Research On Teachers' Implicit Beliefs Of Creativity And Creative Students

Implicit theories are opinions and views held by people to have an effect on people's judgment, activities and attitude toward the word. Teachers' implicit beliefs about creativity reflect teachers' understanding about the essence of creativity and influence teachers' attitude toward creativity and creative students, teaching methods and activities in the classroom.The purpose of this study is to (1) examine and describe teachers' implicit beliefs about creativity and creative students;(2)investigate teachers' attitude toward creativity and students' creativity;(3) investigate teachers' teaching methods; (4) explore affective factors which influence teachers' implicit beliefs and their classroom practice.This study tries to solve the following problems: (1) what are the implicit beliefs of creativity and creative students held by teachers? (2) What are teachers' attitudes toward creativity and creative students? (3) What kinds of teaching approaches are used by teachers in regular classrooms? (4) What affective factors prevent teachers from fostering students' creativity?The research took place in a well-established top primary school in Chaoyang district. All the teachers who taught in the school participated in the investigation. The measured tools used to collect data in this study include interviews and questionnaires with close-ended questions and open-ended questions, commonly used in previous researches.Based on the results of this research, the following conclusions have been drawn: (1) Teachers' implicit beliefs about creativity cover five aspects, which are social concerns, creative process, creative products, creative persons and creative environment. (2) Most teachers have positive attitude to creativity, but they disagree to the idea that teachers should be responsible for fostering students' creativity. (3) Teaching approaches include providing opportunities, providing time and suitable environment, raising creative questions, and rewarding students' creative behaviors. (4) Teachers attribute major obstacles to cultivate students' to the current educational institutions, which make them barely fulfill their teaching tasks, rather than training students in creativity.