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CREATIVE TEACHER IN THE SOCIAL WORLD - INTER-PERSONAL COMPETENCES OF YOUNG EARLY SCHOOL EDUCATION TEACHERS

I. Czaja-Chudyba

Abstract

Creativity constitutes an important feature in teachers' development, enables for application of the original methods in work and for creating the climate of openness and independence. However, researchers quite frequently notice that creative functioning, correlated also with non-conformism, is often coupled with low social competences, which results in incomprehension, rejection and criticism from co-workers. On the other hand, some investigators point out that creative teachers are expressive, have a lot of co-workers, create science or artistic schools. It is also worth noticing that the majority of creative works is presently realized jointly. Hence, it seems to be interesting to formulate a question about relations between the level of creativity and teachers' social competences. Author's own researches, including questionnaires and tests, were carried out in 2019 onto the group of 49 Polish young teachers of pre-school and early-school education. For the conducted investigations there were used TCT-DP test by K. Urban and H. Jellen in elaboration of A. Matczak, A. Jaworowska and J. Stanczak [1], diagnosing the general level of creative thinking, and Inter-personal Scale of Attitude by J. Stanik [2] describing the dimensions of inter-personal competences such as the following types of functioning: “directing and autocratic”, “supporting and caring”, “co-working and friendly”, “submissive and depending”, “retreating and masochistic”, “rebellious and suspicious”, “aggressive and sadistic”, “competing and narcissistic”. Other styles include operating: “in self-acceptance” or “in self-sufficiency”, “in jealousy”, “in realism and relative autonomy”, “in pessimism, helplessness, calling for help”. The Scale distinguishes also three syndromes of: pro-social behaviour, hostility and ego-centrism. Preliminary results of researches indicate that more creative teachers more often present the behavioural styles correlated with pro-social syndrome (especially this concerns supporting and caring behaviour) and most of all with strong self-acceptance of the own social actions with relative low narcissism. Significant is also the fact that high level of creative thinking at examined teachers correlated well with high suspiciousness and low social resourcefulness as well as with overall syndrome of hostility towards the others. Results that were obtained show the complicated nature of features connected with social relations of creative people, which – according to ideas of D. Simonton [3], K. Szmidt [4] and E. Necka [5] – may present behavior full of contrast and “contradiction integration”.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/SWS.ISCSS.2019.4/S13.016

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