Fostering student creativity through teacher behaviors Based on Arthur J. Cropleys nine principles, the Creativity Fostering Teacher Behaviour Index (CFTIndex) was developed and trialled with a group of teachers (N=117) in Singapore. Of these teachers, 45% had five or less years of teaching experience, 25% had 610years and 30% had 16 or more years. The Journal began its publication as the Classroom Interaction Newsletter by Dr. Anita Simon of Temple University in Philadelphia, with editorial adviser Dr. Ned Flanders. The importance of creativity and creative ideas has increased so much today chiefly because of social media and the increasing demand for art and aesthetics among the masses. Of these, the lowest is r=.43 (Integration and Opportunity), the highest is r=.89 (Independence and Judgement), with a median of the correlations is r=.74. Each manuscript is double blind reviewed by members of the standing review board and/or guest reviewers. Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How to Foster Creativity in MS in Creative Education and Entrepreneurship, post-bachelor's certificate in Creativity and Innovation, Advice for First Year Teachers: Tips + Essentials, How to Inspire Creativity in the Classroom. Such differences show either over-reporting by the faculty on their own creativity fostering behaviour or under-reporting by the students on their teachers, or both. In this context, CFTIndex seems to have proven that it is a data collection tool much needed by creativity researchers, especially those who are concerned with the development of student creativity. These strategies tended to fall into one or more of four categories: differentiated instruction, emotional variables, collaboration, and experiential learning (p. 123). Where academic qualification is concerned, 36% held a Bachelor degree, 46% a Masters degree and 18% a Ph.D. degree. Participants ability to foster creativity in the classroom was improved by supportive administration and instructional peers but was constrained by a lack of time and the constricting standardized testing environment. Students have countless curiosities about the world that theyre eager to explore. Educators can set the guidelines for how students can offer constructive feedback in ways that will be well-received and helpful to their classmates. Key points: - The skills needed to keep learning during the COVID crisis are also key to a lifelong learning mindset. This shows the subscales to have moderately correlated with one another. In the middle range are Question, Frustration and Flexibility. In view of the necessity to evaluate teachers' classroom creativity, this paper designed a valid and . When teachers behave in a manner that foster creativity, students are likely to respond in a creative manner and thus develop their own creativity. Thus, generally, this sample consisted mainly of senior, highly qualified and experience faculty members. Role of Teachers in Fostering Creativity Among Students - Teachmint There were 20 female and 10 male respondents. New researchers have the same opportunity to publish in the Journal as a veteran researcher. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Creativity fostering teacher behaviour around the world: Annotations of studies using the CFTIndex, Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, 287 Ghim Moh Road, Singapore 279623, Singapore, Fostering creativity in the classroom: General principles, The dark side of creativity in the classroom: The paradox of classroom teaching, The adaptation of creativity fostering primary teachers index scale into Turkish, Identification of potentially creative persons from the adjective check list, Creativity in Hong Kong classroom: What is the contextual practice, School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, The University of Western Ontario, The International Center for Studies in Creativity. Engagement in creative activities was measured with a 28-item Creative Behaviors Inventory which had four components for visual art, literary arts, drama and receiving arts awards. It has been cited and used by many researchers for various purposes who investigated different aspects of creativity development: evaluating the effectiveness of creativity development projects, checking its cross-cultural validity of its translated versions and even as the main instrument for Ph.D. theses. All authors are encouraged to submit their current research on classroom interaction. The SDs are also interesting. It overrides play and personal exploration Twenty 9th and 10th grade teachers from a high school in a large, mid-Atlantic suburban school district were involved in the study. For instance, during the planning stages of a group project vs. during a standardized test. Of these teachers, 148 (51.4%) were females and 140 (48.6%) were males. Controlling the classroom environment where students spend hours each day, teachers have ample opportunities to nurture and cultivate creativity. As the following chart shows, 85% of teachers who focus on creativity in learning and use technology in transformative ways say they often see their students engaging in problem solving. - Provide immediate feedback on pupils' inventiveness. Teachers have the power to not just single handedly change the fate of each individual student, but the entire fate of the country as well. Cronbachs coefficients are slightly greater for the replication groups for Motivation, Question, Opportunities