Fostering a creativity mindset in content area pre-service teachers through their use of literacy strategies

•Literacy strategies enabled pre-service teachers to teach creatively.•A hands-on approach worked for pre-service teachers learning literacy strategies.•Pre-service teachers adapted literacy strategies for teaching and assessment.•Literacy strategies encouraged secondary students to respond more creatively.

This paper emerges from our longitudinal study exploring pre-service and beginning content area teachers’ literacy practices in Eastern Canada. It describes how secondary mathematics, science, social studies, and other content area pre-service teachers used literacy strategies in their teaching. These strategies were learned during a course taught by the authors called Literacy in the Content Areas. We note the ways their inclusion of literacy strategies enabled pre-service teachers to approach their teaching more creatively and encouraged secondary students to be more creative in learning the content. Like Jeffrey and Craft (2004), we view these two aspects of creativity in teaching as integral to one another. We suggest the use of literacy strategies provides windows into pre-service teachers’ creativity mindsets and their abilities to improvise within their own disciplines.