The present paper deals with questions concerning how to teach in order to awake students’ ethical creativity to make our education more engaging and thus inclusive. Besides the long history of development in psychology and cognitive science, in the recent decades, creativity is also recognized in the curriculum for elementary school in Sweden (Skolverket, 2019) and many countries in the world (Cheng, 2010). Creativity is also addressed as one of the key competences termed sense of initiative and entrepreneurship (Gordon, et al., 2009) and one of the 21^st Century skills termed creativity and innovation (Teräs, Chang Rundgren, Eliasson, & Ståhle, 2020). During the past decades, embracing ethics in creativity has been also valued in research (Moran, Cropley and Kaufman, 2014), but not so much in educational policy. As the teacher is crucial for children’s development (Hattie & Yates, 2014), in the presentation, we argue the need of taking ethical creativity into account in our teacher training to develop teachers’ competence on engaging ethical creativity in their teaching practices. 

With the cross-curriculum feature, creativity is not only in relation to aesthetic learning processes: which means learning focused on a) exploration of school subjects though aesthetic senses and b) through art forms such as music, drama, painting (Hagerman, 2018), but also in science education (e.g. Musacchio, Lanza & D’Addezio, 2015) with an example of children’s learning of the interior of earth. Butler (2013) also addresses imagination and creativity in relation to democracy and decision making in the classroom with physical education students to explore ways to become active inventers of their own games by including students who have special needs. This game-based activity involves both training of imagination and creativity as well as negotiation and democratic decision making. Similarly, Serriere, Burroughs and Mitra (2017) discuss the importance of education is about dialogue – where students are invited to take an active participation to construct their knowledge – rather than monologue, where students have a more passive role. In the Information/Digital Age, creativity is also seen as the necessity to be engaged in technology education and music education. Ormiston & Hatlen, et al. (2017) introduce students to work with technological tools that enable creative tasks, such audio and video tools, and Hagerman (2016) discusses the consequence of introduction of technological tools in musical composition comparing to traditional composition education with paper and pencil. A didactic model to promote students’ ethical creativity is an opportunity in order to increase classroom democracy, taking account of student’s interests, develop creative core skill for work life, but it raises both practical and moral questions that need to be addressed. For example, Cheng (2010) indicated some obstacles of teaching creativity in classroom including lack of time with a tight curriculum, a clash with testing culture, moral issues arising and teachers have no teaching knowledge about how to guide further discussions. Besides, during pandemic time, it is not hard to understand the importance that creative solutions embracing ethical consideration need to be further addressed in teaching and learning contexts in the global age. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to explore how ethical creativity is embedded in teaching and learning contexts in primary education via literature review. To be more specific, the research questions are:

1. What are didactic models identified in primary education for ethical creativity?
2. What are the remaining challenges?

The literature review method was based on the scoping method (Arksey, & O'Malley, 2005) to map out the relevant literature on teaching for ethical creativity in primary education. ERIC database was used to conduct literature search on 2021-12-14, and the keywords for search were two categories: Ethical creativity AND Primary school or elementary school or primary education or elementary education. Meanwhile, peer-reviewed, English language and academic journals were used as inclusion criteria. A total of 43 articles were chosen for the detailed reading and analyzing.

Based on the results of the literature review, it was found that few empirical studies are conducted with a focus of ethical creativity, although it was the keyword in our literature search. Mainly, the articles discuss the need of embracing ethics in creativity. From the results, there are a number of didactic models identified in the literature review and they include (1) Multi-media engagement of teaching and learning with digital image, audio and video tools (Ormiston & Hatlen, 2017); (2) Art related teaching and learning via theater (Musacchio & Lanza et al, 2015); (3) Reading fiction literature as a way to initiate discussions about ethical questions and dilemmas (Serriere, Burroughs & Mitra, 2017); 4) Rule exploration through invention of new physical games, which promotes ethical discussions about how game rules may include or exclude students (Butler, 2013). 5) However, some authors argue that didactical models stimulating ethical creativity should be based on tackling real world problems outside the classroom (Beghetto, 2017), preferable with inquiry based learning. Some challenges were also revealed in the literature, for example that cultural conditions influence possibilities to develop teaching for ethical creativity. Such contextual conditions can be core values or religious beliefs underlying educational systems. On the other hand Cheng (2010) discusses practical problems arising while implementing teaching for creativity in the classroom, for example lack of time, a tight schedule, testing culture and resistance from students and parents. The detailed didactic models and challenges will be presented at conference. Further suggestion for ethical creativity teaching and research in primary education via inquiry-based teaching and learning will also be delineated.

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