Attitudes Toward Creativity of Day Care Teachers and College Nursery School Teachers

Previous studies have indicated the importance of teacher attitudes on the development of creativity in children. There were several purposes for this investigation. The major purpose was to develop an instrument to measure teacher attitudes toward creativity in children. The second step was the utilization of the instrument to determine if teachers trained in child development are more positive in their attitudes toward creativity than teachers with little or no background in child development. The third purpose of this investigation was to determine the relations hip between the teachers\u27 attitudes toward creativity and religion, age, and social class . The creative attitude instrument was developed by the investigator using the method employed by Shoben in devising the University of Southern California Parent Attitude Survey. The instrument, composed of 83 items, was then administered by mail to day care owners and operators, who were licensed by the state of Utah during the summer of 1967, and to all college nursery school teachers employed during the school year of 1967-68 in the state of Utah. The teachers were asked to respond to each item, indicating whether they Strongly Agreed, Agreed, Disagreed, or Strongly Disagreed with the statement. The answers we re rated one to four, with four being the most positive of the responses. The results indicated that there was no significant relationship between a teacher\u27s attitude toward creativity and her age or social class. The results also indicated there was no significant difference between the attitudes toward creativity of day care and college nursery school teachers. Although there was not a statistically significant difference between the attitudes of the college nursery school teachers and the day care teachers toward creativity on this instrument, the nursery school teachers gave more favorable responses to 13 of the 16 discriminating items found on the instrument