Development of Creativity in Pre-school Teacher Candidates and Its Reflections on Their Professional Works

Author(s):

Asiye Parlak Rakap (presenting / submitting) Sevgi Aydın (presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 B, Creativity in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-13

09:00-10:30

Room:

A-202

Chair:

Peter Gray

Discussant:

John I'Anson

Contribution

Creativity is “the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising and valuable. ‘Ideas’ here includes concepts, poems, musical compositions, scientific theories, cookery recipes, chorography, jokes-and so on. Artefacts include paintings, sculptures, steam engines, vacuum cleaners, pottery, origami, penny whistles, - and many other things you can name.” (Boden, 2004, p.1) Supporting “creativity may contribute significantly to their flexibility, and their ability to handle changes in their working lives” (Kind & Kind, 2007, p.1). Therefore, education should include the essential characteristics of creativity (Conn, 2012; Kind & Kind, 2007), which are originality, relevance, fluency, and flexibility (Guilford, 1957: Jackson & Messick, 1965 as cited in Kemple & Nissenberg, 2000). Motivation, interest, effort, and opportunity are necessary vital conditions that should be provided for creativity development (Jalongo, 2003). Thus, for educating creative teachers, teacher educators should be aware of necessary factors on creativity development and arrange the environment considering them (Singer & Singer, 1998). Moreover, teachers should be given a chance of observing creative mentors’ teaching (Grainger, Barnes & Scoffham, 2004).

Creativity became an important subject in Turkish curriculum (Ayan & Dündar, 2009). In relation to its importance many researches were conducted searching for creativity development in children, teachers’ creative thinking levels (Görgen & Karaçelik, 2009), etc. However, little is known about how pre-school teacher candidates’ creativity develops and its reflection on their professional work (Grainger, Barnes & Scoffham, 2004). Thus, this study will be of utmost importance since it examines pre-service preschool teachers’ creativity development and its reflections on their activity plans.

Method

This study is qualitative in nature (Patton, 2002). For this study, a course in Early Childhood Teacher Education program was designed to support pre-service pre-school teachers’ development of creativity. Thus, it was examined whether creativity development influenced their creative teaching. The course is a must course offered to sophomores. The data were collected by the use of lesson plans prepared by pre-service teachers at the beginning and end of the semester, focus group interview conducted in the middle of the semester, and course assignments. There were 60 pre-service teachers of who were selected purposefully for the purpose of the research (Patton, 2002). The course through which the development of creativity was examined was about 10-week long. It had both theoretical (2-class-hour) and application parts (2-class-hour). In the former, the introduction of creativity, the factors impeding creativity, the development of creativity, and its steps were mentioned. In the latter one, varying activities (e.g., creative writing, recreation area, creative painting, and creative salad) were used to support pre-service teachers’ creativity. All pre-service teachers enrolled to the course were informed about the research and its purpose. They all agreed to participate to the study. The data were coded inductively (Patton, 2002) with no pre-determined codes. Data and investigator triangulation, and member checked ensured the credibility of the research.

Expected Outcomes

Expected outcomes: Due to the fact that we have not completed the data collection yet, we provided our expectations. We think that with assistance of the ‘Creativity’ course offered to pre-school pre-service teachers, they will be able to prepare better lesson plans that reflect the essential characteristics of the creativity (e.g., prediction, consideration of possible solutions, etc.). Moreover, they will be able to develop their instructional strategy repertoire that supports the creativity development of pre-school children. Moreover, the assessment of creativity development is one of the obstacles that teachers face with. Therefore, we also think that the pre-service teachers enrolled to this course will also be able to develop themselves regarding how to assess creativity and its development owing to both the assessment strategies used by the instructor in the course and the support provided to pre-service teachers how to assess creativity in the course. To conclude, at the end of the 10 weeks they are supposed to develop their knowledge of what creativity is, how it develops, and how to be a creative teacher .

References

Ayan, S. Dündar, H. (2009). Eğitimde okul öncesi yaratıcılığın ve oyunun önemi. Selçuk Üniversitesi Ahmet Keleşoğlu Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 28, 63-74. Boden, M.A. 2004. The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Conn, K. (2012). Intersections, molecules, and homeless shelters. The Science Teacher, 79(2), 63-65. Görgen, İ. & Karaçelik, S. (2009). Okul öncesi öğretmenliği ve fen bilgisi öğretmenliği öğrencilerinin yaratıcı düşünme beceri düzeylerinin karşılaştırmalı incelemesi. Muğla Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 23, 129-145. Grainger, T., Barnes, J. & Scoffham, S. (2004). A creative cocktail: creative teaching in initial teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 30(3), pp. 243–253. Kemple, K. M. & Nissenberg, S. S. (2000). Nurturing creativity in early childhood education: Families are part of it. Early Childhood Education Journal, 28(1), 67-71. Kind, P. M. & Kind, V. (2007). Creativity in science education: Perspectives and challenges for developing school science. Studies in Science Education, 43, 1–37. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Author Information

Asiye Parlak Rakap (presenting / submitting)

yüzüncü yıl university

pre-school teacher education

Van

Sevgi Aydın (presenting)

Yüzüncü Yıl University, Turkey

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