Abstract:

Problem Statement:
According to experts, only a creative teacher can educate a creative student. Therefore creativity is an important factor in the development of teacher professional competences. A significant problem of teacher continuous professional development (hereinafter CPD) is its efficiency, which was the issue in the PROFILES project funded by the FP7 programme of the European Commission. The study deals with the research of effect of the teacher creativity on teacher training in implementation of inquiry-based science education (hereinafter IBSE).

Purpose of Study:
This study deals with influence of teacher creativity on the training of innovative educational method (IBSE). The main objective of this research is to describe and analyse the inclusion of creativity in the multidimensional development of teacher professional competences through IBSE. Main research question was: How teacher creativity influences the training of teachers in IBSE?

Methods:
This study is a retrospective case study giving a descriptive and explanatory analysis associated with selected teachers. Structured observation, questionnaire, structured interview, analysis of teachers’ products were also used. To determine the style of teacher creativity was applied standardized method Kirton’s Adaptation-Innovation Inventory.

Findings and Results:
The main output of the research is finding that teacher creativity style is the important factor which has a significant impact on the efficiency of teacher CPD. The interest and behaviour of teachers were strongly influenced by their creativity style. In this study, we identified great creative teacher development, which is very important for students, because creativity is one of the most important factors in their lifelong learning and future success. Research conclusions are supported by specific examples of curricular materials.

Conclusions and Recommendations:
To increase efficiency of science teacher training of innovative educational methods as IBSE it is necessary to develop and implement into CPD courses considering personal characteristics of the individual teacher-participants – especially creativity style.

Keywords:

Creativity, improvement, inquiry-based science education, teacher training.