The Relationship Among Primary School Teachers' Perceptions On Creativity Fostering, Their Teaching-regulated Ability, And Creativity Fostering Behaviors

Developing students'creativity is the main aim of current education. As the organizer and director, teachers play an important role in attaining the aim. As to help the teachers ameliorate their inappropriate behaviors and become the propellent for students'creativity, it's necessary to study their perceptions on creativity fostering, their creativity fostering behaviors and the factors influence them. Researchers have studied much about the teachers'perceptions on creativity and their creativity fostering behaviors, someone found that the teachers'creativity fostering behaviors were consistent with their perceptions on creativity, but someone made the contrary conclusions. That means there are other variables effect their relationship. Enlightened by existed researches, present study introduced the variable"teaching-regulated ability"into the relationship between teachers'perceptions on creativity fostering and their creativity fostering behaviors, explored the mechanism that how the teachers'perceptions change into their actual behaviors, clarified the inconsistent conclusions and provided a new perspective for intervening the teachers'creativity fostering behaviors.The present study firstly investigated 305 primary school teachers, used the exploratory factor analysis to explore the structure of the primary school teachers'perceptions on creativity fostering and constructed the Primary School Teachers'Perceptions on Creativity Survey. Then investigated 430 primary school teachers, confirmed the structure of the Primary School Teachers'Perceptions on Creativity Survey, and used the Self-Regulated Teaching Scale and the Creativity Fostering Teacher Index to examine the participants'perceptions on creativity fostering, their teaching-regulated ability and their creativity fostering behaviors, and examined their relations. The main methods used in this study were ANOVA, correlation analysis and SEM. The main conclusions are as follows: 1. The primary school teachers have appropriate perceptions on creativity; their perceptions on creativity fostering differ because of their teaching length: 1-5 years is the ascending period, 6-15 years reaches the tiptop, and then declines; their perceptions differ depending on the areas: suburban primary school teachers have more appropriate perceptions than urban primary school teachers, and urban primary school teachers have more appropriate perceptions than country school teachers.2. The primary school teachers'teaching-regulated ability differ on the four dimensionality: the ability of planning is better than the abilities of self-reflection, evaluating and regulating, the ability of self-reflection is better than the abilities of evaluating and regulating, the abilities of evaluating and regulating are the worst and there are no significant differences between them; suburban and country primary school teachers'teaching-regulated ability are better than urban primary school teachers.3. The primary school teachers'creativity fostering behaviors differ on the four dimensionality: their behaviors of inspiring students'motivation are more than the behaviors of view judgment, learning style instruction and encouraging flexibility; their behaviors of view judgment are more than the behaviors of encouraging flexibility, their behaviors of learning style instruction and encouraging flexibility are the least and there are no significant differences between them; the longer they engage in education, the more creativity fostering behaviors they exhibit, and reach the tiptop when they engage 16-25 years; suburban and country primary school teachers exhibit more creativity fostering behaviors than urban primary school teachers.4. The primary school teachers'perceptions on creativity fostering, their teaching-regulated ability, and their creativity fostering behaviors are positively related; the primary school teachers'teaching-regulated ability has mediator effect between their perceptions on creativity fostering and their creativity fostering behaviors.