The purpose of the study was to explore the perception of teachers about creativity education in early childhood education settings and possible related variables such as a teacher's creative personality, the type of program, on-the-job training exper...
The purpose of the study was to explore the perception of teachers about creativity education in early childhood education settings and possible related variables such as a teacher's creative personality, the type of program, on-the-job training experience, career history and education background. A perception questionnaire was composed for this study based on previous research and included 5-point Likert scale items in the areas of conceptions of creativity, characteristics of creativity, characteristics of a creative child, instructional strategies, learning activities and evaluation practices. The questionnaire also included a creative personality inventory. Both were distributed to 140 kindergarten teachers and 111 daycare-center teachers in P city, Gyeongsangbuk-do. Mean scores of each area were calculated. An ANOVA was conducted to test the differences of the means based on the levels of each teacher's creative personality and the other variables.
The results of the analyses were as follows:
First, teachers who had higher levels on the creative personality test showed higher scores in conceptions of creativity, understanding of characteristics of creativity, recognizing characteristics of a creative child, understanding of effective instructional strategies and learning activities.
Second, nursery school teachers showed higher scores than kindergarten teachers in all areas of the creativity education questionnaire used in this study.
Third, teachers' training experiences in the creativity education were associated with differences in the perception of creativity education for young children.
Fourth, no differences in the perception of creativity education for young children were associated with different levels of teaching career in the early childhood settings.
Fifth, teachers who had two-year education backgrounds showed higher scores when compared with four-year education backgrounds in the area of conceptions of creativity, characteristics of a creative child and effective learning activities. However, there were no differences between the two groups in their understanding of the characteristics of creativity, instructional strategies and evaluation practices.