and CFTIndex as a whole. Among these only four (2.5%) references pertain to teachers . Table 4 was reconstructed by using the data from the article. Therefore, it is vital that they put in their best to help their students become the best version of themselves they can be. Forrester and Huis (Citation2007) study was premised by the hypothesis that if teachers saw value in creativity as integral to their effective teaching, observed teachers classroom behavioural choices would reflect a significant array of creativity-enhancing techniques. Comparisons with the original CFTIndex (Soh, Citation2000) shows that for all subscales the Chile groups had greater means, especially for Independence, Flexibility, Consultation (Question) and Opportunities where the Cohens ds indicate large effects. The present article is an effort to summarize and highlight information pertaining to the CFTIndex and put them in a form for ready referencing by future researchers. The teachers were observed for their classroom teaching. This serves two useful purposes. How well they play this role depends on whether they demonstrate creativity fostering behaviour when interacting with their students. A child who has been exposed to more worldly experiences will be able to come up with more creative ideas than a child who has had few ones. Independent t-test shows no differences between male and female teachers as well as between teachers teaching in urban and rural locations. 2018 H. Jerome Freiberg For a better experience, click the icon above to turn off Compatibility Mode, which is only for viewing older websites. It is when someone is determined and focused that they use their full potential, and in this case, the student will be motivated to do their best, which is when their most creative ideas will come to the forefront. The purpose of this study was to describe the impact of a flexible classroom environment, including the teacher and student relationship, and its role in fostering creativity in middle school students. Theres no single recipe for developing creativity in students, but there are some simple things you can do to make your classroom a little more creative. A portfolio of rubrics was developed during the OECD-CERI project Fostering and Assessing Creativity and Critical Thinking Skills in Education. What Is Foster Creativity? - creativitylab.tv Factor analysis of the primary school teachers responses yielded nine factors explaining 59.12% of the total variance. The purpose of Soh and Queks (Citation2007) study was to explore further the validity of the CFTIndex using fresh data from another group of Singaporean teachers. This highlighted the role of schools and teachers in fostering and en-hancing creativity. Nevertheless, the current mood and belief is that creativity can be fostering, as evidenced by many writings posted on the Internet and more formal publications (e.g. The CFTIndex was used as the main data collection instrument, in addition to Goughs Creativity Personality Scale which has 30 adjectives; a shorter version based on Domino (Citation1970) was used in Soh (Citation2000) and a Chinese Creativity Test. 7 Ways to Foster Creativity in Your Kids - Greater Good Each item was presented with a six-point scale, with 6 for All the time and 1 for Never. Since CFTIndex is a social measure and social measures tend to be more fallible, reporting reliabilities also serve the purpose of cautioning other researchers not to over-trust a set of research outcomes but to take due caution against over-interpretation which may lead to misinformation and wrong decision. These are somewhat lower than the average reliabilities (Table 12 below). They also pointed out that their research question remains unanswered but the study point to possible pathway to its eventual answering. To establish the concurrent validity of the CFTIndex, 16 adjectives were selected from Dominos (Citation1970) 59-item Creative Adjective Scale through several rounds of factor analysis. Tell students that truly creative people must imagine, and struggle, and re-imagine while working on a project. At the time of conception, not everyone gives importance to whether or not an idea is good or not, but as the possibility of presentation arises, they ultimately do think of it. Children are some of the most creative units there are. There are many data collection instruments for measuring student creativity but there is a dearth of instruments to measure creativity fostering behaviours of teachers. Pioneer classroom ecology researches like Bronfenbrenner (1977), Moos (1979), and much later Fraser (2002) all emphasized the importance . This article is of interest not only to creativity researchers but perhaps more to educators in general who are concerned with developing creativity in the students. For this reason, it can be said that Cronbachs Alpha coefficients obtained from the scale and subscales is sufficient (p. 321). The author then concluded that These values, which take account of sample size and complexity of model, demonstrate good fit (p. 321). The Journal of Classroom Interaction The CFTIndex has fulfilled its predicted role in meeting the need of creativity researchers by providing them with a much needed data collection instrument. Creativity fostering teacher behaviour a . https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2015.1034494, http://issuu.com/didaktica/docs/articulo_revista_ctes2013_comportam, I encourage students to