Indexing Creativity Fostering Teacher Be

Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
KAY-CHENG SOH
Indexing Creativity
Fostering Teacher Behavior:
A Preliminary Validation Study
118
ABSTRACT
Research on teachers’ creativity fostering behavior has been
much neglected in spite of the important role teachers play in
developing student creativity. One possible reason for this is
the lack of a suitable measure of teachers’ creativity fostering
behavior. A 45-item self-rating scale based on nine creativity
fostering behaviors identified by Cropley (1997) was developed
and validated with self-describing adjectives checklist. Analysis shows adequate construct and concurrent validities. Specific teachers’ creativity fostering behaviors were found to
correlate with sex and ethnicity. Further work is suggested.
INTRODUCTION
Of the four P’s of creativity (Rhodes, 1961), much more
research effort has been accorded product, person, and
process but much less press. This, perhaps, is because of the
all-encompassing and hence the elusiveness of the concept
of environmental press needed to support development of
creativity. It is a truism that the teacher plays a critical role in
fostering student creativity. A teacher can directly reinforce
creativity through her interaction with students by rewarding
their creative efforts (process) and outcomes (product) as
well as recognizing their creative traits (person). The teacher
can also indirectly influence student creativity by creating a
supportive social environment through her words and deeds.
Thus, what the teacher does or does not do in relation to
student creativity constitutes a vital factor in the social context of the classroom environment, giving rise to the needed
motivation (press) to create and be creative. The teacher’s
action and reaction therefore are a signal to the students
regarding the acceptability of their creative efforts, outcome,
Volume 34 Number 2
Second Quarter 2000
Journal of Creative Behavior
Operationalizing
Creativity Fostering
Teacher Behaviors
119
and personal inclinations. The mechanism by which a teacher
can encourage or discourage student creativity, intentionally
or inadvertently, is vividly depicted by Cropley (1997) in a classroom episode of “Mr. Clever”, a grade-two boy who tried to
draw the inside of a man’s head while his peers drew a conventional outside of a man’s head. This classroom incident,
be it real or fictitious, aptly summarizes the probable effects of
teacher behavior on student creativity on both “Mr. Clever” and
his classmates.
Notwithstanding the important role teachers play in fostering student creativity through their constant interaction, there
was a dearth of research on teachers in their views on creativity even some ten years ago (Fryer & Collins, 1991) and a cursory look at the relevant journals shows that the situation has
not changed since. If teachers’ views on creativity has been
neglected in creativity research, all the more so for teachers’
creativity fostering behavior.
There may be many reasons for this situation, an obvious
factor causing this is the lack of a suitable measuring instrument of teachers’ creativity fostering behavior. Progress in scientific research depends on the availability of the needed
measuring instruments, as exemplified by the changed concept of “length is measured by laying rods end on end” to “the
meter be defined in terms of the assumed constancy in the
period and wavelength of a laser” (Cliff, 1993, p. 63). In creativity research, the proliferation of research is to a large extent due to the availability of instruments purportedly
measuring creativity, of which the Torrance Tests of Creative
Thinking (Torrance, 1990) is the archetype.
Where creativity fostering behavior of teachers is concerned,
the lack of suitable measuring instruments will limit the relevant discourse to the philosophical and conceptual levels
(which are, of course, important in their own right as a subdomain of creativity research). But, there is also the need to
empirically test out the theory, an activity that calls for adequate
measurement. In this regard, the configuration of behavioral
characteristics of creativity fostering teachers as proposed by
Cropley (1997) is a good starting point. The present study is a
humble attempt to fill this gap by constructing such an instrument and check its validity.
Having discussed the various conditions and factors of student creativity, Cropley( 1997) listed the following as creativity fostering teachers’ classroom behavior:
1. Encouraging students to learn independently.
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
2. Have a co-operative, socially integrative style of teaching.
3. Motivate their students to master factual knowledge, so
that they have a solid base for divergent thinking.
4. Delay judging students’ ideas until they have been
thoroughly worked out and clearly formulated.
