Promoting creativity in early childhood education

This study is approved by Social Sciences and Humanities Scientific Research and Publica- tion Ethics Committee of Akdeniz University. Data analysis The content analysis method was used for analyzing the study data of the participants in the open-ended questionnaire form by applying a child-centred data analysis method (see Fig 1). The main purpose of content analysis is to reach concepts and connections that would assist in explaining the comprehensive data obtained in the study. Data, which is summarized descrip- tively and commented on broadly, is studied in detail using content analysis, and new concepts and connections are discovered. The basic process here is to gather related data within the framework of specific themes and concept and present the data in a meaningful and organized way [24, 25]. The themes were created according to the results of the analysis obtained using content analysis. The codes that emerged during creating the themes were presented to the opinion of an expert for reliability (Reliability = consensus / consensus + disagreement) as sug- gested by Miles and Huberman [26]. The reliability of the experts and researchers for the rela- tionship between the codes and the themes was calculated as 89%. The themes which were created were presented as items in findings, and the information on the preschool educational program and regulations were added to the end of each theme in order to compare the data obtained from participants for each theme. Statements were presented in the findings of the study in order to maintain the reliability of the study.

Findings This part presents the findings obtained from the participants within the framework of the themes of the study. Themes and subthemes were analysed by presenting the tables for the sub- themes of each theme. The findings of both preschool teachers and teacher candidates were presented after the tables. Theme 1. Awareness on creativity • The Opinions of Preschool Teachers on Theme 1 Fig 1. Child-centred data analysis. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294915.g001 PLOS ONE Creativity in early childhood PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294915 December 6, 2023 7 / 21