Abstract: In the 21st century, the university should be an explicit space for developing students’ creative skills. The literature on creativity in Higher Education is scarce, particularly on the students’ perceptions. Thus, this study aims to analyze barriers perceived by Spanish university students compared to Portuguese students to better understand the obstacles found at this educational level. For this purpose, the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity was adapted to Spanish university students. The adaptation process from the Portuguese to the Spanish version followed a forward-backward procedure, and cross- validation analysis was used to study the factor structure. The four-factor structure was maintained, but only 36 of the 44 items were retained in the Spanish version. All factors showed good or very good reliability and explained an important amount of the variance. Some cultural differences between the Portuguese and Spanish versions appeared because Spanish university students perceived fewer barriers to develop creativity. In both cultures, gender and curricular areas’ differences were found, but with some specificities. The study concluded that the instrument has an adequate structure and refers to a specific construct maintained in different cultures. Also, both versions could be applied for further broader and more representative cross-cultural studies, contributing to developing new studies on creativity in Higher Education.
Keywords: barriers, creativity, Higher Education, students, intercultural.
Resumen: En el siglo xxi, la universidad debería ser un espacio explícito para el desarrollo de las habilidades creativas del estudiantado. La literatura sobre la creatividad en la Educación Superior es escasa, particularmente sobre las percepciones del estudiantado. Así, este estudio pretende analizar las barreras que percibe el estudiantado universitario español, en comparación con el portugués, para comprender mejor los obstáculos que se encuentran en este nivel educativo. Para ello, se ha adaptado el Inventario de Barreras para la Creatividad Personal a estudiantes universitarios españoles. El proceso de adaptación de la versión portuguesa a la española ha seguido un procedimiento forward-backward y se ha realizado un análisis de validación cruzada para estudiar la estructura factorial. Se ha mantenido la estructura de cuatro factores, pero en la versión española, solo se han retenido 36 de los 44 ítems. Todos los factores han mostrado una fiabilidad buena o muy buena y han explicado una parte importante de la varianza. Entre las versiones portuguesa y española han aparecido algunas diferencias culturales debidas a que las y los estudiantes universitarios españoles percibieron menos barreras para desarrollar la creatividad. En ambas culturas se han encontrado diferencias relacionadas con el género y las áreas curriculares, pero con algunas especificidades. El estudio ha concluido que el instrumento tiene una estructura adecuada y se refiere a un constructo específico, que se mantiene en las diferentes culturas. Además, ambas versiones podrían ser aplicadas para posteriores estudios transculturales más amplios y representativos, lo que contribuiría al desarrollo de nuevos estudios sobre la creatividad en la Educación Superior.
Palabras clave: barreras, creatividad, Educación Superior, estudiantes, intercultural.
Barriers to personal creativity in Spanish and Portuguese university students
Barreras para la creatividad personal en estudiantes universitarios españoles y portugueses
Leire Aperribai
María Fátima Morais
Lorea Cortabarria
Fátima Machado
Recepción: 11 Octubre 2022
Aprobación: 25 Junio 2023
Publicación: 02 Enero 2024
Creativity is a 21st-century condition for personal and social success (Bracci, 2022). The depth of knowledge, expertise in a domain or task, and high effectiveness in algorithmic procedures—essentially logical or routinary—are no longer sufficient. Characteristics such as ambiguity, unpredictability, and an almost permanent adaptation to change are required to face daily challenges (Schwab & Davis, 2018). Skills for creative problem-solving are recognized as essential to the innovation needed and reclaimed at this turn of the century. Promoting individuals’ creative potential in all contexts is imperative to manage both contemporaneity and the future (Nakano & Weschler, 2018).
The definition of creativity has not been simple for a century of research, as it is a complex and multifaceted concept (Kaufman & Glăveanu, 2019; Morais, 2013). However, a consensus on a standard definition, initially pointed out by Runco and Jaeger (2012), continues to be accepted by most authors (Romo, 2019). This consensus refers to the concurrency of two criteria: the originality and effectiveness of ideas or products. Originality, difference, and rarity imply creativity, but the reverse is not true; the difference must serve the meaning, usefulness, and adequacy of the idea or product created in each socio-historical moment. This is also true for the conceptualization of creativity assumed in this paper. On the other hand, creativity requires the confluence of cognitive, emotional, motivational, and social dimensions. Multiplicity and confluence are found in the integrative explanatory models of the concept according to Amabile (2018) or Sternberg and Lubart (1995). It is also known that creativity has emerged in research as modifiable and that individuals’ creative potential can be promoted (Runco, 2014, 2018).
