Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• Prologue
• About the Editor

In the lead article, Cropley shares his original ideas about creativity fostering teacher behaviors resulting from his extensive review of relevant studies. He then shares his modified ideas of the recent years.

This article presents the thoughts and process of the design of the Creativity Fostering Teacher Index (CFTIndex), operationalizing Cropley’s original ideas into a 45-item self-rating scale for teachers. It also discusses the reliability and validity of the scale. Replications with a fresh sample of teachers is also reported.

This is a partial replication study for three CFTIndex subscales: Independence, Flexibility, and Opportunity. These were validated against Robert Sternberg’s Thinking Styles Scales for Legislative, Executive, and Judgmental. The correlations between the two sets of variables make sense and are interpreted in terms of teacher’s creativity fostering behaviors.

This article reports a replication study of the CFTIndex development study with a fresh sample of teachers in the same Singapore context.

This article provides an overview of studies and PhD dissertations which used the CFTIndex as their main data collection instrument. Technical issues arising from the annotations are discussed and remedies are suggested.

This article reports an experimental study of Hong Kong teacher’s creativity fostering behaviors in implementing a drama-in-education programme. CFTIndex was used as the criterion measure. Results show that teachers in the experimental group did show enhanced creativity fostering behaviors subsequent to involvement in drama instruction.

In this article, Dikici summarizes four studies using the CFTIndex in the Turkish context. In the first study, high correlations were found for its English and Turkish versions in 30 English lecturers, evidencing inter-language consistency. The second study contains three sub-studies involving different types of teachers. CFTIndex scores were found to be mediated by scores for Sternberg’s thinking styles. The third study shows that a 27-item shorten version in Turkish yielded comparable results as the longer Turkish version of CFTIndex while maintaining the original nine subscales. There are also variations in terms of scale lengths (numbers of items). The fourth study is a re-visit to the relationship between thinking styles and creativity fostering behaviors among Turkish teachers. Two-factor solutions were found for both 2014 and 2016 cohorts.

This article reports a study of creativity fostering behaviors of PE Educators (N=220) in Greece. A Greek adaptation of the CFTIndex resulted in a shorter 27-item scale forming six oblique factors: Enhance responsibility for learning, Taking students seriously, Lack of rush and criticism delay, Positive management of failure, Emphasis to basic knowledge & skills, and Opportunity for deviation. An 18-item checklist was also developed and used for naturalistic observation during Physical Education lessons. However, the teachers’ responses to the self-report rating scale and the observational results were not consistent. The findings and their implications are discussed.

This article reports a study involving 40 Secondary teachers of Mathematics in Johor, Malaysia. The main instrument for data collection is the Assessment of Mathematics Teachers’ Creativity Stimulation developed by the authors, with reference to Cropley’s nine conditions for creativity fostering. Although this scale shares the same conceptual groundwork with the CFTIndex, it adopted a different approach to scale development, using the Rasch measurement model. The author are confident that they have produced a scale of quality for assessing teachers’ creativity stimulation.

This is another study using the Turkish version of the CFTIndex to find out among Chemistry teachers’ creativity fostering behaviors in connection with their development of educational technological and materials designs. Regression analysis shows that creativity fostering behaviors together with perceptions of technological skills predict success in project-based material development.

In this article, three ways of learning are discussed: modeling, reinforcement, and classroom ecology. The author argues that because creative teachers are by definition rare and student creativity is unpredictable, modeling and reinforcement leave too much to chance and therefore may not be effective in fostering student creativity. He therefore advocates that teachers create creativity fostering classroom ecology by constantly applying the nine principles propounded by Cropley and use the CFTIndex for self-monitoring. This article is followed by three reviews by Cropley, Zaleha Ismail, and Konstantinidou.

The following section is included:

• Epilogue