The University and Training for Creative Industries:

Exploratory Study on How Students from Portugal and Brazil Think about Creativity

Abstract

Creativity is considered an essential competence in this century. Individuals born in the 90s - Generation Z - emerge as a creative human potential and correspond to current university students. Higher Education is an essential level of training to develop creative skills in the face of future challenges, despite the weaknesses that persist in the face of this objective. On the other hand, one of the professional contexts to which higher education contributes and which explicitly requires creativity corresponds to the Creative Industries. In this study, we want to understand how university students from areas related to Creative Industries think about their creativity, namely in terms of beliefs (true and false) about this concept and how they evaluate teaching practices that they are targeted. 89 students from arts courses, from Portugal and Brazil, participated. In assessing the perceptions, the Creative Personality Scale (Garcês et al., 2015), the Inventory of Teaching Practices for Creativity in Higher Education (Morais et al, 2014) and the Beliefs Scale about Creativity in an Educational Context ( Morais et al., 2021). There are statistically significant differences between genders, although not between countries. There are still statistically significant differences in the perspective of the most creative students regarding teaching practices. Creativity beliefs emerge as independent of country, gender and self-perception of creativity. However, if the sample reflects a high level of true beliefs, it also demonstrates a considerable number of myths. In this context, the role that the university should play in the creative training of these future professionals is discussed.