Higher Education emerges as a fundamental educational stage for the existence of future qualified professionals in all occupational contexts. For most students, this stage corresponds to the last formative level before facing the current world’s challenges (Barnett, 2020). Higher Education must, therefore, be able to take advantage of the characteristics offered by Generation Z (individuals born in the 90s) that fill universities daily. The individuals of this generation are motivated to produce an impact, interested in the surrounding and current problems, and dedicated to creative tasks in their leisure time (Seemiller, 2017). The university should be an explicit space that develops and demands students’ creative skills (Jahnke & Liebscher, 2020; Vilarinho-Pereira & Fleith, 2021).
A creative climate provides conditions that facilitate the expression of creativity (Craft, 2005). This climate must also be created and managed intentionally in universities so that future professionals learn to be innovative (Matraeva et al., 2020). How could a climate that facilitates creativity in the classroom be operationalized? Several authors have consensually reported a diversity of characteristics. Among them are emphasized the importance of informative feedback offered to the students about their work, explicit appreciation of creativity, and the relationship between the contents taught and students’ experiences and interests. The appeal to interdisciplinarity, reflection, criticism, and associations of inherent information with remote domains has also been underlined. The teacher, in turn, should cultivate student characteristics such as self-confidence, curiosity, persistence, sense of humor, responsibility, or autonomy. The teacher should also help students deconstruct emotional blocks, such as fear of making mistakes, being different, being criticized, or feeling inferior. Thus, the teacher should be more than a collector and transmitter of knowledge, guiding and encouraging students to rebuild their knowledge and generate creative resolutions to problems. Professional competence to manage a creative environment in the classroom should also be added to the diversity of techniques used, the activities and materials that encourage the multiplicity and flexibility of ideas, as well as a passion for what they do as teachers (Beghetto, 2019; Cropley & Cropley, 2009). However, there are still several obstacles in universities to operationalizing and applying creative tools in management tasks, teaching-learning processes, and assessment (Fleith, 2019). The university continues to reproduce traditional teaching models, in which creative problem- solving in everyday life and the perspective of the future are not sufficiently valued. Objectives and methodologies centered on teachers and convergent and immediate resolutions and responses remain predominant (Cropley & Cropley, 2009; Laguía et al., 2019). Also, innovation in pedagogical practices is not always well accepted, making it difficult for teachers to use alternatives that promote creativity. In the university context, there is a fear of being different, innovating, and not meeting traditional expectations (Egan et al., 2017).
Some research has been carried out on teachers and students to study perceptions about creativity in Higher Education. Particularly regarding students, research has been developed for over a decade, some organized in publications of volumes on creativity in higher education, as in the book edited by Jackson and colleagues in 2006. This book mainly addresses studies analyzing qualitative data (from interviews or questionnaires created for this purpose). It also presents students’ conceptions, needs, or obstacles to teaching creative learning at the university. Other more recent studies related to university students’ and professors’ thoughts about Higher Education are emerging, sometimes considering only one course in Higher Education or analyzing various courses and/or curricular areas, as well as different cultures (e.g., Matos et al., 2018; Morais & Almeida, 2019; Pereira- Guizzo et al., 2021).
In these and other investigations, barriers to creativity perceived by students have been highlighted: specifically, traditional and rigid teaching and assessment methodologies; lack of time and opportunities; stress in the academic day-to-day; conservatism and resistance to students’ novelty and lack of motivation; social criticism related to authoritarianism, intolerance of error, undervaluing differences or fantasy; the scarcity of material resources; the high number of students in the classroom (Alencar & Fleith, 2010; Matos et al., 2018). A dichotomy has emerged from these data. On the one hand, more internal barriers to the individual are pointed out, such as shyness, low self-confidence, or difficulty taking risks; on the other hand, the social context is responsible for inhibitors to creative expression. These characteristics are often interdependent and interact across a life path that begins in childhood (Morais & Almeida, 2019).
