Creativity in Hong Kong’s special schools’ music classrooms

To investigate music teachers’ perceptions and concerns in fostering music creativity of students with intellectual disabilities, findings are presented from a study of nine music teachers purposely sampled from across all three categories (mild, medium, severe) of Hong Kong’s special school for students with intellectual disabilities. Personal profiles identify respondents’ displaying three professional knowledge gaps–music expertise, special-education training and prior experience of being taught ‘creativity’. Findings also indicate that respondents add to the creativity literature: first by supplementing Hargreaves’ [2012. “Musical Imagination: Perception and Production, Beauty and Creativity.” Psychology of Music 40 (5): 539–557] ‘process’ to include ‘music making’ and ‘body movement’, and second, that music creativity may be described as a spectrum that embraces various forms of expressions.