This study examines how Japanese teachers construct the meaning of creativity in their narratives of ideal education, with particular attention to creativity as an expression of teachers’ hopes for children’s personal growth rather than as a means of social contribution. Recent policies in many countries have emphasized the importance of the concept of creativity. In OECD report (2025) frames creativity as a key skill for students to prepare for the future and to discover their potential. Also, creative thinking is seen as having huge benefits not only individuals but also society that needs to progress in an era of rapid change. There are many definitions for creativity but here I align with researchers who see creativity requiring both originality and effectiveness, ranging from genius-level to ordinary-level (Runco&Jaeger,2012; Kaufman,2016).

 When it comes to using creativity in policies, Japan and many European countries share the same aim of giving back to society. Creativity is positioned as a transversal skill underpinning lifelong learning and identified as one of the key competences necessary for individuals to participate effectively in contemporary society (Council of the European Union, 2018). In Japan, creative thinking, ‘souzousei,’ is conceptualized as a competency required for solving modern issues (MEXT,2021). It is positioned as a core element of the broader framework of “qualities and abilities” called ‘shishitsu・nouryoku’ (lit. competencies and skills) that school education is expected to cultivate through subject learning and cross-curricular activities. Within this political framework, Both of Europe and Japan think that creative thinking is not treated as a domain-specific talent but as a general capacity to generate ideas, solve problems, and respond flexibly to complex and changing social conditions.

 However, since policies do not enact themselves, it is important to focus on what happens on schools level and what teachers do in the classrooms. At the level of educational practice, teachers may attach different meanings to the concept that what is suggested by the policies. Furthermore, meaning can also differ between different countries.  Such differences can be understood in relation to cultural contexts that shape how creativity is interpreted and enacted in classrooms. As Lubart (2010) argues, creativity is cultivated and differentiated through culture, rather than representing a universally shared construct. This suggests that the same term may generate different educational discourses across cultural settings. When the same words are understood with different meanings, mistakes occur when creating international standards.

 To understand how Japanese teacher perceive the word “Creativity”, it is important to consider the dimension of teacher thinking. Teacher thinking can be defined as integrated concept of knowledge, belief, attitude and other elements, and used by teachers to plan, interact and reflect in their work (Elbaz-Luwisch,2005; Levin,2015). When a new policy is introduced, teacher thinking always enters the process; it is used to interpret the purposes of a policy, justify it through personal practical knowledge and then put into practice. Teacher’s thinking influences their how they interpret policies and pedagogical concepts. The tension between systematic “must-do” tasks of teaching and teacher's hopes to “raise children like this” is present in their thinking.

 It is also essential to consider Japan's cultural characteristics. In Japan, teachers tend to place greater emphasis on effort (Matsumura, 2016) and it has been pointed out that they do not sufficiently evaluate learner potential and influences of social hierarchy (Kariya,2000). Public education aims to provide equal education for all children according to their abilities, but such differences in ability are attributed to effort. Analyzing the range of teachers' responsibilities regarding what public education should provide can help identify characteristic teacher thinking. 

In my research, I employed a narrative approach, which is an appropriate methodology for this study because teachers’ views of creativity are not always explicitly stated but are embedded in stories of practice, hopes, and ideal images of education. This approach assumes that narratives do not merely reflect social reality but are actively constructed through the act of storytelling (Riessman, 2008). Narrativity, constructed data, allows analysis of how teachers interpret educational policies and key terms and how they justify these interpretations based on their personal practical knowledge (Clandinin & Connelly,2000). I conducted semi-structured interviews with two Japanese public elementary school (grades 1 through 6 in the K–12 system) teachers, Ono-sensei and Ito-sensei. Each interview lasted approximately 1 hour. One teacher had just one year of teaching experience who is teaching fourth grade in the rural area, and the other was a teacher with eighteen years of teaching experience and teaching sixth grade in a middle-sized city in Kansai. Although the number of participants is limited, this study is designed as an exploratory, depth-oriented qualitative inquiry that aims to capture the richness and complexity of teachers’ narratives rather than to achieve statistical representativeness. The interview protocol was designed to elicit teachers’ narratives of ideal education and teacher images. Interviews begin by asking about participants’ professional backgrounds and teaching experiences, followed by prompts encouraging reflection on their ideals as teachers and classroom practices needed to realize those ideals. Rather than asking directly about creativity at the outset, the interviews are structured to allow the concept to emerge naturally within teachers’ stories of practice and aspiration. The analysis followed a thematic narrative approach. First, the narratives that relate to ideal education and desired forms of teaching practice are identified. Second, episodes in which creativity is explicitly or implicitly referenced are told according to two analytic dimensions. The first dimension concerns the temporal positioning of creativity within teachers’ narratives: whether creativity is framed as a starting condition, a learning process, or an educational outcome. The second dimension focuses on the perceived purpose of creativity: whether it is oriented toward individual children’s growth and self-realization or toward broader social contribution and societal progress. Through these analytical lenses, I examined how creativity is positioned within teachers’ professional thinking and how this positioning reflects underlying cultural values, such as egalitarianism and effort-based conceptions of ability.

“Above all, I want to be a teacher who allows each child to reflect autonomously on what they have learned. (Ono-sensei)” Like this, narratives make it possible to show that the creativity described by Japanese teachers is positioned primarily as a process that supports children’s growth, rather than as an outcome oriented toward success or achievement. Regarding the social contributions outlined in educational policy, Japanese teachers do not strongly frame creativity in terms of societal benefit. Instead, they prioritize children’s growth within their immediate educational practice. In this sense, creativity is perceived in Japan as a gap between policy discourse and teachers’ actual practice. While policy documents emphasize creativity as a competence for contributing to society, teachers’ narratives rarely refer to such societal or economic aims, focusing instead on the present experiences of children. For teachers, creativity occupies a rather contradictory position. It is described as something difficult to define and evaluate within existing assessment frameworks, while at the same time being something they strongly wish to nurture. This ambivalence highlights how creativity is valued at the level of teachers’ beliefs yet remains implicit and unstable in practice. The findings further suggest that creativity functions as a moral and relational concept in teachers’ narratives, rather than as a tool for innovation or economic contribution, reflecting culturally specific ways of understanding educational aims. This result leads to implications that teachers may not need to consider social benefit so much, less than policies say. Instead, teacher should pay attention to the children before them. However, this study focused on only the teachers in public school, so there is a possible that the thinking of teachers in private school differs from them because school policies can differ from the national standards.

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