show me what they have learned on their own, I teacher my students the basics and leave them to find out more for themselves, I leave questions for my students to find out for themselves, I teach students the basics and leave room for individual learning, I leave open-ended questions for my students to find the answers for themselves, In my class, students have opportunities to share ideas and views, Students in my class have opportunities to do group work regularly, Students in my class are encouraged to contribute to the lesson with their ideas and suggestions, I encourage students to ask questions and make suggestions in my class, Students in my class are expected to work in group cooperatively, Learning the basic knowledge/skills well is emphasized in my class, I emphasize the importance of mastering the essential knowledge and skills, My students know that I expect them to learn the basic knowledge and skills well, Moving from one topic to the next quickly is, When my students have some ideas, I get them to explore further before I take a stand, When my students suggest something, I follow it up with questions to make them think further, I do not give my view immediately on students ideas, whether I agree or disagree with them, I comments on students ideas only after they have been more thoroughly explored, I encourage students to do things differently although doing this takes up more time, In my class, I probe students idea to encourage thinking, I encourage my students to ask questions freely even if they appear irrelevant, I encourage my students to think in different directions even if some of the ideas may not work, I like my students to take time to think in different ways, I allow my students to deviate from what they are told to do, I expect my students to check their own work instead of waiting for me to correct them, I provide opportunities for my students to share their strong and weak points with the class, My students know that I expect them to check their own work before I do, In my class, students have opportunities to judge for themselves whether they are right or wrong, I allow my students to show one another their own work before submission, I follow up on my students suggestions so that they know I take them seriously, When My students have questions to ask, I listen to them carefully, My students know I do not dismiss their suggestions lightly, I listen to my students suggestions even if they are not practical or useful, I listen patiently when my students ask questions that may sound silly, I encourage my students to try out what they have learned from me in different situations, When my students put what they have learned into different uses, I appreciate them, My students are encouraged to do different things with what they have learned in class, I dont mind my students trying out their own ideas and deviating from what I have shown them, Students are allowed to go beyond what I teach them within my subject, My students who are frustrated can come to me for emotional support, I help students who experience failure to cope with it so that they regain their confidence, I help my students to draw lessons from their failure, I encourage students who have frustration to take it as part of the learning process, I encourage students who experience failure to find other possible solutions. Soh (Citation2000) acknowledged that this is a preliminary study and further work needs be done to further evaluate the validity of the scale. A mediation model was hypothesized with engagement as the mediator between personality and creativity fostering behaviour. The article also reports inter-subscale correlations for the CFTIndex. Most of these teachers attended a workshop on creativity techniques (e.g. Possible further research studies using the CFTIndex are suggested and discussed. For the content of actual items, see Appendix in the original article. Note: The rescaled means and SDs are for five items per subscale as in the original CFTIndex. Instead of the original six-point scale, a five-point scale was used and there is no explanation for this change. Some interesting correlations were observed between teachers creativity fostering behaviour and students verbal and figural creativity measures. to the school context and examine the extent to which teachers' cognitive mechanisms explain their intentions to foster creativity among their students. Moreover, new studies are likely to appear in time to come (for instance, at the time of writing, there was a request to use it for research purpose from Hong Kong) and an update is necessary in the future. emphasized the role of a teacher in the classroom as far as creativity is to be fostered. To facilitate comparisons, the means and SDs were rescaled for five items per subscale. In other words, the findings of the original study have been replicated by and large. The 'Teacher Roles in Free Play Scale' and the 'Creativity Fostering Teacher Index Scale' (CFTIndex) were used during data collection. It is incredibly important that a teacher is aware of one's own behavior and the environment they create in the classroom. The reliabilities are generally high, varying from =.62 (Motivation) to =.85, with a median of =.77. For these, the author asserts that It is nearly impossible in the areas of education and psychology to develop a scale with a reliability coefficient of+1. In the first stage of the study, teachers completed online the CFTIndex and, in