5. Encourage flexible thinking.
6. Promote self-evaluation in students.
7. Take students’ suggestions and questions seriously.
8. Offer students opportunities to work with a wide variety
of materials and under many different conditions.
9. Help students to learn to cope with frustration and failure,
so that they have the courage to try the new and unusual.
For each of these nine behavioral characteristics of creativity fostering teachers, five behavior manifestation statements
were generated. These statements then formed the six-point
frequency scales for self-report by the teachers. For instance,
“I encourage students to show me what they have learned
on their own,” and “I teach students the basics and leave
room for individual learning” are items operationalizing the
behavior of “Encouraging students to learn independently.”
The 45 items thus generated were scrutinized by 20 graduate
students who are experienced teachers attending the present
author’s graduate seminars on the psychology of creativity.
They evaluated the items for relevance and classification, in
addition to editing the language and expression. The 45-item
questionnaire as a whole is titled Creativity Fostering Teacher
Index (CFTIndex) with suitable titles reflecting the nature of
each of the nine constituent scales. The questionnaire can be
found in the Appendix.
DATA COLLECTION
120
The CFTIndex was responded to by 117 teachers contacted
through the graduate students from a wide range of primary
and secondary schools and junior colleges. As shown in Table
1, three-quarters of the respondents are female, and about 60%
are 35 or younger. Slightly more than half of the respondents
are ethnic Chinese while the rest are Malay, Indian, Eurasian
and other races. About 60% of the respondents hold a university degree and there is an almost equal split in terms of level
of teaching. While about 60% teach languages, the remaining
40% are equally divided into science (and mathematics) and
humanities. As participation in this study was voluntary, the
respondents formed a convenient sample and no claim of representation of the teacher population of Singapore is made.
Journal of Creative Behavior
TABLE 1.
The Respondents
Percentages (N=117)
Factor-Analysis of
the Scales
Reliabilities and
Inter-correlations
121
Sex
Male
Female
25.6
74.4
Age
20-25
26-30
31-35
36 and above
10.3
29.9
17.9
41.9
Race
Chinese
Malay
Indian
Eurasian and others
55.6
21.4
17.9
5.1
Qualification
Degree
Non-degree
61.5
38.5
Level
Primary
Secondary
53.8
46.2
Subject
Language
Science, Mathematics
Humanities and others
62.4
19.7
17.9
In the questionnaire formed by the nine scales, one item of
one scale is followed by one item from the next scale and so
on. This was to avoid probable response set within each set of
items for the same creativity fostering behavior. In order that
each set of five items will form a self-contained scale focusing
on one of the nine creativity fostering behaviors, responses to
each set were analyzed independent of the other sets, instead
of submitting responses for 45 items all at once for factor analysis as is usually done for scale development. The resultant
scales will yield more information for diagnosis purposes.
When factor analysis with varimax rotation was run separately for each set of five items, one factor was obtained (and
hence, not rotated). As shown in Table 2, all items loaded sizably onto its respective creativity fostering behavior and the
percentage of total variance explained vary from 47% (Evaluation) to 65% (Frustration).
With the nine scales thus formed, their reliabilities and intercorrelations were studied. As Table 3 shows, the Cronbach’s
alpha coefficients vary from a moderate .69 for Evaluation
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
TABLE 2.
Factor-Analysis Results of the CFTIndex Scales
Scales and items
Factor
loadings
Dependence (51.77% total variance explained)
1. Encourage students to show what they
have learned on their own.
.52
2. Teach students the basics and leave them
to find out more.
.76
3. Leave questions for students to find out
for themselves.
.78
4. Teach students the basics and leave room
for individual learning.
.75
5. Leave open-ended questions for my
students to find the answers
.78
Integration (63.54% total variance explained)
1. Students have opportunities to share
ideas and views
.81
2. Students have opportunities to do group work.
.84
3. Students are encouraged to contribute
to the lesson.
.78
4. Encourage students to ask questions and
make suggestions.
.77
5. Students are expected to work in group
co-operatively.
.78
Motivation (51.73% total variance explained)
122
1. Learning the basic knowledge/skills well is
emphasized.
