Abstract

Among the lakhs of teachers that we have in schools, there are some who are different. They are different not in terms of their educational qualifications or length of service but in terms of some characteristics and quality of teaching. They are the teachers who see worth in children. They do not believe in routine and examination-oriented mechanical teaching. They do not encourage rote memory of their pupils. They are dissatisfied with the present situation and wish to change it for the better. They believe in doing what can be done or what ought to be done without expectation of any reward. They bring newness into whatever they undertake with children. They are different and they boldly explore new and creative ways of teaching and learning (Acharyulu 1995). For a long time educators everywhere believed that one of the important determinants of successful teaching concerns the characteristics of teachers. This resulted in considerable research on teacher characteristics as related to instruction and achievement of pupils.  An attempt has been made here to describe some of the personality characteristics including Cognitive characteristics and Personality and Motivational characteristic associated with creative teachers.  Cognitive characteristics include flexibility, skill in decision making, coping with novelty, visualization, the ability to breakaway from fixed set of ideas and rigid thinking?  Sensitivity to problems and finding order in chaos.  Personality characteristics include a willingness to face and take risks; perseverance; being open to new experiences; commitment to work; high internal motivation; competence in meeting challenges; reflective; independence of judgement; display of courage; excellent work habits; capacity for sustained effort; persistence; liking to think; manipulate and toy with ideas; and a desire to improve upon currently accepted systems.  As creativity still remains an untapped resource for professional development of teachers, helping teachers become creative through appropriate training certainly gains importance because after all teacher's creativity begets pupil's creativity.