Abstract:

Educational systems, on the one hand, are the drivers of change in society and culture while at the same time the permanent expectation of society and culture is to raise the quality of education by changing itself. In the context of the necessity of change and the quality education improvement, in all indicators of success and quality, teachers have been identified as key factors and bearers of educational changes. Therefore, innovativeness of teachers as an intriguing feature is the keystone of the competency profile of those who teach. The central issue of this paper is to what extent future generations of teachers show a positive attitude towards innovation and whether innovation can be developed within the system initial teacher education.

The aim of this paper is to show the results of examining the attitudes of students-prospective teachers towards innovation as well as the correlation of their views on innovativeness with personality dimensions. The survey was conducted on the sample 150 students of the University of Zadar. The results have shown that global student innovation can be measured with least two dimensions:
(1) willingness to try new things and
(2) creativity and originality.

The results show that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between willingness to try new things with openness/ intellect, conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion as personality dimensions. On the other hand, creativity and originality is statistically significantly associated with openness/intellect and emotional stability. The results are interpreted in the context of the contribution of personality dimension to the explanation of attitudes toward innovation and in the context of raising the quality of the teacher education system.

Keywords:

Attitudes to innovativeness, Big Five personality dimensions, Higher Education, Prospective Teachers.