.76
2. Emphasize the importance of mastering
the essentials.
.81
3. Expect students to learn the basic
knowledge/skills well.
.77
4. Moving to the next topic quickly is not
main concern.
.57
5. Covering the syllabus is not more important
than student learning.
.66
Journal of Creative Behavior
TABLE 2. Continued
Factor-Analysis Results of the CFTIndex Scales
Scales and items
Factor
loadings
Judgment (59.99% total variance explained)
1. Get students to explore their ideas before
taking a stand.
.74
2. Follow up students’ questions with questions
to make them think.
.78
3. Do not give own view immediately on
students’ ideas.
.79
4. Comments on students’ ideas only after
more thoroughly exploration.
.82
5. Encourage students to do things differently
although this takes time.
.72
Flexibility (56.60% total variance explained)
1. Probe students’ ideas to encourage thinking.
.83
2. Encourage students to ask questions freely.
.81
3. Encourage students to think in
different directions
.75
4. Like students to take time to think in
different ways.
.81
5. Allow students to deviate from what they
are told to do.
.53
Evaluation (47.19% total variance explained)
123
1. Expect students to check their own work.
.77
2. Provide opportunities for students to share
strengths and weaknesses..
.69
3. Students to check their own work before
the teacher does.
.78
4. Students have opportunities to judge
for themselves.
.74
5. Allow students to show one another their
work before submission
.37
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
TABLE 2. Continued
Factor-Analysis Results of the CFTIndex Scales
Scales and items
Factor
loadings
Question (59.49% total variance explained)
1. Follow up on students’ suggestions.
.72
2. Listen to students’ questions carefully.
.85
3. Don’t dismiss students’ suggestions lightly.
.73
4. Listen to students’ suggestions even
if they are not practical.
.89
5. Listen patiently when students ask questions
that may sound silly.
.64
Opportunities (59.75% total variance explained)
1. Encourage students to try out what they
have learned
.77
2. Appreciate students’ putting what they
have learned into different uses.
.73
3. Encouraged students to do different things
with what they have learned.
.85
4. Don’t mind students trying out their own
ideas and deviating.
.79
5. Allow students to go beyond what I teach them.
.73
Frustration (65.00% total variance explained)
124
1. Students who are frustrated can come for
emotional support.
.67
2. Help students who experienced failure to
regain confidence.
.83
3. Help students to draw lessons from their
own failures.
.84
4. Encourage students to take frustration as
part of the learning process.
.82
5. Encourage students who experienced failure
to find other solutions.
.86
Journal of Creative Behavior
TABLE 3.
Inter-correlations among Scales
Cronbach’s1
alpha
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Independence
Integration
Motivation
Judgment
Flexibility
Evaluation
Question
Opportunities
Frustration
.76
.85
.74
.83
.78
.69
.82
.83
.86
–
.62
.49
.70
.58
.60
.52
.65
.65
2
3
4
–
.56
.71
.71
.68
.67
.71
.65
–
.59
.55
.55
.48
.59
.57
–
.78
.69
.76
.69
.46
5
6
7
8
9
–
.72 –
.80 67 –
.82 .70 .80 –
.66 .65 .70 .75 –
Note: All correlation coefficients significant p < 0.01.
Scale to a high .86 for Frustration Scale. The median of
reliabilities is .82. And, the correlations vary from a moderate
.49 (between Independence and Motivation) to a high .82
(between Flexibility and Opportunities). The median of correlations is .67. Thus, in addition to being highly reliable, the moderate inter-correlations indicate that the scales are reasonably
independent of one another while still measuring something
in common.
While the nine scales provide specific information for each
of the nine creativity fostering behaviors, the inter-correlations
suggest a general factor, although the nine characteristics are
supposedly discrete. It is also useful for evaluation and research
purposes to obtain an overall index of teachers’ creativity fostering behavior. Such a score would enable a more parsimonious interpretation of the relevant behavior. For this, the nine
scale scores were submitted for factor analysis with varimax
rotation. As shown in Table 4, the analysis yielded only one
factor which explains 69.95% of the total variance. Table 4 also
sets out the correlations of CFTIndex with the nine scale. Not
unexpectedly, the correlations are general high, varying from
.71 (Motivation) to .90 (Opportunities), and the Cronbach’s
alpha coefficient for CFTIndex is a high .96.
