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Early childhood teachers’ roles in fostering creativity through free play

ABSTRACT This article aims to identify the correlation between early childhood teachers’ ability to foster creativity through free play. A screening model is used in the study. The participants comprised 166 teachers of the foundation (early childhood) phase. The ‘Teacher Roles in Free Play Scale’ and the ‘Creativity Fostering Teacher Index Scale’ (CFTIndex) were used during data collection. Thus, it found that co-player and onlooker-stage manager roles are preferred teacher roles during free play, whereas the least preferred roles are uninvolved and director roles. A correlation test was performed to find the relationship between teachers’ roles in free play and their scores of creativity-fostering behaviours. Accordingly, a statistically significant positive correlation was found between the mean scores of onlooker-stage manager, co-player, and leader sub-scales to teacher creativity-fostering behaviours. Further, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between teachers’ uninvolved role and their creative-fostering behaviour scores. The relationship between teachers’ director roles and creativity-fostering behaviour scores are not statistically significant. Onlooker-stage manager and co-player roles were found to significantly predict creativity-fostering behaviours. The relationship between the teachers’ ages, their professional experiences and class size, and the roles that encourage creative behaviour in free play are not statistically significant.