Creativity has been accepted as one of the essential skills that serve as catalytic for children’s innovative ideas as well as their actions (Eckhoff & Urbach, 2008; Lindqvist, 2003). Although it is difficult to have a consensus regarding the definition of creativity (Beghetto, 2005; Mayer, 1999; Pizzingrilli & Antonietti, 2010), many authors used their own definitions to describe it. Researchers had some common points associated with creativity such as originality (Torrance, 1966), novelty (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999) and the ability to problem solving (Lubart, 2000). Moreover, Craft (2003) and highlighted that imagination and creativity were prominent and integrated terms among all others.

In addition to researchers underlining definition of creativity, many other researchers investigating creativity issue in educational context have focused on implicit and explicit theories of creativity (Runco, 1990; Runco & Bahleda, 1986). Runco and Johnson (2002) explained the difference between those two theories. While implicit theories refer to individuals own creativity definitions to reflect their ideas about the nature of creativity, explicit theories refers the researchers’ or theorists’ creativity definitions used in their research to develop their own explicit theories (Sternberg, 1985).  According to Plucker and Runco (1998) implicit theories enhance an insight for teachers to understand creativity of their children as well as to foster children’s creativity. Then, teachers can use their implicit theories to either facilitate or inhibit creative behavior (Cheung & Mok, 2013; Nickerson, 1999; Runco & Johnson, 2002; Runco, Johnson, & Bear, 1993).

In essence, researchers have been investigated implicit theories of creativity with different participant groups adopting different approaches (Montgomery, Bull, & Balache, 1993; Sternberg, 1985).  Teachers are one of those participant groups since they have been considered as key individuals to make children reach their highest level of creative potentials. In fact, many authors also reflected the importance of examining pre-service teachers’ beliefs since their beliefs help preschool teacher educators to comprehend the way of presenting knowledge associated with young children’s creative potentials (Eckhoff, 2011). Moreover, knowing pre-service teachers’ beliefs could be an initial step to detect the needs to support creativity of children (Beghetto & Plucker, 2006; Fryer, 1996) and to implement better practices in classroom settings for nurturing creativity of young children (Newton & Newton, 2009).

Based on the above information about the importance of investigating teachers’ beliefs regarding creativity, it is crucial to extend studies dealing with the particular issue. However, in Turkey, there is no scale to explore pre-service early childhood teachers’ beliefs about creativity. Therefore, the current research aimed to adopt “The Student Teachers’ Beliefs about Creativity Scale” developed by Diakidoy and Kanari (1999).

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