The Characteristics Of Primary School Teachers’ Creativity Fostering Behaviors And Its Relationship With Self-efficacy

Since the beginning of this millennium, the significance of fostering creativityin her new generation has become a key issue in education. As the organizer anddirector, teachers play an important role in achieving the goal. To help teachersfoster their creativity fostering abilities, it’s necessary to examine thecharacteristics of their creativity fostering behaviors, and the factors influencingthem. Of all the possible factors, self-efficacy is a strong predictor. Self-efficacy isdefined as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses ofaction required to produce given attainments”. Bandura suggested that strongself-efficacy was an important requirement for creativity.In order to investigate the characteristics of creativity fostering behaviors ofprimary school teachers and examine the relationship between creativity fosteringbehaviors and teacher’s self-efficacy, we tested332primary school teachers usingthe Creativity Fostering Teacher Index and the Genernal Self-Efficacy Scale. Themain conclusions are as follows:1. Preliminary analyses revealed that the mean score and standard deviationfor creativity fostering behaviors was4.47and0.47, respectively. From lowest tohighest were inspiring students’ motivation, encouraging flexibility, learning styleinstruction and view judgment. Further analysis revealed that view judgment wassignificantly lower than other three aspects.2. In the total score and the four subscales, no significant difference emergedbetween male and female teachers, nor between urban and rural teachers. Theprimary school teachers’ creativity fostering behaviors did differ on their educationbackground: the teachers who have a post-secondary education background aresignificantly better than teachers who have a secondary vocational schooleducation background.3. There are significant differences in teachers’ creativity fostering behaviors for those with different levels of self-efficacy. Compared with those teachers withlow self-efficacy, teachers with high self-efficacy would adopt more creativityfostering behaviors.4. Teachers’ self-efficacy was positively related to their creativity fosteringbehaviors, and the four aspects of creativity fostering behavior.5. Teachers’ self-efficacy can positively predict one’s creativity fosteringbehaviors, controlling for their sex, education backgroud, teaching years and thetype of the school.