Creativity as a Cross-program Skill of Teachers: Based on TALIS 2018 Data

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between teachers' sense of readiness to teach cross-curricular skills (eg creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) and their professional development needs for this area. In addition, it has been tried to examine whether the professional development needs of teachers for teaching cross-program skills (for example, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) change according to whether previous teacher trainings have taken courses in this field. The research is in scanning model. The participants of the research are the teachers who answered the questions of the research who participated in The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). While the first sub-problem was analyzed with the data of 236409 teachers, the second sub-problem was examined with the data of 247597 teachers. The data of the research was obtained from the TALIS 2018 page. Within the scope of TALIS 2018, teachers' perceptions of their readiness to teach cross-program skills (for example, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) were asked as an ordinal scale as "Not at all", "Somewhat", "Well", "Very well". The needs of participation in professional development activities were asked as "No need at present", "Low level of need", "Moderate level of need" and "High level of need". In the analysis of the data, the Goodman-Kruskal Gamma test was used to determine the relationship in ordinal scales. Mann-Whitney U test was applied for 2 X c dimensional tables to determine the change according to previous course taking. In order to determine whether there is a relationship between the questions, the Gamma coefficient and the Mann-Whitney U test were performed for the groups as (2Xc). According to the findings of the study, a moderately inverse significant relationship was found between the teachers' feeling ready to teach cross-program skills (eg creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) and their professional development needs for this area. On the other hand, teachers' cross-program skills (eg creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) change their professional development needs for teaching compared to taking courses in previous teacher trainings. There is a significant difference in favor of those who have not taken courses before, that is, those who have not taken a course, even with a small margin, feel the need for professional development.