The perception of barriers to creativity, also in the university, has shown differences related to gender and curriculum areas. Regarding gender, in Brazilian studies, girls claimed their creativity to be more conditioned by social repression (Alencar, 2001), and shyness was mentioned more often (Alencar et al., 2003) compared to boys. As for Brazilian boys, they indicated the lack of motivation as the most significant barrier to creative expression (Alencar, 2001). In Portugal, males also reported more substantial barriers associated with a lack of motivation (Morais & Almeida, 2019). However, contrary to Brazilian data, in this study, boys stated that they were more frequently targets of social repression than girls. It should be noted that these studies, in Portugal and Brazil, referred to the perceptions of obstacles to creativity through the scale that will be the subject of this study. In this same line, Pereira-Guizzo and colleagues (2021) found being female was a predictor of barriers linked to shyness in engineering courses. Also, in the study of Matos and colleagues (2018), girls appeared more sensitive to the quality of the learning climate to promote creativity.
In Spain, although it has been found that creativity correlates positively with academic university performance (Peña, 2019), the study of creativity in this educational stage has been minimal. There is evidence that teachers and students of different Degrees of public universities in Andalusia encountered barriers to promoting entrepreneurship, partly due to the lack of creativity (Ruiz-Ruano et al., 2019). In addition, the lack of development of creativity in the university has been shown to impact the assessment of professional creativity skills received by students participating in training practices in different entities outside the university (Mareque & De Prada, 2018). There is also evidence that students of the Pedagogy Degree perceive teaching practices and methods as unfavorable to developing creative competence in the university (Raso & Santana, 2019). However, due to the limitations of studies, there is no evidence in Spain of student-perceived barriers to developing creativity in different university Degrees. Concerning the curricular area, Cropley and Cropley (2009) found more openness to creativity in Art students. However, Morais and Almeida (2015) reported fewer barriers to creative expression in the Social Sciences/Humanities compared to Arts and Sciences and Technology, coinciding with the study of Ribeiro and Fleith (2007). Joly and Guerra (2004) also identified differences between Higher Education Degrees, finding more barriers to creativity related to shyness in Psychology than in Administration and Pharmacy. In turn, compared to Computing, the lack of motivation was highlighted as the most significant barrier to creativity in Pharmacy.
However, the literature on creativity in Higher Education has been scarce for the last two decades, particularly on students’ perceptions (Egan et al., 2017), indicating the need for more research on this subject. Consequently, there are still few validated instruments to assess the barriers perceived by university students (Alencar & Fleith, 2010; Morais & Almeida, 2019). In this sense, Alencar (1999) created the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity in Brazil. This inventory used the stem phrase “I would be more creative if...” to be completed by university students, resulting in an inventory comprising 66 items structured in four factors: Inhibition and Shyness, Lack of Time and Opportunities, Lack of Motivation, and Social Repression. The instrument presented good psychometric characteristics. In Portugal, Morais and colleagues (2014) adapted the original inventory to Portuguese university students with a similar structure but a shorter version than the Brazilian version. The factors remained the same, but some items were eliminated, leading to a 44-item instrument. The psychometric characteristics were also good, with an adequate level of internal consistency and explained variance. Therefore, the research line on the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity has led to several characterization and differentiating studies on the barriers perceived by university students. This study aims to study barriers to personal creativity in Spanish university students. For this purpose, the inventory had to be adapted to the Spanish population. Understanding Spanish students’ opinions of the most favorable and unfavorable conditions for developing and expressing creativity in Higher Education could help reflect and operationalize the gaps and possibilities to promote creativity.
The adaptation process of the Spanish version of the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity (Inventario de las Barreras para el Desarrollo de la Creatividad Personal – Versión Española, hereinafter IBCP-VE) followed a forward-backward procedure performed by two experts in the field of creativity, both with a background in Portuguese and Spanish languages. The process involved three phases. In the first phase, one expert translated the items from Portuguese to Spanish; in the second phase, the other expert (who was one of the authors of the original version of the scale) translated the items from Spanish to Portuguese; in the third phase, the two experts agreed on the Spanish version. Moreover, a fluent Portuguese/ Spanish speaker was asked to compare the two versions to review whether items meant the same in the two scales. After following the experts’ and fluent speakers’ recommendations, the final version was defined for data collection. The original response format was maintained, so the scale comprised 44 items to be rated on a five-point Likert response format (ranging from 1 = Totally disagree to 5 = Totally agree). The instructions for participants were the same as for the Portuguese version.
