TEACHERS’ AWARENESS OF CREATIVITY-RELATED BEHAVIOUR AMONG UPPER BASIC STUDENTS IN ILORIN METROPOLIS IN KWARA STATE

Abstract
Creativity among students in the classroom remains an important variable and a constantly discussed topic especially among educators. In spite of the importance of creativity in the classroom, studies had revealed that it has received a very little attention from the teachers. This study, therefore, sought to assess teachers’ awareness of creativity-related behaviour among upper basic students in Ilorin Metropolis in Kwara State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey research was adopted for the study. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select twenty (20) public and 20 private schools while purposive sampling technique was used to select five science teachers across the forty (40) schools selected in the State bringing the total number of the teachers to two hundred (200). Awareness of creativity-related behaviour assessment scale by Nicolas Holt Creativity Test (NHCT) was adapted to measure teachers’ awareness of creativity-related behaviour among upper basic schools in Ilorin South, Kwara State. The instrument contains 29 items rated on 4-Likert scale such as strongly agree = 4, agree = 3, Disagree = 2 and strongly disagree =1. The instrument was validated by two experts in the Department of Social Science Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. Reliability coefficient of the instrument was found to be .72 using test re-test reliability technique on students outside of the respondents involved in the study. In order to analyse the data collected from the study, frequency counts and percentage was used to answer the raised research questions while t-test statistical method was used to analyse the formulated null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that teachers in Ilorin Metropolis have high awareness of the creativity related behaviour among upper basic school students with 59%, there is significant difference in the male and female teachers’ awareness of creativity related behavior and there is significant difference in the less experienced and experienced teachers’ awareness of creativity related behaviour among upper basic school students. In conclusion, based on the findings the researcher recommended that continued efforts should be made by the school to organize workshops, seminars and training for secondary school teachers irrespective of the gender to equip them with the needed skills on how to identify early and nurture creative ability of the students.
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