Do physical education teachers feel creative? An approach based on a beliefs inventory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v85.119962Keywords:
Beliefs about creativity, creativity, growth mindset, physical education, teacher beliefsAbstract
Introduction: Creativity is a central attribute in teacher education, yet research focused on physical education teachers has been comparatively scarce relative to other disciplines.
The study aimed to characterize the creativity beliefs of Physical Education Teacher Education students from two regions of Chile and to determine the extent to which these beliefs predicted their expectations regarding future students' creative development.
Methodology: A cross-sectional observational design was used, based on a self-administered online questionnaire applied to 224 Physical Education Teacher Education students. The Beliefs About Teaching for Creativity scale was administered along with a teacher plasticity index built from vignettes, and nested multiple linear regression models were estimated.
Results: The fixed and growth mindset subscales were the only dimensions with significant predictive capacity over plasticity, showing a suppression effect when included simultaneously: fixed mindset was negatively associated with plasticity, while growth mindset was positively associated with it. Female preservice teachers showed significantly lower plasticity levels than their male peers, and older age was positively associated with plasticity.
Discussion: The findings supported the relevance of teachers' mindsets over other declarative dimensions of creativity beliefs, and suggested that vignette-based measures capture expectations less affected by social desirability than traditional self-reports.
Conclusions: It is concluded that initial teacher education in physical education should explicitly address essentialist implicit theories about creativity, alongside innovative pedagogical methodologies, to foster more dynamic developmental expectations toward future students.
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