**1. Introduction**

Creativity is considered to be critical for facing the social and economic changes of today's society [1, 2], as well as for attaining personal development, social inclusion, active citizenship and employment [3]. In addition, the labour market depends more and more on employees' abilities to work with technologies, as well as to generate new ideas, products

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and practices [4]. In this context, digital and creative skills have gained the attention of worldwide policies and have become important educational objectives [5].

Furthermore, Rhodes [11] developed the four P's model, which places creativity at the interplay of four distinct strands, i.e. process (the different stages of a creative activity), person (the characteristics of individuals), press (the qualities of the environment where creativity happens) and product (the tangible or intangible outcomes of the creative process). Rhodes' classification has become a major framework for the holistic exploration of creativity. The next subsections examine the four components in the light of influential theories of creativity.

Strategies for Digital Creative Pedagogies in Today's Education

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Those theories mostly explore and describe the creative process through an iterative sequence of stages [12], which commonly consist of the identification of the task, a phase of preparation and an evaluation of the obtained outcome. Nevertheless, process models present some discrepancies: some researchers view the emergence of ideas as a sudden and intuitive process characterised by an illumination or insight (e.g. [10]); on the contrary, other theories describe a mindful process of idea generation [12]. For instance, the well-known componential model of Amabile [13] proposes a system of five phases: (a) problem or task identification (conscious recognition of the task or problem), (b) preparation (building or reactivation of the information which is useful to the completion of the task), (c) response generation (creation of possible solutions or responses), (d) response validation (evaluation of the possible responses or

Here researchers use biographical and historiometric methodologies to explore the individual characteristics and personality traits of creative persons. Such theories result in a series of creative individual components which include thinking styles, personality attributes (e.g. a positive disposition towards overcoming obstacles, taking risks and tolerating ambiguity) and intellectual abilities [14], as well as concentration, playfulness, discipline, passion and objectivity [10]. Amabile [13] brings a classification which differentiates domain-relevant skills (knowledge and skills in the domain), task motivation (extrinsic and/or intrinsic) and creativity-relevant skills (personality characteristics, like flexibility

This strand concentrates on the characteristics of the environment which may nurture or hinder creativity. First, social, cultural and political factors may influence creativity [15], like family upbringing, cultural traditions and the historical milieu [16]. In addition, Csikszentmihalyi [10] highlighted some environmental features which may foster creativity, including training, expectations, resources, recognition and reward. Similarly, Amabile and Gryskiewicz [17] identified a series of elements of the workplace environment which may foster creativity, such as freedom, challenge and leaders' recognition. At the contrary, some factors proved to hinder creativity, like time pressure, evaluation [17], lack of respect and

solutions) and (e) outcome (evaluation and diffusion of the outcome).

*2.1.1. Process-oriented approaches*

*2.1.2. Person-oriented approaches*

and a persistent work style).

*2.1.3. Press-oriented approaches*

competition [18].

Nevertheless, a gap remains between policies and practices, as education often fails to keep pace with creative and digital economies [4, 6]. This is mainly because teachers are not prepared for adopting pedagogical strategies that foster creativity or for fully exploiting the educational potential of digital technologies.

Beghetto [2] identified a series of obstacles to the integration of creativity in the classroom, including convergent teaching practices and teachers' negative beliefs towards creativity. Furthermore, educators are not prepared to apply creative teaching strategies which match their institutional and curricular requirements [7].

Regarding digital technologies, the 'EC report on initial teacher education in Europe' [8] states that only half of European countries integrate digital education in teacher education. Furthermore, most teachers use digital technologies mainly to prepare their teaching, rather than to work with students during lessons. As a result, between 50 and 80% of students in Europe never use digital textbooks, exercise software, simulations or learning games.

This chapter proposes an innovative framework aiming to prepare educators for applying creative teaching practices mediated by digital technologies. We first attempt to conceptualise educational creativity, i.e. we present the seminal theories and definitions of creativity and the main characteristics of creative education, as well as a series of creative pedagogies. Afterwards, we propose a framework for digital creativity in education, including a definition, a series of pedagogical theories and digital tools which are particularly suitable to the emergence of creativity. We finally establish a set of characteristic components of digital creative pedagogies (DCP), that is, teaching practices which contribute to the development of students' creativity.
