The Future of Education

There is a growing interest in promoting young children’s creative thinking and creative learning outcomes. Creativity in education has become increasingly significant and popular among policymakers. Teachers should be able to recognize and empower students’ creative behaviors in their regular classroom interactions and learning environments to encourage creativity in a classroom. The role of creative behaviors in the relationship between teaching self-regulation, social skills, and self-efficacy of game activities is examined in this study. In this sense, to explain creative teacher behaviors, social skills, teaching self-regulation, and game self-efficacy is tested as structural equitation modeling. Designed as correlational survey research, the sample of the study comprises 151 early childhood educators (73.% women) working in the city of Kirsehir, Turkey, during the 2018-2019 school year. Participants reported on creative classroom behaviors, self-efficacy about the game activities, and teaching approach. Data of the study is collected with four data collection tools: the Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior Index student teachers’ creative classroom behaviors (CFTIndex; Soh, 2000; Soh, 2015) self-efficacy about the game activities survey form (Kadim, 2012), Teaching Self Regulation Scale (TSRS; Capa Aydin, Sungur & Uzuntiryaki, 2009), ), Social Skills Inventory (Yüksel, 1998). The correlations between latent variables were determined according to Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Participants reported on creative classroom behaviors, social skills, self-efficacy about the game activities, and teaching approach. It is concluded that teacher creative behaviors in early childhood education for promoting young children’s creativity a particularly important factor in the teacher professional development of attitudes and beliefs towards promoting creative thinking skills for young children. All results and implications for practice were discussed.