PRELIMINARY
VALIDATION
125
While the CFTIndex and the nine scales show high reliabilities
and also construct and convergent validities, the value of the
instrument needs be supported by other forms of validity evidence. Although behavioral and performance evidence were
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
TABLE 4.
Results of Factor-Analyzing the Scales
Factor loadings
Independence
Integration
Motivation
Judgment
Flexibility
Evaluation
Question
Opportunities
Frustration
.77
.84
.70
.88
.88
.84
.85
.91
.84
Correlations with CFTIndex
.77
.85
.71
.88
.88
.84
.84
.90
.84
Note: All correlation coefficients significant p < 0.01. This
factor explains 95% total variance and the scale has a
Cronbach’s alpha of .96
considered, it was decided that at this early stage of scale
development, concurrent validity serves the purpose sufficiently well. For this, Domino’s (1970) Creativity Scale for the
identification of potentially creative persons was adapted.
Domino’s (1970) Creativity Scale is, in fact, the scoring key
for Gough’s (1952) Adjective Check List which consists of 300
adjectives. A creativity score is derived by counting the number of the 59 adjectives, identified by Domino for the creativity
scoring key, checked by the respondent (Davies, 1991). For
the present study, the adjectives were presented in the form of
six-point scale as The Person I Am, instead of a Yes/No checking. This allows for more variance to be captured so that factor
analysis could be run to study the inherent structure of the list
of adjectives.
Five rounds of factor analysis with varimax rotation were
run on the responses. Following the scree-plots, only the first
factor was retained for further analysis, as there was a big drop
in the variance explained in each round. For instance, the first
round of the analysis yielded 13 factors with eigen values
greater than unity, with the first factor explaining 27.65% of
the total variance, the second 15.53%, and the third 4.32%,
and so on. The first factor was loaded by 33 of the adjectives
and was hence submitted for further analysis.
The fifth round of analysis yielded two factors explaining
59.68% and 5.90% of the total variance of 17 items. The com-
126
Journal of Creative Behavior
TABLE 5.
Factor Analysis Results of Adjectives Scale
Adjectives
Alert
Capable
Clear-thinking
Confident
Curious
Energetic
Enthusiastic
Independent
Industrious
Factor
loadings
.519
.526
.488
.709
.739
.616
.618
.546
.576
Adjectives
Factor
loadings
Ingenious
.817
Insightful
.679
Intelligent
.628
Interests wide
.742
Logical
.305
Original
.703
Resourceful
.715
% variance 59.68
Cronbach’a alpha .96
ponent matrix shows one item not loading on the first factor at
all, while the other 16 items have factor loadings varying from
.31 to .82. These adjectives were used to form a creativity scale
which has a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .96 (Table 5).
Inspection of Table 5 shows adjectives with higher loadings
are those having to do with creativity such as ingenious,
interests wide, curious, resourceful, confident, original,
insightful, and independent, although the factor includes
adjectives that are more cognitive in nature (e.g., intelligent,
capable, clear-thinking, and logical) and a few more attitudinal in nature (e.g., enthusiastic, energetic, industrious, and
alert).
Comparisons were made between the correlations of the
first version (33 items) of the Adjectives scale with the nine
scales and the CFTIndex and those with the final version (16
items). As shown in Table 6, the longer version show higher
correlations for six scales and the shorter version for three
scales. And, the correlation with CFTIndex is higher for the
shorter version. It is interesting to note that all differences are
in the second decimals. The differences in correlations were
tested by the procedure recommended by Meng, Rosenthal,
and Rubin (1992) and were found to be not significant. Moreover, the two versions of the adjective scale have a correlation
of .97. Thus, a 16-item self-rating scale of creativity has been
successfully constructed which is not only concise but also
have meaningful correlations with the scales measuring creativity fostering behavior of teachers.
