DEFINING THE PHENOMENON OF CREATIVITY IN PEDAGOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

The article is devoted to the construction of a definition of the phenomenon of creativity of future teachers, using the essence of the scope and content of the concepts, generic relations and specific features of the concept of ″creativity of the future teacher″, rules for defining the concept, etc., since the socio-economic situation puts forward new requirements for the process of training future specialists in institutions of higher education. We associate this with the fact that acquiring only subject knowledge in modern society does not make graduates competitive on the labor market. And that is why the New Ukrainian School requires creative, creative teachers of the modern generation. Today, the development of creativity of future specialists in the educational process of pedagogical higher education institutions due to the lack of flexible plans, programs, textbooks, insufficient use of innovative technologies occurs spontaneously, does not encourage students to professional creativity and reorients the components of the current educational system on the basis of modern concepts extremely slowly. It is established that modern psychological and pedagogical science considers this concept in various aspects (general foundations of creativity, mechanisms of creative thinking, creativity as a type of intellectual behavior, ″self-actualization″ in connection with creativity, the special nature of the motivation of creative activity, reflection of creativity and creative productivity at scientific employees, etc. Some methodological inaccuracies and improprieties during the modeling of various processes in educational activity, caused by differences in the interpretation of the concept of creativity in philosophical, scientific, methodical and psychological-pedagogical literature, are outlined. In addition, the publication presents a critical analysis of a significant number of approaches to the formulation of the definitions of the concepts ″creativity″, ″teacher's creativity″, ″creativity of future teachers″, etc. Key words: definition, creativity, pedagogical university, future teachers, gender relations.