promising results for teachers.

Through the use of various materials, tools and activities, these devices provide several distinctive teaching alternatives. Because of this, using it as a teaching tool gives teachers the ability to tailor courses to a range of learner types. Additionally, having easy access to a multitude of online resources and the capacity to interact with others helped in ideation. The teachers experienced feelings of motivation, self-confidence and a desire to impart information, all of which are traits of creative teachers. Based on the findings of this study, we may now think about using mobile devices in the classroom to encourage teachers' creativity.

The outcomes of this research indicated that teachers' creativity is strongly influenced by their use of mobile devices as instructional tools. This paper advances the understanding of teachers’ creativity by highlighting their lived experiences. This study is novel because it highlights how these devices have the potential to be used as instructional tools, which has not been highlighted by any study so far.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) frequently overlook the importance of encouraging creative thinking in students. A review of the prevailing practices in a fully online tertiary distance education (DE) institution revealed a lack of learning activities that foster creativity. The study aims to find out whether the creative collaborative group project is a feasible, effective and acceptable learning activity for fostering creativity in students of a fully online graduate-level DE course.

Seven groups of five to six graduate students each had five weeks to conceptualize, prepare and deliver a creative collaborative group project on lifelong learning using key concepts learned from the course.

All groups submitted well-crafted creative projects within the given time frame. Reflections on their experience positively correlated with known outcomes associated with creative skills. Students valued the experience and had a better understanding of the concepts. These support the feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability of the project for fostering creativity in a fully online DE institution.

The feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability may vary in different contexts; future iterations in the same and/or other courses are recommended.

The creative collaborative group project is a feasible, effective and acceptable strategy for fostering creativity in online distance education.

Creativity can be enhanced through appropriate online collaborative learning activities.

The study adds to the body of literature on the use of creative collaborative group projects to foster creativity in HEIs.

Creativity is nowadays seen as a desirable goal in higher education. In artistic disciplines, creative processes are frequently employed to assess or evaluate different students' skills. The purpose of this study is to identify potential pitfalls for students involved in artistic practices in which being creative is essential.

Three focus groups involving Education Faculty members from different artistic disciplines allowed for the identification of several constraints when creativity was invoked. This initial study used a quantitative approach and took place in the “Universitat de Vic” (Catalonia, Spain).

Findings suggest a correlation with existing literature and simultaneously point at some nuances that require consideration: emerging aspects embedded in creative processes that may help decrease some limiting effects that being creative can generate.

The main limitations of this research derive from the very nature of the methodological approach. Focus group has been the single used source. Other means of collecting data, such as the analysis of programs, could be used in the future.

This case study, while culturally specific, offers a useful insight into the potential of further work in non-artistic disciplines but crucially across disciplines. It has tremendous value for the development of intercultural understanding in the higher education sector, specifically in terms of assessment.

Meeting the 21st century skills is critically significant to ensure success in today's world, collegiate context and neoteric careers. This qualitative study turns attention to teachers' mindsets, dispositions and perceptions concerning 21st century life competencies required to meet the current, emerging and future needs of learners.

One-to-one structured interviews were conducted with English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers (N = 8), where open-ended questions were asked in order to determine the participants' perception of, support to, and integration of the life competencies into an EFL classroom setting. In addition, teachers' performance and implementation of life competencies (males and females) was observed in the classroom over a long time.

The results showed that teachers' practices contradict their conceptions of the life competencies. Critical thinking was seen as a priority from teachers' perspectives. Teachers perceived learning to learn and critical thinking as the most important competencies for students to learn. Findings of the study indicated that teachers hold positive attitudes toward integrating life competencies into EFL context; however, they lack a clear vision about how to incorporate them.

This study recommends equipping teachers with professional training and customized orientations offering new insights into how life-competency-oriented instruction might be designed.

Career readiness should be a prominent aim of education where students are equipped with life skills or competencies. EFL practitioners need to understand, support and implement life-competency-instruction.

