Determining the Opinions of Preschool and Primary School Teacher Candidates on Creativity and Metaphorical Perception.

AbstractAim of this research is to determine the opinions of teacher candidates about creativity and to reveal their perception of creativity concept through the use of metaphors. The data have been collected from 193 Preschool and Primary school teacher candidates and a survey, which had been prepared by researchers, has been used as the data-collecting tool. It is seen that teacher candidates see creativity as creating different, extraordinary, and genuine products. Teacher candidates see thinking skills, genuineness and innovation as features of a creative person. Teacher candidates think that not everybody can possess creativity and that it is an improvable and learnable feature. While it has been determined that there is a significant difference between gender, branch and the number of the books read in a year in respect of creativity, it is seen that 4th grade students have more positive opinions than other teacher candidates who are interested in painting.Key WordsPreschool Teacher Candidates, Primary School Teacher Candidates, Creativity, Metaphorical Perception. "Change" is one of the concepts that gained importance in twenty first century. Change brought about innovation and learning. Embracing concepts like upbringing of individuals for information society, innovation, creativity, growth, and self-realization constitute the basis of change. New values regarding the nature of information, and changes in their learning and teaching processes have taken place. Everyone has a different way, speed and capacity for learning. Thus, it is seen that humane approach stands out in new education paradigm. That is why curriculums tend to be flexible, changeable, participation-based and planned as basic frameworks, and teachers' authority to make changes on them tend to be expanded. Thus, these curriculums have features that improve the individual skills of the children along with their communication skills, their competencies to work in a team, their senses, creativities and imaginations.The creativity has been getting very popular in education and business life in recent years. It is seen as one of the most needed skills in business life (Friedman, 2005) and as a key feature in creating educational environments that enable creative thinking skills (Loveless, Burton, & Turvey, 2006; Zhao, 2006). Creativity is finding one's own solution by going through various stages in order to solve an existing problem (Dirim, 2002). Even though creativity is described as presenting new things, creating an object or a situation that did not exist before, there are many features that can be called creativity. In other words, being creative also involves adapting to living conditions, developing new solutions against new circumstances, "creating" the most suitable satisfaction type for individual needs. That is why creativity develops by supporting both psychological maturity and cognitive skills (Akaygun Cuntay, 2005). Creativity is described as genuine and new ideas that are realized; evaluated in respect of a genuine concept or idea and benefit it provides for an individual. A creative thought put into practice can become a discovery, an innovation, a change and a synthesis (Sungur, 1997). Creativity requires critical thinking, making new suggestions, discovering relations between objects or thoughts that had never been discovered before. It is to be unorthodox, in other words authentic, to see the problem, to get new results through different solutions (Caglar, 2003). Creativity is an instinct, a power, a trait that every individual has. People are born with it and use it to solve and interpret the problems of daily life. People cannot be creative in every field. However, human-specific skills and powers such as thinking, researching, wondering, and testing allow people to create new concepts through discovery (Dirim, 2002; Kagitcibasi & Ozgediz, 1979). The most distinct characteristic of creative people is being unafraid of mistakes and putting their ideas into practice. …