The purpose of this study was to assess kindergarten teachers' perception of creativity & personality education and the current status of related programs. First, we examined the variables related to kindergarten teachers' perception of creativity & p...
The purpose of this study was to assess kindergarten teachers' perception of creativity & personality education and the current status of related programs. First, we examined the variables related to kindergarten teachers' perception of creativity & personality education; in addition, we assessed the current status of creativity & personality education programs actually provided in the education field. The results of the study could direct the future development of creativity & personality education programs and provide a basis for effective practice of the programs.
Therefore, this study presents the following questions;
Question 1: Do the background variables of kindergarten teachers, including age, careers, academic achievement, licenses and certificates, type of education institutions, and age of the preschoolers influence their perception of creativity & personality education (information, understanding, perception level, knowledge)?
Question 2: How widely are creativity & personality education programs offered by preschools?
In this study, we conducted the questionnaire survey of a total of 180 kindergarten teachers who teach preschoolers aged between 3 to 5 years at kindergartens and child-care centers located in Seoul Metropolitan City, Gyeonggi Province and Chungbuk Province. We used a modified version of the 'Questionnaire on Kindergarten Teachers' Perception of Creativity & Personality Education and the Status of the Related Programs' based on related literatures Moon Yong-Rin, Choi In-Soo(2010), 'Kindergarten Teachers' Perception about Creativity & Personality Education and their Implementation of the Program' Choi Il-Seon, Kim Jeong-Sin(2014), and 'Development and Effect of Creativity & Personality Education Teaching for Kindergarten Teachers' Pak Soon-Jeon(2013). The SPSS 22.0 program was used for data analysis including frequency analysis, independent samples T-Test, and one-way ANOVA; the Scheffé post-hoc analysis was carried out in case of statistically significant differences.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, each the background variables of kindergarten teachers i.e., age, careers, academic achievement, licenses and certificates, type of education institutions, and age of the preschoolers showed significant differences in terms of the importance of creativity & personality education. However, despite awareness of the importance of creativity & personality education, the mode of education was a challenge to teachers in the field. Therefore, development and propagation of various teaching and education materials are needed for effective implementation of creativity & personality education programs.
Second, older teachers showed a higher level of understanding of creativity & personality education including concepts, content, characteristics and teaching methods as well as the creativity and personality factors. Based on the above difference, for teacher training programs, it might be necessary to divide teachers into career and entry teachers depending on their level of understanding.
Third, for kindergarten teachers showed a higher level of general understanding and perception of creativity & personality education, as compared to childcare center teachers. As the Ministry of Education has placed a greater emphasis on the importance of creativity & personality education programs, kindergartens have more opportunities to improve the level of understanding. In future, more opportunities should be offered to childcare center teachers to improve their general understanding of various aspects of creativity & personality education.
Fourth, training opportunities for teachers in creativity & personality education were surprisingly few. Increased training opportunities for teachers in the education field, including specific teaching and learning methods and creativity & personality education programs are required.
Collectively, our results indicated that despite awareness of the importance of creativity & personality education, the effective mode of teaching students through creativity & personality education programs was a challenge to teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the training and education support for creativity & personality education among teachers and develop education programs and teaching and learning methods for teachers.