This study examined the impact of school leadership on teacher professional collaboration, with collective teacher innovativeness and teacher self-efficacy (TSE) playing the mediating role. Two most commonly used leadership styles, instructional leadership (IL) and distributed leadership (DL), were analyzed using a multilevel design, i.e. teachers are nested within schools.

The proposed model was validated using data of Taiwan TALIS 2018 collected from both teachers and principals and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

Results showed that IL and DL influence teacher professional collaboration through different paths. IL had a significant direct impact on teacher professional collaboration alone, while DL had a significant direct impact on both teachers' collective innovativeness and their professional collaboration. While TSE had a direct effect on collective teacher innovativeness, TSE and collective teacher innovativeness had a direct effect on teacher professional collaboration.

This study highlights the significant impact of principal leadership as both principals and teachers work in the same environment and culture co-shaped through the interaction and collaboration. Research evidence regarding the effects of IL and DL on teacher professional collaboration is limited; this is even less evidential when the indirect effects of variables mediating between school leadership and teacher outcomes, including teacher collective innovativeness and TSE, are added to the total effects. The present findings provide useful references for principals and teachers when promoting professional collaboration to achieve desired outcomes in school and student improvement.

The study aims to investigate the effect of the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching on the creative thinking of students.

The research design of the study was a nonequivalent control group design of quasi experimental research. This study collected data from 80 students in the seventh grade from two different government schools in Bathinda, Punjab, India, which were selected using a random method. The subjects of experimental group were taught by the investigator using the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching and the subjects of control group were taught by their teacher using the traditional teaching method, i.e. the Herbartian method. The data collections were done using the creative thinking test developed by Baqer Mehdi (1995). The data analysis techniques used t-test.

Key finding indicates that the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching is effective in enhancing the creative thinking of students as compared to the traditional method.

The present work is unique in terms of development of an innovative pedagogy, i.e. the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching, which has the potential to encourage students' creative thinking, a key concern for society in the 21st century. Therefore, it is suggested to conduct similar type of studies on this innovative pedagogy and this model of teaching may be used by teachers for enhancing creative thinking of seventh class students.

The Covid-19 period has led to defining changes in the teaching process. Therefore, it is essential to explore how teachers have approached these changes, what experiences they have gained and what they have tried to change. This study aims to elucidate how innovative practices were applied in teaching – which was influenced by emergency remote teaching (ERT) – and better understand teachers' experiences related to these practices.

The phenomenology design, a qualitative research model, was executed in the current study. Phenomenological inquiry aims to interpret people's experiences about a specific concept designated as a phenomenon. Creswell (2020) classified two types of phenomenology: interpretive and descriptive. Interpretive phenomenology was employed in the current study as researchers collected data from individuals experiencing the phenomenon, collected and interpreted the data via excluding their own experiences.

As a result of the data interpretation, four themes related to experiences of innovative teaching practices during ERT were discovered: interpretation of innovative teaching, innovative teaching practices, needs related to innovative teaching and challenges to innovative teaching. The categories related to the interpretation of innovative teaching include positive and negative interpretation. The categories related to the second theme, innovative teaching practices, consist of characteristics of innovative teachers and innovative teaching practices employed. The categories related to the third theme, needs related to innovative teaching, are the need for guidance, training and technological infrastructure. The categories related to the fourth and final theme, challenges to innovative teaching, are barriers related to the teacher, barriers related to the learner and those related to the environment.

This study discovered that for teachers to practice innovative teaching, they must develop themselves, keep up-to-date and develop lifelong learning skills. Hung and Li (2017) reached a similar conclusion to the findings of this study: teachers' professional development is positively related to innovative teaching skills at a high level. The participating teachers stated that they had to rapidly improve their technological competency. It is thought that teachers developing their technological competencies will contribute to both ERT and face-to-face education at the end of the Pandemic.