A Study On The Cognitive Openness Of Primary And Secondary School Teachers

Openness is one of the personality dimensions, on the basis of The Big Five Personality Test. Belief Openness is the core of personality openness, focusing on cognitive openness is of great significance. Teachers’ cognitive openness refers to openness to belief, values and information perception which were associated with the education teaching behavior closely, it would impact on their own development of teachers and the education teaching activity. In order to systematically study the structure of teachers’cognitive openness and the influence of associated factors, we compiled Cognitive Openness Questionnaire for Primary and Secondary School Teachers on the basis of extensive research. A formal questionnaire was formed after the analysis and modify for the preliminary survey, and a larger sample survey was done on the basis of the formal questionnaire. Formal investigation data was measured by factor analysis, further validate the six aspects of the structure of the questionnaire,which were Span of Cognition-Convergence, Flexible Thinking, Perceived Sensitivity, Novelty-drives, Exclusion, Anti-Cognitive Closure. The questionnaire has good structural stability and reliabilityOn the statistical analysis of1126primary and secondary school teachers, the following main results were obtained:(1)The overall development of China’s primary and secondary school teachers in cognitive openness was not balanced, the development level of various factors were inconsistent. At the same time, there were also differences between different regions, different disciplines, and different property of schools.(2)The Flexible Thinking score of art&PE was higher than the others. The Span of Cognition-Convergence score of liberal-art teachers was higher than the others.(3)The cognitive openness of teachers from economically developed areas gained higher score than economically underdeveloped areas.(4)There was overall difference between male and female teachers, at the same time, there were differences in different aspects of cognitive openness.(5)The Cognitive Openness of primary school teachers was higher than secondary school teachers.(6)With the increase of age and teaching years, the Novelty-drives of teachers gradually decreased. Conclusionsr(1) The self-established Cognitive Openness Scale for Primary and Secondary School Teachers has six dimensions including Span of Cognition-Convergence, Flexible Thinking, Perceptive-acuity, Novelty-Drives, Exclusion, and Anti-Cognitive Closure, which has high reliability and fair validity. It could be used as an accessibility tool to understand the cognitive openness level of primary and secondary school teachers.(2)The structure of the teachers’Cognitive Openness was a multi-dimensioned structure, which was a difference among disciplines, regions, type of school, properties of school and teaching years. It reflected that the formation and development of teachers’Cognitive Openness was influenced by multi-factors, and it was related to educational experience closely.