Leading educational institutions and its impact on teachers' creativity
s: dr. Majda Cencič and dr. Tina Štemberger

Summary:  School principals play an important role in the performance of educational institutions. Therefore, they need to be supportive, trustful and foster their employees’ creativity. Various lists of principals’ competences point out changes and innovations, which depend not only on principals’ creative ideas but also on those of the employees. In the present study, we evaluated how preschool teachers assess the role of school leadership as a factor influencing the preschool teachers’ creativity. We also wanted to find out and what are the standpoints of preschool teachers, who are identified as creative in their environment, about the leadership impact on their creativity. This was an empirical quantitative non-experimental research study, which utilised an online questionnaire, and included 366 preschool teachers. The results showed that the preschool teachers assessed the leadership role in influencing creativity as positive. They considered the kindergarten leadership as the most influential. The preschool teachers who were identified as creative placed great emphasis on the role of the leadership. They identified a dual role of leadership, noting that it could act as a positive or negative (inhibitory) force in fostering creativity. Mann–Whitney and Kruskall–Wallis tests showed that the assessment of the impact of leadership on the creativity of preschool teachers differed significantly according to job position and the number of years of service. According to multiple regression, both the number of years of service and the self-assessment of creativity were important predictors of how preschool teachers perceived that the leadership role influenced their creativity. Overall, the results demonstrate that greater attention should be paid to the management of creativity, both the theory and practice.

* Full text article is only available in Slovenian language.
Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies is
published with support of Slovenian Research Agency.