Creativity of Engineering Students as Perceived by Faculty : a Case Study

The fostering of creative students has become a crucial issue in engineering education in recent decades. This paper examines staff members' perceptions of creativity in Taiwanese engineering students. Several studies have reported how teachers perceive the nature of creativity. However, the studies have produced varying results because the samples have been drawn from different educational groups, academic disciplines, and geographical areas. The present study investigated the characteristics of creativity as perceived by 175 academic staff members from two Taiwanese universities. The perceptions of creativity by university academic staff were found to be different from those of primary or secondary school teachers. Rather than emphasizing extrinsic characteristics, such as questioning and responding (as had been done by primary school teachers in previous studies), engineering academic staff members paid more attention to intrinsic characteristics, such as logical thinking. In all, 21 important characteristics of creativity are identified in this study, and these are categorized into five dimensions.

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