Research On Implicit Theories Of Creativity Among Senior School Teachers

Implicit theories of creativity are perspectives on the concepts,structives and development of creativity of people(whether experts or laypersons), which in some forms reside in the minds of individuals in the everyday life and work context.Implicit theories of teachers'creativity play an important role in the development and training of students'creativity.Specially, it is a close corraltion between teachers'perspectives on the concepts of creativity and the attitudes of creative students and the development of students'creativity. Based on these thinking,the research make a survey on the creative and favorite students'characteristics in order to further learn about the criterion that teachers identify the creative students and explore the relationship between them.This study selected 300 teachers from senior school in JiangSu. It adopted the method of survey study. A 5-point level appraisal questionnaire was complied on pre-survey. Senior school teachers were asked to rate their faviorite and creative students on the 66 characteristics associated with creative students. Furthermore, the study goes for single interview with some teachers, in order to explain the study result more reasonably and generally revealed teachers'perspectives and the attitudes of creative students.By comprehensive investigation and data analysis, the study draws following conclusions".(1) Senior school teachers think that the attributes of high creativie students are comprehensive involving mang resembles experts and general people, but it show certain social-culture differences.(2) Senior school teachers think the most typical characteristics associated with creative students (top ten) are: unique or original, exploratory, willing to think, activity, good at observation, curious, imaginative, enterprising, independent and divergent thinking .The least typical characteristics associated with creativity include introversion, individualistic, arrogant, obedient, veracity, rebellious, implusive, opinionated, easy-going and steady-going.(3) Senior school teachers think the most faviorite characteristics (top ten) are: progressive, responsible, cheerful, fridently, broad minded, study intensively, good morality, enthusiastic, stably and clear thinking. The least faviorite characteristics include individualistic, introversion, arrogant, rebellious, implusive, stubborn, nonconforming, question norms, sensitive and emulative.(4) Through factor analysis, 4 factors are extracted that include cognitive traits, personality characteristics, abnormal characteristics and delight. Senior school teachers pay more emphases on cognitive ability, and comparatively ignore creative personality. Abnormal characteristics are relatively close to high creative people'behavior in explicit theories of creativity, but not valued highly.(5) Comparing the creative characteristics and faviorite characteristics, it shows that the characteristics associated with creative are not those valued most highly, and the most faviorite students' characteristics are more related to social values, and consequently teachers prefer students who not display certain characteristics associated with creativity.(6) The variables such as gender, major, grade, length of service, the title of a technical post and schools in which the teachers works have notable influence on teachers'perspectives on the creative and the favorite students.