An investigation on the effects of expressive art therapy applications on the creativity and the creativity fostering teacher behavior levels of teacher candidates

Expressive art therapy combines the psychological aspect of the creative process with traditional psychotherapeutic theories and techniques by comprehending the emotional aspects of different arts materials. Expressive art therapy, by its very nature, enables individuals to express themselves more easily. It is assumed that such autonomy may have an impact on the creativity of individuals, increasing the teacher candidates' significance as role models for their students in this respect. Studies on the effect of art therapy practices in Turkey are still at an early stage. This study has been applied considering that it will contribute to the literature regarding the effect of art therapy practices. This research is a quantitative one with the model of semi-experimental design. Eighteen candidates participated in this research, nine of them in an experimental group and nine in a control group. All of them were students and selected from among teacher candidates of different departments of Buca Faculty of Education of Dokuz Eylül University so that they would represent various fields. It is assumed that enhancement of teacher candidates' creativity and their behaviour levels fostering creativity before starting with the profession will increase the functioning and quality of educational organizations and environments, thus affecting the views of teacher candidates on art, creativity and creative education positively and enabling them being role models for students by working more peacefully, happily and efficiently. Within the scope of the research, six sessions were run with the teacher candidates, each of them taking place once a week and lasting about one to one and a half hours, adding up to six weeks in total. This program covers emotional awareness, expressing feelings, accepting compelling emotions, creative thinking, enhancing behaviours that foster creativity and using this in the classroom. In the study, Raudsepp Creativity Scale, Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior Index and Personal Information Form were used as measurement tools. The analysis of the data were carried out with Skewness-Kurtosis Test, One-Way ANOVA, Independent-Samples t Test, Paired Sample t Test and Hochberg's GT2 test through the IBM SPSS 22.0. As a result, the experimental group's levels of creativity fostering teacher behaviour show a statistically significant difference compared to the control group not exposed to the experimental process after the program used art therapy practices. It has also been observed that female candidates performed better with respect to creativity fostering teacher behaviours. In the context of departments, it has been established that the creativity levels of the students of the Art Teaching Department are higher than those in the Psychological Counseling and Guidance, English Language Teaching, Science Education and Special Education Teaching Departments.