Promoting creativity in early childhood education

RESEARCH ARTICLE Promoting creativity in early childhood education Yakup YildirimID1*, Yeşim Yilmaz2 1 Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey, 2 Preschool Teacher, Ministry of National Education, Alanya, Turkey * yakupyildirim1986@gmail.com Abstract This study aims to find out the opinions and experience of teachers and teacher candidates on promoting creativity and creative thinking in the early childhood stage within the scope of the current preschool educational program. The method of the study is the basic qualitative research design. The study group consists of 25 preschool teachers employed in the prov- ince of Alanya in the city of Antalya, and 25 preschool teacher candidates who were stu- dents in their 3rd and 4th year at Akdeniz University, Faculty of Education, Department of Preschool Education. Open-ended questionnaire form was used for getting the opinions of teachers and teacher candidates. The data was analyzed within the principles of content analysis. According to the results of the study, statements on the prominence of creative thinking mainly emphasized the child being able to express her/his emotions and thoughts effectively, developing the child’s problem-solving skills, forming cause- effect relationships, and being able to create a different point of view towards events and situations. As for devel- oping creative thinking, the opinions that come to the forefront are going on trips with the children, conducting art activities, focusing on drama activities, conducting science and

maths activities based on research, and motivating children to create authentic products with different materials. On the whole, teachers and teacher candidates expressed that the present preschool educational program has positive contributions to promoting creative thinking in children. Introduction What kind of atmospheres and situations in class and out of class should we create or what should we do to discover and promote the real potential of children? We have tried to seek answers to these questions from those closest to the child. Creativity may emerge when the child has the opportunity to combine different experiences in appropriate situations especially in the preschool period. This may sometimes display itself while creating a solution to a simple problem or when obtaining new knowledge by using higher skills. Creating an environment which enables the child to develop a new point of view is a leading element of creativity. Pre- school is a stage during which the creativity of the child is at its peak as they have unlimited imagination. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294915 December 6, 2023 1 / 21 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Yildirim Y, Yilmaz Y (2023) Promoting creativity in early childhood education. PLoS ONE 18(12): e0294915. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0294915 Editor: Prabhat Mittal, Satyawati College (Eve.), University of Delhi, INDIA Received: September 14, 2023 Accepted: November 10, 2023 Published: December 6, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Yildirim, Yilmaz. This is an open

access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All "Promoting Creativity in Early Childhood" files are available from the openicpsr database (accession number(s) https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/ 195022/version/V1/view, https://doi.org/10.3886/ E195022V1.). Funding: The author(s) received no funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.