An Investigation of Islamic Middle School Teachers' Responses on Scales of Creativity, Constructivist Beliefs, and Creativity Fostering Behaviors: A Saudi Arabia Context

Abstract

The field of education has undergone significant changes worldwide, challenging traditional beliefs about teaching and learning (Alshahri, 2016; Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016; Robinson & Aronica, 2015; Starko, 2018). Creativity and education are crucial in allowing teachers and students to reshape the power dynamics that influence the learning process and ultimately improve student living conditions (Robinson & Aronica, 2015; Sholan, 2019; Starko, 2018). Creativity in the 21st century has been identified as an essential skill (Ahmadi et al., 2019; Cho et al., 2017; Guo & Woulfin, 2016; Mishre & Mehta, 2017). The current study has two main objectives: first, to identify the mean scores of creativity, constructivist beliefs, and creativity fostering behaviors self-reported by Islamic middle school teachers; and second, to examine group differences in these variables (creativity scale responses, constructivist belief responses, and creativity-fostering behavior responses) based on teachers' years of teaching experience and gender (male and female). A sample of 237 Islamic middle school teachers in Riyadh City volunteered to participate in this study. The current results of this study showed that the majority percentage of Islamic middle school teachers perceived themselves to have a high inclination toward creativity. There were no statistically significant differences on the scales of Creativity, Constructivist Teaching Beliefs, and Creativity Fostering Behavior based on the years of teaching experience and gender, both male and female of Islamic middle school teachers (p > .05). Descriptive statistical methods were used to calculate the mean score for each participant on the three survey scales used in this research. One-way ANOVA was used to determine if there are differences in the scores of the Creativity Scale, Constructivist Beliefs Scale, and Creativity Fostering Behavior Scale based on the years of teaching experience of Islamic middle school teachers. An independent-sample t-test was run to determine whether there are differences in the scores on the Creativity Scale, Constructivist Beliefs Scale, and Creativity Fostering Behavior Scale based on the gender of both male and female Islamic middle school teachers. In this study, all analyses were performed using a level of statistical significance of p < .05. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software, Version 28.