Preservice Teachers' Personality Traits and Engagement in Creative Activities as Predictors of Their Support for Children's Creativity

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among preservice teachers' personality traits, their own engagement in creative activities, and their beliefs about the teaching practices that have been shown to support children's creativity. A total of 302 early childhood and elementary preservice teachers participated in this study. The Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), the Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI), and the Creativity-Fostering Teacher Behavior Index (CFTI) were used to measure the preservice teachers' personality traits (Five-Factor Model), creativity-related experiences, and their creativity-fostering teaching practices. A conceptual model was hypothesized, tested, and supported by the results using multiple regression analyses and Sobel mediator tests. Findings indicate that preservice teachers who had higher scores on the openness to experience personality trait had more engagement in creativity-related experiences; those who had higher scores on the openness trait and who had more creativity-related experiences were more likely to espouse creativity-fostering teaching styles; and preservice teachers' own creativity-related experiences fully/partially mediated the relationship between the openness trait and their beliefs about specific creativity-fostering teaching practices. Implications for teacher education are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research on the relationships between teacher attributes and the use of teaching behaviors, which support children's creative development.