127
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
TABLE 6.
Correlations between CFT Index Scales and Adjectives Scale
CFTI Scales
r’s with
r’s with
Adjectives Scale Adjectives Scale
(33 items)
(16 items)
Z
1. Independence
.42
.39
.97
2. Integration
.43
.45
.70
3. Motivation
.33
.35
1.12
4. Judgment
.46
.44
.81
5. Flexibility
.41
.40
.30
6. Evaluation
.26
.25
.40
7. Question
.32
.33
.54
8. Opportunities
.39
.36
1.18
9. Frustration
.42
.40
.94
.42
.45
1.48
10. CFTIndex
Note: All correlation coefficients are significant p < 0.01.
Comparisons be Sex
and Race
128
Having had the CFTIndex and the nine scales correlated
with the Adjectives Scale, comparisons were made in terms of
the respondents’ demographic variables, i.e., sex, age, race,
qualification, level of teaching, specialization, and years of
teaching experience. Comparisons were first made on
CFTIndex and then, where a significant difference resulted, on
the nine constituent scales. Since differences in CFTIndex were
significant only for sex and race, further comparisons on the
nine scales were run only for these two demographic variables.
The results are shown in Tables 7 and 8.
As shown in Table 7, male respondents scored significantly
lower than did female respondents on CFTIndex. When
MANOVA was run, a Wilk’s Lamda of .85 (F = 2.11, df 9, 107, p
= .04) was obtained indicating an overall difference for the nine
scales taken together. Significant univariate F’s were obtained
for Independence, Motivation, Opportunities, and Frustration,
all in favor of females. Effects sizes were estimated by arbitrarily designating Male as the ’control’ group. There is for
CFTIndex an effect size of .53 which by Cohen’s (1988) criterion is medium in magnitude. Of the nine scales, a large effect
size was obtained for Motivation(.93) and a small effect size
for Question(.25) and Flexibility (.14), while all other scale have
medium effect sizes ranging between .36 to .55.
Journal of Creative Behavior
TABLE 7.
Comparisons by Sex
M
Male
SD
Female
M
SD
F
199.17
24.26
211.91 28.23
4.87
.03 .53
Independence
20.53
3.59
22.24
3.41
5.45
.02 .48
Integration
23.33
3.47
24.54
4.14
2.05
.16 .36
Motivation
22.46
2.53
24.82
3.47
11.62
.00 .93
Judgment
21.40
3.42
22.67
4.09
2.31
.13 .37
Flexibility
22.13
3.81
22.66
4.00
.37
.53 .14
Evaluation
21.47
3.31
22.86
3.67
3.39
.07 .42
Question
23.07
3.35
23.91
3.44
1.35
.25 .25
Opportunities
22.53
3.29
24.09
3.57
4.43
.04 .47
Frustration
22.23
3.47
24.13
3.74
5.93
.02 .55
CFTIndex
TABLE 8.
p
ES
Comparisons by Race
Chinese
M
SD
CFTIndex
Non-Chinese
M
SD
F
p
ES
203.26
28.08
215.37
26.01
5.73
.02 .43
Independence
21.43
3.21
22.27
3.86
1.65
.20 .26
Integration
23.52
4.32
25.12
3.39
4.73
.03 .37
Motivation
23.85
3.12
24.67
3.70
1.719 .19 .26
Judgment
21.69
4.05
23.15
3.72
4.41
.05 .36
Flexibility
21.77
4.23
23.46
3.36
5.53
.02 .40
Evaluation
22.09
3.75
23.02
3.40 1.20 .17 .25
Question
22.88
3.56
24.71
2.99 8.85 .00 .51
Opportunities 23.00
3.47
24.56
3.47 5.80 .02 .45
Frustration
3.63
24.40
3.79 3.97 .05 .38
23.03
Table 8 show the results of comparisons by race. Chinese
scored significantly lower than did Non-Chinese (including
Malay, Indian, Eurasians and others) respondents on CFTIndex.
