İngilizce öğretmenlerinin yaratıcılığa karşı algı ve tutumları: Elâzığ Ortaokulları örneği

As one of the 21st-century skills, creativity must become one of the primary focuses of education. This is because developing students' creativity in all educational contexts certainly makes significant contributions to their lives both for now and for the future. Aside from the school subjects such as music, art and science, creative thinking should be stimulated diligently within the field of English as a foreign language (EFL). As the biggest and most crucial role belongs definitely to the teachers, who are expected to encourage and nurture creativity in their students through creative teaching, EFL teachers also should be well aware of their leading role for creativity in their classes. From this standpoint, understanding EFL teachers' perceptions and attitudes is of paramount importance. In the Turkish context, there are very few studies on creativity in the field of EFL. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions and attitudes towards creativity and to determine whether gender, age, teaching experience and undergraduate area of study influence their perceptions and attitudes towards creativity. Further, this study aims to examine Turkish EFL teachers' overall thoughts on creativity. In line with the aim of the study, the research questions are in the following: 1) What are the attitudes of Turkish EFL teachers towards creativity? a) Is there any significant difference among the attitudes of EFL teachers towards creativity in terms of gender, age, teaching experience, and undergraduate area of study? 2) What are the perceptions of Turkish EFL teachers on creativity? a) Is there any significant difference among the perceptions of EFL teachers on creativity in terms of gender, age, teaching experience, and undergraduate area of study? 3) What are the overall thoughts of Turkish EFL teachers on creativity? The study was designed as a mixed method research consisting of both the quantitative and qualitative methods. The explanatory sequential design, in which first quantitative data and then qualitative data were collected and analysed, was employed. In this respect, the quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire to answer the first and second research questions, and the qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured interviews to answer the third research question. The study was conducted with the EFL teachers working currently at the secondary schools in Elazığ. 200 EFL teachers participated in the quantitative part of the study whereas semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 EFL teachers. The quantitative data analysis was performed using SPSS 21. On the other hand, NVivo 8 software was used to analyse the qualitative data. The findings of the research have provided notable information about Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions, attitudes and thoughts on creativity. The quantitative results of the study revealed that Turkish EFL teachers exhibit positive attitudes towards creativity in general. Most of them acknowledge the value of creativity in EFL classes and know some strategies that can foster students' creativity. However, many of them were found not to be well-informed about the central philosophy of creativity and found to have some misconceptions about creativity and creative students. The results also showed that there is an agreement on the teacher training to enhance creativity effectively at schools, and overloaded curriculum, test-oriented system and lack of time are underlined to be the barriers for EFL teachers' practices. Moreover, it was revealed that Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions of creativity are high in general. Yet, it was found that the majority of EFL teachers do not always provide novel and efficient opportunities for the development of creative thinking. It was also determined that EFL teachers' gender, age, teaching experience and undergraduate area of study do not influence both their attitudes and perceptions on creativity. The qualitative results of the study revealed that most of the Turkish EFL teachers have ordinary views about the concept of creativity and know about creative teacher characteristics to some extent. Furthermore, they lack the knowledge about creative activities since uncreative activities were declared as creative ones and some creative activities were reported by very few EFL teachers. Finally, the results showed that there are several constraining factors for EFL teachers' creativity and creative teaching practices in terms of context-level, teacher-level, student-level and parent-level. This study explored Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions, attitudes and thoughts on creativity and it will contribute to the field with its valuable results. Keywords: Creativity, Creative Thinking, Creative Teaching, EFL, Teacher Perception, Teacher Attitude