The sample consisted of 719 students aged between 17 and 63 years (M = 21.11; SD = 3.98), of whom 484 were women, 226 were men, and 9 did not specify gender. The students were enrolled in various public (n = 201) and private (n = 518) universities of the Basque Country. The majority, 81.5% (n = 586), were studying Social Sciences, but students of Health Sciences (n = 65), Engineering and Architecture (n = 30), Arts and Humanities (n = 26), and Sciences and Technology (n = 12) also participated. Students were invited to participate in the study voluntarily and anonymously. The instrument was sent to them through mailing lists after obtaining institutional permissions. Previously, the research received the university’s Ethical Committee’s approval (M10_2021_226).
The Portuguese version of the Inventory of Barriers to Personal Creativity (Morais et al., 2014) was adapted in this study. The Portuguese version is rated on a five-point Likert scale (1 = Totally disagree, 5 = Totally agree), composed of 44 items. The scale has a four-factor structure composed of items assessing barriers to developing creativity found by university students. The four factors are: Inhibition/Shyness (α = .91), Lack of Motivation (α = .86), Lack of Time/Opportunities (α = .83), and Social Repression (α = .81).
Firstly, we studied the factors’ reliability and the explained variance. We calculated the ORION reliability estimates (Phi-information oblique EAP scores) and the rotated factors’ explained variance for the four factors with the Factor Analysis program.
Secondly, we performed a cross-validation study to examine the instrument’s factorial structure. The first step involved conducting an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for categorical variables in a randomly selected subsample of 360 participants. We applied the four-factor model (following the Portuguese version) with the robust unweighted least squares (RULS) estimation method based on polychoric correlations (a technique for estimating the correlation between two hypothesized normally distributed continuous latent variables from two observed ordinal variables) and the robust promin rotation (a method for oblique factor rotation) to determine the factor structure. We used the Factor Analysis software to perform the EFA.
Thirdly, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for categorical variables based on the polychoric correlation matrix in a subsample that included the remaining participants (N = 359). We used the MPlus v8 software for the CFA, as the previous program does not provide this option.
Finally, we compared Spanish and Portuguese versions of the scale by analyzing the items’ means and standard deviations and the reliability estimates obtained in both versions. We also compared gender and cultural differences related to curricular areas for all factors. For the Spanish version, except for the reliability estimates, we calculated the statistics with IBM SPSS v26 (whereas for the Portuguese version, the IBM SPSS v22.0 was used).
All factors showed a good or a very good reliability estimate. They all explained an important amount of the variance (see Table 1).
Firstly, an EFA was applied to the first subsample. The first analysis revealed eight items with commonalities lower than .35 and/or with a complex structure (with loadings higher than .30 on two factors). Therefore, those items (7, 10, 13, 16, 29, 33, 36, and 37) were excluded, and the EFA was carried out again with 36 items (see Table 2). In this case, the factor analysis was considered adequate because the determinant of the matrix was lower than .0001, Bartlett’s homoscedasticity statistic was significant (χ2 = 3985.4; df = 630; p = .00001), and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin sample adequacy test score was very good (KMO = .90601). The EFA yielded a four-factor structure with a very good fit (RMSEA = .03; CFI = .99).
The first factor, called Inhibition/Shyness (IS), included 14 items with barriers related to these personality variables (inhibition and shyness). The second factor, Lack of Motivation (LM), included 10 items and referred to motivational variables. The third factor, Lack of Time/Opportunities (LTO), was related to eight items involving environmental variables that hinder developing creativity in practice due to a lack of time or opportunities. The fourth factor, called Social Repression (SR), was composed of four items including the environmental barriers related to social situations that restrict the development of creativity. All the factors explained an important amount of the variance, and all their items presented loadings higher than .30 on a single factor (see Table 2).