the second stage, they were observed in the classroom as well as interviewed. It is interesting to note that the greater faculty-student discrepancies are found for the faculty members with less than six years of teaching experience and also for those with more than 20years, while the three groups in-between have much smaller discrepancies. Manriquez and Reiveras (Citation2005) study aims to find out the pedagogical practices of faculty members of the University of Antofagasta, Chile, in connection with creativity fostering, with the conviction that creative behaviour is a highly valuable goal for modern professional training in higher education. The age range was between 32 and 64years with a mean of 44.3 (SD=2.36). This is a welcome feature that brings about a better understanding of teacher behaviour and this is does not found in the other studies using the CFTIndex. However, the reduction of items down to three for each subscale needs be cautious; a (sub-)scale normally needs 812 to be stable and the five items per subscale in the original CFTIndex is already on the low side. Creativity fostering teacher behaviour around the world: Annotations of studies using the CFTIndex Kaycheng Soh1* Abstract: Teachers play a critical role in the development of student creativity. The review process usually takes 9-12 weeks, somewhat longer if received in December, January or during the summer months. A study standing alone, however well done, has little usefulness; ensuring or facilitating comparisons with other like studies enhances its value in a wider context. As shown in Table 8, the Cronbachs coefficients for the nine subscales are generally high and the median of the coefficients is =.83 which is greater than the conventionally expected =.7 for research instrument, though somewhat lower for the expected =.9 for making decisions on individuals. These correlations indicate that while the subscales are relatively independent, they are also correlated and may form a higher order general factor. Whether creativity is born or bred is a naturenurture question beyond the scope of this article. How well they play this role depends on whether they demonstrate creativity foster- . Classroom observation and face-to-face interviews were conducted with teachers who scored above the 50th percentile of CFTIndex. The authors also classified the faculty members into five groups in terms of teaching experience. These, however, were found to be unrelated to the CFTIndex scores. Within this framework, students are taught to exert control over their learning environment and learning outcomes while going through the stages of learning and teacher's role is guiding them. Early childhood teachers' roles in fostering creativity through free For example, the teacher must act as a positive role model, since the behaviors that the teacher displays shape the behaviors students develop. For this reason, the authors further argue, teachers and professionals handling children with special needs should possess adequate amount of creativity fostering behaviours, depicting their productivity and capacity building. Read to learn more about the importance of creative learning environments and how teachers cab learn to nurture creativity in a classroom environment. However, the reliability for the whole scale of 45 items is =.95, which is very high for research instrument. Thus, if training is to be offered to foster teachers creativity fostering behaviours, these three will need more attention and effort. The students, on average, feel that their teachers are moderately creative in their teaching while the teachers themselves believe that they are highly creative. Of the 36 possible correlations paring two scales, five are r>.80, 14 are .79>r>.70, four are .69>r>.60 and five are .59>r>.40. Having the opportunity to create a learning environment that encourages creative thinking, teachers are in a unique position to help students develop one of their most important life skills. How Teachers Can Foster Creativity in Students Now that you have an idea of the factors that affect a child's creativity, the role of teachers in helping them develop it comes in. Hong Kong (Forrester & Hui, Citation2007). Within the context of No Child Left Behind, Edingers (Citation2008) study investigated creativity fostering teacher behaviours in a high-stakes standardized testing environment. In developing the Sohs (Citation2000) CFTIndex, the nine principles for creativity fostering teacher behaviour propounded by Cropley (Citation1997) were operationalized in terms of teacherstudent transactions. More details can of course be found in the original articles and interested creativity researchers are certainly encouraged to read them in their original forms. Nonetheless, the study did not begin with the intention to generalize to the population of Singapore teachers but to generalize to the theory of teacher behaviour that fosters student creativity. Those with higher scores on Openness and who creativity-related experiences were more likely to espouse creativity fostering teaching styles. Giving students a sense of autonomy in the learning process gives them a sense of responsibility regarding their own education, which in turn provides a feeling of wanting to succeed. The study involves 36 special primary school teachers from the Oyo state. