UNCORRECTED PROOF Please cite this article in press as: Karwowski, M. et al., Creative teaching of creativity teachers: Polish perspective, Thinking Skills and Creativity (2006), doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2006.10.004 ARTICLE IN PRESS +Model TSC 24 1–6 Thinking Skills and Creativity xxx (2006) xxx–xxx Keynote paper Creative teaching of creativity teachers: Polish perspective  3 Maciej Karwowski * , Jacek Gralewski, Izabela Lebuda, Ewa Wi´ sniewska 4 Academy of Special Education, Institute of Applied Psychology, Creative Education Unit, Szcz˛ e´ sliwicka 40, 02-351 Warsaw, Poland 5 6 Received 20 July 2006; received in revised form 19 September 2006 7 Abstract 8 The article presents basic information on the strand of psycho-pedagogy of creativity—a unique perspective on creativity teachers’ 9 education in Europe and the world. Psycho-pedagogy of creativity is a major in pedagogy studies, run in Poland, at the Warsaw 10 Academy of Special Education. Our aim is to educate specialists who are open, sensitive and well prepared content-wise in identifying 11 and developing children’s and youth’s creative potential. We also aim at introducing the studies that function in a wider social context, 12 and presenting the situation of Poland after systemic transformation. It seems that information of this type may prove interesting to 13 researchers and practitioners that deal with education of creativity. 14 © 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 15 Keywords: Creative education; Creativity teachers; Teaching creativity in central-eastern Europe; Polish perspective of teaching creativity 16 17 1. Introduction—on the role of creativity in education 18 The statement that creativity is a fashionable notion of contemporary discourses—both in a sense of economy and 19 politics or pedagogy, will most likely not raise doubts of researchers and attentive observers of social life. It appears 20 in the context of changes which are taking place in contemporary economy that creativity is looked at not only – as 21 was the case before – as a feature of an individual, but as the main engine of the innovation of economy and source of 22 social changes in contemporary world. Contemporary psychology and pedagogy find dear the creationistic approach, 23 according to which anyone can be creative (egalitarianism as opposed to elitism), though it is justifiable to talk about 24 gradating creativity and distinguishing the different levels of it. 25 Looking from a pedagogical point of view, it seems that special attention needs to be paid to the phenomenon that 26 can be denominated as fluent creativity (N˛ ecka, 2001), the not-yet-evident-creativity (Treffinger, Young, Shelby, & 27 Shepardson, 2002), or ‘small c’ creativity (Craft, 2003). Paying attention to this phenomenon shifts the interest stress 28 from product to process, and also accentuates the question of stimulating creativity in children, youth and adults. 29 Researchers attempt to identify reasons for which today’s pedagogy does not assume such exposed place as it should, 30  Preparation of this article was supported by grant BW 05/05-II from Academy of Special Education to Maciej Karwowski (principal investigator) and Jacek Gralewski, Ewa Wi´ sniewska and Izabela Lebuda. This support does not imply acceptance or endorsement of the position taken in the article. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +48 600456102. E-mail address: maciej.karwowski@pl.millwardbrown.com (M. Karwowski). 1 1871-1871/$ – see front matter © 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2 doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2006.10.004