The Wilk’s Lamda of .92 (F = 1.05, df 9,107, p = 0.41) obtained
indicates an absence of overall difference when the nine scales
129
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
were considered together. However, significant univariate F’s
were obtained for Integration, Judgment, Flexibility, Question,
Opportunities, and Frustration, all in favor of Non-Chinese.
When Chinese was designated as the ‘control’ group, there is
a medium effect size of 0.43 for CFTIndex. Of the nine scales,
Independence, Motivation, and Evaluation have small effect
sizes around .25 and the other scales have effect sizes varying
from .36 to .51.
FURTHER WORK
130
The need to study teachers’ creativity fostering behavior
cannot be over-emphasized in view of the teachers’ conscious
and unintentional influences on the development of student
creativity during their daily interaction with the young in the
classroom. While creativity researchers, especially those of us
who have an interest in issues related to education in general
and teacher education in particular, will not disagree that
there remains a gap of empirically validated knowledge of
creativity fostering behavior of teachers, although there is no
dearth of discussion in this regard. One possible reason for
this is the obvious absence of suitable measuring instruments
for gauging teachers’ creativity fostering behavior in the
classroom context, as progress in research is contingent
on measurement.
The present study is a preliminary attempt to meet this
measurement need by developing and then validating the
CFTIndex scales, with the hope that more empirical work of
this nature will be taken up by interested creativity researchers. This attempt could be deemed reasonably successful to
the extent that the structure of the scales is consistent with the
various teacher behavior believed to be creativity fostering
(Cropley, 1997) and to the extent that self-ratings by teachers
on the scales are meaningfully correlated with their self-description of creative personality.
However, it is obvious that more work needs be done to further evaluate the validity and usefulness of data collected with
the CFTIndex scales and to enhance our standing of creative
fostering behavior of teachers. Since, at this stage of its development, the CFTIndex provides only subjective self-report data
of the teachers, the validity of such data need be further evaluated. Some of the possible approaches include (a) checking
with ratings on teacher behavior given by students who are at
the receiving end of classroom interaction; (b) checking against
objective measures by independent observers who may be a
fellow-teacher, supervisor, or creativity researcher; (c) check
Journal of Creative Behavior
whether teachers who show more creativity fostering behavior
have students who show higher level of creativity in the natural classroom setup. Experimental studies could also be
mounted to find out (a) whether creativity fostering behavior
can be trained and, perhaps more importantly, (b) whether
students become more creative when teachers change their
creativity fostering behavior.
The findings that certain creativity fostering behaviors are
correlated with sex and ethnicity also warrant further investigation, especially the latter in view of the recent interest in the
cultural influence on creativity (e.g., Gardner, 1997; Soh, 1999)
Obviously, much more work is needed to establish a definitive link between teachers’ creativity fostering behavior and
student creativity as is assumed by discourse hitherto.
REFERENCES
CLIFF, N. (1993) What is and isn’t measurement. In G. Keren & C. Lewis
(Eds.). A Handbook for data analysis in the behavioral sciences:
Methodological issues, (pp.59-93). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
COHEN, J. (1988) Statistical power analysis for behavioral sciences, 2nd
ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
CROPLEY, A. J. (1997) Fostering creativity in the classroom: General
principles. In M. A. Runco. (Ed.) Creativity research handbook (Vol. 1,
pp. 83-114). Cresskill, N. J.: Hampton Press, 83-114.
DAVIES, G. A. (1991) Creativity is forever, 3rd Ed. Kendall/Hunt Publishers.
DOMINO, G. (1970) Identification of potentially creative persons from the
Adjective Check List. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
35, 48-51.
FRYER, M. & COLLINS, J. R. (1991) British teachers’ views of creativity.
Journal of Creative Behavior, 25, 75-81.
GARDNER, H. (1997) The key in the key slot: Creativity in a Chinese key.
Journal of Creative Education, 6, 15-36.
GOUGH, G. (1952) Adjective Check List. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting
Psychologists’ Press.
MENG, X., ROSENTHAL, R. & RUBIN, D. B. (1992) Comparing correlated
correlation coefficients. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 172-175.