Reliability estimates were similar to or better than in the Portuguese version. However, it should be mentioned that robust estimates were used with the Factor Analysis program for the Spanish version. In general, items’ means and standard deviations were lower in the Spanish version compared to the Portuguese one. Therefore, Spanish university students perceive fewer barriers than Portuguese university students (see Table 3).
As for the items excluded from the Spanish version, two items were related to a lack of initiative (Items 7 and 13) and did not correlate sufficiently to the LM factor. Another two items were related to a lack of time (Item 10) and the role of professors (Item 16). Neither of them loaded well on the LTO factor. Moreover, the SR factor in IBCP-VE lost 4 items from the Portuguese version related to criticism (Items 29 and 37), acceptance of fantasy (Item 33), and authority (Item 36). Thus, in the Spanish version, the SR factor is more related to external limits (Items 22, 26, and 27) and tolerance of errors (Item 28) and it seems to be more sensitive to cultural differences. Finally, whereas the Portuguese version comprises 44 items, the Spanish one presents 36 items (see Table 3).
Levene’s Statistics revealed that the sample was homogeneous (p > .05) in all factors. The ANOVA test yielded statistically significant gender differences (between male and female) in Inhibition/Shyness (F(2, 718) = 7.05; p = .001) and Lack of Time/Opportunities (F(2, 718) = 7.02; p = .001), as revealed by post hoc tests. The effect sizes were medium for both factors, IS (Hedges’ g = 0.301) and LTM (Hedges’ g = 0.297). Therefore, women perceive more barriers due to personal variables related to inhibition and shyness than men (see Table 4), coinciding with the instrument’s Portuguese version (Morais & Almeida, 2019). Also, coinciding with the data of the Portuguese students, in the Spanish version, women perceive more barriers than men for the LTO factor. Finally, results revealed non-significant gender differences in the LM and SR factors in the Spanish version, in contrast to the Portuguese version. Portugal’s version shows that men are more “accommodated,” “lazier,” and less “dedicated to what they do.” On the other hand, women have fewer “habits of searching for new ideas” (LM). In Portugal, men refer more significantly to a “rigid education” and higher self-evaluation about being “authoritarian” (SR) (Morais & Almeida, 2019).
Concerning cultural differences related to curricular areas, the ANOVA test did not reveal statistically significant differences between the five studied areas (Social Sciences or SS, Health Sciences or HS, Engineering and Architecture or EA, Arts and Humanities or AH, and Sciences and Technology or ST). This result differs from that found in Portugal, where students of Arts and Humanities perceived more barriers related to Social Repression and Lack of Opportunities and Time to develop creativity than students of Human and Social Sciences. Students of Sciences and Technology found more barriers than students of Human and Social Sciences (Morais & Almeida, 2015). Regarding the means and standard deviations of the two versions, the Portuguese version obtained higher values than the Spanish version (see Table 5).
This study aimed to analyze barriers to personal creativity among Spanish university students compared to Portuguese students. For this purpose, the Portuguese version of the IBCP was adapted to the Spanish population. The original four-factor structure of the instrument was maintained and validated. Considering the original Brazilian version (Alencar, 1999), the four factors continued to emerge, although the number of items was reduced from 66 to 36 in the Spanish version. Thus, the same structure of the construct remains intact in different cultures.
Nevertheless, some cultural differences between the Portuguese and the Spanish versions appeared. On the one hand, Spanish university students generally perceived fewer barriers to developing creativity. On the other hand, eight items did not seem adequate in the Spanish version. They were part of the factors LM (Items 7 and 13), LTO (Items 10 and 16), and mainly SR (Items 29, 33, 36, and 37). This was explicitly observed in the factors where gender differences appeared to be culturally different. Thus, regarding the factor Inhibition/Shyness, women in both countries showed higher inhibition, lower self-esteem and self-confidence, less fear of taking risks, and less initiative. Also, in both countries, women have consistently indicated more barriers related to Lack of Opportunity and Time. These results are in accordance with the literature. Since childhood, individuals of both genders shape behaviors and expectations that will produce a greater lack of internal and external opportunities in girls (Alencar & Sobrinho, 2017). There were no significant differences in Lack of Motivation and Social Repression in Spain, although, in Portugal, men expressed more barriers in these two factors. Perhaps in Portugal, the education standards for males are more inflexible, which conditions creative expression. Specifically, Portuguese students reported more barriers when admitting a “rigid education,” and they probably internalized more “authoritarian” behaviors (SR). These students also admitted being more “accommodated,” “lazier,” and less “dedicated to what they must do” (Morais & Almeida, 2015). These results may be positive for education in Spain (compared to Portugal), although, in both countries, there are still warnings about the need for more incentives for women’s self-confidence, initiative, and active participation. Higher Education should be particularly sensitive to this gap and not reinforce possible discriminatory gender patterns acquired in other life contexts. Higher Education can have a very positive influence not only on citizens’ professional development but also on their personal and social development.