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215.895.2000, All Rights Reserved, Admission Process and Support for Students, Freddie Reisman Center for Translational Research in Creativity and Motivation. Since teachers play a crucial role in developing student creativity, we focused on predictors of teachers' willingness to foster creativity in a classroom. With our advanced learning management system, you can improve the teaching-learning experience. If the student believes that their idea is truly unique and creative, they will present it with complete confidence, but if they have relatively low self-esteem, they will consider themselves to be less creative, which will affect their creativity. Although not all studies annotated here present reliabilities of the data, it is interesting to have the available reliabilities integrated for an overview of the CFTIndex and its subscale to evaluate how much trust they deserve. Thus, it found that co-player and onlooker-stage manager roles are preferred teacher roles during free. In Hondzels (Citation2013) Ph.D. thesis, Hondzel intended to find out the creativity fostering behaviours of primary school teachers. The author concludes that the strategies teachers use to foster creativity in students should then emphasise the well-rounded and imaginative development of children while tolerating behaviours associated with creative production . This drops to 75% among teachers who foster classroom creativity but use technology in more substitutional ways (replacing paper and pencil with tablets or . They indicate that teachers of the studies displayed these three creativity fostering behaviours more visibly. The creative process is not a simple "aha" that strikes without warning. These were rescaled for five items. Some creative thoughts require time to be molded into an idea. Following the exploratory factor analysis which yielded the above results, a confirmatory factor analysis was run to verify the obtained structure. Comparisons with the original version, the subscale and whole scale means show little difference, perhaps with the exception of Independence, Flexibility, Question and Frustration for which the replication groups scored slightly higher. Fostering understanding through education, organizing and advocacy. Although five items per subscale may be on the low side in terms of scale length for which eight or more would be desirable, the reliability coefficients are sufficiently high for the subscales and the CFTIndex as a whole to be used with confidence for research purposes. Thirdly, also make it a good habit to report reliabilities of the CFTIndex and its nine subscales. The original six-point scale was used. The teacher has the power to make or break a childs creativity. Seen from this perspective, creativity is a behavioral trait which teachers are expected to promote or foster in the students. Note: All correlation coefficients are statistically significant (p<.05). It is a truism that teachers play a critical role in the development of student creativity. Make it clear to students that creativity requires effort. However, through a confirmatory factors analysis, the CFTIndex was modified to have only three items each for the nine subscales instead of the original five items. The availability of the CFTIndex by the present author in 2000 has spawned many relevant studies over the decade. Creativity is a phenomenon where a person uses their own ingenuity to create something that is unique and adds value to someone, or adds extra value to something. Helping students develop their creative capacities can have both direct and indirect benefits. The 45 items formed the 9 subscales, and the CFTIndex as a whole were tested on a group of 117 teachers in Singapore. Finally, they called for attention of policy-makers and decision-makers to organize periodic training for university lecturers in creativity fostering behaviour. The CFTIndex was administered to the respondents with the results shown in Table 1. Although creativity can seem to be an abstract or even mysterious concept at times, there is a growing science behind infusing classrooms with creativity and the benefits it yields to students in the classroom, as well as later in life. So, teachers need to create opportunities and avenues for children to improve their creative skills and come up with more and more creative ideas. The need for such an interment was thus argued for, Where creativity fostering behaviour of teachers is concerned, the lack of suitable measuring instruments will limit the relevant discourse to the philosophical and conceptual levels (which are, of course, important in their own right as a subdomain of creativity research). However, noting the limitation of such data, a scale relevant to the CFTIndex was used to gather observational data. Used for data collection was the CFTindex which has 45 items forming 9 subscales. Instead of the original six-point scale, a five-point scale was used. He suggested several specific approaches such as checking teachers self-ratings for CFTIndex against (a) students ratings of teachers, (b) independent observers ratings, (c) student creativity, (d) effect of training in creativity techniques and (e) correspondence between changes in teacher creativity and student creativity. Data were collected by using the CFTIndex. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. During this time an international review board was established and continues Recently, the European Science Foundation has recognized JCI in its list of quality international research journals.