RHODES, M. (1987) An analysis of creativity. In S. G. Isaksen (Ed.) Frontiers
of creativity research: beyond the basics (pp. 216-222). Buffalo, NY:
Bearly Limited.
SOH K. C. (1999) East-west difference in views on creativity: Is Howard
Gardner correct? Yes, and no. Journal of Creative Behavior, 33, 112-123.
TORRANCE, E. P. (1990) Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Beaconville,
IL: Scholastic Testing Services.
Soh Kay Cheng, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological
University, 469 Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 289 756. E-mail:
[email protected]
131
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
APPENDIX
Your Teaching Style
Different teachers have different teaching styles. They also
handle students’ ideas and learning problems differently. What,
then, is your style? Please read each statement below and circle
one of the six codes to indicate how often you do it.
All the time 6 5 4 3 2 1 Never
1. I encourage students to show me what
they have learned on their own.
654321
2. In my class, students have opportunities
to share ideas and views.
654321
3. Learning the basic knowledge/skills well
is emphasized in my class.
654321
4. When my students have some ideas, I get
them to explore further before I take a stand. 6 5 4 3 2 1
5. In my class, I probe students’ ideas to
encourage thinking.
654321
6. I expect my students to check their own work
instead of waiting for me to correct them.
654321
7. I follow up on my students’ suggestions so
that they know I take them seriously.
654321
8. I encourage my students to try out what they
have learned from me in different situations . 6 5 4 3 2 1
9. My students who are frustrated can come
to me for emotional support.
654321
10. I teach my students the basics and leave
them to find out more for themselves.
654321
11. Students in my class have opportunities
to do group work regularly.
654321
12. I emphasize the importance of mastering
the essential knowledge and skills.
654321
13. When my students suggest something,
I follow it up with questions to make them
think further.
654321
14. I encourage my students to ask questions
freely even if they appear irrelevant.
654321
15. I provide opportunities for my students to
share their strong and weak points with
the class.
654321
16. When my students have questions to ask,
I listen to them carefully.
654321
132
Journal of Creative Behavior
17. When my students put what they have learnt
into different uses, I appreciate them.
18. I help students who experienced failure
to cope with it so that they regain their
confidence.
19. I leave questions for my students to find
out for themselves.
20. Students in my class are encouraged to
contribute to the lesson with their ideas
and suggestions.
21. My students know that I expect them to
learn the basic knowledge and skills well.
22. I do not give my view immediately on
students’ ideas, whether I agree or disagree
with them.
23. I encourage my students to think in
different directions even if some of the
ideas may not work.
24. My students know that I expect them to
check their own work before I do.
25. My students know I do not dismiss their
suggestions lightly.
26. My students are encouraged to do different
things with what they have learned in class.
27. I help my students to draw lessons from
their own failures.
28. I teach students the basics and leave room
for individual learning.
29. I encourage students to ask questions and
make suggestions in my class.
30. Moving from one topic to the next quickly
is not my main concern in class.
31. I comments on students’ ideas only after
they have been more thoroughly explored.
32. I like my students to take time to think in
different ways.
33. In my class, students have opportunities to
judge for themselves whether they are
right or wrong.
133
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
654321
Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior
34. I listen to my students’ suggestions even
if they are not practical or useful.
654321
35. I don’t mind my students trying out their
own ideas and deviating from what I have
shown them.
654321
36. I encourage students who have frustration
to take it as part of the learning process.
654321
37. I leave open-ended questions for my
students to find the answers for themselves. 6 5 4 3 2 1
38. Students in my class are expected to work
in group co-operatively.
654321
39. Covering the syllabus is not more important
to me than making sure the students learn
the basics well.
654321
40. I encourage students to do things differently
although doing this takes up more time.
654321
41. I allow students to deviate from what they
are told to do.
654321
42. I allow my students to show one another
their work before submission.
654321
43. I listen patiently when my students ask
questions that may sound silly.
654321
44. Students are allowed to go beyond what
I teach them within my subject.
654321
45. I encourage students who experienced
failure to find other possible solutions.
654321
Thank you for your kind co-operation.
134