Concerning students’ curricular area, the evidence has shown some courses or domains to be more and less favorable to their creativity development (Cropley & Cropley, 2009; Ribeiro & Fleith, 2007). Specifically in Portugal, country of comparison for the study carried out here students of Humanities and Social Sciences may deal more frequently than their classmates from other areas with aspects such as divergence of opinions, criticism, or perspectives beyond reality and are more involved in reflection and imagination in their academic daily life. Thus, compared to Science and Technology, these dimensions will be more operationalized in work proposals such as essays, debates, theatricalization, or interviews. For their part, Science and Technology students may be more focused on convergent thinking and the need for a single and verifiable response. Surprisingly, in the Portuguese study, there were more barriers in the Arts and Humanities area than in the area of Social and Human Sciences, but the former students may demand more expression of creativity and, thus, point out more obstacles (Morais & Almeida, 2015).
The absence of significant differences in the perception of barriers to creativity in university students found in this validation study may be a positive point for Higher Education in Spain. The average values of the barriers to creativity in Spain may be another positive sign, as Spanish values were almost always lower in all factors than those observed in Portugal with the same instrument. Portugal may have stricter cultural standards for boys (Morais & Almeida, 2019) and in general.
These differences reinforce the need for increasing the cross-cultural focus in research, namely comparative research (Moula, 2021). Specifically, there are cultural influences in creativity (Glaveanu, 2020). According to Shao et al. (2019), the impact of culture on creativity manifests in three ways: through the different conceptions (implicit and/or explicit) of creativity, the use of different creative processes (especially among individualist and collectivist cultures), and the use of different assessment instruments based on culture-related contents.
It should be mentioned that this study has some limitations. On the one hand, reliability estimates used in the two versions were different (Alpha and Orion). However, this should not be considered a substantial limitation because both versions’ estimates seemed good or very good. On the other hand, the sample was not equally distributed according to gender, curricular areas, and the type of university (public or private). This may have affected some results, mainly in which gender and curricular area differences were manifest. Therefore, a larger and more structured sample could improve these aspects of the study. Research should also consider collecting further data to obtain more validity evidence (i.e., external validity). Future research in Spain on the IBCP-VE with a more balanced sample should consider comparing genders and students of different curricular areas, private and public education students, students who start and finish Degree studies, and even undergraduate and graduate students. This instrument may also help to understand barriers to creativity in specific populations such as, for example, migrant students in Spain or people with special educational needs. Furthermore, this research line could help to study the integration or absence of creativity in the curricula of the different Degree studies in Spain. On a more international level, adapting the IBCP- VE to other languages and cultures would help develop intercultural and even cross- cultural research to study barriers to creativity in different educational systems and countries. Such studies would facilitate understanding the main obstacles that prevent university students from developing their creativity worldwide. Fostering creativity among future professionals should be a priority in this world, and understanding these barriers could help overcome this deficit.
Notwithstanding these limitations, the study concludes that the IBCP-VE is an adequate inventory and refers to a specific construct: the barriers university students perceive to developing their creativity. Another conclusion is that, despite some gender and curricular area differences, both the Portuguese and Spanish versions assess the same construct. Therefore, both versions could be applied in further cross-cultural studies. We trust that this research will contribute to curiosity and the development of new studies on creativity in Higher Education.
How to reference this article: Aperribai, L., Morais, M. F., Cortabarria, L., & Machado, F. (2024). Barriers to personal creativity in Spanish and Portuguese university students. Educación XX1, 27(1), 81- 104. https://doi.org/10.5944/educxx1.35761
